Vision & Mission (March 13, 2016)

Sermon Part 1: Vision
Consider the North star, also called the Pole Star or “ Polaris.” Our friends at “earthsky” point out that it appears to hold “nearly still in our sky while the entire northern sky moves around it. That’s because it’s located [near] the north celestial pole, the point around which the entire northern sky turns.”[i] A clear vision is like a pole star, holding steady and guiding us no matter where we may travel, no matter how the seas may change.

When I was in seminary all my teachers made sure we understood that it was important to create a vision statement with your congregation. I’ve been through this a few times now, and it always seems to involve butcher paper, and colorful magic markers, and possibly sticky dots. And when, a couple of months later, I couldn’t even remember the vision we had described that day, I always assumed that a better, more sophisticated process would be more successful if we tried again. We read books and expert opinions and started anew with a fresh pad of easel paper.

I think the misunderstanding I had, we had, was that vision was something that that we could create in a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon if we just had the right process. What I now believe is that a true vision is already there, and needs only to be uncovered, given language, shared.

When Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he was proceeding along with his prepared remarks when Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” At that moment, he put his notes down and could describe, just out of his heart, to the dream that was already guiding him. He put into words the vision that had guided him to that point. When he said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”[ii] he gave voice to a longing that was already in the hearts and minds of the people listening to them that day. It is still in our hearts and minds this Sunday morning, still guiding us forward when we hear about the racial bias people of color experience in this world today. We hear those news stories about the way children of color are treated, and hold those stories up to Dr. King’s vision, and we can see we still have a long way to go.

Being able to imagine the future, to dream the future, is important to who we are as humans. Our dreams, large and small, provide a guiding star for our travels so we can know where we are headed, even when we don’t know exactly how to get there. Creating a vision is something we are already doing every day. Here is the most mundane example I can think of: you are sitting in the living room and it comes to you “I want cheesy fries.” That’s it. That’s your vision. Sometimes the vision is easily implementable- you already have some frozen French fries in the freezer, and some cheese in the fridge, all you have to do is go into the kitchen and start cooking. Other times, the vision seems impossible- it’s already late at night, and you don’t have any of the ingredients. But if you can hang onto that vision, say, the next time you are at the grocery store, or the next time you are out to eat, that vision can still someday become reality. See- visioning is easy.

The first time each of us came to this fellowship we had a vision that drew us here. Maybe the picture in our mind was of a place where we could meet new people, where we could find community. Maybe the vision was of yourself speaking what was in your heart, and other people truly listening. Or maybe you were frustrated and saddened by the state of the world, and imagined here at this fellowship you could meet other people who were concerned, and together we could do something. I know you had a vision because you would never have come that first time without some hope for what you would find here.

Visioning is not about “how.” Even the congregational leadership manuals are clear about this. “How” is the sphere of plans and strategies. Some strategies fail, some succeed. When we confuse strategy for vision, when we confused the path for the guiding star, we sometimes end up losing our way. One of the hardest parts of visioning is daring to have a dream when you can’t see a path that takes you there. If we only allow ourselves to imagine what seems practical and possible, we might not even be able to imagine what we really need and want. Consider Marriage Equality. How many of you thought 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that same-gender couples would be able to be legally married in the state of Pennsylvania? But we dreamed that dream anyway, and it came true. It’s hard to dream something that seems impossible; it’s scary because we know we might be disappointed. But what is possible changes as the times change.

And times are changing so fast right now, it’s easy to be buffeted about by the swiftly changing waters of our times. Organized religion itself is changing radically. Whereas in the 1950s just about everyone went to church or synagogue, we are told, today more and more folks have never even been. 30-40% of young people today don’t consider themselves part of any organized religion. [iii] Rev. Karen Bellavance-Grace, in a presentation to UU Ministers and religious educators, impressed on us the importance of “dreaming UU into the future.” If, she said, we want our beloved tradition to have a future, we must dream it now, together.

So I want to share with you a vision I have had for our movement; it has been growing in me for some time. I see our family size churches and fellowships as the beating heart of Universalism. We in this beloved community embody Universalist love, a love that holds each and every person, that holds each and every living being, as the early Universalists believed that God’s love embraces each and every one of us. We are the heart of Unitarian Universalism, right here in this sanctuary. Our love is like a hearth-fire where we come to warm ourselves, a fire that we tend and feed, a fire have kept burning for over 200 years. This world needs the luminous fire of our love. And we are not alone, this world is dotted with fires like ours.

But when I imagine that life-giving, restoring, inspiring, renewing warmth, it breaks my heart to imagine folks just out of site, wandering in the cold and dark. So part of my vision is that we are constantly reaching out for people who need the warmth our fire, whether they just need to be warmed for a moment during a cold, lonely time, or whether they choose to stay and become fire tenders themselves. This vision is simple enough that no matter what change the future holds, we can remember to keep the fire burning, to keep that fire at the heart of everything we do.

