It's Almost Enough

This is the text of the Reflections I offered on Sunday, June 30, 2019 to the congregation I have served for the past 8 years.  It is the last Reflection I will offer as their Lead Minister.  It is also quite possibly the last sermon I will offer for quite some time, because I do not expect to seek out another pastorate.  Beginning in September I will become a student again as a Chaplain Resident at the University of Virginia hospital.  I will say that it's been quite a ride.

I’m going to tell you a couple of stories this morning.  Not the kind of stories we Unitarian Universalists usually tell one another; not the kind of stories to which we usually even give much credence when we hear others tell them.  Oh, to be sure, this isn’t true of all of us, yet as a generalization, and as we’re most often seen by people in the wider world, our elevation of and commitment to “The Rational” leads us to see such decidedly irrational stories as I’m going to be telling to be ... problematic at best.  Historically, at least, Unitarianian Universalism has encouraged a healthy skepticism; we’ve been largely agnostic at heart.  The English author W. Somerset Maugham once observed,

“A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes, and they have a very lively sustaining faith in they don’t quite know what.”

The first story happened a whole bunch of years ago, back when a primary tool for mass communication was “the list-serve.”  A colleague posted asking for help about a conundrum in which she’d found herself caught.  A member of the congregation she served had died recently.  A short time after the memorial service the deceased woman’s husband came to talk with her.  “Don’t tell my son any of this,” he said.  “We’ve always been extremely rational in our family – we believe that if you can’t see, touch, taste, hear, or feel it, it’s not real.  We don’t go in for any of that spiritual ‘woo-woo;’ we’re scientific rationalists all the way.  So, if my son knew about this he’d think I was losing it.” 

The “this” he wanted to talk to my colleague about, and which he wanted to keep from his son, was that since his wife’s death he’d continued to feel her presence.  Literally.  He knew, he knew, that it wasn’t a memory, or wishful thinking, or a delusion, or a psychotic break.  He still didn’t believe in any kind of “spiritual woo-woo” – ghosts, life-after-death, spirits.  He was still committed to logical rationalism and the proof of the senses.  Yet he also knew, knew, that he had been experiencing the undeniable presence of his wife even though she had died.  As you can imagine, this was throwing him for a bit of a loop.

But that wasn’t the problem my colleague was writing about.  She’d been able to talk with this man about his experiences, trying to help him make sense of them.  The problem came when the woman’s son came to talk with her.  He also requested that she not tell his dad about what he was about to say, because he knew his dad would think he was losing it.  But since his mom had died he’d been experiencing her almost physical presence.  It didn’t make any sense to him, it didn’t fit with anything he believed.  Still, he was rock-solid sure that these experiences were real, nonetheless.

So, that was her conundrum.  It was obvious that these two men needed to talk with each other about their experiences, yet she felt beholden to respect each of their requests not to tell the other.  So … what was she supposed to do?

Her question was pretty quickly and easily answered.  A whole bunch of us agreed that without breaking her promise she could say to either one – or both – something along the lines of:  “I’ve been thinking about what we talked about, and I know that you think your son (or father) would think you’re losing it, yet I’d seriously encourage you to take the risk of talking with them about it.  I think you owe it to your relationship with each other and with your wife (or mother); I also think you might be surprised by the response you’d receive.” 

As I said, her question was quickly taken care of, yet the thread that grew out of it went on for several months, as I remember.  And that’s because, slowly at first, person after person posted something that began like, “I’ve hardly ever told anyone about this, but …”  They’d then go on to tell the story of something rather “unbelievable,” something that didn’t align with our profession’s much touted rationality, yet which the person knew with every fiber of their being was true.  Some confessed that they’d actually never told anybody about this thing; one even noted, “I’ve never even told my wife about this.”  Yet on and on the litany went – post after post, day after day, story after story – experiences that didn’t make sense yet which the person who’d experienced it knew in their core were real.

