HUU Sermon Archives

The Faith that Sustains Me

by Asya Lesly
July 25, 2004

I have a confession to make. I warn you, that some of you will find it disconcerting. It may even fundamentally change the way many of you see me. I have always had and continue to have a fascination with insects and spiders. I love bugs. As a child, I had a pet tarantula named Big Mama, and as an adult, I have an insect collection. When people see me with my insect net in hand, they usually ask if I am collecting butterflies. You should see the look on peoples faces when I reply, no I just caught a really great wasp. My favorite part of my collection is my wasps. I have well over 50 species.

I think that it is the tremendous amount of diversity that fascinates me most. For instance, one out of every five species of plants and animal on this earth is a species of beetle and one out of every 10 is a species of weevil, which is a species of beetle. It is reported that when scientist J. B. S. Haldane was asked what he could be infer about our creator from his studies, he replied that he had, “an inordinate fondness of beetles.”i

Insects can be fond in the largest cities, the scarcest deserts, and even in snow. They have adapted to fit an incredible number of roles. For example, fig wasps were introduced into California in order for Smyrna Figs to be grown. These figs are pollinated almost exclusively by fig wasps. Fig wasps eggs can only hatch in these figs.ii

When I was a child and I would witness and study the beauty and complexity of nature, I was in awe. I could feel the presence of God. I sometimes even dreamed of becoming a nun. It sounded so romantic to be married to God. I did not realize that Nuns were Catholic. My husband laughed a little to hard when I told him about this childhood fantasy. “What is so funny?” I demanded.

“What about all those boys that you dated in college?” he replied.

“Well, I guess things just didn't work out with God, so I had to move on.” But, strangely things did work out, in very unexpected ways.

My family never discussed religion. I knew that my father was an agnostic. My mother was a pantheist, but I thought she was a Christian. It seems like a strange mistake, but we never talked about religion in my family. Sex and politics are fair game, but religion was like a dirty word. Occasionally my mother would take us to church for a short time. I assumed she was a Christian, since all of the churches that I can remember going to were Christian churches. It turns out that we were going for social reasons. Ironically, my mother now tells me that the church that was across the street from our home when I was a toddler was a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. We attended for a short time when I was two-years-old. I would not step inside another UU church again until I was 25-years-old.

When I was 10-years-old we started going to a non-denominational church for social reasons. I always thought that non-denominational meant not belonging to a particular denomination. I think that in the Bible-belt “non-denominational” is a code word for fundamentalist. At first, I embraced church. It was supposed to be God's house, and I knew God from the trees, creeks, tadpoles, snakes, frogs, coyotes' howls, and the stars.

This church taught me that God was mean and angry. He was going to send millions of Chinese people to hell if they did not believe in Jesus, even though they weren't even brought up that way. It did not matter if they were nice or not. They taught me that the Bible was the word of God. It was the truth. They taught me that the world was created in six days, and God took Sunday off to rest. They taught me that everything was created for man. They taught me that God was most defiantly male. I was very confused about why the little girl who was never nice to me in my 6th grade class, was nice to me at church.

The God that I had felt outdoors was not mean or angry. I could not understand why all the nice people in China were supposed to be going to hell. The Bible did not always seem to make sense. PBS said that it took much more than seven days for the earth to form and for animals to evolve. When I would read about how the animals were related in my animal books, that evolution thing made perfect sense. I could not believe that the world was made just for people, instead I saw people as one part of a beautiful intricate puzzle. The God that I knew did not seem to be male or female. And on top of all this, I still didn't understand why the little girl who was never nice to me in my 6th grade class, was nice to me at church.

Perhaps I and many Unitarian Universalists have something in common with Ferdinand Magellan who said, “The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.” My childhood logic failed me though. I saw this issue in black and white. I knew that I did not believe in the God that I was learning about in church. It did not occur to me that God could be conceptualized in many different ways. So, I decided that I must not believe in God, and that thing that I felt outside must be something else entirely. Fortunately, I never stopped worshipping nature in my own ways.

