The chalice is a symbol. We need symbols in our lives; we can’t do without them. We utilize hundreds of symbols every day, including the words we use.

What does the chalice symbolize for you?

For me the chalice symbolizes itself [...]]]> A Talk By James J. Geary
Delivered before the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Church
16 May 2010

Chalice Reading

The chalice is a symbol. We need symbols in our lives; we can’t do without them.
We utilize hundreds of symbols every day, including the words we use.

What does the chalice symbolize for you?

For me the chalice symbolizes itself — fire. Think about fire. Fire is energy. Fire is the essence of the universe. Fire is everything. Everything is from fire. Our sun, from which we come, from which we gain sustenance, is fire. The stars, from which we have come, are fire. We are fire, slow-burning, very complex fires. The stars are energy in action. Our sun is energy in action. And we, carrying within us the life force, are energy.

Like the Hindu god, Shiva, fire is the creator and destroyer of worlds. Fire is life, fire is death, fire is we, fire is the essence of the universe.

Talk 5%. A Very Long Spiritual Journey

Good morning.

Well, here we are — again. Oh, I know I said I was 95 per cent sure my last talk was really my last talk. That’s the meaning of the 5 % in the title of today’s talk.
I had a five percent chance of speaking again.

I have a piece of trivial news. Two days ago I turned 96. I don’t believe it!

I have a couple of readings:

The first is a short poem by the famous English novelist, Thomas hardy. The title
is: Waiting Both

A star looks down at me,
And says: “Here I and you
Stand each in our degree:
What do you mean to do, —
Mean to do?”I say: “For all I know,

Wait, and let Time go by,
Til my change come.” —
”Just so,” The star says: “So mean I: —
So mean I.”

The following reading is an excerpt from Pleasures, a poem by the California poet, Robinson Jeffers.

There is a higher pleasure;
To lie among cold stones my older bothers — God knows I am old enough,
But not like granite — to lie quietly embarnacled
Under the film of surf and look at the sky,
I strain the mind to imagine distances
That are not in man’s mind: the planets, the suns, the galaxies, the super galaxies, the incredible voids
And lofts of space: our mother the ape never suckled us
For such a forest: the vastness here, the horror, the mathematical unreason, the cold awful glory,
The inhuman face of our God: It is pleasant and beautiful.

=============

During the past 20 years, I have enjoyed some inspiring services from members of this fellowship, especially personal spiritual journeys. So I thought I’d try to interest you in mine..

In this talk I discuss the two principal intellectual loves of my life, philosophy and natural beauty.

I‘ll begin this talk with a mental picture, a picture of me crying when I was about 11 years old.. I had been promised I could visit with a family friend on his orchard estate for a few days. And then the promise had been withdrawn; and I was weeping. And my Uncle Leslie said something strange. He said the grief I was suffering was balanced by the joy I had felt when the promise was first made.

I couldn’t handle that. What he said certainly didn’t do anything to assuage my hurt feelings. But I remembered it. Little could I have imagined, however, that the philosophy or psychology that my uncle expressed would become one of the two sustaining pillars of my mature philosophy of life.

A normal 11 and 12-year-old boy, of course, doesn’t think about philosophy. I was interested in family, school, and taking solitary walks with my big reddish brown collie. Our house was the first in a new subdivision, which meant my not having many peers. But it did provide me with a variety of nearby fields, hills, and woods to roam in.

Then, when I was 13, something mystical occurred, something abstruse, amorphous, transcendent. On my walks I would find myself stopping and staring into the distance, at the mountains, at a sunset, for long minutes at a time. I was entranced, carried away with wonder and rapture. I think I was trying to understand, I knew not what.

Also at about that time in my life, and maybe as part of that mystical feeling, I was developing a deep love of the outdoors, of the distant mountains, of nature. I was beginning to have an appreciation and love for the beauty and mystery of the natural world.

I think it was about that age that I began to take an interest in the intellectual discussions at the dinner table. My parents had separated when I was four. My immediate family consisted of three siblings, my mother, my divorced Uncle Leslie, and my widowed Aunt Vedy. My mother and Uncle Leslie were the brainy ones, the eggheads.  From them I learned about evolution. And that knowledge greatly influenced my thinking. I learned about liberal politics. I learned much of the story of the Bible, although both had repudiated the Christian dogma enthusiastically embraced by their father.

My mother, raised in a small, mountainous Southern town, with probably an eighth grade education, rejected Christian dogma totally. Her apostasy was a product of her exceptional and penetrating mind. and her voluminous reading. Christian dogma was her bete noir. She said she was exposed to Methodism but it didn’t take.

As a consequence of her views, I never went to any church. So unlike many of you, I am not an apostate from the Christian religion or any other religion. My mother and Uncle Leslie were nature lovers. And that probably inspired me and reinforced my own mystical feelings for the beauty and mystery of the natural world. I think my love of nature became even deeper and encompassing than theirs.

My mother had a strong and tenacious influence on my spiritual life; my Uncle Leslie even more. I often call him my guru. I was particularly taken by his conviction that pleasure and pain are balanced, as he had expressed that night I was so disappointed. He introduced me to Emerson’s Essay on Compensation, and that became a sort of bible for me. It confirmed for me the view that the law of action and reaction applies to human emotion, that pleasure is paid for by pain, and pain is balanced by pleasure. I firmly believe that to this day.

During my teen years, I began to think more and more about the nature of the world, the universe. Gradually the idea solidified in my mind — again influenced by my uncle — that all action, all effects, are the result of cause and effect. High school physics and chemistry and the natural laws proposed by Isaac Newton supported me in this belief. I became a determinist. Lately I learned that Albert Einstein also was a determinist.

Well, those two concepts became the life-long pillars of my philosophy — one, that human emotions are balanced, that pleasure and pain are opposite sides of the same coin; and, two, that there is no break, no hiatus in the law of cause and effect, that every action, every thought, has a history of cause and effect going back ad infinitum.

At the University of Virginia, I took a course in beginning philosophy, but I declined to take any other philosophy courses. I was a bit arrogant. I didn’t want to dilute my personal philosophy. My major was the natural sciences.

Well, there is nothing like marriage, service in World W II, a growing family of girls, and a newsman’s job to keep one busy and dampen down philosophical contemplation.. Then there was a divorce and two important creative jobs, both very demanding.

The first of those jobs, as director of the five-year Virginia Centennial of the Civil War, made me a department head of the State government for seven years. The nature and dimension of the observance were on my shoulders. The second job, as the original director of the New Market Battlefield Park, brought me happily back to these western Virginia mountains in 1966. But, again, the character of the park and its museum/visitor center would be up to me. I was very busy.

Still I was confident that some day I was going to study traditional philosophy and the great minds of the past.

And I had not lost my love of nature, of the beauty of the starry night, of sunsets, of a child’s face, a sleek horse, and especially of mountains.

Ten years after I came to the Valley, I began to take night courses in philosophy at JMU. I took several in the next three years. Then in the spring of 1979, I took a course on Hinduism from a young man fresh out of the University of Chicago, Wade Wheelock. I enjoyed his course and took several other Oriental courses from him, on Chinese religions, a second course on Hinduism, two courses on Buddhism, and one on Islam. Wade and I became good friends.

I continued to take philosophy courses until I had enough credits for a second bachelors degree. They included: Introduction to Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, Modern Philosophy, American Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Medieval Philosophy, Hume and Mill, Introduction to Ethics, Philosophy of Science, and Introduction to Logic.

I graduated in May of 1985 with Distinction in Philosophy and Religion. I had a grade average of 3.75. It would have been a 4.0 except that I was thinking of pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Virginia, so I studied for the Graduate Record Exam instead of for the final exam in my course in logic. I missed one whole question.

I was elected to Phi Sigma Tau, the national honor society in philosophy, and to Theta Alpha Kappa, the national honor society of religious studies and theology. I was 71 years old.

That panoply of courses in Western philosophy, together with my study of Oriental philosophy and religion, deepened and broadened my concepts of our world. But they did not alter my basic personal philosophy in which I embraced determinism and postulated equilibrium in human emotions. I believe the study of Eastern religions, especially Buddhism, did more than Western philosophy to advance my spiritual quest and provide me with a deeper appreciation of existence, the universe and my relation to it, and to my fellow human beings.

In August of 1989 Wade Wheelock told me a group was forming that he thought I might find interesting. So I went with him to the home of Dan and Jerry Spitzer, for the fourth meeting of what would become this fellowship. I remember Wade saying to a woman as we converged near the entrance, “It’s Beryl isn’t it?” She said it was. The movers and shakers for establishing a UU church were Deb and Randy Mitchell. The following Sunday I went with them and their three children to the Waynesboro UU church, which was in a house. The service began, and someone lit the
chalice.

“What’s this?” I thought. “Is this some kind of ancient cult, a savage worship of fire?” Well, in time I came to appreciate the meaning of the chalice for UUs. And I remained interested in the Harrisonburg group, which contracted to meet at the Jewish Temple on Sunday nights.

My first talk to this incipient fellowship was delivered at the Temple the following January. I said, among other things, that I had come to terms with death, that I had no fear of death. I said we were not individuals before we were born and we would not be individuals after we die, no afterlife. That talk was one of 16 I have made to this fellowship, not counting this one.

My association with HUU has been very good for me. I can’t say it has changed any of my basic beliefs, but, as I have said before, it has fine-tuned them. The searching, self delving required in preparing these 17 talks has required that I focus on my spiritual and aesthetic self. I have also benefitted from the talks that others have made. I reviewed and took a new look at my conceptions of beauty, of happiness, of morality, of my social values and prejudices. I gave a whole service on overcoming the prejudices of my youth..

So what do all those years of study and contemplation leave me with?

Well, I was confirmed in my belief there is no free lunch — we pay for everything.

I also realized how incredibly lucky I have been — good luck; and how luck, good and bad, is the controlling factor in people’s lives. Of course, I believe I have paid for my good luck.

`I realized we live in a world that is, paradoxically, both benign and very dangerous.

I’ve also learned that we humans are a social species — we need each other.

I’ve come to believe that we humans are largely egos. I have an equation: egg plus sperm equals ego.

As for purpose and meaning in life, I have not found any, except to live and produce and nurture the next generation.

The notion of the universe involves the concept of infinity, which I believe is impossible for the human mind to grasp. We cannot wrap our minds around there being an end to space or time, nor there not being and end to space or time. Nevertheless, I have come to believe that the universe is eternal — no creation, no beginning and no end. I don’t believe the Big Bang was the beginning. For me an everlasting universe is the easiest answer to the ancient question of creation.

On the practical level, I think and I hope I have learned how better to deal with my fellow human beings.

And, finally, my studies have confirmed for me the continuing two foundations of my philosophy of life: that everything is determined, that there is no suspension of the law of cause and effect; and that human emotions are balanced, that pleasure and pain complement each other.

But in the end, we really don’t know much, do we? Maybe there are no verities except change. I read that Socrates said it was the beginning of wisdom to realize we don’t know anything. And especially we don’t know why — so many whys. Why is the universe? Why am I? Why am I comfortable and in reasonably good health at age 96, instead of being some starving Haitian woman. Why am I human instead of being a mouse or a frog or a cow.

Well enough of what the Buddha said was useless speculation. The important thing for me is that I am at peace with myself and with my world. I enjoy my association with family and with friends. I observe the passing scene. I enjoy contemplating the great pageantry of human existence, unsavory as a lot of it is. I still love life and the beauty of our natural world.

I want you to know that HUU has been good for me in another way, perhaps the most important way. It may surprise you that members of this fellowship constitute most of Pat’s and my social life. We are home bodies. Aside from relatives, most of our friends, come to this building. Because of my impaired hearing, I have a hard time interacting with most of you in this noisy venue. But you are my friends.