We may be inclined to disbelieve this kind of thing, yet I’d remind you of the words Shakespeare had Hamlet say to his friend: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  More recently it’s been observed, “The universe is not only more strange than you imagine, it is more strange than you can imagine.”  I’d always believed that it was the scientist and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke who coined that phrase.  This week, though, I’ve learned that it actually goes back to a passage in the 1927 essay “Possible Worlds” by the British-Indian physiologist, geneticist, evolutionary biologist, and mathematician, J. B. S. Haldane:

“Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.”

The title of this sermon is, “It’s Almost Enough …,” and it comes from one of my own experiences.  (One of my own stories.)  In 2001 I was enrolled in the Spiritual Guidance program of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation.  (That’s the same program Wendy Steeves, the Office Assistant here, recently completed.)  The program is largely done at-a-distance, but all of the participants come together for a 9-day retreat once in each of the two years.  There was a lot of instruction, a lot of prayer, a lot of silence, a lot of time for contemplation -- and a whole lot of “spiritual woo-woo,” that irrational stuff that’s eschewed by so many UUs. 

On one of the first days of the retreat we were given a prayer exercise.  It’s Shalem’s perspective that prayer isn’t something we do.  Rather, God is always praying in us, and what we do in what we call prayer is to quiet ourselves enough to hear God’s prayer in us for us.  I’ll note that Shalem is decidedly ecumenical in orientation, even with their deep openness to other faith traditions and spiritual perspectives.  Still, a theistic perspective is core to their understanding of life (the universe, and everything), so the concept of “God” is foundational to them – albeit not with its most common understanding.  Anyway …

In this exercise we were asked to try to find an “inner place of peace … a mood of meditation,” and to allow the thought (or feeling) of a person we knew well to rise into our consciousness.  In other words, to listen for who God might be praying for in and through us.  When we felt that we knew the who, we were then to again try to quiet ourselves and listen for the what, to listen for what God’s prayer might be for that person.  After a little while we were then invited to do the same thing for someone we didn’t know all that well, and, then, finally, for someone we were having some kind of difficulties with.

When I was focusing on someone we didn’t know that well, one of the other participants kept coming up. I saw her in my mind’s eye, standing with Jesus.  He knelt in front of her and she put her hands on his head.  She then sunk to her knees, and the two embraced as they both began to cry.  (Weird, right?)

I honestly don’t think I’d even said more than a couple of words to this woman by this point in the retreat, so you can imagine it was with a little trepidation that I approached her during a break to tell her about this “vision” (if you will) and ask if it meant anything to her.  She looked really shocked.  She said that some years ago she’d had a hands-on healing ministry but had gotten scared by something and had stopped.  We’d been told to come to the retreat with a question to ponder – her’s was whether she should start again.  She felt that the vision I’d had during prayer was at least a pointer toward her answer.

A few days later someone came up to me and said that in her prayer that morning I kept coming to mind, along with the hymn, “Here I Am, Lord.”  The hymn draws on a story from the Hebrew Scriptures in which the character of God keeps calling out to a young Samuel by name.  Each time Samuel answers, “Here I am, Lord.”  This was also the hymn we sang a lot at the Methodist church camp the year I first felt my call to ordained ministry.  My question for discernment was whether I should remain in the ordained ministry.  This person’s prayer, though she could have had no way of knowing it, was a pointer for me toward my answer.  (And here I am I, 18 years later.)

Stuff like that happened a lot that week – prayers being answered, needed messages given and received, we even had a couple physical healings.  A whole lot of “spiritual woo-woo.”  At the time I considered myself a Zen/Taoist/neo-Pagan/historically Christian/currently atheistic Unitarian Universalist, so all of this didn’t fit with any of my “philosophies.”

