Sacred in the Ordinary (December 10, 2017)

Unitarians have been arguing about miracles for a long time[i]. We like science and reason, and miracles almost by definition defy reason. Our Unitarian tradition has folks like Thomas Jefferson, who often attended a Unitarian Church before he became president and created a book called “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” by carefully cut all the miracles and supernatural events out of his new testament with a razor blade. We have spent much of our history cutting out miracles and arguing that when the Gospel of Matthew says “ behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was.” the star might actually have been a comet, and so not a miracle at all.[ii]

On the other hand our UU tradition includes those, like the transcendentalists who were such an important influence on the Unitarians for the 19th century, who would argue that we don’t see miracles only because the world is so full of miracles that we’ve become immune to them. Instead of trying to disprove the miracles of the bible we would ask “what is not miraculous about a comment in the night’s sky?” Ralph Waldo Emerson In his “Divinity School Address” at Harvard in 1838 explained that “ [Jesus] spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines... [miracles are] one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.[iii]”

On the one hand Many Unitarians over the past hundred years or so have looked, for example, at the Nativity story and critiqued the virgin birth and the songs of angels as being without evidence and defying reason. I believe, on the other hand with the great UU Religious Educator Sofia Fahs that Jesus birth was a miracle, because every birth is a miracle. Fahs writes:

For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
Born of the seed of man and woman
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
No wisemen see a star
to show where to find the babe that will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night,
Fathers and mothers—
Sitting beside their children’s cribs
Feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning.

I believe a miracle did happen in Bethlehem many years ago, because I believe life itself is a miracle.

Science has measured and catalogued the progress of life in the womb, and life on our planet, but when you trace everything we know all the way back to the moment when the inanimate becomes animate, when a collection of genetic material turns into a human, that moment is still surrounded by mystery, and scientists are humbled by all we still do not know.

The word miracle comes from Latin miraculum "object of wonder" and from mirari "to wonder at, marvel, be astonished," [iv] The coming of new life into the world is both ordinary and amazing. The predictability of it does not make it any less marvelous; all the data we have collected about it does not make it any less wonderful, unless we let it.

Consider the Christian nativity story. Scholars of history tell us that many great religious leaders have very similar birth stories- suggesting that the miraculous birth story is more archetype than historical account. (We don’t really know even what season Jesus was born- early Christians celebrated variously in November, March, April and May.) Looking at the nativity story as an archetype rather than a journalistic report, we would expect the angels, we would expect the wise men traveling from afar to see a prophecy fulfilled. But what about that manger? Why doles Luke tell us that: “she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. (Luke 2:4–7)” Why lay the babe in a feeding trough? That piece is not part of the birth stories of other important figures- they are unique to this one.

While very few of us still have livestock in our lives any more, the manger would have been quite ordinary in the time of Jesus’ birth. Many of the people hearing the story would know what the inside of stable looked like. They probably knew what it smelled like too. Some of them probably even had the job of shoveling out a stable, or feeding their animals in a manger. I think it is precisely because the manger would have been so ordinary that it suggests something significant- that miracles can happen in the most ordinary of places.

There is an important theological question at the core of this: do we believe that the ordinary and the holy are very separate things? Or do we believe that God is inseparable from the world. As the great Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou pondered:

Is [God] not perfectly joined to his creation? Do we not live, move and have our being in God? …to take the smallest creature from him, … you have left something less than infinity.” (Treatise on atonement P. 81-82)

If the divine, if the spirit of life, is woven into every atom, then every life is a miracle. Your life. My life. And every moment of that life can be a cause for awe if we look at it right.

As the poet Anne Sexton proposes in today’s reading, the eggs you cook each morning can be a chapel. “All this is God” she writes “right here in my pea-green house…and I mean, though often forget, to give thanks, to faint down by the kitchen table in a prayer of rejoicing.” [v] Sexton eloquently describes the spiritual practice of noticing the sacred in the ordinary. You don’t need special gear or training to connect with the Spirit of Life, it is available to all of us in every moment. You don’t even need a minister. We gather in community on Sundays not because this is the only way to access the Spirit of Life, but because we remind one another that even in these dark and difficult times, the sacred is all around us. Because, as Sexton suggests “The joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard, dies young.”

Like our Baptist, Quakers and Mennonite neighbors, some folks call the way we worship “low church.” We worship in spaces that are relatively plane. We tend to have fewer rituals and traditions thank congregations called “high church.” Our minimalist worship style has roots in the Protestant tradition which theorized that all the icons and idols and robes of the high church tradition sometimes create a barrier between the people and the spirit. Our branch of the Protestant Family tree had kind of a “back to basics” philosophy that would allow us to be spontaneous and give a sense of freedom to our religious life together.[vi]

In seminary we talked a lot about ritual – about what makes worship powerful and how to keep worship from getting stale, how to keep it relevant. We inquired what parts of tradition could be discarded and what grounded us? One of the professors encouraged his students to use very ordinary objects in worship. He scandalized some by proposing a Dorito communion- saying he wanted a ritual that followed us into our daily lives, that if we ate a Dorito on Sunday for communion maybe each time we ate a Dorito we would remember our connection to the divine and one another. For what we do together on Sunday to be truly relevant, we want whatever is good about what we experience together in worship to leak out into our lives all week long.

As today’s readings imply, our feelings of awe don’t require the presence of angels, but a “towel, newly washed” can inspire awe and gratitude. We didn’t miss the last miracle if we weren’t there the night that Jesus was born, because we experience a miracle every time we look into eyes of a baby. Gifts of Gold Frankincense and myrrh are more important than the sorts of gifts Befana brought, help for a new mother with sweeping up, or changing a diaper, calling a friend who is sick, a warm bowl of soup, or a hand written letter, a moment of quiet.

So in this time that the Christians know as advent, I encourage each of us to be on the look out for the sacred in the ordinary. As we consider the star in the east that guided the wisemenn, let it be a reminder to us to gaze at the special way stars twinkle on a crisp winter’s evening, to savor a true moment between you and your family on a Tuesday evening. These moments are as unique as each one of us, so I invite you into a time of guided meditation….

