Washing the Dishes (December 11, 2011)

One summer at the UU church I served in Palo Alto, our RE team decided we would offer a pilot session of SpiritPlay- the UU adaptation of the Montessori-based “Godly Play” developed by one of my heroes Jerome Berryman. What makes SpiritPlay special is that it tries to create a scared space where children can engage directly with religious language. It is based on the radical assumption that all humans are engaging their existential reality no mater what their age. And so after the story each students chooses the work he or she will do. It might be painting, or drawing, or shaping clay, or re-telling the story for themselves.

One of the core concepts behind Montessori is that if children have equipment matched to their size and capabilities, they will really develop a sense of their own capacity. The room is prepared so that the children are empowered to find what they need to do their work. This means there’s a huge amount of preparation need for the first class, but then little changes from week to week except the story. My co-teachers and I were all a little daunted by the amount of prep and set-up required; I had thought the long descriptions of clean-up supplies present in the Montessori classroom to help children take care of their own spills seemed really tedious and complex, and I was willing to let it go. But at the last minute that first morning we made a quick run to the kitchen for buckets and sponges and were back in time for the children to enter.

That first morning the children did more-or-less engage with us in a quiet wondering space. I was touched and delighted every time they were willing to play along. After the story each child went to find their work for the first time, and the two youngest children chose paint. They got out their special paint trays and paints and paper, and in about 2 minutes they were done painting. Oh my, I thought, I hope they will be able to “find their work” today. But before they moved on to their next choice, they needed to clean up after their painting. I showed them where we kept the bins of water and the sponges cut small for individual use. Twenty minutes later when I called everyone back to the circle those two were still cleaning their trays. For those young children, this was clearly the best fun of the whole morning. How delightful to have your own sponge in a bucket marked “trays” to clean off your tray. How fun to have a special bucket marked “hands” to wash your hands in.

Berryman’s pedagogical asumption behind letting each child find their work is that each of us knows somewhere deep inside what our spiritual work is on any given morning. This theory places a radical trust in the spirit’s capacity to be heard, and in our capacity to hear it. And this capacity is not dependant on physical or mental maturity; Berryman is making the radical leap that we are all engaged in our spiritual work our whole lives, not once we get some degree, or go on a meditation retreat with a guru. We don’t always know what our work is, so we set aside time to see what emerges, trusting that this will be the work our spirit needs. And these youngest children figured out that the work of their spirit that day was to wash their paint trays in bins of soapy water with their very own sponge.

I told this story a number of times when folks asked how SpiritPlay was going. I found myself saying “maybe the Buddhists were right- maybe it is all about washing the dishes.” It came out in a kind of glib way, but the idea sank deeper and deeper within me over the following weeks and years. Maybe the spiritual work of washing the dishes is really important and powerful and even compelling. Maybe it really is all about washing the dishes.

[Here there was a reading from Thich Nhat Hanh’s Miracle of Mindfulness "Washing the Dishes to Wash the Dishes" and "The Cup in your Hands"]

I first read Thich Nhat Hanh’s writing about mindfulness maybe a decade before that fateful morning with the paint trays. I was in seminary at the time and I had the frame of mind that I was really living only when I was doing something interesting or fun or exciting- and that the chores I had to do were the cost I paid for my real life. Dishes and other chores were something you should put off doing as long as possible, and then rush through quickly to get back to really living. But in my Intro to Buddhist Meditation class, we were learning that we should always put our attention in to the present moment, no matter what that might involve. Whether we were sitting quietly on a meditation mat, or stuck in traffic, we could practice equanimity, and being fully present in the moment.

Well, I tried- honestly I did. And when you live in the bay area, there are plenty of moments to sit patiently in traffic practicing your equanimity. But still I was missing an important point. I was motivated by the idea that if you really practice being present as often as possible, then when some great moment of spiritual revelation comes, you could be as fully present to that as to the bumper of the car in front of you on the interstate. I would struggle with doing the dishes to do the dishes so that later I could drink tea to drink tea, as it were. And maybe that was my work. I was a student after all, and I am still grateful that I had adventures and did interesting things in my twenties- I’m glad I had passionate ideas about changing the world, and a deep hunger for spiritual awakening and growth.

Then, about the time I was settled in my first full time ministry, my partner and I became parents. I remember one Sunday afternoon standing in the living room after a full day at church, and my family was all watching a football game and relaxing. “Why don’t you sit down and relax?” someone said. I wondered, “why don’t I?” And then I heard the sound of my infant son waking from an all-too-short nap in his room. Now parenting an infant is a very rigorous job. You are never really in control of your own schedule. There is no putting off your work for later- when a baby needs to eat, he needs to eat NOW. Then when you are the parent of a toddler, there is no rushing through things as quickly as possible; it’s not unusual to spend half an hour getting a child into his or her shoes. Toddlers do everything in their own time and are rushed at your peril. So if you are really living only when you are on some grand adventure, or having fun with your friends, or pursuing some scholarly or spiritual insight, then time spent parenting is time when you are not really living.

But the wisdom of the Buddhist tradition challenges us to set aside those assumptions. The time you are stuck in traffic or stuck at the sink with a pile of dishes or pacing the floor with a colicky newborn, this is still your time. This is still living. In fact, for most of us this is the very fabric of our days. What a waste it would be if all our long day of chores and work and helping others were all in preparation for that hour after dinner when all the dishes are done and we can relax with family or with a good book.

Moreover, there is something really satisfying about work done well. There is something almost restful about washing dishes, or sweeping, or pulling weeds because the mind can let go of all its cares and worries, can put aside planning for the future and just sink down deeply into the task at hand. When I sit in front of the computer answering e-mail I usually feel kind of scattered by the time I finish, and finish is such an arbitrary word for it since there is always more to do. But when I set out to wash a load of dishes it has a definite beginning, middle and end, and when I am done I have something aesthetically pleasing to show for my work- a clean kitchen that I can enjoy and use. I may feel tired after doing the dishes or weeding the garden, but my mind is almost always more clear and calm when I am done if I am doing the dishes to do the dishes, than if I am rushing through to get to the next thing on my list.

As pretty much every healing discipline agrees, doing things with our body is good. Being a little tired from activity is a good thing. I used to lace on my running shoes and go for a run first thing out of bed in the morning, but now that I have to get my son to elementary school, after I make my son’s breakfast and lunch and feed the dogs and let them out and set the coffee to perking, I like to do a load of dishes or a load of laundry. It has a very similar effect to going for a run -- I’m awake, I’ve used my body to start the day and I feel ready to go. (I think this is how you know you are in mid-life; when doing a few chores before breakfast seems like a nice way to start the day.)

I want to go beyond a strictly Buddhist concept of mindfulness for a moment and think about work itself. Especially the kind of everyday tasks we do with our hands, with our bodies. The last half century or so has been filled with “labor saving” devices, tools and machines. And yet are folks less busy than they were half a century ago? Do we have more time to go on walks and sit quietly and read a book? I don’t think we do. Our whole society is guided by the idea of doing the dishes to get done as quickly as possible so that we can go watch TV or something. James Bostic, former deputy assistant secretary of agriculture for rural development once said “… just stop for a minute and think about what it means to live in a land where 95 percent of the people can be freed form the drudgery of preparing their own food.” To this Wendell Berry replied in his book “The unsettling of America:”

“In gardening, … one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, and a source of delight. …

The ‘drudgery’ of growing one’s own food, then, is not drudgery at all… It is – in addition to being the appropriate fulfillment of a practical need – a sacrament, as eating is also, by which we enact and understand our oneness with the creation, the conviviality of one body with all bodies…”

“The former deputy assistant secretary cannot see work as a vital connection; he can see it only as a trade of time for money, and so of course he believes in doing as little of it as possible, especially if it involves the use of the body.” [Berry p. 138-9]

I agree with Berry that eating becomes more meaningful when we have prepared the food ourselves. The only time my son has ever eaten certain vegetables is when he harvested them off the vine, or helped cook them up. And so it is with washing the dishes -- to really feel the dish under your hands, the temperature of the water, the smell of the soap. How different each kind of food is to clean off a dish. How different it is to clean a fork than to clean a mug. I tell you I am much more careful when I cook certain foods knowing how hard it is to clean the pan if I scorch it. When we feel the full cycle of food from garden to stove to table, or of a dish from cupboard, to table, to sink, to cupboard again, we know something real about what it means to live in this world. If we only ever experience the cupboard full of clean cups, our knowing is superficial.

It is one of my most deeply held beliefs -- that if anything is sacred, then everything is sacred. Well then, if any work is sacred, washing the dishes is surely sacred. Whatever your work is this week, whether you are called to it by the spirit, or called by the pragmatic needs of living in the world, I challenge you not to rush through it to get back your real life, but to cherish your time washing the dishes, to claim it as your life. Any time you find yourself facing the day’s chores: washing dishes, clearing frost off your windshield, getting a cup of juice for a child, walking to the mailbox. I encourage you to sink down into it, to experience it fully. It is the very fabric of our lives.

Facing Death (November 13, 2011)

I am 4 years old, laying in bed at night, afraid to go to sleep because the inevitability of my non-being has dawned on me. I am afraid to die.

