Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“To Do and To Be”
Rev. Rod Debs
January 10, 2010
Story: “Frederick” by Leo Lionni
2. All along the meadow where the cows grazed and the horses ran, there was an old stone wall.
3. In that wall, not far from the barn and the granary, a chatty family of field mice had their home.
4. Since winter was not far off, the little mice began to gather nuts and wheat and straw.
5. They gathered heavy ears of corn too. They all worked day and night. All—except Frederick.
6. “Frederick, why don’t you work?” they asked. “I do work,” said Frederick. “I gather sun rays for the cold dark winter days.”
7. And when they saw Frederick sitting there, staring at the meadow, they said, “And now, Frederick?” “I gather colors,” answered Frederick simply. “For winter is gray.”
8. And once Frederick seemed half asleep. “Are you dreaming, Frederick?” they asked reproachfully. But Frederick said, “Oh no, I am gathering words. For the winter days are long and many, and we’ll run out of things to say.”
9. The winter days came, and when the first snow fell, the five little field mice took to their hideout in the stones.
10. In the beginning there was lots to eat, and the mice told stories of foolish foxes and silly cats. They were a happy family.
11. But, little by little, they nibbled up most of the nuts and berries, the straw was gone, and the corn was only a memory. It was cold in the wall, and no one felt like like chatting.
12. Then they remembered what Frederick had said about sun rays and colors and words. “What about your supplies, Frederick?” they asked.
13. “Close your eyes,” said Frederick, as he climbed on a big stone. “Now I send you the rays of the sun. Do you feel how their golden glow…” And as Frederick spoke of the sun, the four little mice began to feel warmer. Was it Frederick’s voice? Was it magic?
14. “And how about the colors Frederick?” they asked anxiously. “Close your eyes again,” Frederick said. And when he told them of the blue periwinkles, the red poppies in the yellow wheat, and the green leaves of the berry bush, they saw the colors as clearly as if they had painted in their minds.
15. “And the words, Frederick?” — Frederick cleared his throat, waited a moment, and then, as if from a stage, he said:
“Who scatters snowflakes? Who melts the ice?
Who spoils the weather? Who makes it nice?
Who grows the four-leaf clovers in June?
Who dims the daylight? Who lights the moon?
Four little field mice who live in the sky.
Four little field mice… like you and I.
One is the Springmouse who turns on the showers.
Then comes the Summer who paints in the flowers.
The Fallmouse is next with walnuts and wheat.
And Winter is last… with little cold feet.
Aren’t we lucky the seasons are four?
Think of a year with one less… or one more!”
When Frederick finished, they all applauded for his poem, and for bringing sunny warmth and color and words to get them through the lonely winter.
16. Frederick blushed, and he bowed. He was happy to have something to offer.
Message: Do you remember Whoopi Goldberg in “Sister Act II”? With her choir of street kids from the inner city, she sang: “O happy day! When Jesus washed my sins away. He taught me how to watch and pray, and live rejoicing every day. Happy day! Happy day! When Jesus washed my sins away.”
I really don’t know who decided to change “watch and pray,” a Biblical reference, to “wash, fight and pray.” As if city street kids learned that from Jesus’ example! I don’t know, maybe parochial schools do require kids to wash and pray! But the fight-idea seems a bit foreign to what I learned about Jesus who taught, rather than to fight back, if a person strikes you on one cheek, to turn the other cheek. It’s a bit of movie cuteness, I guess. Yet they sang: “Happy day! When Jesus washed my sins away.”
You’ve heard the story about the little boy on his first day in kindergarten. The teacher asked the children to say their names. All the children gave their first and last names, but one little boy just gave the name Johnny. The teacher asked, “Is that your whole name?” Johnny said, “Yes.” “But is there another name your parents always call you?” Tentatively, he replied, “Johnny Don’t?”
There are so many things children have to learn. In my day, I felt that there were thousands of “don’ts” to remember. It was only this year that I heard from two sources, a parent here (Jennifer) and a psychologist, that to build a healthy sense of self, children need to hear six words of praise or expressions of love for every one criticism.
Kids notice details even if they only hear them in passing, like the King James version of Matthew 5.48: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” It was many years after being tormented by childhood guilt that I heard from a colleague that the text might better be translated, “Be ye therefore whole….” Jesus’ teachings as a whole rejected perfectionism of Temple Judaism and its onerous purity laws. Jesus taught grace, universal acceptance toward all kinds of outcasts: the diseased, half-Jewish Samaritans, the woman with “the issue of blood,” the pagan Roman Centurian, the adulterous woman at the well, all manner of imperfect people…, Jesus lived that teaching of universal acceptance, of grace, not flawless perfection.
Wholeness. I represented Unitarian Universalism a number of years ago, at a Religious Vocations Fair held at The University of Northern Iowa when I was Minister of the congregation in Cedar Falls. I remember being stumped by a girl who asked me: “What do UUs consider to be salvation?” I didn’t have an answer. But later I learned that the term `salvation’ comes from the root “to salve,” to heal.” One might say that for Unitarian Universalists, our Mission is to attain “wholeness.” To heal the brokenness of the human spirit. To heal the brokenness of community—which is really two sides of the same coin, the self in community. Our UU mission is to save souls, to save the world–or rather, to heal brokenness, to bind us together in greater wholeness.
Our Unitarian Universalist Statement of covenant includes these final words: “Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and to expand our vision. As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.” (UUA Bylaws)
We seek wholeness, unity in diversity, not in conformity. Rather than condemning all our imperfect human thoughts and understandings, we celebrate one another’s religious and intellectual integrity.