The cohort with whom I went through the program consisted of Catholic nuns and priests, pastors from various Protestant traditions, lay people, a staunchly rational atheist humanist psychiatrist, and a Zen/Taoist/neo-Pagan/historically Christian/currently atheistic Unitarian Universalist.  Early on I became good friends with two of the other participants – a Baptist clergyman and a Presbyterian laywoman.  (I’m glad to say that we’re still friends all these years later.)  I don’t remember any longer which of us coined the phrase, but whoever said it, it stuck.  Whenever we’d hear one of these stories about something “queerer than we can imagine,” we’d reply, “You know … it’s almost enough …”  Actually, the full phrase was, “You know … it’s almost enough to make you believe in God.”

Physical healings; seeing/hearing answers to questions we didn’t know were being asked by people we’d never met before; miracles, for want of a better word, both big and small … and we’d say, somewhat ironically, that these were almost enough to make one believe in God.

I know, I do know, that “God” is one of those words many UUs don’t want to hear in their sanctuaries during Sunday services.  It’s meaningless.  It’s harmful.  The fourteen times we uttered it during the Opening Hymn, and the eight or so times Adam said it, were more than enough for some of us to last a year or two.  The Sunday after Virginia legalized same sex marriage I put on the altar two placards that had been created for a protest planned that were no longer needed.  One said, “All Love Is Equal;” the other said, “God is Love.”  So strong is the allergy to traditional “God language” among some of us that I know at least one member of this congregation came in that morning, saw the sign on the altar with the word “God” on it, and then turned around and left in disgust.

I do understand that what has been and still is so often referred to by that word, “God,” is utterly meaningless and has been used to inflict great harm.  Yet I also know the philosophical definition of the word:  “God” is, “that than which no greater can be conceived.” This means that whatever “God” is, it’s the greatest, the best, the most awesome, the most life-affirming, the most expansive … it’s that for which no greater attribute can be conceived.  The way the word “God” has been and is still so often being used is incredibly limited and limiting.  The way the word “God” is all too often (mis)understood simply can’t be what that words is really pointing to because it’s so easy to imagine something greater.  And this means that those understandings of “God” simply can’t be what “God” is.  The word “God,” when properly understood, is so unlimited that no less an authority than Saint Augustine said, “if you can understand it, if you can comprehend it, it’s not God.”  (Si comprehendis non es Deus.)

When I did my chaplaincy training all those years ago my supervisor told us what she’d say when a patient told her they didn’t need a chaplain’s visit because they didn’t believe in God.  “Tell me about this God you don’t believe in,” she’d say.  “I probably don’t believe in that God, either.”  That “God” isn’t what “God” is.  And if that “God” isn’t God, then God might after all have meaning even for us skeptical, agnostic, rational UUs who “[disbelieve] almost everything that anybody else believes, and [who] have a very lively sustaining faith in [we] don’t quite know what”

In his address to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School in 1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson asked those freshly-minted ministers,

“In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, [are people] made sensible that [they are] an infinite Soul, that the heavens are passing into [their] mind; that [they are] drinking forever the soul of God?”

Not given dogma or stern warnings, but told that they are, themselves, intimately a part of what God is; that they are inseparably part of something truly larger than themselves.  The answer is “not in too many” Unitarian Universalist churches today, I’m afraid.

And in his essay Nature St. Ralph described an experience he had when he was,

“Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes.  I become a transparent eyeball [I love that phrase!]; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”

In how many churches, by how many prophets, are we told that we are “part or parcel” of God?

I believe it was the first sermon I preached during candidating week for the first congregation I served which some encouraged not to give.  It was called “A Feather on the Breath of God,” a phrase used by the Catholic saint Hildegarde of Bingen to describe herself.  “Don’t talk about ‘God’ right out of the gate,” some people advised.  “It doesn’t go over well.”  (Yet here I stand, 25 years later.) 