Dreaming the future is important. Casting a vision you truly care about, then just having the courage to hold it in your mind, and to share it with others creates a bigger possible future for everyone. It’s hard to hold onto a vision when we don’t know how we can get there, but remember there was a time when no one could have imagined a female preacher. Remember there was a time when we thought marriage equality would never come to America. So hold on to your vision like a north star, guiding us into that future.

Sermon part 2- Mission
Do any of you remember a movie from 1991 called “City Slickers?” It’s kind of a screw-ball comedy with Billy Crystal in which a trio of suburban middle aged men busy with family and work go on vacation for 2 weeks driving cattle from Colorado to New Mexico with real live cowboys. Towards the end of the movie one of them, Curly, played by Jack Palance (curly) turns to Billy Crystal and says

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean [anything].

Every religion tries to answer the question burning in our souls “what is the meaning of life?” I believe that the answer, in this Unitarian Universalist tradition, is highly individual, but there are some common themes. The great UU religions educator Sofia Lyon Fahs said “the religious way is the deep way” So living life deeply is one secret your faith offers. Our tradition also teaches us that serving the common good is essential to a well lived life, As Rev. Rebecca Parker wrote:

“You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.

So our tradition invites us to live our life deeply, and to serve the common good with our gifts. But do either of those things really gives us a “to do” list for when we wake up in the morning? That depends on our one thing. One can live deeply and serve the common good if you are an elementary school teacher, or a machinist, or a chiropractor. So it’s up to us to ask “what is the meaning of MY life.” Our faith tradition calls us to make sure our own mission, our own reason for being, is guided by certain principles, like respect for the inherent dignity of every person, and the interdependent web of life of which we are all a part. It encourages us to live out a mission different from that of the culture at large which I believe is “the one who dies with the most toys wins” or “you can never be too rich or too thin”

When I was getting ready to go on maternity leave I knew that returning to work with a baby would be challenging. So I signed up for a seminar called “First Things First” from the folks at Franklin Covey. The primary message was that when we get up in the morning, we do the most important things first. Look, today we have already gathered in beloved community making our spiritual life and our relationships a priority. Then, when that unexpected call comes in the afternoon, or when your child comes home from school early with a fever, you have already done the most important thing, and you can end the day saying “well, I didn’t get it all done, but I got the most important thing (singular!) done.” By keeping your mission constantly before you, it increases the odds that you can live your life by that mission instead of getting sucked into a life of racking up the most toys.

Take a moment of reflection now to think about those moments in the life of this community when you have said to yourself “I’m really glad I made it to the fellowship that day” If you like to write things down, take an index card and list or draw some of those memories.
...now look for any patterns you notice among those memories. What do they have in common, like the string that holds the beads together? That, I submit, is your de facto mission. Now notice any qualities that come to mind as you review your string of memories and dreams. Compassion? Courage? Beauty? I’ll give you an example of what I mean from the most well know mission statement in the western world today:

“To explore strange new worlds
To seek out new life and new civilizations
To boldly go where no man has gone before”

Boldness is the quality with which the crew of the Star Ship Enterprise wants to seek new worlds. It would have been quite a different show if they had “prudently” gone, wouldn’t it?

Are you starting to get a picture of the mission of this fellowship? What string links together those precious gems of our life as a community, a string that reaches all the way back into our first days in [the 1860s] [the 1950s], and will lead us into our future. Take a moment to write down any words, phrases, images, pictures, symbols that remind you of our reason for being, our reason for coming together. [pause for writing] Now check out how that feels in your heart and body when you project it into your future. Does it make you excited or inspired, or maybe even a little afraid? Or do they make you feel heavy and tired: “I really AUGHT to…” [pause] Because as Rev. Howard Thurman wrote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

If Vision is a picture of how you want to be, Mission is the verb in the sentence. Mission is what you are doing in that picture. If you resonated with that vision of us tending and warming ourselves by the warmth of universal love, then perhaps our mission is to “boldly embody God’s universal love”. But that’s still too broad to really tell us what to do first when we wake up in the morning. Let me suggest some things we are already doing- “tending our own spiritual lives and caring for one another.” A mission issues the challenge - “how do we best use the resources of our community, the gifts each person brings, and the legacy handed down from our founders over 200 years, to serve our mission?” Would a mission like that -- “To boldly embody God’s universal love by tending our own spiritual lives and caring for one another” – would that help steer us in the right direction? When the board, or the worship team roll up their sleeves for the good of our fellowship, what things would that mission call us to put first? It’s not up to me to choose a mission for this fellowship, only to encourage us to name and strengthen the thread that ties our work together, that gives it strength and purpose.

