HUU Sermon Archives

Our Spiritual Journeys

by: Sarah Cheverton, Julie Goldman Caran, and Barbara Moore
July 11, 2004 

Chalice Reading:

We have each made our choice to come together to form a free community of love and tolerance. We each bring the stories of our past to share in our personal journeys of truth and discovery. By whatever means has brought us here, by whatever forces have compelled us to join our blessed community, let us begin a new day of spirit and worship.

Introduction to Sharing:

For some of us, this church is a sanctuary, for others it is a launching pad. Do you come here to rest in the peace of your soul? Or do you come to kindle the fires of passionate engagement with the world? Are you looking for comfort, healing? Or a community in which you can feel at home? Each of us traveled on our own path to get here. Each of us has taken a spiritual journey. This morning Sarah, Julie, and Barbara will share their journey with us.

Sharing:

Sarah Cheverton

I’m not a very spiritual person. At least that’s what I’ve thought most of my life, especially when I sat in my father’s church and failed to connect with what he was preaching, when I could never really feel “the spirit,” and when I couldn’t buy into the idea that God, “the Man,” would protect and deliver me from evil. After all, through my entire childhood, He couldn’t seem to deliver me from getting myself grounded on a regular basis…. so I sure as heck didn’t know how he was going to deliver me from real evil.

This posed a dilemma for me when Pat asked me to share my spiritual journey. I thought, “well, it’s a short journey so this shouldn’t take very long.” I had absolutely no idea what I could talk about. So I started reading through some old personal journals that I kept through my late teens and early 20’s. I discovered a bit more spiritual reflection than I had expected and realize now that I had already started on the road towards Unitarian Universalism.

So, to describe my journey—at least the beginnings of it, I hope it’s okay for me to simply read excerpts from those journals written more than 20 years ago.

In 1979, at nineteen, I ended a poem to a friend with the words, “Trust in God and you and them.” But a year later, I started to express doubts. In reference to the world’s current affairs, I wrote, “I spoke to God today. But why do I feel like I’m praying in vain? Little faith. I guess I just don’t think God is going to stop a war because I asked him to……….Oh God, how I want to love you, to really believe—just to have something to believe in.”

And in 1981: “Praying for people. Sounds funny--- me and prayer. But I wonder if in a sense I pray a lot, in my contemplation with nature, people. What IS prayer? Is it contemplation? For anything? Or does it have to be with God? Am I considering God all along but keep resisting it? Keep believing that my God is still in the ‘graven image of man’? Don’t we believe that?!! I think we do; how else can we relate? It’s too far-fetched to speak with a blob, a spirit we can’t define in terms of size, shape and eye color. But we always speak as if we thought otherwise. We’re trying……”

In the Spring of 1982, during my last undergraduate semester, I had been invited to live with the minister of my church, his wife and a couple who were deeply committed to social action. I was concerned that my doubts would be a problem so I asked to meet with David, the minister. Before I met with him, I wrote down several thoughts:

1. “Why must we place our faith in a God when we can place our faith in ourselves? Or are we really only placing faith in our own thought after all but use God as an ideal manifestation of our greatest ideals, our greatest ethics, our moral system?”

2. “Sometimes I feel like I pray all the time merely because I spend tremendous amounts of time in meditation, in struggling with issues, in trying to decide what’s right for me, for the world and then wondering what’s more important.”

3. “With Christianity, are we trying to degrade human nature, place limits on human ability, keep people from ever feeling totally good about themselves? In other words… we [believe that we] must eternally sin because that’s what God said we would do?”

4. “More and more I find myself heading towards a humanistic view of life, of a belief in the Spirit of humanity, of Nature and the connection of the two. Oh hell, I guess God could be another realm as well—sometimes I find it hard to see what difference it makes.”

5. “I believe in most of the teachings, the philosophy of Christian love, but… I wish I wasn’t so pragmatic; I wish I had more of a feeling for spirit, for cosmic spiritual universes. I guess I don’t want to get caught up in believing in extraterrestrial spirits and living my life with that in mind instead of the here-and-now life and times of our universe. That’s why I say “pooh” to Falwell and his empty futuristic unrealistic salvaging religion.”

And later:

“I can’t seem to put my finger on what it is I’m seeking. I refuse to make myself believe in a God that will ‘see me through my times of distress.’ If I ever do find a God, I want to meet it face to face and shake hands.”

And finally, in February, 1984:

Just read “Ruth” and the first 10 chapters of 1st Samuel. Read it aloud in the sunshine, in the quiet. Read it after reading 2 meditations out of Koyama’s 50 Meditations. His words sent me to pick out The Holy Bible and turn to the Old Testament. He was talking about how the stories are human stories, stories about conflict and resolve, dishonesty, jealousy, etc. Of course, relating it to God…. But the idea of dealing with human conditions is what drew me to pick up the book. I don’t have to believe the stories now, so it makes them easier and more enjoyable to read.”