In one way, this may be goodbye — goodbye from this pulpit. I am not making any promises; I’ve learned my lesson. But I want you to know, I’ve enjoyed expressing my thoughts over the past 20 years to this friendly and sympathetic assembly. For me these talks have been satisfying ego trips. Thank you for all those years of listening.

First Reading John 6:1-13 Feeding The Five Thousand

Some time later, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee– also called Lake Tiberias –and a huge crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he gave by healing the sick. Jesus climbed the hillside and [...]]]> By Rev. Emma Chattin
March 14, 2010

First Reading
John 6:1-13
Feeding The Five Thousand

Some time later, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee– also called Lake Tiberias –and a huge crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he gave by healing the sick. Jesus climbed the hillside and sat down there with his disciples. It was shortly before the Jewish feast of Passover. Looking up, Jesus saw the crowd approaching and said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ Jesus knew what he was going to do, but asked this to learn Phillip’s response. Philip answered, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread to give each of them a little mouthful!’ One of the disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said, ‘There is a child here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; and as many as five thousand families sat down. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were seated; so also with the fish, giving out as much as they could eat. When the people had eaten their fill, Jesus told the disciples, ‘Gather up the leftover pieces, so that nothing gets wasted.’ So they picked them up, and filled twelve baskets with the scraps left over from the five barley loaves.

Second Reading
Adapted from~
Jesus and Buddha as Stories by Professor David Loy

…. Our minds need stories just as much as our bodies need food. ‘Story’ in this case means….all our mythologies, folktales, legends, epics, novels, philosophies, ideologies, including, of course, our religious beliefs. Just like food builds and rebuilds our bodies, stories build and rebuild our minds (or spirits, if you prefer) because it is through them that we learn what the world is, who we are, what is important in this world, and how we are to live in it. ….. If we look at religion-stories from this perspective, we can appreciate them in a different way.

….. The analogy between stories and food is actually quite a good one, I think. An occasional dose of fast food or junk food is usually not too bad for us, but a diet that consists only of (fast food burgers), fries and soda pop is unhealthy. Just as we need to eat something to sustain our bodies, so we need stories to provide meaning and structure for our lives. One of the worst problems with our consumer culture is that, just as it encourages us to eat too much junk food, so it encourages us to watch and listen to too many junk stories, with simplistic and predictable plots focused on violence and sex, and with predictable effects on the lives [and spirits] of those [who become exclusively] devoted to them.

The myth which inspires me most of all is the story of Shakyamuni Buddha. ….. The core of the Buddha story is a search for wisdom… The Buddha’s life-quest is elegant in its structure and deeply moving, because it forcefully reminds us not to repress our awareness of the illness, old age and death that haunt our lives, but to use that awareness to motivate and energize our search for the meaning of our own life and death. His awakening is described in various ways, and there even seems to be something intentionally ambiguous about it, but some essential points stand out: the understanding we need is not a conceptual one; we can resolve the anguish of our lives not by accumulating things but by overcoming the greed, ill-will and delusion of our own minds; this involves letting-go of the sense-of-self that [causes one to] feel alienated from others in the world.

Reflection: What Feeds You?

Good Morning. Welcome to Stewardship Sunday!
My name is Emma Chattin, and I’ll be your server.
On the menu this morning, some of the synonyms of Stewardship….
Attention… Care… Cherishing, Protecting, Preserving….
Nurturing… Nourishing… Feeding….
And some of the side dishes….
Giving Thanks… Generosity…. Gathering…
Sharing… Caring…. Growing… Letting Go…
Some mighty good vittles!
Yawl hungry?

What does Stewardship Sunday mean?

It’s a day when the community considers the way in which it sustains itself and prepares for growth; a day when the community considers the realistic and tangible means to support its mission, its vision, what it is doing in the community, and how to do so for more people (in some cases, many more people); the practical considerations of new programs, more seats… and the basics of looking around at some point and thinking… with a sense of gratitude, and perhaps some anxiety as well:
How do we care for all these people?
How do we feed them?

Now there are two things that churches generally do not like to talk about, and, not surprisingly, those are the same two things most often at the root of problems and conflict- both for church communities, and, also, not surprisingly, in most intimate relationships. Those two things are Sex and Money. And, I will be honest with you, I am quite comfortable talking about both.

Because the things we don’t talk about- and maybe try not to think about -must be talked about and thought about, because the issues that we do not have the courage or the will to discuss are the ones that will destroy the very thing that they could have otherwise created and built up if we were only to approach them openly. Folktales and great mythology reveal this timeless truth to us again and again.

But that doesn’t mean we just jump right on into either topic without some preparation. It matters that we talk about them, but it also matters most HOW we talk them.

SEX & MONEY.

Both can expose some of our deepest sensitivities and insecurities. Both can impact our sense of self-worth in some very complicated and tricky ways. Both can be used, misused, even exchanged, in perhaps the most oldest exchange, one for the other; and both can be approached in a less than pleasing, completely insensitive, and even vulgar manner.

Yet, if we are sincerely and fully true to our principals and beliefs, then both subjects can and should be approached without shame as beautiful gifts, as expressions of intimacy, and as a means of vital connection with one another.

Money is not some great and all powerful thing; it is not the be all be-all-end-all; it is not the ultimate prize or reward for a life well lived; it isn’t fair and it knows no sense of morality other than the purse, wallet, or hand it happens to be in at the time. Wars are waged over it, people are killed for it, and some people lose all sense of humanity in the pursuit of it. Perhaps this is why we sometimes hesitate to discuss it, because money seems guilty of so many things by association and through exchange. And yet, it is not the end but rather the means to the end. It is not the result but rather a tool through which we achieve a result. It is not to be held tightly. It is, however, an important resource, and a resource that, like water, and life itself, functions best when it flows freely.

I’m familiar with giving as a means of sustaining a spiritual community, and giving as a spiritual principal- as a means of individual spiritual growth. Let me talk about the latter for a moment.

Though there is some variation, many faith traditions have some sort of prescribed level of giving. My own tradition centered on tithing, or a giving level of 10%. The origin of this practice is deep in the Hebrew Bible, and it is a hotly debated subject in some circles. In fact, much has been written in both Christian and Jewish communities as to why this level no longer applies. It matters less to me what the figure is, and more that so many people spend so much time and energy trying to make it less or avoiding the topic of giving altogether. I find that interesting… because I believe is the end goal is less about giving something up, and more about learning to let go.

So back in the old days, it was 1/10, or 10% of a person’s harvest or livestock. Nowadays, people will ask, 10% of gross or net? Do investments count? How about money contributed to an IRA? When a person asks such questions, I can gather that they have perhaps already missed the point of giving as a spiritual principal of “letting go”.

In the old days they would haul their sacrifice up to an altar…. and burn it. I once asked dad that if God likes burned meat so much why didn’t we just bar-b-que in church? Dad told me it’s not that God likes burned meat- the sacrifice was burned so that someone wouldn’t be tempted to return to the altar later and get their offering back. Makes sense. I have known people in church communities who behave in a similar manner- always wanting to get their offering back in some way, or wanting to maintain control of it. Again, the lesson of giving is about learning to let go.

Also, if the offering was burned, no one really knew how big or small it was. There were no boasting rights or entitlements. That is, I give x and y gives z… and so I am more entitled…. … entitled to a better seat… a better hymnal… a better parking space. Giving as a spiritual principal involves no such quid pro quo.

…. or I give z amount, and I don’t want it used for postage stamps… or to pay the electric bill… but for something REALLY important ….

Again… missing the entire point of letting go. In the old days what happened to the offering? It went up in smoke. Giving as a spiritual principal is all about the practice of letting go of the gift once it leaves your fingertips. You do that often enough, and even what is at your fingertips is no longer held tightly in your grasp. And THAT, I think, is what giving as a spiritual principal is all about.

The story in today’s First Reading is about an apparent lack of resources in a community. It is also perhaps one of the most popular stories in the Jesus tradition, and the only so called “miracle story” in the ministry of Jesus that appears in all four of the canonized Gospels. Clearly, this story communicates something very important, meaningful, and moving about the experience of following Jesus, so much so that I can imagine this story being told over and over again in each of the gospel communities before finally being written down by their respective scribes (“Hay, do you remember the time… feeding all those people? Wow, those were the days!).

While the version in each of the 4 canonized gospels have variation, they all convey the essence of a very remarkable story. Feeding 5000 + people from a basket of five loaves and two fishes. Wow! And having more left over in the end than what they began with – a basket of left-overs for each of the twelve disciples!

That kind of multiplication, that kind of expansion of resources, is often used as a metaphor for the fund raising efforts of many church communities, and the imagery of over-flowing offering baskets was not lost on many a rural preacher praying for a miracle during budget formation time.

But the question for us today is … how do we absorb this story?… How do we consume it? As a miracle? A magic trick? The sudden and momentary suspension of some sort of natural law that otherwise seems to govern the rest of us?

When I was a child, a magician pulled a coin from my ear and gave it to me. I was amazed. For a moment. And then I told him I had another ear. Well…. if he could pull a coin from one ear, surely he could pull one from the other. And he did. And then, where else could we pull one from? And then, what would stop him from pulling dollar bills? Or even bigger bills from bigger ears? From everyone’s ears! And making the whole room wealthy, and eventually making the entire world rich and satisfied! All of our problems solved! What a wonderful thing! And how could I learn to do it?

My father explained to me, after pulling me off the stage (much to the performer’s relief), that things are not always what they appear to be.

That very same thought is what inspired some German theologians, called rationalists, who reflected on this story of the loaves and fishes during the Age of Enlightenment, to offer possibilities, different ways of reading this story.

The Enlightenment. The late 1600’s… thru the 1700’s…. and sometimes I think they were more enlightened than we are now, as we stumble about a few hundred years later, with religion and science once again being cast in opposition to one another, as opponents on a battlefield warring for POWER and CONTROL, rather than acting as partners in helping us to understand and / or simply accept ourselves, each other, and the wonderful universe in which we live.

The rationalists proposed a few possibilities, among them… that seeing the act of a child’s generosity, and the gratitude expressed for it, inspired the people gathered there to respond with their own acts of generosity…. That as the basket was passed… those there who had more food with them than was needed to satisfy their hunger… contributed to the basket…. And those there with a need, received from the basket. In this way, the entire crowd gathered there was able to meet the needs of the crowd. And the people did so through amazing generosity, by letting go of what they might otherwise have held to tightly.

Now, to me, that’s a REAL miracle. Not some meaningless magic trick, or some gift given on a divine whim that is unavailable to the rest of us, but rather a moment….. a moment like a sunrise, that is available to anyone who chooses to open themselves up to the experience… to open themselves up to the beauty of the moment….. to the grassy field, to the needs of their neighbor, to experience, for one glimmering moment, the awesome interconnectivity of everything around them.

For me, a miracle is a moment in which the living Spirit of goodness and generosity moves in us around us and through us … because we have opened ourselves to that possibility. For me, a miracle is a moment in a story when the human and the divine momentarily touch, join, embrace, and kiss… People are inspired with a spirit of greatness……

…rising above the small, petty, and self-centered focus that usually drives us… lifting us to embrace the better angels of human nature….. And suddenly, feeding a multitude with a small basket of fish donated by a child seems well within the reach of a multitude— And suddenly there is a moment in which people must actively participate for the good of needs far beyond their own, transcending their own sense of self. That’s a real miracle.

(We may not sing with Smokey Robinson, folks, but we ARE the miracles).

Of course, the story of the loaves and the fishes is recorded so that you may believe whatever you wish to believe. I am not out to change minds, simply suggest possibilities.

But … let’s take a moment and try it on for size. Let’s step into the story. Let’s become a part of the story ourselves, and see how it feels.

Imagine yourself among the multitude there, 5,000 people standing about, 5,000 tired sweaty people, like an open-air Jimmy Buffett concert, only there are many entire families, all elbow to elbow, some pushing, some shoving…

What happens next? We are instructed to sit down. In a grassy field. Don’t know about you, but I have been to enough open-field concerts and farm parties to know that sitting down in a grassy field is a right relaxing experience.