Since I started out talking explicitly about God it seems right to talk explicitly about God in this last sermon, too.  Truth be told, I’ve done so in many, many sermons over the years since – maybe even in most of them, honestly.  I didn’t always use that word; you may not have even noticed.  But I did.  That’s because when we talk about “God,” we’re really talking about the Ultimate Reality in which, through which, and by which we live.  What a child once called “the Really Real,” in which, as the Apostle Paul put it, we “live, and move, and have our being.”  When we talk about “God” we’re talking about that which “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together” (to quote the esteemed theologian Obi Wan Kenobi).  We’re talking about, really, the only thing that’s really worth talking about – because that toward which the word “God” points is not some angry and judgmental anthropomorphic cosmic cop on the lookout for any infraction.  No.  When we talk about God we’re talking justice, we’re talking about truth, we’re talking about life, we’re talking about love.  What else should we be talking about?

Look around you.  Really open your eyes and look around you.  Look at your own life.  What do you see when you do?  A child’s open smile.  The warm touch of the person you love, and who loves you, most in all the world.  Leaves rustling on the wind when a stultifyingly hot day shifts with an incoming storm.  The pastel pinks and blues of sunrise; the vibrant crimson and azure of sunset.  The realization that you’ve found an answer for which you were seeking.  The courage to act on it.  Comfort in times of your own brokenness; strength when others need it from you.  Beauty, even in the presence of brutality.  The healing of body, mind, and spirit … even when there is no “cure.”  People who challenge our complacency; people who help point the way when we feel lost; people, plain and simple, other people.  Animals, plants, rivers, rocks, stars.  Moments of clarity about what really matters most.  Every breath we take.  (Every move we make.)  The sound of music.  The sound of silence.  The sound of life lived well, of life lived poorly, of life lived the best we can.  The sound of life lived in love, and love lived in our lives. 

All of that is real.  Really real.  All of it shows us, grounds us in the truth that, as I’ve been saying for years, “we are one human family, on one fragile planet, in one miraculous universe, bound by love.  All of it revealing the truth that we are not alone; the truth that in the end justice will prevail.  All of it reminders of the twin truths that life is stronger than death and that love is stronger than anything.  All of it God.

Look around you; really look around you, my friends, and really see.  And you know what?  It’s almost enough …

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Water & Community

This is this text of the reflections I offered on September 2, 2018, at the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Water is pretty awesome.

50% - 60% of the human body is made up of water.  Did you know that?  50% - 60%.  And some 75% -- ¾ -- of the earth’s surface is covered in water.  (Some people say we shouldn’t call our planet “Earth;” we should have called it, “Water.”)  Life on this planet, at least, began in the primordial oceans, and biologists and chemists believe that only water and carbon are necessary for life to arise.  And not only is water needed for life to arise, it’s vital for life to continue – you can live for about a month without food, yet only for about 3 – 5 days if you have no water.

Water is essential.

And water is powerful, too.

As Leia just said, we’ve seen, both in the news and, maybe, even on our own roads and in our own basements, the dramatic power of water.

Yet water has another kind of power, too.  In Chapter 78 of the Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu wrote:

Nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet in overcoming the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.

Has anybody ever taken some water in your hand and let it run through your fingers?  It’s clearly a fluid, it just flows out of your hand so easily, doesn’t it?  Yet anyone who’s ever done a cannonball –how many of us have ever done a cannonball? – we know that water can also be really, really hard.

Even in its fluid, though, it’s “soft and yielding” state, water is powerful.  The Grand Canyon, which in places is as much as a mile deep, was formed by the Colorado River cutting through the solid rock of the Colorado Plateau.  It took a while – roughly 6 million years – but in a game of rock, paper, scissors, water, water will always win in the end.

This morning we’re about to celebrate a ritual that Unitarian Universalist congregations around the country will also be celebrating as part of their In-Gathering services.  The water communion apparently began back in the 1980s, and we’ve been doing it here for a long, long time.

We line up.  Each one of us carrying a little contain of water, and we pour our water into this common bowl.  We do this, of course, to symbolize the kind of community we strive to create here – each of us bringing our own individual selves, together forming something more than any one of us alone.