So, has everything been crystal clear and guilt free since 1984? Of course not. But I would say that I am still heading towards or perhaps am now within that humanistic view of life, of a belief in the Spirit of humanity, of Nature and the connection of the two. I am deeply, indescribably moved by the smoky sunshine as it filters through the trees on my daily dog walk, by the perfect tune of our local wood thrush, by the smell of damp earth on my dogs’ feet, by the unexpected, sometimes momentary and usually unforgettable connections that I sometimes experience with people I know well and with people I’ve met for the first time, by the power and impact of people’s words and actions on our universe and its inhabitants. It is godly and I like it.

Julie Goldman Caran:

When people ask me how I came into Unitarian Universalism, I often give the short answer: my mom is Methodist, my dad's side of the family is Jewish, my mom's parents are Presbyterian, I went to an Episcopalian camp, and I studied Buddhist meditation in a class at my Catholic High School.

Today I'm going to flesh out that answer for you — just barely.

I mark the beginning of my conscious spiritual journey at around the time that I was attending a Methodist preschool. My Grandma Jacobs was visiting our family for Hannukah, and I remember her tucking me in with a bedtime prayer that made me ask her what the difference was between Jewish and Christian people. I think she said that Christians pray to Jesus and believe that he is god, while Jewish people believe he was a man and a teacher, but not god himself. I remember telling her, "I think I'm Jewish but don't tell my mom."

About a year later I began challenging my Sunday School teachers for the first time. My dog, Debit, had just passed away and Mr. Whitmore explained that due to her lack of free will and consequential inability to accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior, Debit would not, in fact, be waiting for me in heaven as my mom had suggested. Since I trusted my mom more than Mr. Whitmore, I pretty much dismissed his idea.

Throughout my childhood I believed strongly in god, but not just because of the bible lessons and the weekly Sunday school classes; my belief was based more significantly on the experience of praying with people of faith. When my family prayed in Hebrew with my Jewish grandmother, I felt the presence of something larger than our individual selves; I felt connected to generations of people of faith, and to the god that each of them had prayed to. When I said my simple bedtime or dinner prayers with my Presbyterian grandmother, I knew that God — and her Christian faith — gave her strength and comfort. I did not question the existence of God, because I saw the way faith in God could make a person glow with strength, act in kindness and come together with one another in love. Prayer had a way of making me completely aware of every amazing molecule around me. Praying also brought with it a humility. The act of prayer opened my eyes to the bigger picture, to the life all around me, to the sun dancing through the leaves or the intricate detail on the wing of a fly. It is hard not to recognize the miracles of the world around me when I offer prayers of thanksgiving.

In spite of my strong belief in god, I began to question my religion and the nature of god in more depth when I was twelve and I became very ill. I was in and out of the hospital during the spring of my twelfth year and again a year later. The medications prescribed seemed to have all of the negative side effects and none of the intended healing qualities. I began to hate my body, my whole self, and most of the people around me. I felt completely isolated. When I attempted to pray, I no longer felt any sense of connection. lt felt like God was gone altogether -- like I had driven him away with all of the anger and hatred I felt for the rest of my life.

After that year of illness, though, my faith was achingly restored when I attended an Episcopalian camp in North Georgia. This was the kind of summer camp where the kids start attending when they're in kindergarten and they come back every summer till they graduate from high school. I had never been in such a supportive, tight-knit community before. Of course we were thirteen but it was the closest thing to a utopian society that I've ever seen. Within a couple of days of camp I had a whole group of new friends who accepted me into their fold. The camp fostered the kind of connections that I felt I had lost. At night, when the 200 campers read from the Book of Common Prayer together and sang camp hymns in a big wooden room, I began to reconnect to that "something larger" — that thing that I call God. After that week of camp, I felt like I was able to begin to have faith again — both in people and their ability to embrace one another, and in God and our ability to connect to god.

