It’s All About Relationship – (The Pieces of a Puzzle)
(talk given at the Harrisonburg UU October 14, 2007) by Rev. Emma Chattin
“Cultivate your own relationship with God, but don’t impose it on others. You’re fortunate if your behavior and your belief are coherent. But if you’re not sure, if you notice that you are acting in ways inconsistent with what you believe—some days trying to impose your opinions on others, other days just trying to please them—then you know that you’re out of line. If the way you live isn’t consistent with what you believe, then it’s wrong.”
From Romans 14:22-23, The Message Translation
“I think Christianity has created a great problem in the Western world by repeatedly presenting itself, not as a way of seeing all things, but as one competing ideology among many. Instead of leading us to see God in new and surprising places, it too often has led us to confine God inside OUR place. Simeon Weil, the brilliant French resistor, said that the “tragedy of Christianity is that it came to see itself as replacing other religions instead of adding something to all of them.”
– From Richard Rohr in Everything Belongs
Religion… the final frontier….
This is a part of the voyage we will take today
in the UU @ Dale Enterprise.
Our 25 minute mission:
to seek truth, to explore new thoughts,
to try to understand civilization…
… to boldly go where few souls have ever gone before!
Is Religion the final frontier? I certainly think it’s A frontier, and one that humanity must explore and learn how to navigate in a peaceful and constructive way before going much farther.
And if religion itself is a frontier, then Unitarian Universalists are indeed the pioneers. Because you not only tolerate plurality… you not only invite it… you cultivate it!
And if this world cannot learn plurality- how to live together in the tension of togetherness—then, quite simply, we are doomed.
The world has gotten incredibly small. Different cultures and different communities, ones otherwise alien to one another, now routinely rub shoulders, often encountering each other edges, and most of those edges these days involve what we call “religion”
The challenge before humanity, I think, is a space race of sorts – a race to learn to live together in the same space before we kill each other. This is increasingly important, because humanity’s advancement in the ways and means (and motivation) to kill one another has outstripped our ability to make peace with one another. Not only have we developed the devices to destroy ourselves and the planet we inhabit many times over, but these things are now becoming increasingly accessible. At the same time, we are being increasingly divided by religion, locally, nationally, and globally. The burning irony is that these divisions are sapping humanity’s resources and are distracting us from the very purpose of religion in the first place.
Let’s take a look at the word — RELIGION
Words are tools, and like tools, they can be used for many different purposes. A claw hammer can be used to build things, or it can be used to take things apart. The purpose and intent comes through the hand that wields it.
Words are like tools, and indeed there is some power in understanding their origin– the original root meanings they carry with them as a result of how they were put together.
RELIGION
Joseph Campbell, a writer and mythology professor whose works I admire, explains it like this: The word comes from the Latin… ligare-to connect. That’s also where we get the word “ligament”, something that connects bone to bone. “Re-ligare”, meaning to re-connect. There. That’s simple. I can work with that. Re-connect.
What is it that we wish to reconnect with? I think that answer is as diverse as we are; whether it is to reconnect with the Spirit of Creation, or Creation itself which surrounds us, or to reconnect with other people around us, or to reconnect with our own self and the world and wisdom within, or all of the above. I think a good question to ask at this point is this: What is it that you seek to reconnect with? Where are your connections, and in that context of your connections, what does your religion look like?
What is it that you seek to form a relationship with? Knowledge? Truth? The Source? Your community? These are essential questions to ask ourselves, and if we approach the word “religion” as simply a desire to make those reconnections, then we I think we begin to experience religion a little differently.
This longing for some sort of “reconnection” with something other than one’s self is exactly what I mean whenever you hear me talk about “religion”. This reconnection is beautiful, because it also implies that everything was all once connected  and, I believe, still is. It’s just a matter of uncovering and discovering those connections– our commonalities, the places where we can fit together.