Suddenly everyone is well grounded, has their space well defined. Begins to relax. Maybe even open up a bit. “Hey, you ready for the Passover feast? Yeah, me neither. But we’re looking forward to it anyway.” What can be more Zen and in the moment than stopping and sitting…. not being anxious… not fretting about… o no on what am I gonna eat!! But stopping, sitting, taking a moment… to just BE.

We look. We see. A child has five loaves and two fishes. Now that a child would have such a bounty packed is noteworthy, as is the fact that the feast of Passover is approaching. We see this new Rabbi… what is he doing? He is … wait… is he going to try to feed all of us with that? (there is laughter) Then… what’s he doing? He is giving thanks! Amazing. He seems to be really grateful for that little bit. And wait now… the little boy is letting go of his meal… and suddenly into the crowd the basket goes….

You look into your own basket or pouch. You have two pieces of fish, 4 packs of crackers, an apple, olives, dates…. it’s more than you need, really… and this person next to you has a full wineskin… and he’s offering you a drink… you know, this is actually quite nice ….

Some people read stories literally, everything as fact, and existing as something completely separate from themselves, apart from who they are as a person. And some people savor stories with delicacy, with delight. Consuming them, absorbing them, letting the story become a part of them, and they a part of it.

In the introduction to his book Gates of the Forest, Elie Wiesil relates a rabbinical story that is often used to communicate the power of narrative .

When the great rabbi Israel Bal Shem Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go to a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Maggid of Mezeritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: “[Creator] of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.” Again, the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Moshe-Leib of Sassov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: “I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.” It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Israel of Rizhin to over come misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is tell the story, and this must be sufficient.” And it was [Wiesel, 1966, Introduction].

Did the event of the loaves and the fishes happen?

I don’t know. What I do know is that what I have is the story, and stories are powerful. My own faith journey is less about a study of historical facts and events, and more about a search for how I may better fit into my present. And good stories help me do that. Good legends, good epics. it matters less about the context and more about good meaningful narrative. I can get more out of a good episode of Star Trek, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, than most minister’s sermons.

The answer to “What feeds me?” as a person is clear. It is stories.

A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt. He said, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.”
The grandson asked him, “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?”
The grandfather answered: “The one I feed.”

What feeds you? As a person? And do you nourish and nurture and care for that which feeds you? Is it social justice? Personal growth? Economic justice? A sense of community connection? Mowing the grass? Working outside?
What feeds you?

I dare say that each of you have, will, can, and do… seek and find nourishment … satisfying and fulfilling spiritual nourishment …. here. In this community.

This spiritual community is very unique. In many ways, and for many reasons. I love that you are a lay-led. I love that you have done marvelous things as a community. You have spruced up your building, made all sorts of improvements, created a parking lot, new sign, have stood as a testament of social justice to the poor, the hungry, the alone, the wounded, the sick… you sent people to Washington DC to march on the side of love… there is a literal litany of things this community has done.

And today, you are going to feed a multitude…. a multitude that has the opportunity to nourish in return the community that has fed it in so many ways.

And you also have an opportunity to become a part of the story that is unfolding and being told here. I encourage you to open yourself fully to that exciting possibility.

Oh… and speaking to the community,
what is the answer to “What feeds you?”

You do. :

Readings: 1) “thy eyes look to me mild. Out of maize @ air/ your body’s made and moves. I summon, see,/ from the centuries it./I think you won’t stay. How do we/ linger, diminished, in our lovers’ air,/ implausibly visible, to whom, a year,/ years, over interims; or not;/ to a long [...]]]> Sunday service by Robin McNallie
3.28.2010

Readings:
1) “thy eyes look to me mild. Out of maize @ air/ your body’s made and moves. I summon, see,/ from the centuries it./I think you won’t stay. How do we/ linger, diminished, in our lovers’ air,/ implausibly visible, to whom, a year,/ years, over interims; or not;/ to a long stranger; or not; shimmer @ disappear.”
John Berryman, “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet”

2) “Sometimes the sun is only shadowed by a cloud that we cannot see his luster although we may walk by his light, but when he is set, we are in darkness till he arise again. So God doth sometime veil His face but for a moment that we cannot behold the light of His countenance as at some other time.”
Anne Bradstreet, “Meditation 50”

When I agreed to do this morning’s service, I was in the middle of reading Sarah Vowell’s well-received 2008 book on the 17th c. Massachusetts Bay Puritans, “The Wordy Shipmates.” I recommend it highly. Vowell, an audaciously cheeky commentator on that society, is also true to the historical record and shrewd in her judgments on it. She is essentially a stand-up comedian doing a sort of antic impression of Perry Miller, Harvard University’s pre-eminent authority on the New England Puritans and the later Transcendentalists. Although Vowell doesn’t seriously contradict H. L. Mencken’s oft recycled definition of Puritanism as “the sneaking suspicion that someone somewhere is having a good time,” she does suggest that there are, at least, a few redeeming qualities to Puritan society which should perhaps come as good news to UUs since our Unitarian branch is the evolved offspring of Puritan congregationalism; we won’t be harmed either from owning up to that dour and dyspeptic past or knowing it more fully. Since Vowell devotes considerable space to Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, we can infer that a positive attribute she finds in the Massachusetts colony is the quality of the dissenters it produced—before banishing them to Rhode Island.

I would like, however, to direct my own remarks to another woman of that patriarchal world not covered by Vowell, the other Anne—Bradstreet. To students seeking to pass their masters exams in American Literature Anne Bradstreet is the answer to the question: “ What poet was the first in the English speaking New World colonies to have a volume of poetry published in London in the year 1650?” The title of that book, probably supplied by a market savvy publisher of the time, is “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.” Anne, incidentally, was peeved initially, because her brother-in-law had delivered the draft of it to London without her knowledge. The universal moral here: Keep your best china and all loose manuscripts hidden when having your in-laws over.

Three noteworthy facts to remember about that book’s publication: 1) its author was indeed a woman, 2) its author was indeed a Puritan—to the Puritan mind writing poetry was deeply suspect, a product of idleness and sensuous inclinations, unless the verse served as an aid to creedal indoctrination , as, for example, the famous “New England Primer” with such exemplary couplets as “In Adam’s fall/ we sinned all,” and 3) “The Tenth Muse” is rarely read today, its contents deemed to be very derivative of the work of a French poet , DuBartas, popular at the time. Bradstreet’s distinctive voice is largely absent, save in the Prologue where she upbraids male poetasters for not acknowledging that women too can create worthy verse.

The works by Bradstreet that do make contemporary anthologies are her so-called “domestic” poems. In these she evinces repeatedly a fierce love for husband Simon and her eight children, seven of whom survived, remarkably, the primitive conditions of that time and place to reach adulthood. She, in the main, writes an unadorned verse in simple patterns of standard rhyme and meter. The voice heard in the poems is what invests them with the power to reach the modern reader. It is both direct and guileless, doubtlessly because Bradstreet is addressing only herself or an intimate circle of family and close friends. She is confessional but rarely falls into the well of self-pity. Some readers have detected a resemblance between Bradstreet and her 19th c. New England successor, Emily Dickinson, who also went largely unpublished in her life.

I will bring that voice into this sanctuary whose simple elegance I think Anne would have approved of. Of the poems I have read by her, this one addressed to Simon, is the one that most powerfully stirs me. Truly there are many great, even outstanding poems by others that, even with their greater refinement, move me far less. It is titled by editors “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”; its power to move us is reinforced by our knowledge of the all too real and considerable dangers of child bearing in that colonial era. “ All things within this fading world hath end,/ Adversity doth still our joys attend;/ No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,/ But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet./ The sentence past is most irrevocable,/ A common thing, yet oh, inevitable./ “How soon, my dear, death may my steps attend,/ How soon’t may be thy lot to lose thy friend,/ We both are ignorant, yet love bids me/ These farewell lines to recommend to thee,/ That when that knot’s untied that made us one,/ I may seem thine, who in effect am none./ And if I see not half my days that’s due,/ What nature would, God grant to yours and you;/ The many faults that well you know I have/ Let be interred in my oblivious grave;/ If any worth or virtue were in me, let that live freshly in thy memory/ And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms,/ Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms,/ And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains/Look to my little babes, my dear remains./ And if thou love thyself, or lovedst me, These O protect from step-dame’s injury./ And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,/ With some sad sighs honour my absent hearse;/ And kiss this paper for thy love’s dear sake,/ Who with salt tears this last farewell did take.”

American poet John Berryman, a reader who came obsessively under Bradstreet’s spell, spent five years in the aftermath of WW11 studying her life and work, leading up to the publication in 1953 of his “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet,” a 57 stanza tribute but really more like a feverish valentine. Knotty and elliptical, the poem presents a speaker who at junctures seems hard to identify—is it Berryman, Bradstreet or an amalgam of the two, the latter a clear possibility given the author’s fervent embrace of his subject. I cannot decide whether I find “Homage” to be truly touching or genuinely disturbing. The ambivalence may be attributed to my awareness of Berryman’s later suicide.

Berryman, clearly, seems to have identified with the turbulent spirit he detected in Mistress Anne. He evidently saw her like himself as being at war with the surrounding culture. I believe he was barking up the wrong Anne. Unlike Anne Hutchinson, the public rebel, Bradstreet’s conflict was essentially inner and private. We need to remember that this Anne was a poet and what W. B. Yeats said of a poem: it is the argument the poet is having with himself (or herself). I would like to suggest that the advent of Anne’s recurrent struggle between her earthly attachments and her duty to the God whom by the dictates of her faith she needs to love, honor, and obey can be pinpointed at that moment she arrived in Massachusetts in 1630. She tells her children in a letter she leaves them as she approaches death, this in about her sixtieth year, that upon first viewing the new scene, “My heart rose.” Those three monosyllables convey to me incredible poignancy. Imagine if you can. Here is a young girl, daughter of Thomas Dudley, steward to the Earl of Lincoln, who had at one time eight tutors and a large library at her disposal, who, at sixteen, recently married to Cambridge educated Simon Bradstreet, accompanied him and her beloved father on the
Arbella , the ship which was to take this vanguard of Puritans to the Bay Colony, the first cresting wave of the great Puritan migration of the 1630’s.

What can we, both reasonably and intuitively, infer about the young Anne’s state of mind at that moment when her “heart,” she tells us, “rose”? Trepidation certainly at the wilderness around her, possibly even terror and, not least, a stabbing pang of regret at all that has been left behind. She must have felt quite literally forsaken of God, God forsaken. Her bulwark against despair had to be her bond with family–father, husband, and the eight children she gave birth to over time, “my little babes, my dear remains.” Essentially, this is her perpetual conflict, a struggle between her love of this world, her attachments therein, and her duty to God, whom, by the dictates of her Puritan faith she needs to love, honor, and obey above all else. In this same final letter she confesses to the struggle, still, seemingly, ongoing, as she approaches death: “Many times hath Satan troubled me,” she writes, “concerning the verity of the Scriptures, many times by atheism how I could know whether there was a God; I never saw any miracles to confirm me, and those which I read of, how did I know but they were feigned. That there is a God my reason would soon tell me by the wondrous works that I see, the vast frame of the heaven and earth, the order of all things, night and day, summer and winter, spring and autumn, the daily providing for this great household upon the earth, the preserving and directing of all to its proper end. The consideration of these things would with amazement certainly resolve me that there is an Eternal Being. But how should I know He is such a God as I worship in Trinity, and such a savior as I rely upon?…. I have argued thus with myself. That there is a God, I see. If ever this God hath revealed Himself, it must be in His word, and this must be it or none.” I detect in that last sentence desperation more than doubt even. What she seems to imply, is that her professed faith is a gamble that she is making that she might possibly lose, indeed, might already have lost.