The Methodist youth group I attended during my adolescent years also allowed for the kind of intimacy that I associate with prayer, singing, and sharing. Many of the people in that youth group became my best friends. But things became problematic when I was in 10^th grade and a new youth minister arrived. For Joseph, faith had little to do with this sense of communion and awe at the interconnectedness of life, and everything to do with testifying your faith to Jesus. Since I had never had a "personal encounter with Jesus," I learned that I was not, in fact, a true Christian. My friends from youth group would come back from conferences claiming that they were born again and filled with "Jesus juice" — which still sounds really weird to me. I kept asking Jesus to come into my heart but I never felt any different. I had a great respect for the man and his teachings, but I felt like praying to Jesus was betraying God in some way; it was breaking the first commandment. I tried to believe what my friends and youth minister believed, but the whole time I was thinking "Why should I pray to a middle man when I can pray directly to God?" Meanwhile, Joseph had put it upon us to make sure all the people in our lives were also letting Jesus into our hearts. I just didn't think I could convince my dad that Jesus was the way to go. He never even practiced his Judaism, so I couldn't imagine him asking Jesus to enter his life, much less testifying about his personal transformation in Christ. Ironically, while Joseph was evangelizing and teaching us to do the same, my best friend in the youth group and I were falling in love. We had learned to “love the sinner, hate the sin,” but when I suddenly became cognizant of the fact that I was in love with Elizabeth, I said to myself  "This is sinful??? This isn't what they told us about. They must not have understood. God is love, and this is love, so how is it bad, again?" I felt that if God had allowed this love to happen then he was probably okay with it, even though my life-application bible told me otherwise. I had the feeling that everything happened for a reason, and that it would actually be denying God's plan in some way if I denied this capacity for love.

I guess the other thing that's funny is that even as I was trying to be a good Christian, I was busy coming up with my own theory about the nature and meaning of life. All these questions about heaven and hell must have brought it on. The Jews, Methodists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Muslims and Quakers all seemed to have different rules for getting into heaven. I was trying to figure out if there was a connection or a single thing that they all had in common. It seemed like if one group was right, then everyone else was wrong. So I tried to come up with my own theory. I looked at my own experiences of feeling connected to God and tried to make sense of how they fit into the Biblical scriptures, the church teachings, and my own life. I developed my theory over the course of my tenth grade year, and gave my friends periodic updates on what I thought was the meaning of life. At a slumber party that spring I gave my final results. I told my friends that I believed that God was not a man or a woman, but that we can't really conceive of God so we use those metaphors to describe "him." I had them imagine God as something that doesn't fit into a form like a man or a woman — God could be more easily imagined as a cloud of light just floating somewhere, and that cloud is made up of millions of little atoms. When these atoms of God-nature come together in any particular combination, they form a soul. When a person is born, that soul comes with the body. When we die, there are no pearly gates or hellfire. We just return to the big molecular pool that is God. We are all part of God, and God is part of us. That's why we are able to connect to one another, and why we sense that there is something larger than us out there. I figured Jesus was just more aware of his connection to God (or maybe even more highly concentrated with God-nature), which is what made him an excellent minister, and gave people the impression not only that he understood God, but that he actually was God.

My philosophy was quite Unitarian — my God was one and everything, not divided into a father, son and holy spirit — my God was continuous and expansive, not so much splitting up into people, animals and plants as flowing through all of us. My theory was definitely Universalist. In my plan, everyone returned to God no matter what they believed in. I thought that all the different religions in the world just used different metaphors to understand the same incomprehensible reality of the divine.

At the time, I was really proud of myself. I thought I'd had a major breakthrough in the history of the world and that I was going to be a great philosopher. Imagine my disappointment when, the following fall, we studied Plato and I found out that he'd come up with a very similar philosophy about 2400 years ago. On the one hand, my idea was not as original as I thought. On the other hand, people have been coming up with an idea like mine on their own terms for 2400 years.

My senior year of high school, my faith crystallized in a new way. I feel like I found the true nature of God (for me) over the course of a Prayer and Meditation class. We did a lot of traditionally Buddhist meditation, but Jesus would pop up in our visualizations here and there so that it could be taught at a Catholic school. As the semester progressed, each person in the class began to find his or her "center." It's the space in each of us that feels like it's bigger than us. It's huge and expansive and has amazing clarity and calm; a space of light and a moment of complete awareness. It's what I think of now when I use the word "God." When I finally found my center, I had a sense of complete affirmation that said "You are exactly who you need to be." It gave me the feeling that there is some larger plan or order to things, even if it is a just a beautiful dance with no beginning or end.

It was also through the Prayer & Meditation class that I began exploring UUism. For the class, I was required to attend a religious service of some kind at least twice a month. I felt that I could no longer attend Methodist services with earnest faith in that church's doctrine, so I began attending the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta that term, and occasionally in the months following. While in college I joined the chapel choir at school, so I mostly attended on-campus non-denominational (Christian) services.