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean [anything].
Mitch: But, what is the "one thing?"
Curly: [smiles] That's what *you* have to find out.

Endnote
[i] http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/polaris-the-present-day-north-star
[ii] http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html
[iii] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7513343&page=1

Altruism and Evoltution (April, 24, 2016)

Every year on the weekend of Darwin’s birthday, congregations around the world join in talking about the Theory of Evolution. We take time to talk about evolution because, despite the fact that it is backed up with centuries of verifiable scientific research, evolution is under increasing attack in our schools and in our public discourse. We also celebrate evolution Sunday because the science of our physical reality is not just for “experts” with advanced degrees -- the story of your body, your eco-system is a story every one of us should know in order to understand ourselves and the world in which we live. This is particularly important for Unitarian Universalists who list as one of our sources: “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science.”

I’ve preached about evolution here each year, and this year I want to tell you a love story. Not a story of romantic love, but the love of other living beings that binds us to one another. I know Vampire bats don’t seem that romantic on the surface, but the precious gift they give one another is eminently more practical, and more precious than a heart shaped box of chocolates. These creatures out of our nightmares, who suck the blood of large mammals, such as cattle, are actually one of the most selfless animals we know of. Researcher Jerry Wilkinson, chair of biology at the University of Maryland-College Park, noticed back in 1977 that if a bat is not able to find food, say because of illness, or lack of large mammals or because a researcher has put her in a cage, that other bats in her group will share their dinner with her by regurgitating into her mouth. [i] So, just like humans, bats can choose to give their own food to help another hungry being.

Bats are not alone in their altruism. Vervet monkeys cry out to warn their neighbors of a predator, even though they increase their own personal risk by letting predators know exactly where they are with that cry. [ii] There are even stories of altruism in Bacteria, like our nemesis e coli. Scientists have found examples of special drug-resistant bacteria sharing something called “indole” (\ˈin-ˌdōl\ ) with neighboring bacteria who aren’t drug resistant and so can’t produce Indole on their own. (Indole is the compound that helps bacteria fight off antibiotics). These altruistic super-bacteria share, even though it weakens their own capacity to reproduce when they give away this precious resource. [iii]

The Vampire Bat, the Vervet Monkey, the e coli bacteria are all engaged in Altruism. When we talk about human altruism we use the term pretty loosely, to mean anything from pulling a fellow subway rider off the track in front of an oncoming train, to bringing a put of soup to a neighbor who has the flu. But in evolutionary biology, there is a very precise definition:

“An organism is said to behave altruistically when its behavior benefits other organisms, at a cost to itself. The costs and benefits are measured in terms of reproductive fitness, or expected number of offspring. So by behaving altruistically, an organism reduces the number of offspring it is likely to produce itself, but boosts the number that other organisms are likely to produce.”[iv]

Since the earliest days of Evolutionary Theory, altruism has stumped scientists. If what propels evolution is the competition for limited resources, altruism seems to throw a monkey wrench into the theory. Even Darwin was troubled by this. About 13 years after he published his seminal book on Evolution called “On the Origin of Species” Darwin wrote in his book The Descent of Man: “he who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature” (p.163). Darwin wondered if sometimes a behavior that was risky for the individual (like a Vervet Monkey) could provide an advantage to the larger group of which he was a part: “a tribe including many members who...were always ready to give aid to each other and sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection” (p.166). [v]

Later scientists, dissatisfied with this explanation, began to realize that the individuals who were the beneficiaries of altruism tended to be the relatives of the altruist. So even though I might end my own life before reproducing, if my close kin survived to reproduce, like sisters and brothers who share 50% of our genes, I would still be genetically successful. A fellow called George Price even worked out an equation to show the mathematical relationship between genetic benefit and closeness of relationship (because cousins, for example, are not as beneficial to preserving your gene pool as your siblings)[vi]

Then in 1984 Wilkinson challenged the link between kinship and altruism with his research about Vampire Bats. Over the course of the study he tracked which bats helped one another, and found that if you were a hungry bat, the neighbor bat who was most likely to help you was a bat you had helped in the past. It’s a remarkable, though relatively unique, example of altruism among unrelated neighbors. In a really wonderful “Radiolab” program on the topic, Wilkinson extrapolated that maybe 40,000 years or so ago something happened to all the large mammals in the area where the bats lived. There was a crisis in the bat food supply, and bats evolved this altruistic behavior so that they could survive as a species.