One of the things that UU and MCC share in common is our reach for plurality and connection. Admittedly, we in MCC do it more ecumenically. That is, within the branches of the Christian church, gathering together under one roof Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, on and on….
It’s a lot harder than it looks. There is a whole lot of disagreement among these groups. I mean, that’s why they split apart in the first place… over issues of baptism and communion (what it is and how to do it)…. even how and when to worship. When all of these denominations began coming together under one roof in MCC, there were frequently cries of “Wait, you’re not doing it right!”. Or when approaching some of the more sticky wickets of Salvation, Atonement, Grace, and so on…. there were frequently cries of “But you’re not believing it right!!”
Rumi, the Sufi poet, said,
“Out beyond right-doing and wrong-doing, there lies a field.
I’ll meet you there.
That’s kind of what we do. MCC is a field where we can begin getting these groups back together, reconnecting them. Asking all the many denominations to look at what they can add to each other, rather than what they can replace or displace in each other. We approach some of the more difficult questions (and face it, most questions which surface in this context are difficult questions) simply by acknowledging that there is no necessity or imperative for a universal corporate answer. Or even an answer, period.
Sometimes there is great beauty in simply living with the questions.
Individuals have great freedom in their belief systems. But with that freedom comes the responsibility of not imposing it on any other. And THAT makes us VERY different from any other Christian denomination. People are sometimes surprised when they learn that I am not going to tell them what to believe. But with that sense of surprise often comes the gentle awareness that they, too, should not decide what particular belief is right for another.
Church-wise, in general, when people first come to MCC, they want exactly what used to have, only a lot Gayer — with a lot more Gay people. But we’re pretty clear- this is not your old time religion. This is something very different.
Several of our churches have become affiliated with a movement known as Progressive Christianity. It is a movement that came from another movement, one known as the emerging church. It emerged in the late 1990’s, and began to look at Christianity in some very new ways- ways that were, in fact, very old. It some ways it involved a deconstruction of Christianity, and a careful examination of the
context in which it emerged.
It’s all about relationship and reconnecting.
I have brought folks seeking to use your facility to your services on Sunday mornings because I want them to meet you, to know your community, because I think it is important to support the communities who support us. We join together as allies against oppression. Because…. It’s all about relationship.
Humanity’s liberation from oppression is as integrally connected as a string of separate dominoes, all lined up, motionless, apart from one another, untouching, unchanging, waiting for that one touch, that one connection, the tip of a finger to release their potential, as they suddenly touch each other, and fold against each other, as they pass the moment of connection along, until every single domino is touching each other in a long unbroken connected string.
The liberation of humanity will need all of us, working together, and re-connecting.
There is a saying attributed to aboriginal activists in Australia:
“If you have come to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
We are all inter-connected. Like the pieces of a puzzle… individually, perhaps, it’s hard to get the picture, but as we begin to gather, to come together, to share our images of divinity, then we also come to see a much larger truth. A bigger picture begins to form among us.
It’s not about replacement, it’s about relationship — how we fit together
Because true liberation does not simply free the captive, it frees the guard as well. In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire writes of south American plantation workers who don’t wish to be free from the plantation system that has enslaved them, they simply want to become a plantation owner themselves, enslaving others.
That is not freedom. That is the preservation of the system. Just as the poor do not wish to be free from the monetary system whose extremes have imprisoned them in poverty, but rather, they wish and dream of simply being on the other extreme. The slave all too often does not want freedom from the system that has enslaved them, but rather simply to rise up and hold the chains of another, to enslave another. Oppression and oppressive systems will continue until the oppressor experiences liberation from the system. The oppressor AND the oppressed. We are so interconnected, that one cannot be truly freed without the other being freed as well.
I met a couple, the man an atheist and the woman religious, who wanted to marry. The man did not want a religious ceremony, the woman did, and as a compromise, they looked for a minister who would join them in a ceremony “without God”. I was happy to do this. Why?