Afterwards, when I moved to Charlottesville — a town where I didn't know a soul — I began attending a UU church regularly again. I felt an immediate connection with the members of the Twenties and Thirties group, and in time this extended out to the rest of the congregation as well. When I joined the church in April of 2000, they gave me the book Our Chosen Faith and as I read it, I kept saying aloud "Exactly!" "Yes!" and "I'm so glad I found this church." I couldn't believe that a whole history of people had challenged their belief systems and come up with philosophies and principles that were so close to my own. I knew I had made exactly the right decision and I became a proud UU. I became the Acting Director of Religious Education in Richmond for two years (Aug 2001 - July 2003) before moving to Harrisonburg.

Now when I think of the nature of life and of god and of humanity, I still believe in god, but have more than one way of seeing it. There's the Judeo-Christian God that I knew as a child and still pray to now, the meditative center that also means God to me, and the idea of God as amorphous blob of atoms that I came up with in tenth grade. Sometimes I think my tenth-grade philosophy is really just a metaphor for the biological processes that occur as we live and die on earth. My blob of light in the sky god could just be another way of saying "the milky way" or "the interconnected web of all existence." When I studied Hinduism in college, I learned that while Westerners think there has to be one right answer, other cultures allow for conflicting beliefs to coexist harmoniously. So at this point in my spiritual journey, I see the "spirit of life" in all of these ways at once. It seems to me that God exists beyond of the boundaries of one metaphor or another, so I like the idea that God can be characterized in three different ways simultaneously.

Barbara Moore:

A few days after Pat Geary, our Sunday Services chairman, asked me to participate in this service, and while I was pondering what to say, I received an email from my son with the subject line which read, "great quote from Bertrand Russell." This is the first time I remember my son sending me a quote he found interesting. As soon as I read the lines, I knew I would open my remarks today with these words:

"What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires--desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way."

What I say this morning are my myths--they may not agree with yours, but for my life I find them valid and necessary.

First of all, I must say that I have more questions than answers to what I believe, but I happen to think questions are more important than the answers. When I was younger, I envied those who seemed to have all the answers to life's big questions: Who are we? What is our purpose on earth? What comes after this life? They seemed to be so sure of their answers, and convinced that their pathway was better than all others. They excluded the beliefs of the Islams, or the Hindus; the Buddhists or the Jews; the Bahai, or the Christians; the pagans or the African traditions. I see these various groups all searching for a spiritual identity, and maybe there are truths to be found in all of these pathways. Therefore, although I was raised as a Christian in the Methodist church, I am no longer willing to limit myself to that particular thinking. The diversity of UUism is what I find intriguing--I can explore many pathways to find truths that could apply to all people. I may not agree with all facets of a particular religion, but I could worship anywhere that people gather in search of a greater being. That is one of my myths. I like the idea of a creator or a greater being. In conjunction with my creator myth, I find comfort in nature. Although I grew up in the center of Pittsburgh, my backyard adjoined an undeveloped wooded ravine that was home to deer, pheasants, raccoons, squirrels, birds and other wildlife. Reading a book under the shelter of this greenway was solace to me in my childhood. When I was 12 years old, I moved to Idaho Falls, Idaho located on the Snake River in the heart of an area that included Jackson Hole, Yellowstone Park, the Grand Tetons, and Sun Valley. The desert landscapes, the majestic mountains, and the scent of pine forests impacted me profoundly with their natural beauty. Every day I see the beauty around me in nature and thank the creator for this gift. If there truly is a creator, then she will appreciate my gratitude; if not, still my own being is enhanced by my awareness.

Another of my myths concerns the purpose for our life here on earth. I find the teachings of Jesus with his emphasis on loving ourselves and others to resonate with me, regardless of my uncertainty about the other aspects of his persona. I think of my life as a learning experience in how to love. I am much better at it now than when I was 20, but I still have a lot of learning to do before my body returns to the earth. I hope that all this learning does not just end, but has a purpose--a preparation for what comes after this life. Once again, I think I can not lose--whatever the reality. If there is another life to come, my concentration on growing my ability to love should prove to be helpful. If my world and I just end, I still will have had a purpose in living that allows me to get up every day and find meaning in caring for others. I intend to learn what I can from this world and keep my options open until a clearer path presents itself. Perhaps my ideas are too simplistic for you--perhaps not wordy enough. But that is a trait that I received from my mother which I consider a gift. She seemed to have an ability to find the heart or core of an emotion or experience. No words could change her gut feeling. The truth could not hide from her. There was only honesty. Sometimes she was too forthright--saying things that could be hurtful, but she gave me the ability to see the simpleness of life. Young children and elderly adults in their final years whom I have cared for over the years have taught me what is really important. Robert Fulghum's credo in his book, ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN (a guide for Global Leadership), says it best for me.

I would like to share it with you in case you have never read it, or as a reminder if you have:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum. See his web site http://www.robertfulghum.com/ ]

And that is what this HUU community does for me--we hold hands and stick together.

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