Come to the Ordinary: A Guided Meditation by Janet Corso

Use each your senses and your imagination to picture in your mind's eye the following:

Sound: Hear.. the ordinary

• the sound of a gentle rain - peepers on a Spring night - the crunchy sound of footfall on snowy February day
•  a clock ticking in a silent room
• the wind soughing through white pines
• a screen door opening and banging shut
• church bells off in the distance
• now imagine, and hear, another ordinary sound - one that you particularly love

Touch: Feel the ordinary

•  the elasticity of bread dough
• the warm embrace of someone you love
• pulling on thick, clean socks
•  standing under a hot shower 
• the warm body of a pet snuggled against you
• laying your tired head down on your pillow at night
•  now imagine, and feel, another ordinary feeling - one that you particularly love

Sight: See the ordinary

•  a brilliant blue May sky and the bright green of new grass
• the hand of an elderly person you've loved: veined, with papery thin skin
• two persons greeting with joy at an airport
• sun glistening on icy trees
• candles flickering in a darkened church
• yellow daffodils dancing in a stiff breeze
• now imagine, and see, another ordinary sight - one that you particularly love

Taste: Taste the ordinary...

• · milk chocolate melting in your mouth - cold water on a hot day
• · salty tears of joy
• · biting into a drip-to-your elbow peach
• · tartness of a lemon
• · the first sip of morning coffee or tea
• · now imagine, and taste, another ordinary thing - one that you particularly love

Smell: Smell the ordinary...

• · clean sheets, line dried outside
• · bacon frying
• · the piney smell of a real Christmas tree
• · incense rising at a liturgy or service
• · an orange as it's being peeled
• · a newly powdered baby
• · now imagine, and smell, another ordinary sight - one that you particularly love

Now go to your life ... your ordinary life... see in your mind's eye your daily rounds, your usual activities.

What do hear? Smell.., feel ...taste? What do you see about you that gives you comfort, gives you solace, reminds you?

Allow God to enter into the space of your days hear what God says about your ordinary life, your ordinary days, How are they good?

How does God identify you by your days? How does God rejoice in what you love?



End notes
[i] for a wonderful overview of the whole debate, see http://www.uucpa.org/sermons_08/sermon080427.html
[ii] https://www.yahoo.com/news/star-bethlehem-star-comet-miracle-153708423.html
[iii] http://emersoncentral.com/divaddr.htm
[iv] (in Church Latin, "marvelous event caused by God"), from mirari "to wonder at, marvel, be astonished," figuratively "to regard, esteem," from mirus "wonderful, astonishing, amazing, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=miracle
[v] http://www.worldprayers.org/archive/prayers/celebrations/there_is_joy_in_all.html
[vi] http://www.crivoice.org/lowhighchurch.html

The Many People Inside Us (October 29, 2017)

When you are an adult, there are very few opportunities to play dress up. If we went in to see our doctor one Tuesday in March and she was wearing a Strawberry Shortcake costume, it might raise questions in our mind. It might create a barrier to our trusting her to care for us. So instead she comes to work every day in her doctor costume. We know that, for better or for worse, the way we present ourselves to the world impacts how people respond to us. As Grownups, we have all spent many years creating and polishing the various costumes we wear every day. This is no different for ministers. There are discussions all the time online about what ministers should or shouldn’t wear- one recent discussion was about whether it was okay to lead worship in open toed shoes. In fact, there is a whole blog called “Beauty Tips for Ministers” subtitled “because you are in the public eye, and God knows you need to look good.”[i]

Consider for yourself the image you present to the world when you:

• go the family Thanksgiving Dinner
• mow your lawn
• go to court to contest a traffic ticket
• work outside the home
• work at home
• go on a first date
• root for your favorite sports team

For most of us there is at least some small variation between how present ourselves in those scenarios. I would argue that it is not just our clothes that we change, but many other subtle things as well. For example, in our house it is perfectly fine to lick the beaters after mixing cookie dough. (And the bowl, if I’m perfectly honest about it.) But we try not to lick, well, anything if we are hosting a dinner party. And if I am out getting a drink with a friend, I might use some colorful language that I try to refrain from using in the pulpit. All these things are part of what Jung calls our “persona” – the image we present to the world that we can put on and take off like a costume. [take off robe]

The problem comes when we get trapped inside a persona. For example maybe you recognize a persona I will call the dependable friend [put on apron]- you know, the one who is always there when you need her, who hosts parties at her house, and never asks for anything in return. Such a persona can harden into a shell, like that suit batman wears. Maybe you would really like to cancel this week’s dinner, because you are exhausted, but because “dependable friend” wouldn’t cancel, the dinner party goes on, though there is some part inside that feels trapped and stuck.

Jungian Spiritual Director Don Bisson suggests that inside each of us is a whole committee of people. Responsible friend may be one, but she struggles all the time with a “free spirit” part of herself who wants to put her social calendar in a paper shredder, jump on her motorcycle and follow the call of the open road. Yes, inside each one of us there are whole committees of people, some of whom are on the executive team and tend to run things, and others who sit there all day with their hands up and no one ever calls on them.

I realized in middle age that I have a 4 year old princess in me that likes to wear way more ruffles and sparkles than is really seemly for my minister persona, or my responsible adult persona, or even my “adult with good taste” persona. She longs for a big bag of Grandma’s cast offs to play dress up as freely and flamboyantly as I did when I was 4.

Inside me I also have Very Efficient Worker who is constantly at war with Patient Compassionate Listener. Sometimes Very Efficient Worker just needs a quiet day alone with her to-do list or she gets pushy.

Who are the parts of you who are sitting there with their hands up waiting to be called on, whether sitting silently and patiently or jumping up and down and waving their hands in the air? Let’s take a moment silently to consider...