In recent years, some readers have wanted to see Anne Bradstreet as a stealth secularist, one writer dubbing her “the worldly Puritan.” Such a view seems to me to be an example of the wish becoming the conclusion. Her writing, taken en toto, simply doesn’t support it. This morning’s reading from Anne’s Meditation 50 in which she depicts her God coming and going like the sun is in effect registering her own persistent cycling between faith and doubt, also referenced in her parting letter. Against the poems expressing earth-anchored love of husband and children is, for instance, her poem “The Flesh and the Spirit” which employs the debate format, a poetic tradition that dates to the Middle Ages and, continues to appear, some times in disguise, up to the 20th century. The debate typically pits the claims of this life and this world against those of the next. The soul, as might be expected, normally gets the last word, although in the 20th century the tables tend to be turned as in Wallace Stevens’ magnificent meditation “Sunday Morning.” In Mr. Stevens you truly have a real honest-to-godless secularist. But Bradstreet accords the last word, and, in essence, the victory garland to the soul. Although many readers , even fairly devout ones, can claim that the arguments of the flesh seem more compelling in her poem, just as in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” Satan seems more convincing than God, Bradstreet explains why this is so. She says in her 13th meditation “The reason why Christians are so loath to exchange this world for a better is because they have more sense than faith: they see what they enjoy; they do but hope for that which is to come.” That is her way of saying this world is a real turn-on, a wholesale aphrodisiac, and who knows this better, as we have seen already, than Anne herself. In “The Flesh and the Spirit,” however, as in another poem where she consoles herself concerning the loss of her house to fire, she asserts that the eternal lease on life offered by Heaven trumps the immediate gratifications of earth.

Puritan, poet, woman, wife, mother, Anne Bradstreet was caught in a duality she couldn’t in the end bring to congruence. She remained divided between her heart’s present attachments—“Earth is the right place for love./ I don’t know where it’s likely to go better,” to quote Robert Frost—and her expectation of heaven—“My hope and treasure lies above” as she says in her loss- of- home poem.

When Henry David Thoreau lay on his death bed, a relative asked him, as one story has it, if he had prepared himself for the next world. His reply? “One world at a time.” For Mistress Bradstreet, I believe, Heaven couldn’t be dismissed, but it could wait.

Greetings!

In case you don’t know, my name is Eric LaFreniere, and I’m chair of your HUU Membership Committee.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the idea of HUU membership as membership in a kind of extended family, with all [...]]]> Eric LaFreniere addressed HUU members and friends gathered for the Stewardship Sunday luncheon. His comments follow.

Greetings!

In case you don’t know, my name is Eric LaFreniere, and I’m chair of your HUU Membership Committee.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the idea of HUU membership as membership in a kind of extended family, with all the challenges, rewards – and food – that entails. Our HUU family encourages us to be our best selves: to adhere to core principles, to participate in and buuild community, to evolve through positive if sometimes difficult relationships with others, to seek and supply solace and support, and to quest for spiritual meaning together. Like a biological family, our HUU family is worthy of our attention, time and energy. It is both a value in the present moment and an investment in the future.

Speaking of which, on this Stewardship Sunday, as chair of your Membership Committee, I beseech you to pledge generously to your HUU family. Yes, these are troubling economic times – and Lord knows many of you have already given amply of your time and energy – but our HUU family is on the verge of expansion in terms of both membership and programs – just as a biological family might be about to be transformed by a birth or a marriage, or by sending someone off to college, or by the start of a business. All of those things take money, which is what I’m frankly asking of you, so that our HUU family can transform into a bigger, better vehicle for the realization of our principles, our relationships, and our spiritual journeys.

Thank you.

“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”~ Jalal ad-Din [...]]]> Encountering Divinity Through Community (Or…. Is It The Other Way Around?)

January 10, 2010
by Rev Emma Chattin

Words of the Mystics -  Thoughts for Reflection

“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
~ Jalal ad-Din Rumi (Persian Poet and Mystic, 1207-1273)~

“You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”
~ Teilhard de Chardin quotes (French Geologist, Priest, Philosopher and Mystic, 1881-1955) ~

“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming [themselves].”
~ Saint Peter of Alcantara quotes (Spanish Mystic and Founder of the Discalced (i.e. barefooted) Friars Minor. 1499-1562)~

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Jalal ad-Din Rumi ~

“(said of God ): If this is the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few!”
~ St. Teresa of Avila ~

Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.
( Bidden or not, God is present. )

A  statement that Carl Jung discovered among the Latin writings of Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), who declared the statement had been an ancient Spartan proverb. Jung popularized it, having it inscribed over the doorway of his house, and upon his tomb.

The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive.  The faults of others, one lays open as much as possible, but one’s own faults one hides, as a cheat hides the bad dice from the gambler. ~ (Buddha, Dhammapada, vv. 252, 253) ~

Reading

~ from Nevada Barr in Seeking Enlightenment Hat by Hat: A Skeptics Guide to Religion

Church is for finding and adoring God in community: with others, through others, because of others, in spite of others.  Only by finding this place of human interaction, focused around the need for the spiritual, was I able to recognize God in other people, and so in myself.  Without community, how would I learn to share?  Who would I help?  How would I learn to accept help? … Community is God rubbing elbows and passing the tuna casserole, a place where we can snuggle down with the Divine.  Though I’d never have suspected it when I began this spiritual journey, God is not separate from people.  Sure we’re hypocrites, liars, boasters, blasphemers, and cheats, but we are God’s hypocrites, liars, boasters, blasphemers, and cheats.  The spark is in each of us.  When we work together for what we sincerely hope is good, worship together in the belief we will touch God, sing together in the hope (God) hears our praises, then the spark is fanned, and God becomes as visible in us as God is in new snow, or a sunrise, or in a mountain lake.

Sermon

Good Morning.   And welcome on this very binary morning of 01 10 10.

My father would begin all of his Sunday morning services with “Welcome all who gather here today, this is God’s House”,  and I learned at an early age exactly what that meant.

We were stationed at Mt Carmel Methodist church in Covington, VA, and whenever I heard that phrase, I always took some pride in it.  After all, THIS was God’s house.  Our place.  Our little church was where God lived.

As I went to school, I had Jewish & Catholic friends, and while I knew some of the differences between us, I took a secret sanctimonious pride… that our little church was God’s place, God’s pad. This pride continued to swell in me, until one day, I blurted out to one of the church members that this was God’s house, Mt. Carmel was where God lived.  The member, I can’t remember his real name, but everyone called him Chestnut, looked down at me with that bristly burry flattop haircut of his (which my have been the source of his nickname), and pointed to the front of the church.  Behind the altar and pulpit, at the very forward part of the church, hung a HUGE burgundy velvet curtain as a backdrop.  Chestnut told me that God lived behind that curtain.

I should have paid attention at that point to his wife, Margaret,who slapped him disapprovingly on the arm, and told him he should be ashamed of himself.  But I just thought she didn’t want Chestnut giving out any big church secrets.  So the next time I was at the church with dad, while he went off to do something in the office, I wandered into the sanctuary.

Now … there is just something about an empty church space. I have walked through so many in my time.  Each different. All the same.  The stillness.  The fullness.  The emptiness.  I can’t explain it.  It’s like a beautiful flower vase… with no flowers.  The house of God… with no people.  It’s very Zen.

I made my way to the front of the sanctuary, and I crawled beneath the large table behind the pulpit, and set out to look behind the curtain, feeling a bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and wondering just what God might look like.

At that moment, I heard my name being called. It echoed around the church & boomed down from the arched ceilings.  
I nearly …. O…   Well… The second time my name was called it was much closer, and I recognized it as my father’s voice. He asked me what on earth I was doing, and playfully grabbed my shoe and pulled me out from beneath the table.  I somewhat sheepishly told him I was looking for God.  He just stared at me, puzzled.  I was an odd child and a mystery to him in so many ways.

I told him that Chestnut told me that God lived behind the curtain. Dad gave a little huff, a cross between amusement and frustration, and he reached over and pulled back the curtain.  I was stunned.   God looked like a brick wall.  A big huge red brick wall.  With really sloppy masonry work.

Dad saw from the look on my face that I was shocked.  He kneeled down and looked me in the eye… “Why are you looking for God?” he asked.   I said… “Well, this is God’s house…. where does God live?”

Dad smiled… he tapped my chest…. God lives here,….  and then he tapped his chest…. and said and God lives here….  and God lives in and fills in the space in between us…. I asked if God lived elsewhere… in Chesnut, for example.  Dad laughed, and said yes… and in our next door neighbor…. in the mail carrier….  We are all made in the image of God.  And God’s house is wherever God’s people gather together… In praise…. in worship…. in celebration …. in support…… and in love.  From that moment on, I began my journey of spiritual growth, moving beyond the walls that contained me, and I never saw communities or church structures in quite the same way ever again.

I think back to that moment now whenever I think about one of the central questions of my profession: Why do people come to church?  Why gather together in a spiritual context?  What are they searching for?  What are they seeking?  Are they, like I was, seeking God?  And do they find what they are looking for?

Why are you here this morning?  What have you come to find? What have you come looking for behind the curtain?   God?  Divinity?  Presence of the Spirit?  Truth?  Healing?  Wholeness?  Illumination?  Each other?  One, Any, or All of the Above?  And… instead of finding what you are looking for… do you sometimes encounter only a brick wall?  And I might ask… do you sometimes look like a brick wall to others?

I think the gathering of people who are seekers, and people who sincerely wish to be in authentic relationship with one another, is a sacred thing. Sanctuary. Sacred space.  Holy Ground.  In whatever way you might recognize or honor that.  And part of being in an authentic relationship is an awareness of the way our lives touch, impact, and change one another.

If the relationship that we have formed over the years, me and you, has touched you or moved you in some way,  know that I have been moved and changed by it as well. As a community, you challenge me, stretch me, encourage me to look at old things in new ways. You nourish me. Here I have met people here from so many spiritual paths…  and I cherish making connections… I treasure the places where our paths cross…. where our footprints meet.

A good example of how this community shapes me?  I could not find a scripture reading for this Sunday from the Bible, although I knew which way spirit was leading me. I was looking so hard, but nothing ever surfaced.  
When Martha, the facilitator for today said…. “Do you really need one?”  Well, I have always had one… and … I… you know…. Well…

Martha was right.  Hers was the voice of spirit speaking to me.  Do you really need one?  No.  Because the entire Bible is about two things…. Divinity and Community.  All the commandments.  The laws.  When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment he said: Love God with all your heart and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.  Upon these two hang all the law and the prophets.  Divinity and Community.

We come together.  We change each other. We transform.  We touch.  We create.  We are a spark of Divinity.  We are star stuff.  And together …… we stir truth among us.

Simple truth.  Complex truth.  And the beautiful truth of a child’s world. If a church is the House of God  (or, in other words: Divinity.  Truth.  Illumination.  Healing.  Transformation).  Then…. Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and look at the people.

We are linked, woven together… It’s about connection.

In his book, Guerilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson tells of this legend from Australia. It is said that when two aborigines meet for the first time, their first task is to talk with one another until they find a common relative between them.  If they exhaust all possibilities and no link is found, they can’t be friends, and they must fight one another.  At times they have been known to search for days for this link!

There is a binding desire to connect, share, co-exist. Even in the process of talking with one another, of sharing, they come to form a bond.  They don’t want to be enemies.  They WANT to connect.

I think a desire to connect in some way, to find common points of connection, is very important in making a space where truth is uncovered, where Divinity is revealed.

While I have met people who begin conversations with things that divide, I am always drawn to those who seek connection, and I don’t think any one group embodies that desire to connect more than mystics.  What is a mystic? .  Wikipedia suggests (with some paraphrasing) that a mystic is one who seeks and pursues communion with, identity with, or a conscious awareness of an ultimate reality.. divinity… or truth.  Rumi, a Persian sufi mystic, said that the only religion of the mystic is God.  And it is true that mystics of various faith traditions have far more in common with each other than they do with those in their own faith tradition who are more conservative.  Mystics are blessed with a desire to connect, and would much rather spend time looking for those connections than sorting out any differences.