I am 5 years old, lying in bed at night, remembering what we learned in school about volcanoes, about earthquakes. My mother tries to re-assure me: there are no volcanoes in Pennsylvania. I tell her I am afraid of earthquakes. She tells me earthquakes only happen in California. This doesn't help. I am afraid of dying.

I am 24 years old. I am in California, I moved here to attend seminary because I still don't understand how to live knowing that I will die. I had thought that maybe if I spent a few years studying the wisdom of the world religions I might finally understand this mystery; I might finally find some peace. The Bay Bridge has only recently been repaired from the Loma Prieta earthquake when the top level collapsed onto the bottom level, killing those trapped on the bridge at that unlucky moment. I white knuckle my way across the bridge at least once week. I am afraid of death.

I enroll in a Buddhism class without knowing what a good idea this is -- to start my inquiry with a tradition that looks directly in the face of death. I mean this figuratively, but also literally. Our teacher is a Theravadan monk, and our textbooks are not from American Buddhism, but Buddhism as it is practiced Malaysia. In that land when a person dies, the professor Bhanti explains, they are not buried under ground, but laid out to decompose. We read in our text Buddhist Meditation: In theory and practice about the Asubha Bhavana, a meditation on the ten stages of the decay of the body after death. The text explains in great detail the preparations leading up to the meditation, and the many things that should be noted during the meditation on a dead body decaying in the graveyard. I am shocked.

I don't, actually, meditate on a corpse, but I do imagine what it would be like not to jerk my eyes away when I see a squirrel lying on the ground. What if I could just breathe, in and out? What if I could cross the Bay Bridge, knowing that earthquakes do happen here, and that bridges do collapse, and I could just breathe. I encourage myself not to run away from the idea, I don't push it away but I allow it to be present, and then without grasping let it fade. I develop the habit of mind of looking at my fears as unflinchingly as I can. It makes me feel braver.

I take the required systematic theology class, and have the good fortune of studying with Bob Kimball, who is a very wise man and who exposed me to the writings of his teacher, the Theologian Paul Tillich. Tillich says that there is only really one source of anxiety, and that is the anxiety of non-being. “The ontological question, the question of being-itself, arises in something like a “metaphysical shock” – the shock of possible nonbeing.’ (Systematic Theology p. 163) I recognize that metaphysical shock from when I was a little girl with anxiety- induced insomnia. Tillich writes “Finitude in awareness is anxiety…” We attach that anxiety to real things, like earthquakes or volcanoes and they become fears, but really at the root is this anxiety of non-being. “A danger, a pain, an enemy, maybe feared, but fear can be conquered by action. Anxiety cannot, for no finite being can conquer its finitude. Anxiety is always present, although often it is latent” (p. 191) And finally I understand why as I tossed and turned grappling with my own non-being when I was just a little girl my mother couldn't comfort me.

And what is it that does assuage this anxiety? Courage, the “Courage to be." How do we find the courage to be, knowing that our lives are finite? Tillich uses an “ontological argument” which means that if we can conceive it, it must exist; Because we can imagine the courage, it already exists in us.

Tillich writes “In order to experience his finitude, man must look at himself from the point of view of a potential infinity. In order to be aware of moving toward death, man must look out over his finite being as a whole; he must in some way be beyond it.” Tillich’s language is difficult, and I slog through even the smallest reading assignments. But Prof. Kimball is patient, and passionate about the power of Tillich’s work, and I challenge him and challenge him across his desk during our seminar which gathers weekly in a small circle in his office. Some courage begins to grow in me.

I am researching a paper and I read these words by the psychologist Erich Fromm, and copy them into my journal: “The common suffering is… the awareness that life runs out of one’s hand like sand, and that one will die without having lived.” This is it; my greatest fear here in this book. Finally I understand what I have to do. I have to live. I have to live passionately, creatively, vibrantly right now, living a life so full that when it comes time to die it will have been enough.

This is the heart of what I want to talk to you about today. I believe that whenever we realize that we are mortal, whether it is because of something scary the doctor finds during routine tests, or just because the reality of our fragility comes fully to mind, it changes how we see our lives. It changes what seems important and what seems urgent.

So I want to invite you to join me in a moment of meditation. This meditation is by our dear Thich Nhat Hanh meditation from Blooming of the lotus
(Exercise 10 p. 50-51)

When we dare to become present with our own impermanence, what thoughts rise? What is that comes to mind when you allow into your awareness the reality that each of us will die? That you yourself will die?
[pause for meditation]

What things in your life surge to importance when you look at your life from that vantage point? when you look back at your life today, as if there might be no tomorrow for you, what parts of your life are you most proud of? most grateful for?

[pause for meditation]

The next is a more difficult question- when you look back at your life as if from the end, are there things you feel are missing from your life? Lost opportunities or dreams? Some of these lost dreams that come to mind we can only grieve: if we turned away from a path we regret never taking, if we wish we had spent more time with a loved one who is now deceased. It is healing to take time to grieve these losses, these parts of our life that never were. To grieve and let go of that which will not be, even if that takes time and patience, lightens us for whatever is ahead.

The greatest gift of facing the reality of our death is that we can make choices about the time that remains for us. If you learned today that your remaining life had a discreet number of days, what would you do?
Would you reconcile with long lost friends or family?
Would you forgive or ask for forgiveness?
Would you finally live out an old dream- to hike the Appalachian trail, to go back to school and become a nurse?
[pause for meditation]

Now I am Forty-something, and it has been many years since I laid awake at night anxious about my non-being. I do, occasionally, face my own mortality, or more often I face the mortality of people I love so dearly that I know their death will leave a hole, a scar in my spirit.

Our state of mind when we face death is different than our ordinary state of mind. On any given day, our priorities may be to get to the grocery store, to finish a project at work, to finally clean out those gutters, to play bridge with friend. But death gives us a different perspective; it makes us think of life as a whole piece. It helps us clarify our values. Being present with our own mortality sometimes helps us let the dinner dishes sit if it means we can spend time in conversation with our family, it helps us take the time off work to see the sun set over the pacific. We put off raking the leaves to get our will in order, to make sure our family is taken care of after we are gone.

Buddha, the enlightened one, was once stopped on the road and asked by a man, "Sir, are you a god?"
"No." Said the Buddha.
"Are you a demigod then?" asked the man.
"No." replied Buddha.
"Then are you great man?" asked the passerby. "No." replied the Buddha again.
"Then what are you sir." The man final asked.
"I am the one who is awake." Replied Buddha as we went on his way.

The realization of our own death comes to us as a wake-up call. Sometimes it nudges us to be fully present to this very moment, even to our fears, because the more we are present the more we will know that we are really living. When we face death this precious moment, the way it is, fully lived by us is enough. Sometimes our fear tells us that we are afraid of dying un-reconciled, unfulfilled. When we face death we realize how lucky we are to still have time to reconcile, to connect, to fulfill our dreams. Death robs us of complacency, but shows us what it means to live.

Taking Root (October 23, 2011)

Taking Root

It is easy for Unitarian Universalists to feel rootless. For so many centuries we have been out on the growing edge of religious, ethical, and philosophical thought. Folks hear that we are a non-creedal faith and say “UUs can believe anything they want” but it is not a creed that keeps us grounded, it is our principles and our roots. As one of my old professors at Seminary used to say about our movement “This wasn’t something that was born at an EST seminar in California in the 1970s.” No, we have deep roots, and as we learned in our children’s story, the deep roots of the trees protect the soil and the water, and keep it from blowing away in the wind and drying up in the sun. Without deep roots the land becomes a desert. I believe there is a lot of wisdom in the biology of our world, and that the principles we observe in nature can inform our living. Today I want to talk about once such principle. The principle is simply this: “Take Root” -- connect to our ancestors and to the local.

This principle is not only true for soil and trees and Eco-systems, it is also true for our hearts and minds and spirits. For example when we proudly declare ourselves to be a welcoming congregation, welcoming to all people be they Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Bisexual or straight, that welcome has so much more strength when we realize it is rooted in our Universalist theology- the idea that every single person has inherent worth and dignity. We adopted that principle in the 20th century, but it is an idea rooted in our centuries old Universalist heritage which says that God is all loving, that god loves all people, that all people will be reunited with God and with one another at the end of days. All are chosen, all are saved. We draw not only on our contemporary principles and values when we protect the rights of our GLBT neighbors and friends, but we also draw on the fiery passion of our stump preaching ancestors, who called on the power of God’s all encompassing love and power to save. Like a tree drawing water and nutrients from its roots, I feel powerful and strong when I call on the wisdom of my ancestors.

The history of Unitarian Universalism is often told something like this: In the 1500s a Spanish physician named Michael Servetus, the same man who discovered respiration in the lungs, published a book called “On the Errors of the Trinity.” He believed that God was one, and that the bible did not say anything about a trinity. He was burned at the Stake by John Calvin in 1553 for refusing to retract this statement.

During this time, such ideas were traveling across Europe. Just a decade later in Transylvania [1568] a young king, John Sigismund was convinced to listen to great preachers of different sects of the Christian tradition before he took the king’s privilege to name the state religion. A preacher named Frances David won the day with his ideas about how the trinity was not in the bible, and how “we need not think alike to love alike.” David advised King John that not only his Unitarian ideas but all Christian religious groups should be allowed to co-exist under an “edict of tolerance.” Now groups of Unitarians began to worship together for the first time under this name. Other strains of Unitarianism grew in Poland and in England.