Yet the water itself adds to that symbol, because it turns out that coming together in community is essential, just as water is essential.  Scientists tell us that people who don’t have community can’t sleep as well, have weakened immune systems, and higher levels of stress hormones.  Children who grew up without strong communities are in poorer health 20 years later than their peers who did have wider connections.  Loneliness can increase the risk of stroke by about ¹/₃, and it’s as damaging to our health as smoking.  (Even our Transcendentalist ancestor, Henry David Thoreau, knew about the importance of community.  During his experiment of living alone in the woods around Walden Pond, Thoreau would actually left his 10’ x 16’ cabin from time to time to go into Concord and have dinner with his friend Emerson.)

Community is essential.

And, like water, community is powerful.

The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

The incomparable Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray once said, “One person plus a typewriter equals a movement.”  (For those who don’t know, a typewriter is an old-fashioned word processor.)  And while that is in many ways true, it is also true that the hundreds of thousands of people who participated in the Women’s March in Washington D.C., and the million or more who took part around the globe, would have had far less of an impact that if only one person had showed up.

Although our fiscal year begins in July, this really feels like the beginning of the church year.  Some of us traveled during the summer, others stayed around here but were busy doing a whole bunch of things, and a whole lot of people kept coming to church more weeks than not, yet the annual In-Gathering Water Communion service feels like our coming back together.

So, as we come back together, readying ourselves for another year of trying to live by our Unitarian Universalist principles; wanting to grow ourselves, make a difference in the lives of those around us, and help to heal the world; let us remember just what it is we are signing up for.  We are agreeing to bring our own, individual selves and to join with others in the creation of something that’s larger than any of us.

Because community is essential for life.

Because community is powerful.

Pax tecum,

Rev. Wik

(PS -- the Closing Words were an excerpt from the Marge Piercy poem, "The Low Road")

Responses to the Questions II

This past Sunday, July 22nd, I facilitated the "Questions & Responses" service we have annually in the congregation I serve.  Congregants write questions on index cards, which are then collected, and to which I offer my in-the-moment responses.  Over the next several weeks I plan to devote this page to attempts to offer written responses.  If you'd like to see the entire list of questions asked, they're the bulk of my post-Sunday post on July 23rd.

For the most part I expect my responses to the questions I was able to play with on Sunday to be very similar to what I said them.  (Although I reserve the right to have changed my mind in the meantime!)  There are also several questions that were asked more than once (in slightly different ways).  I'll group them together here.  (And I'd remind readers that these are only my responses, and my responses today, at that.)




Help me learn to pray, please.

Given that I've literally written a book on prayer, this feels something like a softball.  (Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life, Skinner House Books, 2005.)  Yet before responding to this question specifically, I want to pull back and address the larger issue of "spirituality."

I think that the heart of "spirituality," shorn of any particular theological overly, is the universal observation that there are, let's say, two ways of living -- living in such a way that we are truly and deeply alive, and, well not that.  Our Unitarian Transcendentalist ancestor Henry David Thoreau wrote in his classic book Walden that he wished to live in such a way that when he came to die he would not discover that he had not lived.  (That's a rough paraphrase.)  And this sense that there are two kinds of living can be found in nearly every religious tradition we humans have developed -- alive and dead, living in sin and living in the spirit, deluded and enlightened, asleep and awake.  I could go on, but probably don't have to.  "Spirituality," then, has to do with this living life rather than not-life.  This would mean that spiritual practices -- like prayer -- are tools to use in the effort to be alive.

How, then, do you pray?  I'd say that we should pray in the way that "works" for us.  It's not necessary to believe in some anthropomorphic deity with whom we "talk."  It's not necessary for "prayer" to involve "talking" at all -- either externally or interiorly.