Beyond a desire to connect. I think another important characteristic of a sacred space is hospitality.  Creating a welcoming space. And I think another significant part is to recognize and realize that we are not in control here. That’s a powerful life lesson that I think spiritual community can teach us.  Should teach us.  We are not in control.

Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, puts it like this: Sacred space is by definition liminal space (threshold space). Because we are not in control and not the center, something genuinely new can happen. When we surrender control, look beyond ourselves, step outside of our ego driven desire for control, amazing things can happen.

Racecar driver Mario Andretti puts it another way: “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

It’s less about answers  .. and holding on …  and certainty, and more about questions, and letting go, and mystery.

Rhor goes on to point out that control is not our task. And yet the opposite of control is not non-control or giving up.  The opposite of control is actually participation. Or, in the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise: “Engage”. Engage your community!  Become a part of it!  Connect with others!   Participate!

And be aware that we often find the greatest growth at the edges… Where the edges meet… where sharp points meet sensitive places…. And where the places of someone else’s wounded-ness touch our own anxieties.  Listen to these things.  Know when you have encountered a brick wall.  And… know when you may BE the brick wall.

Welcome others, Participate in the process, seek to make connections… These are the things that create a space for Spirit to move among us and through us.

We search for ourselves, we wonder who we are…. We come to this place, we search for God… Truth… Illumination… Warmth… We sometimes crawl under tables seeking the face of divinity…

I want to share a bit of a poem by Hafiz, the Persian Sufi poet and mystic (d 1390).

You are the Sun, the light in disguise.
You are God hiding from yourself.
You are a divine elephant with amnesia
Trying to live in an ant
Hole.
Sweetheart, O sweetheart
You are God in
Drag!

We are all God in Drag!

I enjoy watching  a TV program called Big Bang Theory. It’s about four geeks – outcasts, socially awkward individuals – who somehow create community among themselves.   The series creator, Chuck Lorry,  usually flashes his vanity plate at the end, the name of his production company, but he also flashes a screen full of text… writings, musings, thoughts, (sometimes profound, sometimes profane, sometimes just plain amusing) flashing across the screen for a whole 1.5 seconds.  If you have a recorder, you can stop and read it, or you can visit a website on line.

Recently… one screen read:

“A wise man once told me that we are all God in drag. I like that. Sometimes when I’m in a public place or sitting at a stop light, I’ll watch people walking by and I’ll silently say to myself, “He’s God. She’s God. He’s God. She’s God.” Before long I always find myself feeling a warm sense of affinity for these strangers. The experience is even more powerful when I do this while observing a person who is clearly suffering.”

He goes on to break the mood of the moment with some off color joke about FOX News…. but still…. a beautiful reflection… and one that left me deeply moved, even more so for the fact that this beautiful bit of theological wisdom was being spread by the creator of a television comedy. Connections are often created in unlikely places.
Wisdom is where we find it.

Sometimes the things, the walls, the divisions, the things that divide us… the curtains … the brick walls….  are all of our own making…. our own creation…. by our own hand… the divisions are ours …  … the divisions  are us.

If we can begin to look beyond ourselves…. moving into the sacred space a space where we may encounter both the human and the divine woven together… … then not only are we creating space in which we might encounter Divinity….  but we are making space in which Divinity may create new things using us as the material ….

A space in which Spirit may work and create through community.

So perhaps some people gather in spiritual community seeking a glimpse of God, … Divinity, Truth, Illumination, Warmth, Healing, Wholeness… and then discover all of these wonderful people within each of whom resides a bit of they seek, OR … Perhaps some come here looking for community and human connection, and then discover something a bit more than meets the eye.

Why did you come here this morning? What were you looking for?

It is my hope and prayer that you found it and that you will continue to find it in each other.May it be so.

by theologian, Paul Lakeland from Paul Rasor’s Faith Without Certainty.

The postmodern sensibility, let me suggest, is nonsequential, noneschatological, nonutopian, nonsystematic, nonfoundational and ultimately, nonpolitical.  The postmodern human being wants a lot [...]]]> “The Certainty of Uncertainty:  Do you welcome the uncertainties of life or do they just make you anxious?”
Sunday Service January 17, 2009 by Merle Wenger

Chalice Lighting

by theologian, Paul Lakeland from Paul Rasor’s Faith Without Certainty.

The postmodern sensibility, let me suggest, is nonsequential, noneschatological, nonutopian, nonsystematic, nonfoundational and ultimately, nonpolitical.  The postmodern human being wants a lot but expects a little.  The emotional range is narrow, between mild depression at one end and a whimsical insouciance at the other.  Postmodern heroes are safe, so far beyond that we could not possibly emulate them, avatars of power or success or money or sex—all without consequences.  Postmodernity may be tragic, but its denizens are unable to recognize tragedy.  The shows we watch, the movies we see, the music we hear, all are devoted to a counterfactual presentation of life as comic, sentimental, and comfortable.  Reality doesn’t sell.  So here we stand at the end of the twentieth century, a century that has seen two world wars, countless holocausts, the end of the myth of progress, and the near-depth of hope, playing our computer games and whiling away the time with the toys that material success brings.

My “I Believe” statement

I believe in science and the inherent mystery of the universe.  I believe change and unsettled truth are two constants of liberal religious thought. I believe it is my daily religious task to prevent my senses from being numbed by the demands of cerebral information overload.  I believe great joy is borne out of the struggle to experience our feeling and thinking selves and at the same time to integrate with the living and non-living forms of our planet.  I believe a good life is inherently available when we see ourselves as good.  I find it fascinating that sooner or later we all become involved in doing less than good.  I experience great hope and fear and peace, but I choose to believe in peace.

Message:  The Certainty of Uncertainty

Raking the fluffy yellow-brown leaves in my sun-drenched backyard on this past Thanksgiving Day, I reflected on what I was really thankful for in 2009.  Putting my finger on one specific item was difficult, and my mind wandered to more philosophical and spiritual aspects of the past year.  It had been a difficult year: the economy faltered, my business followed suit; a relationship I was in ended, I felt lonely, and two friends of mine were dealing with difficult legal problems that worried me. I felt like the proverbial dingy lost at sea.  I struggled to find any contrasting events that made me feel grateful.  I was starting to feel a little like the grump pilgrim who stole Thanksgiving but really did not want to dwell on such negativity, and set about seeing if I might find some remote positive aspect of my difficulties that might be worth celebrating.

The leaves were really fluffy.  I notice this attribute because for some reason, the farm boy in me isn’t too keen on raking leaves.  It’s easy for me to observe the beauty of newly fallen leaves, contemplating, rather than raking, during the subsequent 30 day picturesque “fluffy period” and then watch guiltily as the leaves are transformed to a mat of brown, mulchy, slippery, organic thatch covering my backyard.  I look and see “protection for the lawn” through the winter: I imagine my neighbor sees a “lazy neighbor who doesn’t care about keeping up the hood.”  But I really felt determined to change my non-urban tendencies and move into a more urban lifestyle.  I was enjoying the raking: I was stymied about my gratitude.

Perhaps it was because it was just too fabulous a day for an optimist like me, with aromas of a sage-stuffed turkey and dressing roasting in the oven, but mid-yard, I stumbled on the quirky idea that perhaps I should be grateful for the seeming hardships that I had faced throughout the year.  Is that possible I asked myself?  Is this something I could actually share at the dinner table?  (For you see, one of the reasons this self-rumination was gnawing at my gut, was that I thought I might be the one to say a bit of grace before dinner, and I wanted to find something authentic to speak.)  I thought, will my dinner guests actually buy this “dark” existential gratitude, or will they find it a bitter condiment, more akin to too much radiccio in the salad or horseradish in the cranberry sauce?

Pensively I raked a few more bushels of leaves, working swiftly as the farm boy who knows the work is never done: more tasks are always at hand.  The pile of leaves was growing to some 12 feet in diameter and three feet high.  I thought wistfully about borrowing the neighbor’s children to come and jump in them but wormed back inside my brain instead.  What circumstances in life would people generally feel grateful about when in fact they were filled with darkness and uncertainty?

And then the seed for this talk suddenly and clearly sprouted in my brain:  we can and usually are extremely welcoming, grateful, and I would posture, craving of uncertainty.  I could feel secure in holding hands around that table piled high with too much turkey, cranberries and pumpkin pie, in thanking the universe for all the uncertainty that had created my year for I realized at once that it was uncertainty in fact that drove my year and appears to be driving my life.  I realized quickly that without uncertainty there can be no hope, no faith, no dreams, no markets, no growth in relationships, no change, no weather.  Without uncertainty, some of the most complex of human emotions would simply not exist.  Whether it be in the uncertainty of fully comprehending the motives of another person, city, nation, continent, globe, planet or universe or the simple uncertainty of knowing how much money was going to land in my cash register drawer the next day, (Black Friday), it is uncertainty that keeps us involved in living.

I concluded, as I finished raking my amoebic glob of yellow fluff through the backyard gate and into the street where the lumbering, cat-terrifying leaf vacuum would pick them up in the next week, that I simply would rather die and be raked away myself, were it not for the uncertainty that draws me forward in some patterned yet random line that crazily would come to be called my life.  But it would be called life: and a similar string of events strung together with the glue of certainty, feels to me to be akin to death.

Imagine for a moment if we positively knew who would be sitting in the seats that face me and who would be standing at this podium speaking in January of 2014.  Would you like to know who would come and go, who would lose their job in Harrisonburg and be forced to move away, or who would choose to move to China or India for a more promising career?   Would you really like to know who among us might decide that staying home and reading the paper, or attending another church might be more fulfilling then coming here and socializing with us for two hours?  Would you really like to know who might fall in love, get married and have a baby, and who might fall ill and pass from this life?

Would you really like to know where you will be in your career even if you might slip down a notch into some position that you could not possibly understand now.  For instance, let’s say you could see that you would be making $5,000 less but did not know that the average cost of living had decreased by $ 7,500?  Would you really like to know what hardship your child were going to suffer, what trouble they were going to face, what homework they “forgot to tell you” they needed to do when instead they went off to play.

Imagine as a parent if you could be certain of the direction of your child’s life.  All parents know what a real-life experiment child-rearing is, with you in a lab coat pouring a little bit of morality into one beaker and a bit of education in another, a healthy social life in a third, pouring them all together and putting them over the burner to boil for 18 years.  We know that one day we stand by and watch that beaker bubble, then boil and turn colors, even explode, and voila, our experiment is finished: out pops a mature adult.  Explain to me any part of this process that feels “certain.”  What if we were certain of the results?  Johny will be a straight-A student who at the last minute decides to get married, run off with his girl friend, breakup, later join the Army, and finally come back, go to college and establish himself with a happy family as a principal of the local school.  Would you really want to know all this?  Could you tolerate it?

What would happen if even one person in the world would be certain of the future?  For it appears that n spite of the foggy wavering direction of the news, astrological readings, diviners and seers we are all just “guessing,” or making “uncertain stabs” at knowing.  I have observed for the past 40 years my generation rebelling against the uncertainty of the American capitalist markets and  military industrial complex, then, for survival sake, putting their pot and drugs aside, along with their dreams, and buying into the whole capitalist package, hook, line and sinker.  Yet imagine the post-apocalyptic horror of 2009, when in a period of 6 months, in as stunning a proof as a mathematician could present, our generation watched as the capitalist system fantasy (along with our 401Ks), evaportated.  What, I ask, would the hippies have done, if after having forced America out of Vietnam, they could have forseen the insanity of the Gulf War and Iraq?  What would they have done if they could have known for certain that GM would fold and America’s largest banks, in fact her entire financial underpinnings would have collapsed if our government, supported by foreign banks, had not stepped forward to bandage up the blood gushing from a nation’s economy in triage?  Or if that is too tough a question, then let me ask it another way.  What would we do today—now that we know all this?  Of course, no one person does know the future.  The lottery keeps playing.  The keno tickets and blackjack tables give and take.  The counter-spinning Wheels of Fortune and Misfortune turn crazily as though the only certainty is that fate IS spun out.  To know the weight or pattern or color of the thread is impossible.