But Unitarian ideas continued to be met with persecution. Joseph priestly, an English Scientist and Unitarian Minister fled to America after his laboratory was burned to the ground because of his ideas. [1791]

Many in America were responding to a powerful fundamentalist movement called “The Great Awakening.” This was revival movement that grew out of Calvinism. Opponents of this movement emphasized the importance of reason and logic, an approach to the bible that valued historical and critical thinking, and the importance of ethics. Unitarianism is one of the movements that grew out of this opposition.

At this time the Unitarian churches were still part of the state-sponsored church system – funded by taxes. Universalism, which had its roots in similar ideas, believed in a separation of church and state, and were allied with radical fringe groups like the Quakers. Universalism grew up in opposition to Calvinism, which said that only a certain small group had been chosen by God at the beginning of time to go to heaven; The rest of us were going to hell.

Universalists thought that a vision of much of humanity damned to hell did not harmonize with the concept of an all powerful all loving God, and they rooted their faith with the idea that all persons could be saved. It was in the second generation of American Universalists that the Athens UU church was founded, that our lovely historic building was built in Sheshequin.

The Unitarian and Universalist movements grew alongside one another. Both were deeply impacted by the transcendentalist movement, which preferred the natural world over the biblical literalism on which even the old-school Unitarians built into their faith. Transcendentalists like Channing, Fuller and Emerson wanted to strip away the historic structures and teachings of the church and center their faith in the direct experience of God. The transcendentalists also introduced Eastern thought into our movement, widening the web of our roots beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition.

This was also a great time for Social Justice as Unitarian and Universalist preachers and activists worked to end slavery, worked to give women the right to vote, and work in other areas which badly needed reform like the Prison and Mental Health systems. Pioneers like Olympia Brown, the first woman ordained into the ministry of an organized denomination in this country, paved the way for gender equality in our own Universalist Tradition.

In the 20th century, the humanist notion that one could be religious and ethical without God was a powerful one in our movement. It was during the high tide of Humanism that this Big Flats Fellowship was founded about 60 years ago.

In 1961 the Unitarians and the Universalists merged into one association. Together we were allies and activists in the civil rights movement. The women’s movement lead us to re-consider how we thought about God, and searching for a concept of the divine that honored women, we encountered the ancient pagan ideas of God the mother, and were inspired by the ideas of the neo-pagan movement. We have been and still are leaders in the rights of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender persons. Today we provide a bridge between the secular and the sacred, among faiths and theologies.

But we have roots that go even deeper than that. I think of the church I used to serve in California. They had a beautiful Madrone branch as hung behind the pulpit for as long as anyone could remember. I thought about the symbolism of a branch without a trunk, without roots. I used to joke that maybe the place where that branch was cut from its tree is a symbol of the execution of Servetus -- Our break from the Catholic Church and our Protestant cousins. But it is shortsighted to consider a branch apart from the tree, and now I want to trace our own branch down the trunk and deep int our roots. As I tell the story of our roots, see if you can find Unitarian Universalism as we follow them further and further back.

Frances David and Michael Servetus were both raised Catholics, and were part of the protestant reformation that rocked the western world. The Church of England, the Calvinists, the Baptists and many other protestant movements blossomed and evolved within a generation of Martin Luther, the Augustinian Monk, nailing his 95 thesis to the church door in 1517. Luther had been upset about corruption in the Catholic Church, and had grown in his disputes with Catholic theology.

With the invention of the printing press in 1450, common people could now read and interpret the bible for themselves. The spread of the printed bible translated into the popular tongues created grass-roots movements within the Catholic Church.

Ever since Roman Catholic Church had become the legal religion of Western Europe, it was tightly allied with political and financial power. Monastic movements, like those founded in the 12th century by St. Francis and in the 5th century by St. Benedict created an alternative to the wealth and corruption which infected the power structures of both church and kingdom. Men and Women religious took oaths of poverty and devoted their daily life to sharing work and to cultivating the spirit.

At the same time mystics like Meister Eckhart and Hildegard of Bingen held at the center of their faith a direct experience of the divine (in them we find roots of the transcendentalists). Throughout Christian history there was a perennial tension between those keepers of the church traditions and institutions and those mystics and martyrs who held themselves accountable only to God, playing at the edges of heresy.

Arius, a parish priest at the turn of the 4th century, found himself on the heretical side of the Nicene Creed when in 325 the Council of Nicaea drew its theological line in the sand. Arius had taught that God created a Son who was the first creature, but who was not equal to God. According to Arius, Jesus was a supernatural creature not quite human and not quite divine. Some call Arius an early ancestor of Unitarianism.

Even before that, when there was as yet no council to declare him heretical, many controversies followed the teachings of Origen of Alexandria, who lived a century before Arius. (185-232) He preached the eventual return of all souls to a perfection in proximity to God (an early ancestor, some say, of the Universalists).

Before Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and issued The "Edict of Milan" (CE 313), which ended the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire, the early followers of Jesus were enemies of Rome, tortured and punished by death. Paul, who is credited with forming the early church, was imprisoned and writes about his imprisonment in the New Testament. Early Christianity was a religious movement which identified strongly with its crucified teacher. It was an egalitarian movement, a reform movement both within the Jewish tradition and within the Roman Empire.

So too the Jewish people had lived as a conquered or occupied people in the Roman Empire. Many spent their lives as slaves, taken in battle. Roman procurators kept the peace and collected taxes, pocketing additional money for themselves. Roman leaders swung between tolerance of Jewish religious practices and persecution. Like the early Christians, Jews were tortured or put to death when they refused to worship pagan gods, or refused to worship the emperor as a God. In 70 CE the fall of the second temple in Jerusalem was the sad outcome of the Great Jewish Revolt against the Empire.

This time moving backwards to the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem under Babylonian rule was a time when the books we now think of as the Hebrew Bible were canonized and began to assume their present form. This was the time when classical Greek philosophy was thriving, and the Jews were known for the strong ethics of their legal code and tradition. The last books that made it into the canon were writings of prophets like Ezekiel and Zacharia who spoke out against the injustices of the ruling class, and of their contemporary culture as a whole.

The chronicles of Jewish history that appear in the scriptures describe a struggle of kingdom against kingdom, of the rise and fall of powerful men. (This was a patriarchal time when women rarely had political power, and were not part of the Jewish Rabbinate.) The Hindu and Greek mythologies tell a similar story, their pantheons reflecting the role of war in Classical society. And so it was throughout the world, as the Chinese warred for dynastic control of China, and the Aztecs in this continent.

But these classical civilizations gave us not only war, but also the written word; first in Sumer and later in Egypt peoples first wrote down their scared stories and texts. Classical religions such as Judaism brought sacred writing to the center of their religious identity.

But before writing, that great religions stories were passed through telling. The first five books of the bible, called the “Torah” collect stories of a very ancient oral tradition, and these earliest stories of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures share roots with of those old stories with Islam. All 3 religions call themselves descendants of Abraham. 20th century feminist scholars have used the stories and descriptions of the life of women to help recreate a picture of what women’s lives might have been like. We notice the presence of deities like “the Queen of Heaven” in these biblical stories. Since women were not taught to read, and in many times and places worshiped separately from men, their stories and rituals would have been passed down orally and many were lost. Scholars like Marija Gimbutas have found evidence of a time before written history when women held power in politics and religion, when God was female.

Before the written record, before the lingering stories of ancient times, we have only the archeological record to help us understand our roots; the residual tools of a Neolithic village, the sediment of an evolving earth. Before people organized themselves and their farms around towns, the Neolithic villages grew out of small settlements. Only about 1 million humans lived on earth. Archeological evidence of the first shrines and religious art shows us that religions focused on the cycle of life, the return of the sun after winter, harvest after planting. It was the role of early religions to pass on this cyclic wisdom, and to remind people of their place in the natural world. The Great mother deity gave birth to and cared for the universe.

These earliest peoples passed on to their offspring not only their genetic coding, but a cultural coding which preserved the learning of parent and grandparent for each evolving generation. Spoken language had made this possible in a new way.

As far back as our Neanderthal ancestors, ritual surrounded burial of the dead. Evidence of such a burial is found in an archeological site in Lebanon including a thoughtful arrangement of stones and a deer killed as food for the deceased. We identify with the drive of these early hominids to find meaning in the cycles of life and death, establishing traditions for integrating such experiences in their own lives and in the natural cycles of life.

Many of us found Unitarian Universalism as adults. It is new and exciting for us, and we the newest generation may feel like the newest leaves on the tree, gazing out with open minds at a future we cannot imagine. But let us never forget our roots. We have roots in this country going back to the American Revolution. We have roots back to the earliest leaders of the Christian Church – we were cutting edge thinkers (or heretics as Arius was called) back in the 3rd century. We have roots back to the ethical teachings of the Jewish traditions, and to the primal earth centered religions before history. We have roots that bind us to all beings who have ever wondered why we live and die.