I don’t need to impose my views on any other. I don’t need to mention the Spirit. (although sometimes I do) I don’t need to say a blessing over food. (although sometimes I do) . God goes with me wherever I go. I experience the Spirit as near to me as my own breath — and I don’t need to constantly tell people I am breathing in order for me to breath. Carl Jung had an ancient Latin saying engraved over his doorway AND on his tomb: Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit. My Latin is kind of rusty, and it also comes with a southern accent, so I will translate:
Called or uncalled, God/Divinity is present.
It is honoring my vocation to serve people in these wonderful and sacred life cycle moments, and such diversity as this wonderful couple co-existing in the tension of their spiritual differences fascinated me. It is sacred to me. It is holy. It is diversity.
It is what we see in the world around us. Turn over any rock and look at all of the wonders that crawl and live together beneath it. Look at the universe- black holes and great suns. For me, diversity is one of the fingerprints of the Creator, the Great Maker. And different people living together and holding in tension their differences to me speaks of a harmony that is sacred. Whole and holy. A beloved unity.
And unity is not uniformity.
Uniformity is not a Divine attribute. Something as simple and as beautiful as snowflakes tell us this. No, uniformity is a human creation. The kind of order that lines people up in little rows and puts them all in uniforms. That kind of order is not Divine.
Uniformity is a human creation. The need for us to be alike. But that need, perversely, is ultimately a divisive need, because it eventually and invariably establishes “Us and Them.” thinking. And then, the Us who are more US among US than the other Us, who are actually more like THEM. And wait, you are a little different from US, so you must be more THEM. And who among US is the most US among US? And THEM over there is deciding the very same things among THEM. Who is more like THEM among THEM?
This same urge for uniformity was vocalized in a question a woman asked me last year, “When did Jesus become a Christian?”. I contained my amazement and impulse to smile, because the woman was sincere in her question. [Note to clergy- try hard not to smile at sincere questions.]
I tried to explain to her that Jesus was a Jew- an observant Jew who practiced and observed the traditions of Judism. He was born a Jew, and he was buried in the manner of a Jew.
I wanted to go on… and tell her His name was not even Jesus, that it would have been pronounced, Yesheua, and he could not be more different from her than Moshe (Moses), Mahatma Ghandi, Budda, or Muhammed. But I restrained myself, because for her to think of Jesus as a Jew (just like her next door neighbors who worship on a Saturday and who don’t celebrate Christmas) was just WAY too much for her mind to contain. She wanted Jesus to be a Christian, just like her.
This month I was shopping in the bookstore of the Virginia Theological Seminary  and I “God shop” everywhere, by the way. The folks in the store at the Fairfax Jewish Community Center know me, as do the ladies at the Pascal Lamb, a conservative Catholic bookstore, as do the folks at Terra Christa, a new age earth spirituality store. And I encounter Divinity in all of those places.
Anyway, in the book store at the Virginia Theological Seminary, I actually heard someone describing a professor with the phrase: “He’s a real Christian Christian”. Think about that one. He’s a very US one of US.
And at that moment, as I looked around at all of the Episcopal branded tee-shirts, sweatshirts, patches, decals… and remembered similar ones in the Methodist stores, in the Presbyterian stores, in the Lutheran stores… it occurred to me that the spirit I was seeing in those things was SO much more like the team spirit for the Dallas Cowboys than an expression affinity for the Spirit of Creation and Divinity.
It is at such moments of clarity when I must reflect deeply, because I occasionally get very frustrated with religion. Sometimes people believe clergy have all the answers. Not true. I can only speak for myself, but what I have are A LOT of questions. In fact, i think that is what some of the most sincerely faithful folks have  QUESTIONS.
I am going to close with some words from Rainer Maria Rilke:
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language.”
Whenever I get frustrated, and I ache in my heart at the way this religion stuff is taking people apart- is tearing the world apart ÂI have to stop and remember…. What it’s all about for me:
And for me, it’s all about relationship.
And I can live with that.
And may someday so we all.