As much as the average American has come to despise the power brokers on Wall Street, can we imagine it any other way?  If goods and services are traded around the world, if Chile is to receive a fair price for her copper from China, not knowing in any certain way how much copper they or other countries will need next year, then how would one establish a fair and certain price for selling a contract of copper to China, say one year or two years before the ore is extracted from the earth?   We can only be certain that what one party pays another will affect our lifestyle: we can not be certain by how much.  We trust brokers and traders on Wall Street and in marketplaces around the world, to devise daily new and better systems to comprehend the certainty of the markets, yet as we have seen in the past year, uncertainty still rules the game.

What about life after death?  Certainly the traditional Christian theology of heaven and hell creates one of the driving uncertainties for more than a billion souls on our planet.  But come on, beyond ones arrival at either place, aren’t the age old choices of heaven or hell just a bit too certain?  I mean afterall: streets of gold with eternal happiness, Thanksgiving dinners everyday, no leaves to rake: Wouldn’t we miss the bickering, the anxiety, the depression, or the days that turn ecstatic with unexpected good news or eventually wouldn’t we just wanna die to see a pothole in an asphalt street?

Isn’t it just the surety of uncertainty that keeps us stuck on that issue?  Isn’t the fact that for most of humanity, the elusive veil of existence beyond  our last breath, keeps us pondering, figuring, imagining such un-imaginable scenarios as streets of gold, eternal life, bevys of virgins, both male and female, unending happiness, tables Thanksgiving-filled forever, cash registers always overflowing.  Does your version of the after-death episode include uncertainty or are you longing for eternal certainty?

Considering my argument, orphans in Haiti, is this an elitist stance.  What about the starving in the streets.  Is uncertainty elitist?  At first I thought this was a flaw in my perspective but the more I thought about it, for an orphan who dreams about not being an orphan it is that uncertainty that one day they might be claimed to live in a family that drives their hope and dreams.  The same can be said for the hungry looking for their next meal:  what is certain is hunger.  Uncertainty, on the other hand, prods the dream or lifestyle choice that might twist fate in another direction.

What lesson might we draw from this little spin through Merle’s brain?  The lesson I hope to leave, is that we savor and value the uncertainty in our life.  Let it feed your dreams and give you courage to extend your relationships beyond those that feel certain.  I see uncertainties falling round about me as perennially as fall’s colored leaves.  I intend to enjoy them, romp in them, and become familiar with them rather then letting them turn into some frightening, brown disgusting mulch.

You might risk telling someone you care deeply for that you love them.  Likewise take the risk of telling someone who is hurting you about how you feel.  In either case the outcome might surprise you.  When children stretch the limits of your thinking, politicians tramp on your best intentions, editorialists scream certainly, preachers assure you salvation, I challenge you to stand, noisily or quietly and thank the universe for all that you do not know or understand.  Bask in what Thoreau referred to as the gospel of the present moment. Be grateful for the grand mysteries yet to be revealed, honor your own biased observations with the certainty that what you don’t know, what we don’t know as a civilization, could be what actually saves us.  Celebrate this week, with certainty, that a complete life awaits those who build few fences ‘round their uncertainty.

These few days are observed as Halloween, Samhain, All Souls Day, All Saints’ Day, Dia De Los Muertos…days when nature slows down toward winter and legend says the veil between living and dead becomes most thin.

I took our title from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse 5. The character [...]]]> All Souls Day service
by Chris Edwards
Nov. 1,  2009:

These few days are observed as Halloween, Samhain, All Souls Day, All Saints’ Day, Dia De Los Muertos…days when nature slows down toward winter and legend says the veil between living and dead becomes most thin.

I took our title from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse 5. The character Billy Pilgrim gets abducted and taken to the planet, Tralfamadore, where past, present and future are one. When Tralfamadorians encounter death, they say, “So It Goes.” Billy had first survived the same WW2 traumas Vonnegut had…so the story contains many instances of death. Each one –from the most hideous carnage down to the demise of an insect– concludes, “So it goes.”

I found that mantra running through my mind one summer evening here, watering the new plants. A laurel had died: So it goes. A truck full of birds headed to the plant for butchering: So it goes. And… around the bend to the east, a cross bears the name of Tiffany, a girl killed there in an accident two years ago. So it goes.

Commentators have called “So it goes” a memento mori (remembering we will die), comic relief, “fatalism, stoicism and the acceptance that no use will come of shrinking away when the worst has happened.”

To me, it just says what is.

I’ll offer two other accounts, about ways of dealing with death:

1 (one): In a memoir whose title I’ve forgotten, the author visits a small Irish village and gets to know her in-laws’ extended family. They often talk about a relative named Fred—not somberly; they tell funny stories about him—but she can tell this man is especially loved. One day she says “I can’t wait to meet Fred.” They tell her, “Oh, Fred lies in the churchyard under the roses . . .but I guess we still can’t think of him as gone.”

2 (two): In Watership Down, the rabbit heroes meet a colony of rabbits who seem to live in great luxury. Fresh carrots appear each morning for these rabbits, who are big and sleek, but somehow sad and spiritless. They have a taboo: never ask where another rabbit is. Truth is, the same invisible hand that sets out the carrots sets snares. If you ask where Flopsy’s gone, the others just turn away. If she doesn’t come back, her name is not mentioned again.

Which of these is more like our culture in dealing with death: the nonfiction memoir, or the talking-rabbit fantasy?

During El Dia de Los Muertos, the Mexican custom of grave-side picnics with the departed one’s favorite foods sounds like the Irish memoir in spirit. But for most middle-class, fairly healthy 21^st Century Americans, death is a far-off abstraction. Except when it isn’t.

Both my parents died before I turned 24. More recently I’ve lost a few friends, and a nephew who’d been like my little brother growing up, and my former husband, who was a member here. The passing of generations brings sadness, but it’s natural. My son, Albert, died eight years ago from an auto accident. That wasn’t natural. Albert’s life was a work in progress, filled with struggles and promise. He was 31.

I’ll read you a piece of literature from a support group for bereaved parents, The Compassionate Friends.

“Listen, gentle people, and hear my truest needs…

“I hear you stumbling for words. Relax. There are no words… You don’t have to give me answers, for I will learn to live without them. You don’t have to pretend my loved one never existed, thinking I will forget if you do…”

I took part in the local chapter of that group while it operated.

When I talked there about friends being more supportive when our dog died, and when I had minor surgery, than they were after the death of my son, people nodded, YES – that happened to them, too.

We compared notes on handling small-talk questions: Like, HOW ARE YOU? (A Ukrainian friend calls that American, ritual question disconcerting. No one wants the answer if it’s complicated or sad.) Another stickler is HOW MANY CHILDREN DO YOU HAVE? Most of us didn’t want to just number the living and leave out the child we lost. We move on, we engage with life, but we don’t forget that child; don’t want to. My answer is not two, but three.

I met parents who seemed like basket cases at first but ended up coping well, maybe better than some of us who functioned on autopilot (like me). The morning a month to the day after we lost Albert, standing in line at the Mason Street post office, I thought I heard people around me talking about a disaster movie. A clerk who’d been crying said “The Pentagon is on fire.” I vaguely thought I’d turn on a radio…but once I got out to the car, I focused on whatever my next autopiloting task was, and that surreal news totally slipped my mind.

A support group speaker advised that in reaching out to someone with a loss, “Don’t try to give them Prozac, or Jesus.”  I’d add, don’t try to give them Job’s friends (those three guys who keep insisting Job must have done some terrible sin to bring on his disasters… maybe in a past life?) And, don’t give them Dr. Pangloss — that comic philosopher in Voltaire’s Candide who kept insisting “All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” I guess it’s only human to want the world tidy….but arguments like those made me wish I was out in a desert, throwing rocks at God.

Some context: Albert, from early on, thought outside the box. When he and Eddie and Steve were small, asking big questions, I told them God was invisible, but everywhere. So, once when Albert was about three, he got mad over some frustration and threw a shoe across the room at God. He said, “I hit him! God is everywhere, right?”

How helpful are pep talks about self-improvement, or other consolations? My favorite columnist, the late Molly Ivins, said ”I’m sorry to say (cancer) CAN kill you, but it doesn’t make you a better person.” Harold Kushner thought he had acquired more empathy, and become a better rabbi, after the loss of his son, but if only it could turn out to be a long bad dream, and his son growing up, healthy, he’d gladly lose whatever he’d gained.

Of course we always know of people who worse things happen to. That’s a cure for self-pity, not a consolation. If we have empathy, don’t their misfortunes make us sadder?

UU’s like to talk about how our molecules will one day be blended into rivers, worms and stars. That’s nice – and for me, a reason to be cremated and scattered, to help the process – but not a consolation.

So, the most helpful thing to tell someone who’s had a severe loss may just be, “I’m sorry.” Or help in some practical way, as the friends did who walked our dog and fed our cats after Albert’s accident. Or if that person wants to talk, listen. If they say life isn’t fair, don’t argue.

The Unitarian Universalist Rev. Kate Braestrup wrote a memoir, Here if You Need Me, about her work as a chaplain with the game wardens in Maine. She ministers to families of people lost in the forests. Once they found a young woman who had killed herself. The woman’s griefstricken brother asked, “Would a Christian church do a funeral for a suicide?” This minister surprised herself with her answer: she talked about the searchers combing the woods for many hours in icy rain, and said, “One thing I am sure of. God is not less kind…than a Maine game warden.” They said a prayer together, and she gave him the names of some local ministers she knew, “fairly conservative pastors who knew the earth was round” and would know depression can be a fatal illness.

Rev. Kate had found her vocation after a personal tragedy. When this excerpt appeared in UU World, I suspect a few atheist-missionaries in our fold disapproved of what she said and didn’t say, but I wish there were more like her. She never tried to impose her worldview. She only offered comfort, in terms that could reach the young man.

Charles Darwin, once a Christian, became an agnostic. He said that was not because of science. Biographers such as his descendant, Randal Keynes, think Darwin lost his faith in a loving God when his young daughter died. He was human. I’m skeptical when anyone claims to get their metaphysical worldview from pure, detached reason, unaffected by slogging through life.

A hundred years ago, people talked of wanting “a good death.” That was tied up with traditional theology, but also with facing each day as if it could be the last (which existentialists would also come to do).

How many deathbed scenes show the person fully conscious but comfortable, surrounded by loved ones, reconciling conflicts and expressing love? We might not have it that way. We need to show love and forgiveness now; and, yes, stay mindful that each day could be our last.

In “Six Feet Under,” one of those short opening scenes where we knew someone would die began with an older couple asleep one morning. He wakes up and asks her, “Hey, bitch, where’s my coffee? . . . It’s 9 o’clock, get your lazy tush up, bitch!” We think, what a jerk! (Will we see him killed?) But his wife has died in her sleep. Later, at the Fishers’ funeral home, he sits, dignified, in quiet despair, beside her casket round the clock, for two or three days – won’t leave when they close for the night. The morning before the burial he’s found, in the same position – dead, someone says, from a broken heart.

I saw two solid morals in that piece from an R-rated series: treating people well while we have them with us, and withholding judgment.

One thing I know (and anyone here can be my witness): I want to live as long as I can have a clear mind, a fairly able body, and my life be of some benefit to others and myself –NOT a day longer.

I respect those who’d hang on to the last glimmer. What matters is facing it. I suspect all the paranoia about end-of-life counseling and living wills as part of an evil plot comes from our consumerist culture’s almost fanatical denial in the face of death. This may only make our deaths harder. Whatever our wishes, getting them on paper and telling loved ones, while we’re still healthy, could be a very compassionate act, relieving them of having to make painful choices for us.