We honor our roots today lest we become rootless and adrift, lest our UU tradition become cut off from the roots that bring us water and nutrients, lest our souls become deserts buffeted by the winds of change. When we take root we become strong, we become wise, and we remember that we are inexorably connected with the web of life itself.

The Earth is Our Mother (May 8, 2011)

For years I have been singing that chant “The Earth is our mother” and in my mind I pictured the globe- Gaia – our blue boat home. Recently, however, I heard Vandana Shiva, Physicist, Environmental Activist, talking about the role of earth in her culture in India. "For us,” she says “mud is not just the matrix of life in which we grow our plants, it's our building structure - it's our very sense of who we are." [quoted in a movie I recommend highly- Dirt! The Movie]

When she says that “the earth is our mother, she should be respected and treated as such”, I realized she was talking about earth- the soil out of which we are all born. The soil which carries the building blocks of life, all those minerals and elements that make up our bodies, and the bodies of the plants and animals we eat. Says Physicist Fritjof Capra "The living organisms on earth have used the very same molecules of air, water and soil over and over again. Not just the same types of molecules but the very same molecules.", [Dirt! The Movie] Image singing that chant again- the earth is our mother, and picturing not the shining blue sphere, but a handful of dirt from your garden: the soil that feeds you and your children, the soil that turns fallen leaves and apple cores from garbage into life. As it says in the book of Genesis: [3: 19] “for out of [the ground] you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.” The earth is our mother. From her we and every living thing is born.

When I first read the passage by Wendell Berry we heard this morning, it awakened some deeper knowing in me- knowing in a deeper way what I had known since I was a child-- that everyone, everything I love as they die becoming part of the soil, and (I’ve been very clear with my family- when I die I want to be buried in a plain pine box) my own body will be part of that soil. I want to rejoin that millennium old chain of life, and when I die I want to rejoin it as soon as possible. When I thought of the soil that way, suddenly I was filled with an awe-filled reverence. That soil IS my ancestors, my grandmothers and great-grandmothers, all our ancestors, all our loved ones, it is us.

As we saw in our opening meditation, dirt is not some inert material, soil is incredibly alive. I recently saw a movie called “Dirt! The Movie” and in it wine critic Gary Vaynerchuk said "With the amount of species that live in a teaspoon of dirt, I think it's very obvious dirt might be more alive than we are." Because we live in a very fertile area, we take for granted that something will grow out of the ground, bidden or unbidden. We have to mow and cut back and sometimes even use poisons to keep thing from growing out of every bit of dirt. If we lived someplace like Africa we would know better. There about a third of the continent is dessert. Most of the continent is savannah, some naturally occurring, and much of it created when forests were cut down or burned to create farmland Nobel prize winner Wangari Maathai has devoted her life to planting trees to try to reclaim that desert, the desert that was created when we humans cut down or burned the trees and plants that held water and nutrients in the soil. Pierre Rabhi: Philosopher, Agro-ecologist Farmer turned philosopher has spent his life helping farmers in such arid landscapes to rebuild soil damaged through cultivation. He is quoted as saying "Africa is not poor. Ethiopia alone, if properly cultivated, could feed the entire African continent." [Dirt! The Movie.]

It is scary to realize that we in North America are not immune to this desertification. Our Top soil is not inert- not something that will always be there no matter what we do. We take it for granted, perhaps the same way we took our mothers for granted when we were children. We could not feed a singly hungry mouth without a constantly renewable source of healthy soil, yet the way we practice farming in modern times we lose six tons of topsoil for every ton of food produced: "The Dust Bowl was an event, not quite on the same scale, but comparable to what happened after the last Ice Age. We made a really big change in the landscape just by bad farming practices” -- to quote urban arborist Bill Logan. [Dirt! The Movie ]

The Earth is our mother- we must take care of her- starting with roots. Roots hold the soil together. Roots draw water and nutrients down into the soil and up into plants. Without an interconnected network of roots the soil washes away, or is blown away as in the days of the dust bowl. This is what causes desertification. This is why it is so important for farmers to plant cover crops in the off season- it keeps the soil healthy and whole when it is not producing crops. Moreover, the deep roots help us through droughts, through times of scarcity. In times of drought the deep roots reach sources of water which shallow roots cannot reach, they can also reach elements, nutrients from deep down. Deep roots are the ones that take time to lay down, the roots that last from year to year, decade to decade. My grandfather, who spent his life in farming communities in North Dakota, told me once about how hard they worked to encourage their neighbors to plant rows of trees at the edge of their fields to help preserve the soil and slow the wind. We care for our mother by allowing deep roots to grow, and by protecting the bare earth in winter to keep her whole and healthy.

The soil also needs rest. A piece of land that has grown corn for too many years will bear less and less produce as the nutrients that corn needs are used up. Good farmers also rotate crops to keep the land fruitful, but sometimes we need to just let the land rest- to lay fallow. By lay fallow we don’t mean that the bare dirt is just exposed to the sky for a year, we mean that it is uncultivated, it is “left to its own natural growth.” We care for our mother earth by allowing her to regularly rest and renew herself.

A natural ecosystem will find its own balance over the years if “left to its natural growth.” But when we cultivate land we have to very carefully keep track of the balance, to build a relationship of plants that are mutually supporting- elements that work in harmony with one another. It is widely known that it was the custom among the first nations people in this land to plant corn, squash and beans together- this is referred to as the three sisters. Squash protects her sisters from weeds and shades the soil from the sun with her leaves, keeping it cool and moist. Beans help keep the soil fertile by converting the sun's energy into nitrogen filled nodules that grow on its roots. And the corn provides a trellis for the beans to climb. Or think of the compost pile. Most folks use a layering of dry and wet compost materials (lasagna is the common metaphor); too much wet stuff and it will not get hot enough to transform. If there’s not enough oxygen it doesn’t transform (this is part of the problem with our current landfill system.) But once the right balance is achieved, the compost practically creates itself. We care for our mother earth by supporting balanced eco-systems.

And here’s the most amazing thing of all. What feeds the soil? Builds the soil? Waste. Death. Decay. Think about an old growth forest. There are trees there in all stages of life- young, old, and those laying there on the forest floor decaying. It can take a tree the size we see in our backyards about 20-25 years to decompose. All through that time it is food and habitat for many species of bugs, birds, rodents, bacteria, moss, even new trees. The leaves that drop from the trees in autumn become over the next few seasons the very food that will feed those trees and other members of the eco-system in future growing seasons. But what do we do in our own yards? We rake up all those leaves, haul away the dead trees, burn them or send them to landfill to keep things looking tidy. Then if we want to feed our yard we go buy fertilizer at the store. Permaculture offers a different model reminding us that- waste is food. Like mom always said “waste not- want not”; if we treat our waste like what it really is- that which nourishes new life, if we care for our mother earth by returning to her all she brought forth, she will always facilitate that most remarkable of transformations- From dust we were born and to dust we shall return.

The main message I want to leave you with this morning is the same one we started with today. The earth, the sacred ground we walk upon, is our mother, we must not take her for granted. The earth is really quite elegant and awe-inspiring if we look carefully. All life comes from her, and she recycles death back into new life in an incredibly sophisticated and even, I would say, miraculous process. We must take care of her. We care for her by allowing deep roots to grow, by creating communities of balance, and by allowing the soil to rest and be renewed. The earth is our mother. She will take care of us. She will feed us and our children for generations to come if we remember to nurture and care for her.

For You Were Strangers in That Land (April 10, 2011)

For weeks before this past year’s General Assembly, (where important decisions for our denomination are made by delegates from our congregations) The UUA board had been having special meetings in preparation for what they knew would be a powerfully explosive issue. You see, while the country was calling for a boycott of Arizona after the passage of SB1070, (that law that required anyone who looked like they might not be a citizen to show their ID at any time), our own 2012 Assembly was scheduled to be held in Phoenix. The minister’s chat was abuzz for weeks. Should we boycott, knowing we would forfeit over 600,000 in hotel cancellation fees? Many said yes, and even started passing the hat to defray the cost of moving the assembly. DRUUM issued a statement which expressed concerns about the safety of our members who would be subject to racial profiling under this law, and LUUNA also issued a statement concerned that our Latino/a members would experience harassment by local law enforcement if GA were held in Phoenix.

I was a supporter of the boycott, but the words of Rev. Susan Fredrick-Gray changed my mind. She is the minister of the church in Phoenix, Arizona and she and her congregation had been working with the local grass roots immigrant rights group Puente. She said that though the boycott might make us feel good for a moment now, this was not what our brothers and sisters in Arizona most directly affected by the laws wanted. They wanted us to come and stand by them, to come march, to come and witness. The discussion was passionate and emotions ran high. It was hard to know how we could best witness for justice. But you know what was absolutely clear? That our mandate here was justice, and that this law, SB1070 and the anti-immigrant sentiment behind it are unjust and immoral, and that we as Unitarian Unversalists must stand against it as strongly as we can. Ultimately the Assembly voted to hold the assembly in Phoenix as planned, but to fundamentally change the nature of that assembly. We voted to advise the UUA board to hold a justice-oriented General Assembly in Phoenix in 2012 “with a business agenda limited to the minimum allowed by the bylaws. We asked the UUA administration to work with leaders in Arizona UU congregations to establish an Arizona immigration ministry; asked the board to work in accountable relationships with DRUUMM, LUUNA, ARE, Equual Access, TRUUST, and other stakeholders to maximize the safety of historically marginalized groups going to Phoenix” Weasked the UUA board to make sure the money we did spend during the 2012 General Assembly would be with businesses that are partners and allies; and we “called on the board to provide resources to build the capacity of UUs to stand in opposition to systemic racism.”