Now some of the people on the committee are scary, so we try to pretend they are not there. We are afraid if we give them any air time bad things will happen. They live in the part of ourselves Jungians call “the shadow”. It is not unlike the shadow your body casts in the sunshine. If the sunshine is the light of our conscious awareness, wherever we point that awareness, there will be a dark spot blocked by what we are focused on. Because it is important to me to be a “responsible friend” I can’t or don’t want to see in myself the slacker who spends all day on the sofa watching a Netflix marathon instead of going to a baby shower. And I outright reject a part of myself that would say or do something mean to a friend.

As Connie Zweig writes in her book Romancing the Shadow

… the shadow, is us, yet is not us. Hidden from our awareness, the shadow is not a part of our conscious self-image. So it seems to appear abruptly, out of nowhere, in a range of behaviors from off-color jokes to devastating abuses. When it emerges, it feels like an unwanted visitor, leaving us ashamed, even mortified. For instance ... When a [man] with a health-conscious lifestyle craves ice cream and feels compelled to binge in the dark of night, [his] shadow is acting out. When a normally kind mother belittles her child, her shadow is showing…

In each of these instances, the individual’s persona, the mask show to the world, is split off from the shadow, the face hidden from the world. The deeper this rift and the more unconscious the shadow, the more we experience it as a stranger, … an alien invader. Therefore, we cannot face it in ourselves or tolerate it in others.” [P. 4]

Zweig is suggesting that the “deeper this rift” between our persona and our shadow, the more destructive and out of control the shadow may be when it emerges. According to Jung, it is much healthier to deal with the shadow than to keep it locked up. He encourages us to pay attention to our shadow, try to understand it and bring to consciousness is rather than relegating it to the unconscious.

Let’s take a moment silently to think of some names for our own shadows. Consider moments when you have done something so out of character that you surprised yourself. Consider things you would never do yourself, but make you really angry when you see them in other people… [pause]

Everyone has a shadow, just as each of us has a shadow in the physical world. And if we are not paying attention to and trying to learn from our shadow, it will stop raising its hand to be called on in the committee meeting of our psyche, and will try to get our attention in much less healthy ways. In this light, our weird habit of dressing up as the scariest thing we can think of seems like a smart idea. Each Halloween we get to take a little peak at the shadow and we have society’s permission to do it!

This holiday offers us a great tool to call forth our shadow in a playful and low-risk way. Educational experts agree that playing is one of the best ways to learn new things- “Play is nature's great tool for creating new neural networks and for reconciling cognitive difficulties. When we play, dilemmas and challenges naturally filter through the unconscious mind and work themselves out.”[ii]

Imagine how you would dress up as your shadow.- whether that’s Dracula or the woman who takes too long writing checks in front of you at the super market...
As a lifelong UU I believe that every human life has value. I don’t like competition that pits people against one another; I think we should all work together to find a consensus solution in a non-violent way that serves everyone. Perhaps this is why, many Sunday afternoons in the fall, I come home from church and put on my Eagles Jersey, and spend the afternoon exploring a unapologetically patriarchal world where people use physical force to determine who are winners and who are losers for the profit of the wealthy. While I respect the inherent worth and dignity of every player in the NFL, I’m exploring hating the Cowboys and feeling glad when they lose. It’s cheaper and more fun than Therapy.

Jungian Theory proposes that integrating all these different aspects of ourselves into a cohesive whole is the path to maturity and wisdom- a harmonious and effective inner committee. Consider the groups we’ve been part of in our lives. When we meet in our church committees at UUCAS, I’m amazed how kind we are to one another. How we listen to each other’s ideas, even when they seem to come from way out in left field. We talk and think together until we find a solution that everyone in the committee can agree to. We are rarely so kind to all the characters inside our psyches. But I believe that even the most disruptive person on your inner committee has something important to say if we will listen.

Now here’s where the sermon takes a surprising twist – after encouraging you to listen to all those characters, and to try on all those costumes, the next step in our spiritual journey is to take them off. Because no persona, no matter how polished, no matter how fully integrated into your psyche, is really you. The real goal of this journey is not to find a better, more complete costume to wear for the world, but to figure out who is inside all those layers. When we begin to pay attention to and become conscious of the personas we put on to face the world, it reminds us that we are not our costumes. We are not our personas. Underneath all those layers is what Jung and the Spiritual teachers of the east call the Self - the deepest core of who you are. Underneath all those costumes is the true you- the one who is there when you are naked.

If we mistake our persona for our own skin, any threat to that persona would be terrifying. But when we realize it is just a useful costume we wear, we can wear it loosely; we can take them off and put them on as we need them.

At Satsang many years ago, Kenny Johnson[iii] said that what we think of as our self is more like a coat we wear that “we must take it off and burn it in the fire. And take it off and burn it in the fire.”
This is the spiritual journey, the journey to the true Self.

But just as we can’t go to work without any clothing at all, we do need some persona to interact with the world. Not a thick impenetrable veneer, but a thin breathable cloth. A useful tool that helps us communicate our roles to one another, but lets the Self shine through.

So I encourage you, today and throughout this holiday season, to play a little with your personas, your hidden selves, your shadow. We have a few tubs of costumes in the social hall, and I encourage you to try on anything that catches your eye. Try on something familiar, something that excites you, something that scares you. Try them all on at once if you like. Always with the goal of discovering the true self that lives within.


Endnotes

[i] http://beautytipsforministers.com/

[ii] http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/childrens-health/articles/2009/03/09/10-reasons-play-can-make-you-healthy-happy-and-more-productive

[iii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oubf1n6tl4Q

The Restorationist Controvercy (October 1, 2017)

Think of someone you love to hate- it could be anyone from the neighbor who always parks you in, to the political figure that makes your blood boil every time you see them in the news. When you hear that UUs don’t believe in hell, this is the person for whom you would make an exception. When you remember our first principle “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” this is the person who makes you wonder… “every person?”