Two of the things I hope to do before kicking the bucket are see the big redwoods, and maybe gain some wisdom. In “Bucket List,” Morgan Freeman’s and Jack Nicholson’s characters take on their dreams, with Hollywood-buddy adventures like skydiving. Later we learn each of these men is estranged from someone he cares deeply about. Knocking on their doors may take more courage than jumping from planes.

To love takes courage. Loved ones are our hostages to fate. I pity those who once had a dog or cat that died and never got another because they couldn’t bear it. But caring has a price. It binds us to the world. As a student in the 60s, I wasn’t very political. The Vietnam war was bad, but far away. A moment of terrible realization came later, with baby Albert beside me, as I listened to reports of the My Lai massacre. It hit me that the children killed in that village were as precious in the eyes of the universe as my child, and our fates were different purely by chance, and no one was truly safe. How do we cope with knowing this? I delight now in watching my baby grandson, Benjamin, becoming each day more aware of this world, flexing his tiny hands as if to grasp it in total joy and wonder…this crazy world he’s cast upon.

Several people in my support group said they were no longer afraid to die. The worst had already happened to us, and it wasn’t our own deaths.

I’m 64 now – the age my mother was when she passed, and a year younger than my father was. I’m healthy (knock on wood, like my mother used to say), but that milestone is a mortality-reminder.

I hope it’s no time soon, but I feel I could meet the eyes of the Grim Reaper without blinking. That is, provided she came for me (not another of my loved ones).

I don’t believe in Hell.

My sister wrote to me once, “Tell me what you’d like to inherit when I go on that great garbage scow to nowhere.” That made us laugh, and you know, we can sing, “On That Great Garbage Scow To Nowhere,” to the melody of “Twas the Last Rose of Summer.” I doubt it would get in a hymnal, though, even a Unitarian one. Hymns are stuck on hope. And I like Peter Pan’s idea much better: “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”

I don’t want to be frozen, and I hope humans don’t find a way to bioengineer our own immortality. New generations should take over. They might do better. Maybe -– in a few billion years, before the sun goes dark — other life forms should get a try. But I hope very much that humanity can thrive into the 22^nd Century (our grandkids are likely to live that long). Failures to consider the 7^th generation make me sad.

To be fully alive is to accept sadness….AND fleeting joys. The glowing maple we pass each morning. Surprises, like Friday when Robin and I hiked on Loft Mountain, expecting to find that kind of bright foliage but instead, finding bare, gnarled branches immersed in blowing fog, just as lovely in their way…and a large doe who maintained eye contact for some time. The joy of the children around us: the things they do each day, as they change and grow so fast.

We get the mix, joy and sorrow.  So it goes.

–Chris Edwards
===================

After a quiet moment of reflection, we invite all who are so moved to join in a calling-out of names. . . Speaking the names of those whose lives you remember and wish to celebrate.

21st Annual

National Coming Out Day

&

The National Equality March

On Washington DC

~ from 1 Corinthians 13

The Gift of Love

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and [...]]]> October 11, 2009

21^st Annual

National Coming Out Day

&

The National Equality March

On Washington DC

First Reading

~ from 1 Corinthians 13

The Gift of Love

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Second Reading

~ from Paul Robeson in

Singing the Living Tradition

I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of despair and fear.  My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained.  The song of freedom must prevail.

Additional Thoughts for Reflection

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for [humanity] to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. [Humanity] must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

~  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., December 11, 1964

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

~  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Marching on the Side of Love”

by Rev. Emma Chattin
October 11, 2009

Today is National Coming Out Day.  It’s a day set aside by Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Intersexed, and Questioning community to encourage those who live in closets to open the door and to step forward, beyond the threshold of their own fear, to walk in the light of day.  It is a time to encourage dialogue, to talk about our differences, our similarities, and the things that are important to us.  It is a time of healing.  A time to become whole again.  It is also a day for me to tell you that I am Queer; I am Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Intersexed, and Questioning.  Nice to meet you. 

I also brought with me today my wonderful partner, my dear, my sweetheart, my beloved, my life partner of some 13 years, Heather.  She’s also queer.  And she says it’s nice to meet you too.  

Somewhere there are people in this land contemplating this day, wondering who to tell, what to tell, and how to tell them.  There are people wondering how they will live a more authentic life, a life more reflective of who they are, and who they love.  It’s a risk, and the price for some will be steep.  But the human spirit is willing to endure remarkable things in order to live in freedom, in truth, in light, in love.  And so we say on this day….

Come Out… Come Out… wherever you are.

Today is also the National Equality March on Washington DC.  This march is for equal protection under the law for GLBTIQ citizens.  Equal Protection under the law is a broad goal, but let me synthesize it for you into a bumper sticker that would go on a vehicle that belongs to Heather and i.  It would read: “If we lived in Vermont, we would be married now.”  Or Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or Iowa.  But we don’t live in those places.  We live here.  And we are not married.  We cannot be married here.  And that is not fair.

Marriage.  Why is that even important?

There are over 1,100 federal rights that come with marriage!

Now… I realize that I may be speaking to the choir here, but if I am, I beg your patience for the next 15 minutes, give or take.  If I am speaking to the choir it is to offer my gratitude, my encouragement, my faith, and my hope…. and perhaps … to provide you with some words to a song of freedom that you might carry with you and sing to others elsewhere on your own, because civil rights issues require not only your heart, mind, and thoughts, but in order to move a community forward, they require your presence, your voice, your body.  These must be in alignment with your heart and your thoughts and your passion- and your Love.

You already know this.  I can’t tell you how happy and proud I am to be connected with this community, because you have supported and sent members of your community to this march.  You are not just standing on the side of love, you are marching on the side of love.

And what is a march?  It is moving forward, with deliberate determination, with coordination, and with unity.  It is a show of solidarity.  Togetherness.  It is being in step, and moving your community forward.  That is what a march is.  A metaphor for moving forward together.

And this is the civil rights issue of my generation.

Without co-opting the African American civil rights movement in this country in any way, I can see the similarities.  When I think back to those times… I was just a tot when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech in 1963… but our family was involved, and these things were important to our family, and as a result, they made a deep impression on me.  And who knows what seeds have been sown in the fertile minds of the children of your Religious Education group by attending the march today!

And I remember seeing all the people gathered together, on TV and in photographs.  Remembering then, and looking back now, I see the occasional dot of white faces in the crowd.  Everything was in black and white then, and it was easier to see …. white faces stood out…. and I could see them… and seeing the white faces walking, marching arm in arm, I was, and still am, so proud… that there are indeed good people among all of us… good people who will stand up for the rights of others, and who will walk with them.  Because good people were surely needed then.  The tension along racial lines was palpable.

People who opposed racial integration and the racial civil rights movement were angry, and they were afraid.  Some took refuge in religion,  and they were comforted by ministers who told their congregations that yes  indeed the Bible preached segregation, and that it was the way that God intended things.  Other people took refuge in the laws of segregation, and said they had to abide by the laws of the land.  Some people argued that it was simply the tradition of this nation.  That the way it’s always been.

That’s just the way it is.

Today is the date I was regularly scheduled to be here, and Bernie thoughtfully offered to change that date so that I could be at the march, but I will tell you what I told her: This is what a march looks like me to me now.  This is what I do now to be in step with justice and to move forward with others. If I weren’t here, I would be doing this someplace else, and quite frankly I would much rather be doing this here.  With you.

Even so, this is probably one of the most difficult reflections I have ever prepared.  No, it IS the most difficult.  I always speak about issues that I am close to, that are close to me, and that I feel passionately about, but I am right on top of this one.  And it hurts.  If you are married, consider the pain you might experience – daily – if you were not allowed to marry, to legally join as one with the one you love.  I have to gather my thoughts carefully here, because on the one hand, there is so much I want to say… I run the risk of droning on like a noisy gong…  and on the other hand, I want to behave as a child…  and just stomp my foot down and scream, “Not fair!”

Heather and I own cars, and property together.  We are legally bound together through wills, contracts, and financial and medical powers of attorney.  We are as bound as the Commonwealth of Virginia allows, but even that is in question … because of a vote held a few years ago, where the oppressive majority were allowed to pass a law that exclusively restricts the rights of a minority, and because of that, even those three little documents we have may not hold up in court if challenged.

Following the lead of Virginia and other states, the approach now is to bring the issue of same-sex marriage to a popular vote, to have a majority vote on the issue.

A vote.  That sounds fair doesn’t it?  Fair and democratic.  To have a majority vote.  A majority vote on the rights for a minority….. ?  That isn’t fair at all.  And I can tell you if integration had not gone through the courts but rather been brought to a popular vote in the 1960’s, it would have failed.  It would have failed … and people would have given reasons of tradition, religion, order, preservation of the status quo… But behind all those things, deep in a closet somewhere… was FEAR.

And make no mistake about it, the struggle for racial equality and racial justice in this country continues today, and it is an issue no longer simply in black and white but a spectrum colors.  And I am convinced that we are seeing now the unhealed wounds and fears of racism resurfacing today in strange and often bizarre ways, because there are people in this country, in small towns and in the halls of power, who believe that the issue of integration and racial equality in this country were forced upon an unwilling nation by activist judges.  And if these individuals, driven by fear, and filled with hate, can take this nation backward, they will.

Being here today is what a march looks like to me now.  This is how I put my body where my mouth is, how I put my voice where my heart is, how I put my feet where my beliefs are.  This is how I move forward, deliberately, and with determination, in step and in rhythm with community.  Together.  On the side of love.  And a march born of love is unstoppable.  A march born of love moves forward, ever onward, rejoicing in the truth.  A march born of love does not walk over anyone or on top of anyone, it walks with them.  A march born of love bears all things, hopes all things.

And this is what a march looks like to me now.

Being here with you now.

What does a march look like to you?

What does your march look like?

What are you doing to put your feet with your beliefs?

How are you moving forward, step by step, with your community…

….. how are you moving your community forward?

There are obstacles, and you know them well.  Perhaps one of the most frequently used justifications for opposition to gay civil rights is the Bible.  If you have been at protests, you know this.

However, the more you understand about the Bible the more you understand that it is not a place upon which to stand to look down on others.  It is not a place on which to stand against Love.  More accurate translations, sharper understandings of the culture and context, are being taught in seminaries today.  This is why there are large mainline denominations, that at the risk of schism, are moving forward on the side of LOVE.

Biblical marriage.  There is no such thing as Biblical marriage. There are over 40 different types of relationships described in the Bible, and only a handful would come close to describing the professed convention of today.  Regardless, using the Bible as a weapon against social civil rights stands as fear wrapped in the robes of religion.

Some people will say gay rights are against tradition.  Well, “Tradition” is a fickle banner under which to march.   In examining our past, “tradition” has almost universally been the vanguard of social oppression.    It is important to note that it is precisely the occasions when we have had the courage to transcend tradition that have allowed our nation to rise above its history.

But… I have to tell you… the LGBT community is not even in full agreement with itself on marriage.  Some argue that it is “marriage or nothing”, some support civil unions, some support civil unions for everyone and marriage as the ceremony that is provided in the religious sanctuary of one’s choice.

Marriage is not a perfect institution, and I don’t think anyone thinks that it is.  Marriage, as we know it today, began as an instrument of the patriarchy.  It was a public ceremony symbolic of property exchange, a woman, as property, being handed from her father to her husband.  The word husband itself stirs back to 1200 or so… meaning head of the household, landowner, peasant farmer.  Its ancient roots are revealed in the word ‘husbandry’… meaning caretaker… farmer.

Marriage is not an ideal union, and I am not sure it even fits well with the model of same-sex relationships, which often seem to be more equal by their very nature.  When I call Heather my life partner, I mean it in so many ways.

So I am not all starry eyed on marriage.