So really, when it came time to vote for the new Study Action Issue, the issue that we as an association of congregations would commit to studying and putting into action over the next 4 years, when it came time to decide between the 6 issues folks around the country had put before the assembly, it seemed right that we would chose “Immigration as a moral issue.” There was a feeling of unity growing among us. We had heard our brothers and sisters speak about their pain in Arizona and around the country, and our hearts were turned.

So here we are, back in New York, where Immigration is not in the forefront of local politics. I invite us, starting here and now, to join in solidarity with our sister congregation in Phoenix, in solidarity with UUs around the country, and with all our brothers and sisters around the world whose lives bear witness to the injustices of the system. I invite us, here and now, to let our work begin in our own hearts.

Way back in my first year in Seminary, on my first election day in California, there was an issue on the ballot called proposition 187, which would make sure that undocumented immigrants could not receive medical care, or public education or other social services. The proposition was titled “Save our State” and the argument was that we could save 3 million dollars a year if we didn’t provide such services to undocumented immigrants. The language of the proposition was fiery: “The People of California find and declare as follows: That they have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal aliens in this state. That they have suffered and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal aliens in this state. That they have a right to the protection of their government from any person or persons entering this country unlawfully.”

I was, at that time, enrolled in a class called “Basic Buddhist Meditation” taught by a Theravadan Monk. One of my classmates brought to our seminar this seemingly complex issue. Our teacher Bhanti said- it’s simple. It’s a matter of compassion.” He had long been trying to explain to us the importance of compassion in Buddhist teaching, explaining that in Buddhist practice the goal is to let go of all things except compassion and equanimity, that we hold on to compassion right up to the moment of enlightenment. There was a stunned silence in the classroom as he reduced months of fiery politicking in the media to just one concept – compassion. Would it be more compassionate to provide medical assistance to a sick or injured person, or to deny it?

The Hebrew Scriptures also offer us a clear response to this tangled issue. The book of Leviticus, the one with all the laws, says: (Leviticus 19:33-34 ESV ) “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt"

… you shall love the stranger as yourself. First of all, notice that it says we shall LOVE the stranger. Today’s rhetoric around undocumented immigrants is so rarely loving. And we shall love them as ourselves, yet laws like SB1070 create a separate class of human beings, somehow less human than those who are citizens of this country. As if basic human rights do not need to be applied to all humans: the right of mother and child to be together, the right to due process the right to a speedy trial. But the Hebrew Scriptures are clear – though Leviticus recognizes the difference between stranger and native, and it acknowledges that the stranger is at risk when sojourning among us, it is clear that there is to be no difference in treatment. Why? Because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Or, for any of us living in America who are not first nations people, we were strangers in this land. If we ourselves were not born in a different country, our parents or grandparents or great grandparents were. The scriptures call on our empathic imagination to remember that we have been strangers, and so ask us to treat the stranger as ourselves.

Now I know the call to pure compassion is always simplistic. We all fear, and rightly so, that if we pour ourselves out in utter compassion, we will use ourselves up, there will be nothing left to give. So one school of thought on immigration reform is that we need, literally, better boundaries. And I agree that we should as a nation think seriously about what compassionate boundaries look like. For example, in the meat packing industry some companies actively recruit Mexican citizens to staff their factories, but when INS raids happen it seems to be only the workers who are carted off in the night, and not the employers who recruited them. Better boundaries might include an enforcement policy where the burden for observing the boundary is carried by managers and owners and not only by labor. The Tompkins County Worker’s Center recently exposed an “internship” program where folks travel from all over the world on a J-1 visa to work as maids at the Holiday Inn in Ithaca and other hotels in the county- doing work that does not require an “internship”, work local folks would be glad to have. Better boundaries would include tightening loopholes like this in our laws.

But these are not the kind of boundaries that are part of the public discourse right now which says “We need walls, barbed wire and an armed citizenry to defend our boundaries”. Let’s look again at that preamble to prop 187: “The People of California find and declare as follows: That they have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal aliens in this state.” The perception is that undocumented immigrants drain our resources. But a study by the tax lawyer journal from the American Bar Association argues that the undocumented immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in social services. A 2005 New York Times article showed, for example that they pay about $7 billion annual to social security, with no hope of ever receiving a social security check.

Now look at the second sentence of prop 187 “That they have suffered and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal aliens in this state. That they have a right to the protection of their government from any person or persons entering this country unlawfully.” We have a right to be protected from undocumented immigrants. Why do I need protection exactly? It is hard to gather conclusive data about the relationship of immigration and crime, but a number of studies, including one by the immigration Policy Center, based on U.S. Census Bureau data showed there was no increase in crime in relationship to undocumented immigrants, and a study by the public Policy Institute of California showed that cities with more immigrants have lower crime rates than comparable cities.

So the contention that we need protection from undocumented immigrants does not seem to be based on facts, it seems to be based on irrational fear. And that fear is not only directed at folks who are undocumented, but folks who LOOK or SEEM like they might be immigrants. That seems like racism pure and simple to me. Whenever we create a second class of humans, we are building oppressive structures. We cannot allow our immigration policy to be based on fear and xenophobia. It must be based in the reality of our shared lives together. This is where, since our very beginnings 400 years ago, the Unitarians come in. We bring the light of reason. The Study Action issue process starts with study. We begin with open minds to ask the basic questions about immigration: Who are the immigrants in our communities? What underlying factors contribute to global migration? And where are we complicit or accountable in these factors? We start our journey by asking questions, by paying attention, by inviting this issue into our “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”

There are a lot of assumptions and half truths and downright lies out there in this debate about immigration. For example, the claim of prop 187 that undocumented immigrants costs us 3 million dollars a year in social services, when studies show this is simply not true. As a people of faith who believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person (not just of American Citizens) it seems to me that Unitarian Universalists are called to stand up for an immigration policy that is based on reason and facts, rather than fear.

We must also insist that our immigration policies and practices are based on compassion and not hate. UUs, along with other activists around the country, pled the case of Marlen Moreno, the woman we met in our opening reading. She is mother of 2 children, one of whom is only 10 months old. She is married to a legal resident, and came to the US with her parents when she was only 13 – undocumented. For this, she went to jail for 4 months. ‘Detained” they call it. At a recent “movie Night” at the Athens church we watched a fictional movie called “the Visitor” in which the hero is “detained” while awaiting deportation. A voice near me said in the dark “what? You can’t walk in there to visit like that with only one security check!” and I remembered that one of our members has a brother who was “detained” without any charge for 4 ½ months while awaiting deportation. Those being detained have no idea how long they will be incarcerated, are denied even basic information about the status of their case, are separated from family who face significant obstacles and sometimes expense to stay connected with them. Family visits are limited to one adult at a time, can last no longer than ½ hour and are conducted through a glass partition, using wall phones. Our member told me later that: “The truth is, contrary to the movie where the professor and the mom had nothing else to do but to visit the young man, most families do not visit inmates in detention because of the 1/2 hour restriction. How many people can afford to take a whole day off for a 1/2 hour visit? …Young children do not visit.” Her brother is now in Hong Kong, they told him one morning he was leaving that very day. Marlen Moreno was just days away from being taken away from her family, deported, but activists phoned, faxed, called the press, and were able to delay her deportation for a year. Still her future is uncertain. When reason and compassion are applied to a system that treats undocumented immigrants like criminals, how can it be justified? It can’t really be justified as a way to save the taxpayers money; Atlanta news station WSB-TV reported that the annual cost to taxpayers just to detain and deport immigrants adds up to $2.6 billion.

While in jail for her civil disobedience in protest of SB1070, UU Rev. Wendy von Zirpolo reported: “While inside the Maricopa Jail garage, I saw a young Latino man dragged past me and behind some vans, calling out ‘I am not resisting arrest. I am not resisting arrest.’ When I saw him again, perhaps only ten minutes later, it was clear he had been beaten. Beaten badly.” Whatever concerns we may have about the economic impact of immigration policy on this country, the act of separating mother and child, the act of beating a prisoner, these are not compassionate acts, and they are not necessary in order to uphold the laws of this country. I call for a reform of our laws to make them just and compassionate, and reform of the ways we implement these laws, that they be carried out in just and compassionate ways.

Last July, about 100 UU ministers and lay-people, along with president Peter Morales, flew from around the country to be part of the non-violent civil disobedience in response to SB1070. Of the 83 protesters who were arrested that day, 26 were UUs, including President Morales. Our UU protesters were wearing those saffron yellow t-shirts with big hearts reading “standing on the side of love.” Rev. Paul Langston Daily, one of the ministers participating in the march wrote later in his blog: “At lunch today, a colleague told us she overheard some people saying “Hey, look over there, it’s the Love people”. I hope together we can live up to that name- the Love People.