If you were a lucky Universalists sitting in your pews on a Sunday morning 175 years ago you might have been listening to the great itinerant preacher Hosea Ballou, who preached all over New England trying to convince his congregations of that very thing.- yes, every person. Some of the arguments you might hear today on the Family Life network, were not so different from the arguments Ballou answered in his day- like the argument that people would never be good if there were no hell. So in 1832, Ballou used the example of a famous murder that was scandalizing folks far and wide. In 1832, a pregnant mill worker was found hanged, and the investigation implicated a prominent Methodist minister Ephraim Kingsbury Avery. [i] Here was a Fire and Brimstone preacher accused but acquitted of the murder of a young woman who may have been pregnant with his child. As we know still happens in our time, the powers that be, both the industrialists of Fall River and the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church exerted their political influence, and Avery was acquitted.[ii] Tempers were hot all over New England when he was released.

Now here was a man who preached fire and brimstone every Sunday- surely if fear of future punishment in the fires of hell was going to deter anyone from committing a crime, surely it would be such a person. Ballou writes “… if he was guilty, neither the fear of future punishment, nor the fear of temporal punishment, was of any avail.” Ballou argued, along with many other early Universalists, that not only was the threat of hell ineffective, but might sometimes have the reverse effect. Ballou wrote:

"… they have exercised, toward their fellow creatures, a spirit of enmity, which but too well corresponds with the relentless cruelty of their doctrine, and the wrath which they have imagined to exist in our heavenly Father. By having such an example constantly before their eyes, they have become so transformed into its image, that, whenever they have had the power, they have actually executed a vengeance on men and women, which evinced that the cruelty of their doctrine had overcome the native kindness and compassion of the human heart."[iii] 

Let me translate. Ballou is saying that when people imagine a “wrathful heavenly father” in aspiring to be more godly they themselves become vengeful and cruel. Ballou believes that the image of an infinitely loving and compassionate God brings out the kindness and compassion already in our hearts. By remembering the love that surrounds and will never let us go, by daring to believe that the spirit of life is in its nature loving, we ourselves become more kind, more compassionate, more loving. As it says in our hymnal “That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping we are becoming.”[iv]

So not only is a doctrine of hell ineffective, argues Ballou, but he along with most of the early Universalists argued that it is not in the character of an all loving and all powerful God would not create souls doomed to hell right from the start. Surely all people had a chance to be saved from the eternal torment with which preachers of the day loved to fill their Sunday mornings. Ballou held that “to argue for endless punishment would be to argue for a permanent, eternal division in the fabric of the cosmos, a dualism so monstrous that it would rout any claims of the omnipotence of God.” [Robinson p. 65] Historian Thomas Whittemore, one of the earliest historians of Universalism[v], described Universalists as those who believed in “the eventual holiness and happiness of all the human race” [Robinson p. 71]

One of the fundamental questions here is about God’s capacity to forgive. Does God hold a grudge like we do? If God is all powerful does that mean the divine power to forgive is greater than ours, or is it God’s power to hold grudges that is great? The Universalists put their faith in God’s infinite capacity to love. As the Rev. Linda Stowell tells the story, one time ”Ballou was riding the circuit again when he stopped for the night at a New England farmhouse. The farmer was upset. He confided to Ballou that his son was a terror who got drunk in the village every night and who fooled around with women. The farmer was afraid the son would go to hell. "All right," said Ballou with a serious face. "We'll find a place on the path where your son will be coming home drunk, and we'll build a big fire, and when he comes home, we'll grab him and throw him into it." The farmer was shocked: "That's my son and I love him!” Ballou said, "If you, a human and imperfect father, love your son so much that you wouldn’t throw him in the fire, then how can you possibly believe that God, the perfect father, would do so!"[vi]

Hossa Ballou challenged not only the orthodoxy of the Calvinists, but the orthodoxy of the first generation of Universalists like John Murray asking: “Is God the unreconciled or dissatisfied party, or is man?” [Robinson p. 64] For Ballou, God’s love for us never wavered, but it was we who are dissatisfied, we who need to atone and be reconciled, to renew our love for God.

Among the Universalists the question arose, “what about people who do something genuinely harmful, something one might call evil?” Back when UUCAS was called The Universalist Society of Sheshequin, and we had not yet built our historic meeting house, this question caused a great debate almost tore Universalism apart.

On the one side were the Restorationists who believe that the soul would be disciplined or educated in a period following death, and eventually the soul would be ready for eternal holiness and happiness. For these Universalists, Hell did exist for the unrepentant and “It’s very purpose was to cause repentance” [Robinson p. 66] “Those who believed in free will reasoned that a soul could not be fully restored until it wanted to be saved and, as souls can be very stubborn, a change of heart could require a lot of time, perhaps a hundred thousand years.”[vii]

On the other side were the Ultra-Universalists or Death and Glory Universalists, lead by Ballou. As Rev. Victoria Weinstein tells the story, Ballou was preaching in a town somewhere and staying with a family, when he walked into the kitchen to find the lady of the house mopping the floor. "Well, Mr. Ballou," his hostess said. "I hear that you preach universal salvation for all." He replied that he did. "Do you believe, sir, that all men are going to be saved, such creatures just as they are?" she asked. Hosea Ballou saw that she did not understand the doctrine of universal salvation. "Sister," he said, "What is that you have in your hand?" "Why, it' s my mop," she replied. "I always mop my kitchen floor on Saturday afternoons." Ballou asked, "Do you intend to mop that floor just as it is?" "Why, of course," she said, "I mop it to clean it." "Yes," said Ballou. "You don' t expect the floor to be made clean before you consent to mop it. And so it is with salvation. God saves men to purify them. That is what salvation is designed for. God does not require us to be pure in order that he may save us." [viii]

Whereas early Universalists, and the more orthodox Universalists of Ballou’s time believed in a literal fire-and-brimstone hell, Ballou believe “Hell is not merely a place of punishment but a state of rebellion against God and against the unity of humans and God. Heaven is the accomplishment of that unity.” [Robinson p. 65] So when Ballou claims that the soul would experience immediate salvation upon death, he is not imagining the soul entering the orthodox heaven of pearly gates and streets paved with gold, but the reunion of the soul with God. Hosea Ballou believed that sin was its own punishment, so there was no need for punishment after death. “Since the dead can no longer sin, it would make no sense for a rational God to punish them in the afterlife”.[ix]

The controversy started amiably enough. Ballou and his friend and fellow Universalist minister Edward Turner debated the issue in their correspondence. At first Ballou’s position was not that different from his friend’s but by 1817, when the debate was published in the Universalist magazine Gospel Visitant Ballou was a confirmed “Ultra-Universalist” – that is to say he believed there was no “future punishment” at all.