I'll digress here to make a plug for another book project I've been involved with.  In 1999, Skinner House Books published the ground-breaking Everyday Spiritual Practice:  simple pathways for enriching your life.  It's an anthology which offers an extremely wide variety of understanding of just what could justifiably be called a spiritual practice.  Earlier this year, Skinner House Books published something of a successor -- Faithful Practices:  Everyday Ways to Feed Your Spirit.  I was honored to have been the editor for this anthology, which includes examples of spiritual practices as wide ranging as sitting zazen, blowing bubbles, walking through your neighborhood, chopping vegetables, playing roller derby, and "playing" with action figures.  (Guess who wrote that chapter?)

To learn to pray, then, in it's most expansive understanding, is to (again) feel your way to the answer.  What are you doing when you're feeling most alive?  Most connected to the universe?  I'd say that you could call that "prayer" and that, after defining it that way, paying attention to how your experience of it might change.

[If, of course, this question was actually a specific request for help in learning to do the "talking to" kind of prayer, this response may not have been at all helpful.  I would, somewhat modestly, recommend my book as one resource.  There are many others I could suggest, and I know that I would be glad to talk with you directly if this is your question.  (Whether you actually wrote this question or not.)]



I am trying to find my space in this liberal religion -- where there are more questions than anything else.  Where do I start?

I'll begin my response by saying that, properly understood, Unitarian Universalism is filled with lots of answers as well as questions.  It should!  What would be the point of asking questions if we were never to find an answer to them?  That said, our faith tradition encourages us to hold on to the answers we've found ... lightly.  We're encouraged to be willing to let them go when new experiences lead us to new ways of thinking.  There are two quotes I love which speak to this.  The first comes from someplace I've never known, "if you're not willing (or able) to change your mind, how do you know you still have one?"  The other, which I just heard a week or so ago, comes from the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.  He once wrote, "If the you of five years ago doesn't consider the you of today a heretic, you're not growing spiritually."

All that said, I think it's important to remember that there are not set answers for you to find.  Unitarian Universalism invites us to look to our own lives as "sacred scriptures," as full of depth and meaning as any text revered by one of the world's great religions.  I've often said that for UUs, "experience precedes theology."  I mean that, in a great many other traditions, we are told what, for instance, God is like, and are then encouraged to go out and look for experiences of that in our lives and in the world.  We, on the other hand, invite us to first look to our own lived experiences to identify what we would consider "sacred" or "holy" (whether or not those are the words we'd use).  Then, after discovering our own experience, we can apply more traditional religious language, or not.  (I once wrote what I think was a pretty good sermon about this.  I'll see if I can find it, and I'll post it here sometime in the future.)



Well ... those two questions took up a lot of space, so I'll hold it here for today and come back tomorrow with more responses to more questions.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

It's the little things ...

It's no secret that I love comic books -- the Batman, especially, and other DC characters, but Marvel heroes as well.  I've collected a pretty large number of them now, but I'm not one of those collectors who seal them away in plastic and never take them out unless wearing gloves so as not to leave any oil on them.  Well, I mean, I do have them in plastic, but I open them up all the time and take them out of their protective sleeves.  I like to read comic books.  I like the stories.  

There's a four-issue run of JLA (#50-54) that's part of the larger, "Divided We Fall" story arc.  In this tale, the characters who make up that iteration of the Justice League  -- Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, the Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman -- are each split into both their superhero identities and their alter egos.  So there's a Batman and a Bruce Wayne; a Clark Kent and a Superman.  Only Wonder Woman and Aquaman are unaffected, since at that time neither had a "secret identity."

While an interesting premise, it's where this story goes that so interesting (and cool!).  Who is the Batman without Bruce Wayne's anger and grief?  Who is Superman without the tempering influence of the so-very human Clark Kent?  Bruce Wayne becomes consumed with rage he can't process or direct; the Batman becomes ineffectual because there's nothing really driving him.  Superman becomes cold and brutal because he is nothing but a Kryptonian, while Clark Kent becomes frozen in fear.  Throughout these books the notion of identity is explored, and the need for not just these heroes but for all of us to learn to integrate the different, sometimes contradictory, aspects of ourselves.