We are called by these 2 pillars of our heritage- by reason and by love. With reason we will ask the questions that so urgently need to be asked, with reason we will seek truth and justice. With love, with compassion we will act, affirming the inherent worth and dignity of all people. Will you accept this call? Will you take up the rights of the stranger in our land, as we have stood for civil rights so many times before? Let’s reach out to our brothers and sisters around the country, around the world letting reason and love change this broken system to one of compassion and justice.


Resources:

http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/165916.shtml


http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-film.php


http://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2011/01/workers-center-works-overtime-to-uncover-problematic-j-1-visa-program-in-local-economy/

J. Lipman, Francine, J. (Spring 2006). Taxing Undocumented Immigrants: Separate, Unequal and Without Representation. The Tax Lawyer. lso published in Harvard Latino Law Review, Spring 2006. Harvard.edu

Eduardo Porter (April 5, 2005). "Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions". New York Times.

Eunice Moscoso (2007-02-27). "Study: Immigrants don't raise U.S. crime rate". Arizona Daily Star.

“Crime, Corrections and California: what does Immigration Have to Do with it” PPIC California Counts: Population Trends and Profiles V. 9 Number 3 Feb 2008 by Kristin F. Butcher, Anne Morrison Piehl.

Immigration as a Moral Issue (Congregational Study/ Action Issue for 2010-2014)

The Cost Of Illegal Immigration By Justin Farmer Posted: 12:16 pm EDT May 10, 2010

http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/165916.shtml

http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/167428.shtml “'Justice' General Assembly to be held in Phoenix: Days and nights of work result in a plan most can endorse” By Jane Greer 6.28.10 UU World

http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-film.php


http://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2011/01/workers-center-works-overtime-to-uncover-problematic-j-1-visa-program-in-local-economy/

J. Lipman, Francine, J. (Spring 2006). Taxing Undocumented Immigrants: Separate, Unequal and Without Representation. The Tax Lawyer. Also published in Harvard Latino Law Review, Spring 2006. Harvard.edu

Eduardo Porter (April 5, 2005). "Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions". New York Times.

Eunice Moscoso (2007-02-27). "Study: Immigrants don't raise U.S. crime rate". Arizona Daily Star.

“Crime, Corrections and California: what does Immigration Have to Do with it” PPIC California Counts: Population Trends and Profiles V. 9 Number 3 Feb 2008 by Kristin F. Butcher, Anne Morrison Piehl.

Immigration as a Moral Issue (Congregational Study/ Action Issue for 2010-2014)

The Cost Of Illegal Immigration By Justin Farmer Posted: 12:16 pm EDT May 10, 2010

http://www.standingonthesideoflove.org/blog/trials-begin-for-15-clergy-and-leaders-arrested-in-july-29th-sb-1070-protests-in-phoenix/

The Wisdom of Giving (March 27, 2011)

When I first joined my very first church as an adult, I knew that pledging was something every member was expected to do. I had grown up in a Unitarian Universalist church, and watched my parents pledge like clock work every year. As an older child I had even gotten my own little box of numbered envelopes to put my dollar in every week. But now that I was an adult I had a much harder question to answer. What was the proper amount to give? I remembered that when I was young my parent’s church did a person to person canvas, which meant that someone would call them up, or even come visit, to talk to them about their pledge to the church. Now that I was an adult too, I wanted that conversation. I needed that conversation. I was afraid of that conversation. I wanted to be a responsible adult and do the right thing, but I wasn’t sure if I was up to the challenge.

The fear is that we will be asked to give more than we can give, whether it is to the church at Pledge time, to a loved one whose health is failing, or to a cause, like protecting the local water table from hydro-fracking chemicals. When you think about the poverty in the world, you almost instantly realize that you could give away everything you own and it would be barely a drop in the ocean. Sometimes I am afraid of being too stingy with both my money and time and love, and at the same time I am afraid of giving so much that I give myself away. So while I had always thought of the rules in the Jewish and Christian scriptures as an imposition on personal conscience and individual liberty, after my own groping around how much to give, the idea of tithing started to seem somehow comforting and stable. Even the Hebrew scriptures, strict as they are some times, were not asking me to give away all my wealth, instead the book of Deuteronomy says [14:22] 22"You shall surely tithe all the produce from what you sow, which comes out of the field every year.” Though at the time this giving consisted of in-kind donations from an agrarian economy, contemporary Jewish tradition aplies this in terms of annual income.

Islam also has a clear guideline about giving. One of the 5 pillars of Islam is called Zakāt which is the giving of 2.5% of one's possessions to charity each year. So “guideline” isn’t really the right word here- this is expected of “every adult, mentally stable, free, and financially able Muslim, male and female” and the Muslim community also is responsible for making sure that these donations makes their way to the folks who need it. It says in the Qur’an "The alms are only for the poor and the needy, and those who collect them, and those whose hearts are to be reconciled, and to free the captives and the debtors, and for the cause of Allah, and (for) the wayfarers; a duty imposed by Allah. Allah is knower, Wise." (The Holy Qur'an 9:60). Islam offers a clear benchmark so observant Muslims can know when they have done their duty.

But you very rarely hear Unitarian Universalists talk about the biblical tithe, so how are we to know what is right and good? Well our UUA has created a “fare share giving guide” available to anyone who wants to know. It’s much less poetic than the Jewish or Islamic scriptural passages, but it generally ends up being between 2-7% of our adjusted gross income depending on how strongly you feel about this faith tradition. Oh, what a relief this was when I discovered it. I confess to you that it was a jump for me to reach even that bottom rung, to contribute 2% of my family income to the church, but I also want to tell you that it felt great. It was a challenging but reasonable number, and it made me feel like I was supporting my church in a substantive way. Then I head a colleague of mine explain, during a special fund drive, that he and his family had recently become tithers. Not just fare share givers, but tithers in the biblical sense. It blew my mind. Here he was, a young UU minister, still probably carrying his student loans from seminary, and he had committed himself to that ancient tradition of giving ten percent. Now I freely confess that this is still only a goal for me. But it is a goal. I challenge myself in good times and in bad to creep closer and closer to tithing myself.

Of course that dollar amount is higher in good times than in tight times, but we work hard to make sure that the percentage of our income that we give does not go down. I am encouraged in this by my favorite story about giving from the Christian Tradition. It is found in the Gospel of Luke:
[Jesus] looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. And He saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. And He said, 'Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them; for they all out of their surplus put into the offering; but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.'
—Luke 21:1-4
This story helps me when I worry that my small contribution doesn’t matter. But according to the words of Jesus- and he was a man of few words- my pennies, your pennies are precious and important, even when they seem ridiculously small next to whatever Bill and Melinda Gates have been up to recently. The value of a gift can be determined not by how many zeros are at the end of it, but by what it means to you the giver, like the gift of the Widow’s mite, or the gift of the striped squirrel from our children’s story. The size of our generosity is measured by what is in your heart, not by the size of the check.

All of the religions traditions we’ve mentioned today are also clear that there are many important ways of giving that do not involve money. In addition to the Zakāt in the Islamic tradition, which is a required giving, there is also the concept of Saddka which means "voluntary charity". This is the word for any time we give freely out of compassion, friendship or generosity. Abu Hurairah (who was a companion of the prophet Muhammad reported that the prophet said, "Every day the sun rises, charity is due on every joint of a person. Administering justice between two people is a charity; and assisting a man to mount his beast, or helping him load his luggage on it is a charity; and a good word is a charity; and every step that you take (towards a mosque) for daily prayers is a charity; and removing harmful things from the road is a charity."
In the Catholic tradition we find 7corporal acts of mercy:
1. To feed the hungry;
2. To give drink to the thirsty;
3. To clothe the naked;
4. To harbour the harbourless;
5. To visit the sick;
6. To ransom the captive;
7. To bury the dead.
These acts of mercy seem to come directly from the Gospel of Matthew 25, when Jesus said to followers about the day of judgment: 34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father… 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”.

In this spirit as we at the Athens UU Church enter into our pledge season, we are trying to lift up the great varieties of gifts that we offer on another. Of course we need all our members and friends to make a contribution to the ongoing health of the church: we need to keep the heat and lights on and to pay fairly the folks who come help us worship together on Sunday morning. We need crayons and construction paper and books for our children’s program. I understand that Big Flats is embarking on a building project that is very exciting, creating not only a beautiful new place of gathering for this community, but also leaving a legacy for all those Unitarian Universalists who will gather here over the coming generations. Our churches and fellowships need our financial support to build and grow. But that is not enough to sustain a beloved community. When we take a casserole to one of our members who has just had a baby, when we brew the coffee and pour out the juice for fellowship hour, or when we go visit a member recovering from surgery in the hospital, these are the gifts we give that make us a beloved community.
In the Hindu Tradition the scriptures talk of 5 karmic debits we all have. They believe that we all have a Debt to the Gods for our blessings and that this debit is paid by rituals and offerings. We have a debt to our ancestors and teachers which is repaid by supporting them, having children of one's own and passing along knowledge. We have a debit to our guests; which is repaid by treating them as if they were gods visiting one's home. We have a debt to humankind which we repay in ways similar to those listed in the Catholic acts of mercy, by helping the orphaned, the hungry, the poor. The fifth debt is to the cosmic elements and everything that arises out of them that is to say, a debt to Nature: to plants, trees, birds, animals.