The debate grew more heated. Letters of increasing sharpness on both sides of the issue appeared in the Universalist Magazine until late 1820s . Ballou’s great-nephew Hosea Ballou 2nd and Thomas Whittemore took the side of Ultra-Universalism. And on the other side, Charles Hudson, a minster from Westminster MASS, wrote in 1827. . Armed with your system, might not the robber go forth with composure, and say to himself, I am sinning, it is true, but if I succeed I shall obtain a fortune; and if I lose my life in the attempt, I shall go in an instant to the enjoyment of heaven? In either case I shall be a gainer, he might very naturally say, therefore I will embark immediately in this bold adventure*[x]

To Ballou, the punishment for sin was sin itself. [It will ] be asked why I should fear sin? Answer; because it will make me miserable if I commit it. There is no priest that I can apply to, who can prevent my suffering, if I am a sinner. If I fear a prison or a gallows, or a punishment in the future world, I may flatter myself that some way may be provided, by which I may escape them; but if I fear sin itself, I know, if I am a sinner, I must endure that evil. [ p. 33] Going back to that example Methodist Minister Ephraim Kingsbury Avery, who was not deterred by fear of hell, but if he had feared the sin itself, “had that man been half as fearful of committing that crime as he was of being found out, and punished according to the law, the poor girl, whose sad fate we deplore, would not have lost her life by his hands. “ [Of Future Retribution. 35]

Also on the side of the Restorations were Paul Dean (who succeeded John Murray at First Church) and Jacob Wood “an erratic young minister.” Wood wanted to make future punishment an official part of the doctrine of Universalism and was willing to push the denomination to Schism over it. And so Universalism split in two. A group of Restorationists led by Adin Ballou and Paul Dean split off from the main body of Universalism and in 1831-1841 this faction formed the Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists. The rest of the Universalists stayed with the denomination even though most were restorationists. By 1841 the break-off group had folded- even within the group there were too many different opinions, and energy soon faded to base identity on this one theological point, the cause of abolition had a much stronger pull.

When the dust cleared, the Restorationist position was dominant in 19th century Universalism. The whole controversy faded with time, but these ideas are just as challenging today as they were in Ballou’s time. I was teaching a class on our UU principles many years ago and we began to discuss the question “which of our principles do you like the best, and which gives you the most trouble” this first principle was the top answer to both questions. Consider, even, the murderer of that young woman in Fall River almost 200 years ago. I’m not asking you to condone the act, but to ask yourself the difficult theological question “did that murderer start out his life somehow marked, somehow a different kind of being than you and I?” and then we have to ask ourselves “Is he still like you and me, or is he now less than human because he committed that act? Does he still have free will to choose good over evil in any given moment?” And if we believe he is still human, and still has free will to choose good, to choose life, then his life has worth.

As “small u” universalist Richard Rohr wrote in our time “Forgiveness has nothing to do with logic. It is the final breakdown of logic. It is a mystical recognition that human evil is something we are all trapped by, suffering form, and participating in.” Standing in the Universalist tradition, we must wrestle with the illogical idea that even acknowledging our human capacity to do evil, still we are all somehow one, still we all somehow have inherent worth, we can all still be held in love.

Like the mother in our children’s story today, God loves us even when we are slimy and smelly, stinky and scary. Our task is not to convince God to love us, because God’s love for us never ceases. Our job is to simply be open to love. It’s not logical, it’s a mystery we will never fully understand. How are we separated from love, and how can we return to it? Is love right there, ready to embrace us whenever we turn to it, or have some folks gotten so far away from goodness and from God that their journey home may be a long one?

Today we are atheists, and theists and agnostics. Not all of us believe in God, but that Universalist impulse is still there in our first UU principles, “The inherent worth and dignity of all people” It takes the old Universalist idea that God loves each and every one of us, and reframes it as a humanist idea -- without exception every person has worth. Whether we are atheists or theists, we don’t believe the world is divided into 2 camps- worthy and unworthy, but that we are all one.

It suggests an alternative to the popular idea some of us deserve a live of comfort and others deserve their suffering. Since every single one of us has worth, we work for the dignity of all- even that neighbor who parks us in, even the politician that says those maddening things. Even you, even me, even when we feel the least worthy. The Spirit of Life flows through every one of us, and calls us always to atonement, reconciliation, and a renewal of love.




End notes
[i] http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1005.html
[ii] http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1005.html
[iii] Hosea Ballou Casara p. 154
Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosea_Ballou>
[iv] -Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Debate about source: http://danielharper.org/yauu/2011/09/not-emerson/
[v] http://uudb.org/articles/thomaswhittemore.html
[vi] http://www.uuworld.org/articles/stories-universalist-history
[vii] http://uudb.org/articles/restorationist.html
[viii] (Ernest Cassara, Hosea Ballou: The Challenge To Orthodoxy, adap. http://www.firstparishnorwell.org/sermons/inherent.html)
[ix] http://uudb.org/articles/restorationist.html
[x] https://archive.org/stream/aserieslettersa01hudsgoog/aserieslettersa01hudsgoog_djvu.txt

Emotions as Big as the World (June 11, 2017)

Many Sundays someone comes up to the front of our sanctuary during Joys and Concerns, takes a rock and tells us about some joy or concern for the world. The birds are returning in the spring. The effects of global climate change, the oppression of people far away in a place we have never been. As one of your worship leaders I often feel torn about this. On the one hand, it’s my duty to make sure that worship takes about an hour, on the other hand, as your worship leaders it’s our job to encourage us to have a global consciousness. It’s important that we notice when the birds return in the spring. It’s important that we notice the strange weather we have been having. It’s a good thing when the plight of someone half way around the world touches our hearts. It reminds us that we are part of an interconnected web of life.