And our covenant of mutual trust and support does not give license for anyone to lord it over anyone else. Our UU Principle of affirming and promoting “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” “the right of conscience and the democratic process”-–these are behavioral aspirations, high behavioral aspirations worthy of our faithful efforts. We work really hard to take each person seriously which is, I think, at the heart of what we call “the democratic process.” Not just winning a vote, not gaining power of the majority to ignore the minorities’ opinions. The spirit of democracy is to take each individual’s opinion seriously. To celebrate the wisdom brought by diverse views. To broaden our understanding. To attain greater wholeness with each added voice, each perspective integrated in the community of understanding. Aspiring to wholeness.
My wife, Jeannette’s graduate work was in Human Development. She pointed out to me that before a certain age, toddlers are not able to play together. They tend to grab toys away from one another and say, “Mine.” Adults learn to use Distraction as a technique when children are struggling over a single toy: We point out another plaything for one of the toddlers. Parallel Play is the age-appropriate expectation. It’s not that children are bad. They have not yet developed to where they are able to share their toys.
We adults have our intellectual toys: Ideas, ideologies, analyses, models, world views, beliefs. Our Unitarian forebear, Francis David, who died in a dungeon in Transylvania in 1579, for his religious “innovations,” offered his wisdom calling us to stop fighting over our intellectual toys, calling us to—well, I’d call it “intellectual parallel play” when he said, “We need not think alike to love alike.” Those were the days when you could be put to death if your ideas were labeled heresy.
Wholeness. Salvation for us Unitarian Universalists, it seems to me, will involve us moving beyond tolerance, “live and let live”—an adult version of Parallel Play—each with our own precious intellectual toy. Healing of our brokenness, our private perspectives will require us to even go beyond acceptance of diverse perspectives, to joyful celebration of how each one “enriches and ennobles” our collective understanding.
Some of you have heard me speak of my childhood experience of religious fear—terror. Raised within the Evangelical Friends Church to believe in the literal truth of Bible stories—stories of rapture, heaven and hell —I remember coming home from school to an empty house. I was about seven years old. I thought that the Rapture might have taken my parents to heaven, that I might have been left behind with all the evil people to suffer the thousand year reign of the beast. I ran from window to window, crying, praying to see someone on the streets outside. Then mom came in the door with my baby sister and the groceries.
Many of our relatives and neighbors suffer terrible fear and guilt for sinful imperfection within their literalist religious world-view. Others suffer the cultural guilt and blame as “losers” within our consumer society or condemned for breaking the rules in this economic world war of each against all. In this context, Jesus life and teachings offer the grace of acceptance, no matter our imperfections, missing the mark. “O happy day! When Jesus washed my sins away.”
I want to close with some reflections on “watching and praying,” as the song goes: “He taught me how to watch and pray, and live rejoicing every day.”
The work ethic is rooted in our Puritan religious heritage. The difference between being productive or being lazy is a judgment I internalized as a child. I was graded every day at school as to whether I did good work or was a failure. Our educational system, I understand, was developed at the time of British industrialization when grades of performance in school were used to determine whether workers would be on a manager track, technical track or unskilled labor. School grading scales were reflected in employee pay scales within a class society—-except for Europe’s permanent aristocracy who passed their inheritance of land and wealth down to heirs, generation after generation, above and outside of the class grading system.
Last week I broke in a new computer. Instead of waiting forty-five minutes for it to boot up, instead of waiting an occasional twenty seconds for a single keystroke, I was able to spend five minutes on responding to one email, and then whip through twenty more email that require no response in another three minutes! I felt so good about myself. The more I accomplished, the better I felt.
From rewards for doing my homework back in grade school, rewards of A’s for doing excellent work and the humiliation of F’s for failure, we hard-working Americans have become some of the most driven, productive “human doings” as opposed to human beings. There are real penalties for anything less than competitive excellence: companies go out of business. Employees lose our jobs to someone more productive.
We live to do and find our being, who we are, defined by our doing. And what choice do we have? Mediocrity? Hobbies and entertainment and family in our spare time? We are rewarded with the consumer privileges of highly-paid careers. The prestige. The rat race to luxurious leisure of vacation and retirement—if you are one of the winners in the great economic competition, each against all. This, I think, is who we are. There’s no outside to our economic lives.
But there is an inside. Learning to “watch and pray” and “rejoicing every day.” I think the paths of healing and wholeness are rather natural. We stare out the window. We do what the boss (and we ourselves) call “wasting time.” We escape to outdoors, to animal companions, to exploring cultures through story-telling technologies, to various shapes of community relationships that enrich our lives.
When we stop our productive doing, our striving—including our striving to relax and recreate—when we suspend our doing and simply watch what life presents to us, we are practicing the ancient religious arts of meditation, paying attention, watching. Buddhism simply involves the practice of paying attention to our breathing and noticing what presents itself to our minds.
It is this silent openness, along with prayer— our heart’s longing, not doing, but just being watchful and being that longing that we feel so deeply, that is a practice toward healing and wholeness. And, the practice of gratitude.
I see great opportunity for healing and wholeness in Forrest Church’s three-part aspiration: “Do what you can.” Grace means you don’t have to be perfect. And doing is not all. So pay attention, watch and pray, or as Forrest says, “Be who you are.” Finally, practice gratitude rather than attention to insufficiency or dissatisfaction. Forrest said: “Want what you have.” Practice being grateful.