But this thing that I felt never seemed to go away. Instead it grew and expanded. I started to realize that the way that I felt when I communed with nature was the same as I felt in many other situations. I started to see more and more connections. I would read about history or spent time with children and I would feel it. I would feel it when I was enjoying life, or when I was spending time with people I loved. It kept expanding until I even starting feeling it when I was among strangers. I still denied that this was my God and did not consider myself a religious person. While I was attracted to some Buddhist practices and some Hindu thought, I did not see myself as a religious person. I saw myself as a person who led a moral life for the sake of goodness itself and not out of fear of being punished for all eternity.

The American Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is quoted as saying “God is in the details.” I imagine that he was referring to architecture, and perhaps it was in reference to perfectionism. I am afraid he may have been referring to perfectionism (shudder the thought). Yet, those words really capture my minds. I think of the incredible diversity and detail that is seen in each species of plant and animal, each culture and religion, in pieces of art, in the vastness of space. Some people are more prone to be filled with awe when they see a gorgeous panoramic view. I am most awed by the details; seeing the tiny toes on the hummingbird who eats outside my window, learning that the baby that I carried had paddle-like hands and that the cells in between his fingers must die so that he may have five fingers, and the yellow banana slugs of the Pacific North West. God is in the details.

One day, many years ago my ex-husband yelled at me, “Why won't you just do as I have asked and become a Muslim? It's not like you believe in anything anyway!” My simple explanations of my belief in nature had not convinced him. I realized that they were no longer enough for me either. I knew that I would have to confront what I believed more fully, I would never again deny my God, whether or not it was the God of the main stream America. It seems ironic that words of anger that were meant to convert me, would help me to begin to define myself as a religious person.

About 6 years ago, my husband and I came to the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. I immediately recognized it as my spiritual home. I have had the same experience at the Unitarian Fellowship of Chico, and at Starr King School for the Ministry. Unitarian Universalism has not tried to convert me, but to engage my mind and my heart. It challenges to be my best self. I have learned much more about theology. I have learned that my beliefs are not so unusual. Like everyone here, I continue to learn and redefine what it means to live by my faith.

I would like to recite a poem that I wrote to you.

All These Things
by Asya Lesly

I look into the trees and feel an awaking in my soul, knowing that there is something there that I cannot explain.

I look upon an old woman holding her great-grand child and know that I have a future and I have a past.

I see the waves bashing against the rocks, and I know that there is life struggling among this violence.

I watch an ant dragging a lifeless beetle back to its colony and am reminded that life comes from death just as death comes from life.

I look though the lens of a microscope at the twirling and whirling of miniscule monsters equipped with flagellum and cilia, and I am reminded of worlds so small and worlds so vast that they are easily forgotten. But, there is no line between these worlds and my own, for these worlds are my world.

I look at you and find you are looking back at me. I realize that my life has a greater impact than I first imagined.

I look at all of these things, and I see something that some call nature and some call life. But, no words can explain it, so I will just call it God and hold it up, revering it as sacred.

Nature continues to be where I feel God most strongly. When I need spiritual renewal, I go hiking, skiing, swimming in a pond, or just sit outside. When I feel discouraged or far from my faith, I turn towards life. When we live life fully, we turn towards our faith; whether it is God, Life, Love, Nature, Humanity, or anything else. When we live life to the fullest, it is easy to see what we value most. We are no longer caught up in the rat race, but spending time with our families, working toward good in this world, teaching our families, appreciating and protecting nature. May we all engage the world and live lives that reflect our faith. Amen.

i  Evans, Authur V., and Bellamy, Charles L. 1996. An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles. Henery Holt and Company, Inc. New York, New York. p.9.

ii Donald, Borror J., Triplehorn, Charles A., and Johnson, Normon F. 1992. An Introduction to the Study of Insects. Sauders College Publishing. Orlando, Florida. p. 717.

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