Every day we hear about truly horrific things around the world, and to be honest with you often when I hear about such things I don’t feel anything at all. Or sometimes they make my stomach clench up and I suddenly think of a chore I have to do in a different room. That’s why I was so surprised when a picture of a logging road through an old growth forest disturbed me as deeply as if it were an open wound on a human body. It made me sad and angry. I felt hopeless, and lonely and I felt like I was the only person in the world be upset by a logging road.

Our culture teaches us that this is not normal. First of all, we are not culturally comfortable with the difficult emotions. Perhaps you have experienced a loss or heartbreak and people around you tried to cheer you up with platitudes which imply that they would really like you to hurry up and finish grieving as quickly as possible? Psychologists agree that grief is an important process for healing loss. If we refuse to feel our feelings they don’t disappear, they creep into our bodies and into our relationships. The real need of our emotions and spirits to process our experience slams up against our cultural fear of having strong emotions. Even if we are determined to feel our feelings it’s hard to change cultural habits that are reinforced on a daily basis. For the past year this has been one of my most important growing edges; my whole life I have prided myself on being cheerful and positive. But eventually I realized that I was shutting myself off from parts of my own experience so that I could stay cheerful.

We have an additional cultural taboo to overcome as we grieve the “destruction of the world” – the taboo that only human losses should be grieved. Since I’ve been the minister here a number of us have lost companions who are dogs or cats, and so often when we tell each other this news we are apologetic- knowing that in our culture it’s not really proper to grieve too deeply the loss of any friend who is not human. All the more so, there’s a general rolling of eyes if you express deep emotion about the felling of a tree, or the loss of the coral reefs in the ocean. This comes from our cultures insistence that we are different, that we humans are separate from everything which is not human, anything that is outside our own tribe. And the reverse is also true; by severing our emotions from the living world we are able to do the things that separate us form the web of life. If it were sad to cut a logging road through an old growth forest, it would be harder to do.

Joanna Macy, Buddhist teacher and activist, was one of the first Western thinkers I was aware of to suggest that, in fact, we are all feeling this great grief for the world all the time. We all feel sad about the loss of forests and woodlands. We all feel sad about the extinction of species. We all hurt when people around the world die from curable diseases because they didn’t have access to treatment. Macy suggests that because it is culturally taboo to feel these things, we learn to numb ourselves. We all have to be able to drive past a quarry and see not an open wound in the earth, but a useful and productive industry. Our numbness helps sustain the status quo.

Macy, and now a growing number of psychologists are suggesting that before we will be able to turn and face these crises we are going to have to feel some of those difficult feelings. As individuals and as a culture we need to let our numbness soften, and let our hearts open to the rips and tears in the web of life before we can do want needs to be done to mend them.

Recently I learned a form of meditation that I have started practicing whenever the opportunity arises to change those old patterns. When I notice an emotion I take a moment to just feel it- not to judge it or analyze it or think about it but to just feel the sensations of that emotion. Then I make a conscious choice to welcome it- even if it’s despair. Even if it’s anger. I just say inside myself “welcome.” I greet it with compassion and curiosity. And after I have gone back and forth between those first two steps for as long as I need, I let the feeling go.

A few years ago I was sitting at a wonderful environmental conference called Bioneers, the founder of a group called Forrest Ethics about the cutting down of the last old growth forests on the continent- the Boreal forests in Canada. Her slides of the beautiful living eco system, and the ravages of logging opened my heart like a key in a lock. She explained that it’s hard to find out exactly what happens to the wood that is harvested when a forest is cut, but they had managed to follow some of those old trees through the paper pulp mill to the catalogues they eventually became. That’s right, catalogues. We were cutting down the last of our old growth forest to make junk mail. Notice how you feel when I say that. Do you feel numb? That’s okay. DO you feel angry? DO you feel sad? DO you feel despair? All those feelings are okay. Just notice. Where do you feel that in your body? Just breathe and notice. Well I felt so mad and sad that day that I went home and wrote up a cover letter explaining where the paper for those catalogues came from and that I did not want to receive any further catalogues. Then I ripped the back cover off all my catalogues and mailed them back to the companies. Later that year my RE program did a teach in on where paper comes form and wrote letters to Weyerhaeuser, a company that was logging the rain-forest to make paper. Without that anger, without that hurt, I never would have had the energy to do the little things I could do.

So I would like to suggest that we can apply this same welcome meditation to our environmental despair just as we would to our grief about a lost job or ended relationship. If we are watching the news and notice strong feelings, we can drop down and just feel those feelings. And then welcome them. Here’s an important point- we are not welcoming clear-cutting old growth forests, we are not welcoming the death of the coral reef, we are just welcoming our feelings about those things. After we get clear and centered in ourselves and in those feelings, it may come to us that there is something we want to do to change the circumstance that unleashed those feelings. Usually this is where I focus my sermons- on analyzing the problems and encouraging us to do something to help them change. I promise there will be many more of those sermons to come. But today I want to just focus on this very important and often overlooked part of the work, which is to allow ourselves to feel the interconnected web, in all its joy and sadness.