Think of the great diversity of gifts which are necessary to keep the heart of this fellowship beating. We need the gifts of those who can patiently help tiny hands fold a piece of paper, the gifts of those who patiently wash our mugs after coffee hour. We need folks who can make a spreadsheet in Excel, and balance the Fellowship’s accounts. We need folks who can lead worship, and folks who understand how buildings are built. We need folks who can explain complicated legislation, and know how we can help bring justice to our world and we need folks who listen compassionately when we are troubled or in pain. We need folks who will sleep in bunk-beds so our youth can play flashlight tag and go on a silent vigil for their coming of age. We could not be the beloved community we are without all our great diversity of gifts.

Finally I want to think for a moment about why we give. The passage from Matthew we talked about before implies that we help our fellows because on Judgment day we want to be found worthy, to sit at the right hand. In the Kamandakiya Niti Sara, one of the Hindu texts, it is said: "…don't fail to offer any thing suitable — food, cloth, vehicle, money, jewelry etc as appropriate — to a saint or a monk, a cow or such animal, a student (bachelor), temple, a worshiper, pregnant woman, child, hungry person, beggar, destitute, a dead body being carried. The help you do comes back in multiples later..."

But in the UU tradition, especially as we are informed by our Humanist roots, we are usually not motivated to give because we hope for a reward in a future life, whether that be a place in heaven, or a better life in reincarnation. It is true that our giving often comes back to us later- either directly or indirectly. We make a casserole for another member of the church when she is sick, and maybe she remembers us when we are weak and can’t care for ourselves, or maybe someone else in the church supports us when we need it most. The Anguttara Nikaya, (the gradual collection of the discourses of the Buddha) lists a total of eight motives for giving, in the order from lowest to highest:
1. one gives with annoyance, or as a way of offending the recipient, or with the idea of insulting him.
2. fear also can motivate a person to make an offering.
3. one gives in return for a favor done to oneself in the past.
4. one also may give with the hope of getting a similar favor for oneself in the future.
5. one gives because giving is considered good.
6. "I cook, they do not cook. It is not proper for me who cooks not to give to those who do not cook." Some give urged by such altruistic motives.
7. some give alms to gain a good reputation.
8. still others give alms to adorn and beautify the mind.
By giving without attachment to how our gift is used, or how the favor might be returned some day, by giving unconditionally we cultivate generosity. We also help immunize ourselves to the kinds of carving for material things, for material success that sometimes keep us from being our truest best selves. This is what is meant by “Giving to adorn and beautify the mind.” Generosity is thought, in all of these great religions, to be one of the best tools on the spiritual path.

If you are, like me, someone who has struggled to know the best ways to share your gifts with the world, always wondering if it is enough, you are not alone. But giving is not just a fiscal question, it is a spiritual question and by struglling with it truly, we come closer to knowing our own hearts, and knowing what things are truly important in this life. We give our gifts not only because it makes the world a better place for ourselves and for others, we give not only out of compassion for others. We give, as the Buddhist sutras say, because a “noble giver is one who is happy before, during and after giving (A.iii,336).” But it helps us, in the Buddhist words “adorn and beautify the mind”; it is a powerful path to spiritual growth. We Unitarian Universalists are called to give not because we are commanded to do so, nor because of some future reward, but because we know we are indebted to all who come before, to all those with whom we share this world, both humankind, the other living beings and to the earth herself, and we give because we know that cultivating a generous heart is its own reward.

Endnotes:
(From Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim - one of the Six major collections of the hadith in Sunni Islam, oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alms#5_Debts
(A.iv,236)
http://www.enabling.org/ia/vipassana/Archive/D/DeSilva/givingInThePaliCanonDeSilva.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat

Our Forefather, Joseph Priestley (February 13, 2011)

Lesson for all Ages

One of the sources of our UU tradition is the wisdom of science, so
Today instead of a story we are going to do a science experiment
(light candle)
Can anyone tell me what will happen if I put this on the candle?
(put it out with candle snuffer we use to extinguish our chalice)
Why?
A candle needs oxygen to burn.
(relight candle, then put candle under jar until it goes out)

Who else needs oxygen? (we do)
How about a plant, does a plant need oxygen?
What do you think would happen if we put a plant in here?
(add plant, relight candle, put jar over both)
How’s the plant doing? Okay, keep an eye on it while we talk

Now when Joseph priestly was a little boy, people didn’t know about air. They just thought that between you and me was emptiness.
But then they made really good scales, and could see that a jar of air weighted more than a jar of nothing. But still they didn’t know what air was made of, and they didn’t know there was more than one kind of gas.

By doing this experiment, Priestly (who was a UU minister by the way, as well as an amateur scientist) Priestly showed that there is more than one kind of air- the kind that a fire needs to burn and the kind a plant needs to stay alive.
By the way, how is our plant doing?

Priestly found that not only would a plant do fine for 2 weeks even after a flame had burned away all the oxygen, but he also found that if you put a flame back in there 2 weeks later it would burn again, just like the first time!

But this is church, not science class, so what wisdom can we learn from this experiment?

That plants and animals need each other. We depend on each other; together we create the air that we breathe with nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and some other gasses too.

It helps show is that we part of an interdependent web of life with all other living things.


Sermon

Joseph Priestly is almost the archetypal Unitarian. He was a heretic of the first order. He loved science, he loved dialogue and debate, the free exchange of ideas. He believed the religious system was filled with errors, and that the political system would benefit from a good revolution or 2. He spoke his mind no matter what the cost.

First, I want to tell you about Priestly the scientist- because that is what he is most famous for. Ironically, he was a minister and a school teacher when he made his most important discoveries. He had grown up in a family of religious dissenters from the Church of England, but he was a dissenter among dissenters, and was denied membership in the Independent church his family went to because of his heretical ideas. But he grew up to be a minister anyway, preaching at a congregation of about 60 people, just about the size of this congregation, and supplemented his income by starting his own school of 20 boys where he published his first book “Rudiments of English Grammar.” His grammar book helped get him a job at a bigger, more prestigious Dissenting school called the Warrington Academy. Somehow between preaching and teaching, he found time for his hobby- science. In particular he had the passion of his day for electricity and what was then called “Natural philosophy.” Electricity was in those days new and cutting edge. He bought the latest electricity gear for his lab, and after some work in the field, decided to write the first ever popular history of electricity. It was to be in English instead of Latin as was the usual language for books about science, so that the field of electricity would become more accessible to everyone. He headed to London to meet the leading thinkers in the field in hopes they would give him what he needed to write his book.

It was through his connections at the Warrington academy that he was Introduced to the Royal Society, and to Benjamin Franklin. In those days, the leading “electricians” hung out in the London Coffee House and called themselves “The Honest Whigs.” Their conversations swung from libertarian politics to the need for a “rational Christianity,” to theories of electricity liberally interspersed with wine and cheese and apple-puffs. The Honest Whigs were not only happy to welcome into their midst, loaning him the books and pamphlets he needed about the history of the study of electricity, and giving him information about their own studies on the subject, but they also encouraged him in his own research.

Priestly threw himself into this writing and research. In 1767 he published “The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments” which became the standard text on the subject and solidified his relationship to the scientific community. It was in this book that the story of Ben Franklin’s famous experiment with the kite and the key was first published. The book also contained some of Priestley’s own work and even a section called “A description of the most entertaining experiments performed by electricity.” His goal was not to set himself up as the keeper of secret specialized knowledge, but to encourage everyone to think and learn and experiment in the new and exciting arena of electricity.

That same year Joseph, his wife Mary and their 4 year old daughter Sally moved to Warrington where he got a new job as minister at the Mill-Hill Chapel. Though this was a bigger congregation, priestly still had plenty of time for his experiments. It was here that he made his most popular discovery, enabled through the serendipity that the temporary house he moved into while his new home was being renovated was right next to the Jakes and Nell brewery. He noticed that the fermenting vats gave off what he called “fixed” air, now called carbon dioxide, which had been discovered only 12 years before, and his neighbors humored him by letting him do experiments with the air over their vats. The discovery of soda water did not even take any fancy equipment, as it seems Priestley was able to carbonate regular water by pouring it back and forth from one cup to another. Now there was such a thing as sparkling water back then, it was mineral water taken from certain springs. It was a rare thing that had to be found and could not be made. Had priestly kept his knowledge to himself and sold it to industry, he could have been a wealthy man – think about today’s lucrative soda market. But Priestly believed in sharing information freely, and printed a pamphlet right away on how to do it yourself.