I could name other story-lines that offer a great deal more than impossibly proportioned women and men in tights duking it out.  I'll give just one more example.  The Amazing Spider-man # 36 came out in the wake of 9/11.  The entire story consists of Spider-man's inner monologue as he responds to the horrors of that day.  It remains one of the most poignant and moving essays I've ever read on the subject.  "The sane world will always be vulnerable to madmen, because we cannot go where they go to conceive of such things."

One of the things I really love about comic books, though, is the character development which at least some authors bring to their story telling.  If you have years of history with, for instance, the Justice League, or even just with a single character, you're rewarded with little details, seemingly throw-away elements, that can speak volumes for people who are really listening.  In one Batman story line, Jim Gordon, the Batman's friend and ally on the Gotham City Police Force, has been seriously injured.  The Batman and his loyal butler Alfred are in the hospital room, and the Batman says, with vehemence, "Jim will pull through."  "Or what, Master Bruce?" Alfred replies.  "You'll dress up like a bat and haunt the night for the rest of your life?"  In the next panel the two just stubbornly stare at each other.  Volumes about the (albeit fictional) history of these two men are revealed in this little exchange.

There's another such moment when the Batman, Superman, and Catwoman have been given a hard time (to put it mildly) by the super-villain Poison Ivy.  Catwoman knocks her out and Supermans asks, "Was that really necessary?"  In the next panel Catwoman and the Batman look at each other, silently, and then they both turn back to Superman and say in unison, "Yes."

Each of these seemingly insignificant exchanges might seem at first glance to be mere "filler."  I would think that this would be especially so for the casual reader, who doesn't have all of the background that's embedded in these moments.The Batman and Superman have always represented two different approaches to this superheroing business, and each has at times critiqued the other for their way of doing things.  All of this is contained in Superman's question.  Catwoman and Poison Ivy have been both opponents and partners at various times, and the hell Ivy had just put Catwoman through, and her sense of betrayal, is part of that punch.  And, of course, the Batman and Catwoman have had an on-again, off-again relationship, a  ... complicated ... relationship, which is beautifully depicted in that look and their unison response.

I'll mention two more.  (Not so much because I think I really need to give more examples, but because I love these so much!)  There's a story line in the Justice League in which the team is battling "white martians."  (Just go with it.)  Wonder Woman has taken the one she's fighting, Primaid, up into the stratosphere until the martian passes out from lack of air.  As she returns to earth, she says, "Can't believe how long she held her breath up there."  Green Lantern asks, "So how long can you hold your breath?"  "Obviously longer than Primaid."  Wonder Woman replies.  And then she adds, "What a strange question.  Why should anyone know how long they can hold their breath?"  Meanwhile, the Batman comes into the scene, pulling the martians he's defeated, and he just jumps into the others' conversation, saying, "Three minutes, fifteen seconds.  You'd be surprised why."

By far my favorite of these little, character moments comes in the last book of the incredible series Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Jim Lee.  (Trust me, if you read only one comic in your lifetime, let it be this one.  The story is wonderful, and the artwork is amazing.  Seriously.   Trust me.  Read this ... and then read Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.)

Anyway ... the story takes place in the future.  I won't spoil the story, but let's just say that there's world-threatening hell breaking out, and Superman flies into the Batcave, desperate for Batman's help.  Batman refuses, and begins to explain to Superman why.  When he's done with his speech he turns around and realizes that Superman had left, unnoticed.   (Something Batman is known for doing, much to people's consternation.)  The Batman returns to what he was doing, with a little smile on his face, saying to himself, "So that's what that feels like ..."

Great, right?

But why have I devoted an arguably overlong post to all of this?  Two reasons.  The first is that I really love this little moments and ... well ... wanted to share them.  And since I can't invite everyone over to my house to sit on the floor and read comics, this post will have to do!