As Per Espen Stoknes writes “My point here is that there must also be room and space where the genuine despair may be expressed and heard. Maybe my anger needs to cry without being impatiently and prematurely pushed and bullied into positive thinking, quick fixes and social movements. Yes, we must make haste. And yes, we must make haste slowly… with the kind of deep questioning that allows the heart and the soul time to follow.” [p. 179]

This is how I’d like to use the rest of our service today. I’d like us to have another time of Joys and Concerns, this time for any part of the web of life we feel connected to. And I’d encourage us to start our sharing by saying “I feel” – to help ground ourselves in our feeling. For example, “I feel angry and sad and hopeless when I see the way the living soil is treated in my neighborhood.” and I would encourage everyone else to just see how you feel as I say that. Even if you feel numb, that’s good to notice. Just be present with that.

I want to say a special word about anger. There’s a lot of anger in our political discourse right now- and that seems about right to me. But sometimes what we do when our feelings are too painful to feel is that we focus them “at” someone. I would challenge you to sit with that feeling of anger- focusing on your own experience instead of on blame. For example. I feel angry and afraid when I hear the EPA is being cut back. So I’m suggesting that we just feel whatever feelings arise in our own bodies.

And of course there is always room for our feelings of joy and connection; it is the joy we feel as the trees fill with leaves, that gives us the desire to stay connected with the web of life.

[At this point in the service we spent some time in contemplation, and then shared with one another our joys and concerns about the whole interconnected web of life. I encourage you, dear reader, to take some time to do the same. After reflection I encouraging you to share your joys and concerns with a friend, in prayer, in your journal, or on social media.]

Change the Story (May 14, 2017)

It’s time to change the story. Whether we are watching the nightly news, reading our twitter feed, or enjoying a popular novel, the stories we have been telling ourselves recently and for many years have not lead us where we want to go.

Why does it matter what story we tell? Stories shape our expectations—If you thought you were in a horror movie you would know never to go into a dark place alone. But if you are in children’s fantasy novel, that dark wardrobe might be the start of an amazing adventure. If we expect something to happen, and we see a path that leads in that direction, it seems natural and right to follow it.

Stories shape our attitudes. We could look at, for example, the Rich Housewives of Atlanta and say “I will never be wealthy and famous like them, my life is unimportant. I lost the great lottery when I was born because I’ll never experience that.” Or I could look at the exact same life and notice that I have a roof over my head, and food to eat, and a community of people who care for one another. I could remember that even Americans at the bottom end of our unbalanced economy live better than 68% of the world’s population[i] and we could be filled with gratitude for our amazing good fortune, and spend our lives trying to share the amazing gifts we have received. I’ve looked for that story on cable- I haven’t found it. The stories we tell give meaning to our experience.

One of the most important stories of our time is the story we are telling about Global Climate Disruption. Per Espen Stoknes, a Norwegian Economist and Psychologist, has taken on the question- if Climate Change is such a big deal, why aren’t we doing more about it? He came to a number of very interesting conclusions, using research from a wide range of disciplines. One of the findings that spoke loudly to me is that when we tell ourselves over and over that the apocalypse is coming, it leaves us feeling too powerless to act. He writes “climate messages have been unpalatable because they – in their apocalypse form – evoke fear, guilt and helplessness…. Any story that tells me that my identity and lifestyle are wrong and destructive will be subconsciously resisted.” [Stoknes, p. 149] “When Climate change is framed as an encroaching disaster that can only be addressed by loss, cost and sacrifice, it creates a wish to avoid the topic. We’re predictably averse to losses. With a lack of practical solutions, helpless grows and the fear message backfires. We’ve heard that “the end is nigh” so many times, it no longer really registers” [p. 82] We tell a story that “it’s all going to hell” hoping that will spur us to action. But instead of driving us to work harder, we are paralyzed by despair.

David Korten, author, activist and former professor of the Harvard Business School, identifies 3 basic stories that he believes underlie 21st century American life.[ii] He talks about the “distant patriarch” story- in which a God far off in heaven is running the show and is “Creation’s sole source of agency and meaning.” This is the story folks are living inside of when they say “we don’t need to worry about Global warming- God will take care of us.”



Then there’s the “Grand Machine” story, which Korten says comes from the lineage of science; the world is just one big machine, driven by its own mechanisms and random chance, without purpose or meaning. We humans are driven by evolutionary self-interest to pursue profit and financial security for ourselves and our genetic line. “Economists urged us to turn to money as our ultimate measure of value and look to markets as our moral compass.” If you live inside this story, it’s hard to imagine any future for ourselves other than the inevitable depletion of the earth’s resources for our personal profit.



Then there is the “Mystical Unity” story; all that we experience is only an illusion, all that is real is our one-ness with the divine. If you live inside this story, you have no obligation to work to turn back climate change, because our world is only an illusion. A life of meditation and prayer is the only sensible choice.



I do agree with Korten that these 3 stories are powerful in our times, but I think Unitarian Universalists have always found gaps those stories. We’ve long challenged the Distant Patriarch story, arguing since our earliest days that humans have free will and what we do matters. As a religion born out of the enlightenment, we often fall under the sway of the great machine story, but we tell a different version. If the machine has no intrinsic meaning, it is up to us to provide our own, to create together a meaning that leads not to competative wealth acquisition, but to the greatest good for all. We challenge the Mystic Unity story as well- while we believe deeply in the underlying oneness of all things, still we have always rolled up our sleeves to be part of co-creating a world of opportunity and justice. Because of that very oneness we hear the suffering of others and want to help. Our hymnal is full of songs inspiring us to “roll up our sleeves.”



I do agree that and one thing all 3 of these stories have in common is that they don’t show us how humans can participate in steering our world in a positive direction through this unprecedented crisis. “The old stories do not fit anymore, and the new stories are not yet fully formed.” Says teacher and author Llyn Roberts.


I believe part of the reason we are gathered here each Sunday (in addition to the great spread you guys always put on after the service) is because we are hungry for a different story to be part of, and we find that here. I believe this is one of our most important jobs as a faith tradition, and as this very particular beloved community. Here are some important aspects of our Unitarian Universalist story:

1. Reality is important. We honor not only the data from the scientific community, but the data we observe in the world around us every day. We notice the creeks flooding more often than they used to, and strange periods of drought in the summer. We bring in our scientist friends to help us understand what we are seeing. Any story we tell has to harmonize with the facts, and when we get new data that doesn’t fit with our story, it is the story that has to change.