I will be honest with you.  I just want the legal rights that I have been denied, and I don’t care what they are called.  I am hungry for justice, and I don’t want to read the menu.  Just give me that for which I hunger.

However, when it comes to marriage, as a minister, I am drafted into being an agent of the state, in performing weddings… a conduit authorized by the Commonwealth of Virginia on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia…. and yet… I am giving to other couples in the Commonwealth what Heather and I are denied.

And that hurts.

Most of what I see at the protests

from those who stand so loudly against same sex marriage

is not calm reason and rational

but anger and fear.

And I can’t meet anger with anger.

Hate with hate.

Fear with fear- and I will not fear those who fear me.

And I can’t meet ignorance with ignorance.

Misunderstanding with misunderstanding.

I can only rise with love.

Speak with love

Because love tells me of the fear that trembles in the hearts of those who rise with oppression… loves tells me of the anger that closes a hand into a fist in my face…. and closes their ears to my words… and closes their hearts to my anguish.

It is love that opens my eyes to their pain, and, having had some experience with it, it is love that stirs me to call them out from their own closets of fear.

I want to close with two little stories from a wonderful little book:  “Jacob the Baker”, witten by Noah benShea.

The first story is Anger cannot be peeled with Anger

A middle aged man contorted his face and waved a message of Jacob’s that the man had found in a loaf of bread.  “What do you mean by this?!” he asked, and he proceeded to read: “The fist starves the hand”?

Jacob took all of the man’s anger, consumed its force, and transformed it, returning peace in his voice and manner.  “When your hand is made into a fist, we cannot receive the gifts of life from ourselves, our friends, or our Creator.  When our hand is closed in a fist, we cannot hold anything but our own bitterness.  When we do this, we starve our stomachs and our souls.  Our anger brings a famine on ourselves.”

The man was quiet.  Those around him whispered.  They urged the man to move on.  But Jacob wasn’t done.  “Put down this fury,” Jacob’s eyes pleaded.  “Anger locks a person in their own house.”

The next story….  Building Fear

A community leader came to see Jacob, hoping to find peace of mind, and ease for his burden.  The man was troubled by a repetitive dream he did not understand.  “Jacob, in my dream I have traveled far and am finally arriving at a great city.  But at the entrance to the city I am met by a tall soldier who says that I must answer two questions before being admitted.  Will you help me?”  Jacob nodded.  “The first question the soldier asks is, ‘What supports the walls of a city?”

“That is easy” said Jacob, “Fear supports the walls of a city.”

“But what supports the fear?” the man asked, “for that is the second question.”

“The walls” answered Jacob.  “The fears we cannot climb become our walls.”

Courts may eventually decide this issue, but the real realm of resolution and the pathway to justice is in the human heart.

I am not asking you to be for same-sex marriage.  With love in my voice, I am asking you to extend yourself, to step forward for Justice and Fairness, to continue to move forward the community in which you live.

We can’t do it ourselves.  We need good people to join us, to walk with us.  We need you. And you don’t need to believe in same sex marriage, I am just asking you to believe in equality and fairness, in liberty and justice for all.

And if you believe, we need you to talk to others, to bear witness…

To call people out of their closets of anger,

past the threshold of their own fear.

This, right here, is what a march looks like to me now.

And whatever a march looks like to you, we need you.

And I am grateful that on this day…

Your community has come out with us…

Not just standing on the side of love,

but MARCHING on the side of love.

Thank you.

Adapted from a 2001 service by Rev. Enid Virago and Julie Goldman Caran presented at First Unitarian Church of Richmond.

Good morning. I’m Julie Caran, and I’ll be directing the Children’s Religious Education program at HUU this year.  Those of you who are new to HUU and even some of the [...]]]> Presented by Julie Caran
August 30, 2009

Adapted from a 2001 service by Rev. Enid Virago and Julie Goldman Caran presented at First Unitarian Church of Richmond.

Good morning. I’m Julie Caran, and I’ll be directing the Children’s Religious Education program at HUU this year.  Those of you who are new to HUU and even some of the current members might be curious about what we teach the children in our church, being that we are a non-creedal congregation and do not require people to subscribe to a specific statement of faith.  If you take a look at the yellow paper in your hymnal, you’ll see the list of seven principles that the Unitarian Universalist Association espouses, as well as the sources from which our tradition draws its lessons and principles.

This year our youngest members, ages 0 to 4, will be in the nursery with Pax Helferstay and parent volunteers.  The older nursery kids will be using a curriculum called Celebrating Me and My World.  The curriculum does not tackle major theological stories or debates, but rather speaks to the children where they are at this age.  As psychologist David Hay explains in the book The Children’s God, “All children are interested in the fundamental questions of meaning: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Where have I come from?’ ‘Where am I going?’ ‘What am I meant to do?’” (Crompton 51).  Celebrating Me and My World helps to address these questions.  Its lessons emphasize our first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and lead the children through activities that teach them to appreciate their own unique abilities.  As the year progresses, they will gain understanding of how their actions impact the world around them, and begin to figure out what kinds of choices make a positive impact.

Children ages 5 and up will begin an imaginative exploration of “God.” Tabatha LaFreniere, Robin McNallie, Angelina Gonzales, Kevin Caran, Jenn Spiller, and I will be leading them on this journey.  As UUs are particularly aware, “God” can be a hot button word because it can mean so many different things, depending on who is saying it, claiming it, and using it.  The curriculum Stories About God will give our children the context they need to have meaningful dialogues about God with people of diverse views.  They will gain some idea of what “God” means to people of different faiths, and participate in exploratory exercises that allow them to express their own thoughts and feelings concerning God.  The curriculum recognizes that one perspective is an atheistic view of God, and thus introduces each perspective on God in the context of a story that some people believe, but not as one ultimate truth that we should all agree upon.

I suspect the question “What is God?” is one that each of us has asked at some point in our lives.  Think back to the first time you became aware of the concept of God.  Did you wonder, “What is God?”  or did you just know the answer?  Was your answer something you had been taught since birth, or did you develop your own theology even at an early age? Do you know the answer now, or continue to ask the question?

One thing that I find exciting about working with children in the field of religious education is that, regardless of age, many of us find ourselves asking the same questions at different times in our lives.  We might have different perspectives on the answers as we mature, but the questions persist.  This service is an opportunity for us to become aware of the kinds of things the children of HUU are wondering about, to acknowledge their questions, and to see what kind of answers we can provide.

The book What is God? By Etan Boritzer provides a great example for how we might answer some of the children’s questions.  Let’s read, and then we’ll see if any of us adults can provide answers to the questions from the children.

Read What is God?

When you came in this morning, you should have received index cards with your order of service, and had the chance to look at the children’s banner of questions and write down one or two that particularly struck you.  As you looked at their questions, did you see anything familiar?  Anything that you might have asked recently?  Anything that you asked as a child?  Sure, there are some questions that are practical and specific to the physical world – questions that adults might have an easier time answering.  But in the article “On Not Falling Down to Earth: Children’s Metaphysical Questions,” the author notes that children’s metaphysical questions are not so different from their questions about the physical world.  They are figuring out its laws, and their questions often arise when something doesn’t seem to fit into the laws they’ve begun to understand.  If a child spreads jam or cream cheese on a warm bagel, she might make the observation that it “stays on top” and add that to her mental catalogue of the how the world works. But the next time she spreads butter on a bagel and it melts into the bread, she might wonder “Why doesn’t the butter stay on top?” Similarly, a three year old boy posed, “Well, the little seed out of the flower drops into the earth and springs up again into a flower. Why can’t (dead) people do that?”  Most of the kids in our program are at an age where their understanding of the metaphysical is rooted in the physical, so try to keep that in mind as you answer their questions.

Now we’re going to have a few moments of meditation for you to contemplate your questions and try to write down an answer for the kids.  If you did not have a chance to look at the banner when you came in, you can step up here now to do so.  I’ll ring the chime when it is time to bring your heart and mind back to the group for the discussion.

Questions and Answers (collected from notecards at the service on 8/30/09)

Why can’t people see God? Where is God?

• GOD is everywhere, even if we can’t see Him or touch him, we know that He is there. He is with us all the time, all we have to do is ask for Him.  We can see GOD in places and things that we love – in nature, in peaceful views, or whenever we close our eyes to pray.
• God is everywhere . . . in the mountains, at the beach, in your yard and in your heart.
• Everywhere.  Every thing has energy, energy that holds the atoms together and makes up the atoms, so God is like this energy that is in every thing, everywhere.
• I know God is with me when I ride my bike because you NEVER get a strong headwind AND a steep hill at the SAME TIME. Thank God!

Don’t bad things mean you’re a bad person?

• No, bad things happen to good people. Just because something bad happens in your life doesn’t mean that you did something wrong or bad.  I believe that good and bad things are experienced by all kinds of people – and that is just life.
• I think that if you do something bad it doesn’t make you a bad person. It just makes you realize what you’ve done is wrong and it teaches you not to do it again.
• Bad things happen to everyone but doesn’t mean you are bad.  Bad things give us a chance to find out what’s really important.
• Doing bad things doesn’t make us bad. It just makes us human. We all do some good things and some bad things. We just need to try each day to do fewer bad things and more good things.

Why did this happen to me?

• It’s part of the “game” we play in life, like Chutes & Ladders, Candy Land, Sorry, Monopoly… It helps us appreciate when the good things happen and appreciate all kinds of adventures.

Why is church fancy?

• To separate it and us from the way things usually are, and help us think about things.

Who dies?

• Everything has a beginning and an end.

When will the flowers bloom?  How long will they stay?

• A famous writer in the Bible said “for every thing there is a season.”  Flowers have their own season.  They bloom in the spring when the weather warms up, and last until the hot summer sun dries them up or the cold fall evenings chill them.  They produce seed which falls to the ground.  In the spring, these seeds produce a new flower.
• Everyone (and every thing) has its time. We are made of many very tiny parts.  Those tiny parts were parts of something else before our time, and will be parts of other things, after our time.

How long will the flowers stay?

• They will stay forever, but they change their form and the way they look, as time passes.

Why isn’t Sunday School attached to the church building?

• Sunday School is not attached to the church building because adults are too noisy and they might bother the kids trying to learn.
• They are. Look at the curved sidewalk between the two. It is like the bent arm reaching between two people in love. In fact, the soil of the earth, and the air of the sky also connect the two and all other places of worship and learning on the earth.  Remember this: we are all connected.

Why do you have a special desk where you stand?

• Sometimes, when a group of people want to think, and listen, and sing together, it helps to all look at the same spot and focus their attention on place.

Why do people die?

• We all ask this question.  Sometimes their bodies wear out. Sometimes they are hurt too badly to keep living.  Dying doesn’t mean someone was bad or did something wrong.  It just happens sometimes.  We feel very sad, but remember the person in our hearts.

Can everyone be “smart”?

Why are some people so “lucky”?

Are we born only once?

Why do we put pebbles in the water instead of just having a flower and stirring the stem in the water?

Why isn’t the church arranged so that everyone can sit in one long row in the front?

Where does Santa Claus live at the North Pole?

How big is the world?

Thank you for your thoughtful responses to the questions from the children.  I hope that, in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, each of us will continue to ask these questions throughout our lives.  I’ll conclude with a quote by Anton Storr: “We are all children, even if most of us have forgotten it” (Heller 149).

Benediction:

“And yet, insignificant as I was, my mind was capable of understanding that the limitless world I could see was beyond my comprehension.  I could know myself to be a minute part of it all”– Edward Robinson, The Original Vision

Credits

Crompton, Margaret. Children, Spirituality, Religion and Social Work. Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998.

Harris, Paul L. “On Not Falling Down to Earth: Children’s Metaphysical Questions.” Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific, and Religious Thinking in Children. Ed. Karl Rosengren, Carl Johnson, Paul Harris. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 157-178.

Heller, David. The Children’s God. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.