This happy discovery set Priestly on a new path- studying the chemistry of air and gas. His most important discoveries were yet to come. The first was the experiment I shared with the children earlier today- though I left out one of the main actors. Mice. Many a mouse met his or her demise in Priestley’s experiments both in electricity and in chemistry. Apparently priestly had been trapping mice in jars since he was a boy, and had noticed that they died pretty quickly if he sealed the jar. In 1771, he decided to compare the fate of a plant trapped in a jar. It amazed him that the sprig of mint he trapped fared so much better than the mice and frogs. Moreover, he found that if he put a mouse into a jar in which a flame had burned out, that the mouse would die at once. So he repeated the experiment with the flame and the mint, the experiment we did this morning with the children. In 1772 he introduced a mouse to the experiment, putting the mouse in the “restored air” and found that, as he described in his own words in a letter to Benjamin Franklin “The same mouse also that lived so well in the restored air, was barely recoverable after being not more than one second in the other. I have also had another instance of a mouse living 14 minutes, without being at all hurt, in little more than two ounce measures of another quantity of noxious air in which a plant had grown.” (p. 78)

This simple experiment was a major breakthrough. It changed not only how we thought we knew about air, but also what we thought we knew about the relationship between plants and people. Franklin wrote back to Priestly saying “I hope this will give some check to the rage of destroying trees that grow near houses, which has accompanied our late improvements in gardening, from an opinion of their being unwholesome. “ (p. 82) Writer Steven Johnson in his book “The Invention of Air” postulates that this discovery was one of the foundations on which eco-system science was built. For this discovery Priestly was awarded the Copley Medal by the Royal Society. Priestly kept experimenting with what as then called “Subtle fluids” which we now call gases, and was the first to identify 10 of them, one of them Oxygen.

This was the enlightenment, a time when new ways of thinking, new fields of knowledge were opening like scenic vistas to the thinkers of the day. Writes Priestley’s biographer “There were literally dozens of paradigm shifts in distinct fields during Priestley’s lifetime, watershed moments of sudden progress where new rules and frameworks of understanding emerged. Priestly alone was a transformative figure in four of them: chemistry, electricity, politics, and faith.” Schoolchildren still learn of the role his good friend Ben Franklin played in the American Revolution, and Franklin was eventually exiled from London in 1775 for his pro-revolutionary views. Priestly had also written a few pamphlets over the years against “forg[ing] chains for America” (p. 129); he became one of the leading supporters of American Independence in England, and his views were know in widening circles. Samuel Johnson, a pamphleteer against colonial freedom, is said to have commented: “Ah, Priestly. An evil man, Sir. His work unsettles everything.” (p. 129). But because during this time his patron was a Lord Shelburne, (in exchange for which Priestley was tutoring Shelburne’s 2 sons and maintaining his library), he seems to have kept his political views quiet during those years, grumbling to friends instead of continuing his stream of pamphlets. Eventually his political reputation caused Priestley to loose this sponsorship, as Shelburne had political aspirations. The loss of the sponsorship was a crushing financial blow, but Priestly met a new group of Enlightenment thinkers and captains of fledgling industrial society. They were called the Lunar Society, (or “the lunatics”) and many of them were willing to become Priestley’s “subscribers” and had instruments custom made for him.

Despite all the cool new gear, in this period Priestley turned his reformer’s gaze to religion. He and his friend Rev. Theophilus Lindsey founded the first Unitarian church in 1774. Priestley put forth in his book “History of the Corruptions of Christianity” the theory that since the first days of Christianity the religion had become corrupted in numerous ways. The idea of the divinity of Christ was one such “corruption” He traced the history of this thinking and found that in the very early church God occupied a higher position than his son, and it wasn’t until the last 3rd century that divinity was bestowed on Jesus. (Robinson p 22-23) He was on the cutting edge of heresy with the idea that Jesus was completely human. Priestly wrote that there was “no trace of the apostles having ever regarded their master in this high light” and also that “It cannot be said that anything is ascribed to him that a mere man (aided, as he himself says he was, by the power of God his Father) was not equal to.”) (quoted in Robinson p. 23)

In “The Corruptions” Priestly pulled apart every kind of miraculous or magical aspect of Christian theology, including the existence of the holy spirit, the trinity, predestination, the Eucharist, and the deification of saints. But Priestly understood himself to be a faithful Christian, faithful to Christianity in its pure form as it was originally practiced. He writes “this historical method will be found to be one of the most satisfactory modes of argumentation, in order to prove that what I object to is really a corruption of genuine Christianity, and no part of the original scheme” (p. 156). For Priestly, doing a historical analysis of Christianity and stripping away the miraculous and the magical, was part of the radical reform through which new paradigms had been born in the scientific and political worlds. His religious ideas were very influential to Thomas Jefferson who wrote in a letter to John Adams “I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and Early Opinions of Jesus over and over again; and I rest on them…as the basis of my own faith.” Then as now presidential candidates were scrutinized for their beliefs, and Priestley’s work enabled Jefferson responded “I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others, ascribing himself every human excellence and believe he never claimed any other.” (p. 156)

Other folks were not so sympathetic. Archdeacon Samuel Horsley called Priestley’s writing an “extraordinary attempt…to unsettle the faith, and break up the constitution of every ecclesiastical establishment” (p. 158). Even his scientist friends could not all follow him into his religious dissent.

Priestly preached a sermon in 1785 called “The Importance and Extent of Free Inquiry” which included in it this metaphor “We are, as it were, laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and superstition, which a single spark may hereafter inflame, so as to produce an instantaneous explosion; in consequence of which that edifice, the erection of which has been the work of ages, may be overturned in a moment, and so effectually as that the same foundation can never be built upon again.” (p. 159) This sermon earned him the nickname of “gunpowder Joe,” but it was his political views that really got him into trouble.

Among the liberal thinkers Priestly hung out with, now calling themselves the “Constitutional Society” there was support of the French Revolution. It seemed a logical next step in political reform after the American Revolution so successfully had put in place a constitutional democracy. The opposition was the “Church and King” movement. They opposed the American Revolution, the French Revolution and they opposed reformation of the Church of England. They put an add in the Birmingham paper in response to one by the Constitution Society saying that “Whatever the modern republicans may imagine, or the regicidal propounders of the rights of men design, let us convince them there is enough loyalty in the majority of the inhabitants of this country to support and defend their King.” (p. 163) A mob formed the night of that event, and angered to find that the Constitutional Society had gone home 3 hours early, they burned down the New Meeting House, including a bonfire of books and pews on the front steps. They then burned down the Old Meetinghouse. Samuel Ryland, A friend of Priestly went to his home to warn him about the mob, and Priestly fled to his Ryland’s house. It was a good thing too, because they burned Priestley’s home and lab to the ground, destroying all his equipment and his library. Ryland and others had lost their homes as well. Priestly tried to live under the radar in England for a while, serving as a minister in London, but he was shunned by most of the members of the Royal Society for his religious and political views. When the French legislative assembly made him an honorary citizen in 1792, the public ire was re-awakened, and spewed forth in pamphlets and cartoons. Eventually Priestley followed his son Joseph Jr. to America where he was building a new settlement in Northumberland Pennsylvania.

His supporters in America welcomed him with open arms, and he was offered a position a the University of Pennsylvania in their Chemistry department, but Priestly chose the family life in Northumberland, and preached to the church there, and in Philadelphia whenever he could make the multiple day journey. Sadly his wife and son Harry died in the same year before their new home was even guilt. And before long Priestly was in trouble again. Old friend like John Adams began to distance themselves from his radical fiery sermons (much as presidential candidates today have had to do). Priestly was disillusioned with the way the principles of the revolution been implemented in a government that was not always true to its principles, more like the Monarchy against which they had rebelled. Members of the Adam’s administration wanted to have Priestley prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts, the passage of which was in fact one of those acts which Priestly felt to violate the constitution of this young land.

He published a volume in 1799 called “Letters to the Inhabitants of Northumberland and its Neighborhood,” his last major work, in which he wrote “To find in America the same maxims of government, and the same proceedings, from which many of us fled form Europe, and to be reproached as disturbers of government there, and chiefly because we did what the court of England will never forgive in favor of liberty here, is, we own, a great disappointment to us, especially as we cannot now return.” (p. 195-6) Thomas Jefferson, still a great friend and admirer of Priestly wrote that the essays were “the most precious gifts that can be made to us… From the Porcupines of our country you will receive no thanks: but the great mass of our nation will edify and thank you.” (p. 196) and in fact when Jefferson became president Priestly wrote “for the first time in my life (and I shall soon enter my 70th year) I find myself in any degree of favor of the governor of the country in which I have lived, and I hope I shall die in the same pleasing situation.” (p. 200) And so he did, writing and editing in his very last days.

So what can we take from this story, the life of one of our founding fathers, a father of both modern chemistry, and of our Unitarian faith tradition. Certainly we can admire his capacity to help birth new paradigms, and to stand behind them even when it cost him dearly. We can, with Priestly, strip away those parts of religious tradition, even our own, that contradict what we know of this world, what we know of truth. But I think today what I want to lift up is that even a minister can be a scientist, and even a schoolteacher can make a difference in the world of politics. In this age of profound separation of fields, of increasing specialization, none of us should be afraid to stick a candle under a jar to see what happens, nor should we hesitate to study religious history to see what new things we can learn, nor should we be afraid to stand up for our political principles. We can see, as Priestly did, as so many of the great figures of the enlightenment did, that all this knowledge informs other knowledge, much as a plant restores air for the flame. It is in the intersection, the cooperation of all these things that a new paradigm is born.


Resources:
Steven Johnson, The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith Revolution and the Birth of America. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.

David Robinson. The Unitarians and the Universalists. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985.