2. UUs believe that we are all part of something larger than ourselves. Our story is a big story, from the flaring forth of the big bang, through the evolution of life on our planet, and we have a responsibility to the future generations not only of humans but of all life here, knowing that the story continues long after we are gone.

3. For a long time the UU story has told about the importance of each and every person. The struggle we are part of is not for the victory of one, or even of a few, but a world where every person has basic human rights and an freedom to grow, change and express themselves. Now, as we stand on the verge of changing our first principle from “every person” to “ever being” we honor how our story is changing, must change, to include not just humans but the great web of life of which we are a part. In the story we are weaving today, we see that from the great wolf, to the bacteria in your gut, to the trees of the rain forests, living beings play crucial roles in the health of our world that we had failed to imagine.

4. In our UU story, we believe that what we do matters. What you do and I do, and what we do together matters. Whether or not we believe in god, we are not passive observers of this unfolding story, but each of us can make a difference in what our world is becoming. Our story is a web to be woven one strand at a time- and each strand will shape the cloth in a unique and important way.

5. In this story, there is not one big boss battle to fight, not one evil king to destroy. We are not trying to win the contest of who has the most. Our story does not culminate in a great battle for victory, but an ongoing search for meaning. Ours is the ongoing story of life unfolding.

6. In our story, there are goals more important than money or success, or even safety. Ours is an ongoing quest for less tangible trophies, like love and justice, beauty and truth.

7. When folks all around us are telling the story of how we are all going to hell, UUs have always agreed with what psychologists are proving today- that fear and despair are not the best motivators to change our lives toward the good. As the founder of American Universalism, John Murray, once said “Give them not Hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.” Our story is not about the fiery pits of hell, but about the heaven we are building together here on earth.

8. In our ever unfolding story, I there is always a place for listening. The hubris of humans has led to much destruction and far-reaching unintended consequences. Let ours be a story where we listen, not only to one another, but to people who are different than us, and to beings who are different from us. Remember the old stories where the youngest son goes out into the world to seek his fortune, and though he is neither as strong nor handsome as his older brothers, he listens to the ants an the birds and so has all the wisdom he needs for a happy ending? There is much wisdom we will need to face this crossroads in our story, and fortunately we have only begun to learn from one another and from our living earth. Let us listen, with our eyes and hearts and spirits and rational minds too.

Korten calls his new story “the living Universe story” he says “I am an intelligent, self-directing participant in a conscious, interconnected self-organizing cosmos on a journey of self-discovery toward ever-greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility” or as we like to say it “the interdependent web of life of which we are all a part.” This world we share is not an inert machine, but life seeking life -- life growing and changing and learning, and dying and healing. We are deeply embedded in that web- when a hurricane sweeps the eastern seaboard and wipes out homes and businesses, when the harvest comes and the first delicious strawberries of spring delight our senses and feed our bodies. When we clear-cut a forest, and the weeds and brambles rush in like scar tissue protecting the wounded earth. We are part of the fabric of life, infused with the spirit of life that flowed long before humans evolved.

Once upon a time, there was a tribe of seekers who loved each other, and loved the world. By listening to the rivers and the rains and the maple trees in their valley, they knew that a great change was coming. “What can we do?” they wondered. They remembered that this was not the first time a great turning had changed the face of the world, they remembered that the universe had had many forms before this one. This was not the first time the living beings of earth had to transform themselves or face extinction. The seekers wanted to help turn the path of change in a direction of abundant life, so they told the stories of all they knew that had come before, and of the new problems that had never been faced before. They talked, and they cried, and they sometimes raised their voices in anger.

“Shhh” one of them said- “listen…” After a time a voice said “I’ve been listening to the air and the storms, and I feel called to do something to slow climate disruption. Everything I do from heating my apartment to driving my car to cooking my dinner uses fossil fuels. Let’s start a campaign to help us be more aware of the ways in which we contribute to carbon pollution and find a way to offset our carbon footprint .” Another voice answered “I’ve been listening to my neighbors who can’t afford their high heating bills, what if we took those carbon offsets and helped local families create more energy efficient homes.”

And then there was more listening.

“I hear the land where we bury our trash calling out to me, it is calling me to recycle” and so she put a recycling bin and a compost bin in the kitchen. “I hear the worry of people who can’t find work to feed their families” said one man, “so I want to figure out how to create jobs in our community” “You know”, said the first woman, “if only we had curbside composting, it would make it so much easier for all our friends and neighbors to compost, and that would help keep the soil healthy and create new jobs too.” Others who were listening felt full of the spirit of life and formed a task force to create green jobs in a brand new curbside recycling venture.

One woman heard the despair of people in jail for minor offenses, and heard that not everyone was being treated equally. Others felt moved by her story and carpooled over to the city hall and created a citizen watch group to create fairness in the justice system.

“Well I don’t hear anything yet” said one woman “so I will water the garden. Maybe the garden has something to tell me, so I will listen while I work. And I will make sure we keep always a place for listening in our community.”

And this little community kept listening, and doing, and listening again: listening to the voices of suffering, listening to the return of birds in the spring, listening to the rush of storm water rushing over the banks of the river. Whenever they weren’t sure what their part of the story was, they listened. And though sometimes they felt alone in their work, they never were. The soil did its part, turning the compost into nutrients into life, and the sun shone down on the solar panels and the tomato plants. Some of their neighbors saw what they did and it made them think about their own stories. And all over the world there were other groups of folks, listening and responding. The story they were part of was so big, we could never tell it all here, but for seven generations each spring the earth awoke, and the people listened, and the spirit of life called them to a vision of hope for the whole living world.

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[i] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/01/astonishing-numbers-americas-poor-still-live-better-than-most-of-the-rest-of-humanity/#dc3a1bc54ef0

[ii] http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/a-new-story-for-a-new-economy