Scientists and philosophers argue that if there is any potential benefit to you, such as the survival of your gene line, that results from your helping act- then your helping act is not true altruism. They argue that maybe “true” altruism doesn’t really exist. But I disagree. The fact that altruism is a tool we have evolved to help us survive is a hopeful thing. We’ve so often wondered if human nature isn’t, at its core, “red in tooth and claw.” We worry that the true nature of life is a fight to the death. But the fact that we are hard-wired to help one another, and that in helping one another we help ourselves, shows that altruism is part of our nature. Altruism is a part of our survival story and part of our biology.

Professor Abigail Marsh has spent her career studying altruism in humans. What makes someone help another person at a cost or risk to themselves? In a recent study at Georgetown Marsh tested 19 altruistic people, the kind of person who would, for example, give a kidney to a stranger, and found everything she tested looked pretty normal except for the amygdala- the part of the brain that helps process emotional reactions. She found this part was “significantly larger” in the altruists she studied than in the regular population.[vii] She concluded that “The results of brain scans and behavioral testing suggest that these donors have some structural and functional brain differences that may make them more sensitive, on average, to other people's distress,”[viii] So Marsh’s research suggests that we help one another because we empathetically feel their pain, their distress, and we act to alleviate that distress as we would our own.

In his Ted Talk Buddhist Monk Matthieu Ricard extends this idea further[ix]. He reminds us that empathy is a normal part of being a mammal, an extension of the instinctive mammalian drive to care for our young. (Mammals are, by definition, those animals that nurse their young after birth instead of, say, laying eggs in the mud and leaving our young to fend for themselves once they hatch). Richard suggests that the problems facing us now- such as economic inequality and global climate change, will require altruism- will require people working for the good of future generations sometimes at the expense of our own present gain. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge some of these problems in our world that you think would altruism would be part of the solution. Go ahead and call our from your seat. ….. Richard wonders if our natural mammalian empathy could be expanded wider and wider to call forth such altruism.

I was amazed to learn recently that Lichen (you know those crusty flowery plants that grow on the bark of trees or rocks?) are a mutualistic symbiosis. That means lichen are actually two totally different life forms, algae and fungus, living together as one organism. Both the algae and fungus can live alone, and in fact it stumped scientists for a long time what might make them come together as lichen. As Biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass:

“when researchers put the two together in the laboratory and provide them with ideal conditions for both alga and fungus, they gave each other the cold shoulder and proceeded to live separate lives, in the same culture dish, like the most platonic of roommates. The scientists were puzzled and began to tinker with the habitat, altering one factor and then another, but still no lichen. It was only when they severely curtailed the resources, when they created harsh and stressful conditions, that the two would turn toward each other and begin to cooperate… When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individual species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival. So say the lichens.”

I thought back to those bats, 40,000 years ago, when some hypothetical catastrophe caused a crisis for their species, and in response they evolved the altruistic behavior that allowed them to survive. Life-saving changes are possible when we need them most. And I argue that this is one of those critical moments in the history of life on this planet. Richard notes that while it may take 50,000 years to make an evolutionary biological change, personal change and societal evolution can happen much faster. He reminds us that there is hard scientific data showing that structural changes[x] happen in our brains when we practice altruistic love, or loving kindness. Richard has thousands of hours of meditation practice in his life as a monk, but such structural changes are possible with as little as 4 weeks practicing loving kindness meditation just 20 minutes a day.

Mammals evolved empathy so that we would be hard-wired to care deeply about our offspring and others in our family group. And we know that for some extraordinary altruists that same empathy and compassion can extend all the way across the continent to a stranger who needs a kidney, or a refugee from a war far away. Could we extend that altruism to the next 7 generations of children yet to be born? Could we take Richard’s challenge to cultivate our own loving kindness as individuals and as a society? Could we extend our circle of loving kindness beyond our own kin, our own friends, to hold all of life itself?

When you are discouraged about human nature, remember that altruism is just as natural as competition. It is an important adaptation that has evolved in us, and helped us survive. It is not only part of our nature, but part of the nature of Vampire bats, Vervet monkeys, and even e coli. Giving selflessly is not only the sappy stuff of love stories; it is part of the scientific story of how we survive together.

Endnotes
[i] http://www.radiolab.org/story/105440-blood-buddies/
[ii] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/
[iii] http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/09/02/hints-of-altruism-among-bacteria
[iv] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/
[v] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/#AltLevSel
[vi] http://www.radiolab.org/story/103983-equation-good/
[vii] http://www.npr.org/2014/11/23/366052779/why-people-take-risks-to-help-others-altruisms-roots-in-the-brain
[viii] http://www.georgetown.edu/news/abigail-marsh-brain-altruism-study.html
[ix] http://www.ted.com/talks/matthieu_ricard_how_to_let_altruism_be_your_guide#t-895224
[x] http://phys.org/news/2008-03-compassion-meditation-brain.html