May 13, 2012
Presented by Joni Grady and Norman Lawson
The tag on our OOS says “One Journey, many paths.†There are many kinds of journeys but we can assume that this is talking about a spiritual journey, the spiritual journey that we are all on, whether we realize it or not.
What might the nature of a spiritual journey be? What is the destination of such a journey? It is a journey we start as soon as we can talk and perhaps before. As a child we always were asking “whyâ€. Are we still asking “whyâ€? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where is it all heading? How can I help others on their journeys? Ultimately we all are looking for the answers to the most basic questions a human being can ask. Why with a capital W.
We each have traveled and are traveling this path in different ways. This morning we give two of our members an opportunity to speak of their own spiritual journeys so we may better know them and perhaps take something from them to help us on our own spiritual journey.
First Reading: #592 The Free Mind by William Ellery Channing
Second Reading Samuel Eugene Stevens, from Science and Superstition, 1914:
“Thought—honest, free, outspoken, is the most valuable contribution intellect can make to human welfare. ..The purest pleasure and highest happiness are only the fruit of mental action exercised in the endeavor to understand the nature of things.â€
Spiritual Odyssey: The inner compass and the magic church bus
By Joni Grady
I did try to be a good Methodist: I sang in the choir, I played piano for Sunday School, I belonged to MYF and learned to play cards in our ‘den of iniquity’. I even taught vacation Bible school one summer. And my parents religiously attended church– on Easter and Christmas—and Wednesday night prayer meeting the year I played the organ. But I always knew I wasn’t sincere, couldn’t buy into the Apostles Creed. So you can imagine my relief when the Music Librarian at Rice University told me my junior year that I was probably a Unitarian, and Les and I began attending First Church in Houston. Clearly my parents felt the same way : they started attending Emerson Unitarian Church a few years later—even when it wasn’t a holiday– and continued as active UUs when they joined us in Clemson.
It was when my mom began digging into my father’s genealogy that I learned I was a birthright UU—not only is Unitarian founding father William Ellery Channing a distant cousin but so is Universalist preacher and theologian Hosea Ballou. (We will quickly pass over the even more distant relationship to Cotton Mather.) A closer relationship was uncovered to my Great-Uncle Samuel Eugene Stevens of Hartland, Vermont, self-published author of Science and Superstition from which I took my second reading.
So my spiritual inner compass, perhaps genetically engineered by some fortuitous accident of birth, and with the help of a librarian, guided me to Unitarian-Universalism in 1961, for which I would thank God if I believed in Her. Not that we attended church much while we were in school but some of you know how it is when you start having kids. In 1970 I took my infant son Ross and became part of that interdependent web of life known as UU religious education, often separate from the adults but always loads more fun and serving to nourish me and my charges on a great spiritual adventure. Where else would I have had the chance to learn that leaving a Christmas pageant bale of hay in the RE room would lead to Crayola colored mouse droppings in the yarn drawer?? Or that the ravens dangling from an old tennis racquet would bring pizza to Elijah in the desert?
I didn’t do children’s RE all the time, however, and I realize now, more than 40 years after first becoming an active UU, that the words I heard in the adult services, and the people I knew at the UU Fellowship of Clemson and have grown to know here, were gently nudging me onward as well. How many times did I have to sing “Our world is one world,†hear “Deeds, not creeds,†and “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has,†before I realized they were speaking to me? How long did I have to watch others going about the tasks of justice-making in ways large and small before I felt a real need to join them? Probably for as long as it took Sophie to appear on the scene and me to realize how unpleasant climate change was going to make her life. I suppose you could say that one thread of my journey has been my mother- and grandmother-hood, as Ross and Megan led me into Religious Education and Sophie into activism.
I am not the sort of spiritual seeker who feels the necessity to read and explore philosophy and religion on my own—though I am fascinated by the research in neurobiology, just as Uncle Sam and my parents would have been. I’d rather read a good mystery any day. And I am not the sort of person to go out and found a movement on my own. For my spiritual journey I need a ‘magic church bus’ that works on UU Principles instead of the laws of physics and runs on our Sources instead of fossil fuel. I need a ‘bus’ full of people on their own journeys willing to share their insights and experiences, their passions for social justice and good food, people to sing “May I have this dance with you?†with love and compassion. Therefore I will always be grateful to that lovely woman, Madith DeZurko, who pointed me to the UU bus stop and said, “Get on, you’ll really enjoy the ride.â€
Norman Lawson’s spiritual Journey
I grew up in Rockville Centre on Long Island, NY and it was rural living at that time-1930. I was into ornithology at an early age although my parents were not outdoor people. I was shy to a distressing degree.
My first acquaintance with a really fascinating person was with the phys-ed director at Antioch College. I was his shadow for several years and was swept along in such activities as cross-country running, archery golf, gymnastics and muck running. He was an original thinker in designing new sports activities.
When I was drafted at the beginning of World War II I was already a convinced conscientious objector and a thorough pacifist. After a year of discussion and combat with three draft boards I was finally sent to camp in the woods for several years. They wanted objectors out of circulation.
One interesting job I was recommended for while in camp in Northern California was three months of fire tower duty. Good old Mad Rock Station, 144 steps up to the cabin and seven days a week attendance. I did not get much smoke action but I did get to know Thoreau’s Walden. Thoreau was becoming more and more familiar and important to me.
Shortly after returning to New York City at the end of the war, my family bought a farm just north of the city and I got married and built a house. The farm operation didn’t work out so I went back to college for a year and finally taught seventh grade biology for fifteen years. There was also time to raise four kids somewhere in there.
To go back a bit in time, our parents and we three kids, age eight for me, left the Methodist Church and took up with the United Lodge of Theosophists. The philosophy of Theosophy has been my consuming religious interest since then. The principles of Unitarian Universalism are fine and strong but on my death bed they will leave me breathless and thoughtless. What comes after that? Is this life the end? Are all my efforts toward betterment going to be lost? Do I not have a tomorrow to look forward to and to work for? Does my soul just dry up and float away into nothingness?
In the afterlife why not just reap what you earned and what you really deserve, mostly good with a little bit of not so good. So there you have reincarnation and another chance for learning and improvement. Anything else would be a waste. Come back and see if you can’t do better. What else would you expect?
The law of Karma says that when ever you make a choice of action you are inevitably and unavoidably choosing the reaction, spitting into the wind, as it were. These are part of one event. The only way to talk around karma is to admit a world of utter confusion.
Add Karma and Reincarnation to your daily list of think about and you might be surprised.