The real reason, though, is that our lives are made up of such moments.  Oh, there are large dramas and full-on dance numbers from time to time.  Occasionally our lives require green screen or a team of stunt doubles.  Most of the time, though, it'a these little moments, things that others might not even notice, that matter most.  And like these moments in the comics, it takes some knowledge of the backstory, of the history, the context in which they happen, that gives these little details such emotional power.  Yet even for those who are living these lives, whose life experiences are the context, such little moments are nonetheless all too easily overlooked, far to easily disregarded as merely "filler" between The Really Important Things.

If we miss these moments, though, we miss our lives.  It's that simple.  So keep your eyes, and your ears, and your hearts open, my friends.  And when you become aware of being in one of these moments, in your own life or in the lives of those you love, take delight.  Paying attention to things like these is a little like knowing how long you can hold your breath.  You'd be surprised at how important it can be.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Can UUs Believe Anything We Want?

This is the text of a sermon (and preparatory remarks) delivered at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, May 3rd, 2015.  If you'd like, you can listen to the podcast.



Arthur Rashap's Preparatory Thoughts

“You are out of your mind!” “You are out of your mind!” Think of the times you have said that to others – or someone has said that to you. What did they mean? What did you mean? Probably, that what was said was not rationale. It didn’t make “sense” intellectually to your mind or to the mind of the person who said that to you.

The instructions for doing proper meditation practices these days involve being ‘mindful.’ And, if truly the goal is to let go, to release the involvement with getting lost in what was, with planning for the future – to ‘be here and now’ then wouldn’t a better instruction, a better practice be to be mindless?

Our topic for exploration today is ‘faith.’ In the Worship Weaver discussions with Rev. Erik, it was pretty hard to get our minds, our thoughts, around defining what faith is. When you walk into this Church, the pamphlet rack is full of brochures relating to the faith of a variety of religions and topics. As Erik will discuss, there is a big difference between what you believe and what you end up taking on faith.

About 11 years ago, I took a year-long course to become an Empowerment Trainer, with the goal to understand how to help guide participants in identifying goals in their lives and processes to achieve such goals – basically looking at the question: “if you could have your life exactly as you want it, what would it look like?” The basic process mirrored nature’s processes in producing a flower or a vegetable – clearing the ground, preparing it, planting the appropriate seed, nurturing it as it grows, removing the weeds, reacting to all those things that come up in the growing process, etc.

Looking back at my notes and to the page that fell open, here are some of the things I wrote:

“The less you do, the more you can accomplish. You need to bring in more of the right brain acknowledging that you still need your left brain to have the information for day-to-day living. The ‘knowing’ we are talking about here is having less of ego/personalization, and allowing other elements to enter and be present. The process is called: ‘getting out of the way.’ To really be empowered or empower another, you come from an implicit faith that the person herself knows the answers – that every human being knows what they need and want.

It is not for the leader, the teacher, the facilitor, the minister to ‘fix’ them. That is the saboteur, the devil in processing. Their function is one of midwifery – to bring into being the answers, the true life that lies within. The facilitator needs to be as empty as possible, while being actively engaged. Meeting the person exactly where they are, showing up to challenge them, to fix them, doesn’t work.

So how to work on our egos? To empty ourselves? To become mindless and take the leap into faith? To begin with, have a spiritual practice, whatever that may be. For a muscle to get strong, it needs exercise and the same goes for spirituality. The goal is to arrive at detached compassion, without this, life you grab you in any way. To become empty requires a lot, to have great courage and dedication.

Rumi wrote: Live at the empty heart of paradox. I will dance cheek to cheek with you there. Reality is a constant juxtaposition. Every system is so fraught with paradox, that you can easily lose your way.

Erik will be exploring this subject in his special way in a minute. Both he and I recently found we have been reading and enjoying the words and approach of a Franciscan Monk named Richard Rohr. He sends out daily meditations that I do recommend to you.

I have edited somewhat the meditation from this past Wednesday which he adopted from two of his books: Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer, and Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality:

"Spiritual Knowing Must Be Balanced by Not-Knowing"  As the Christian church moved from bottom to top, protected and pampered by the Roman Empire, a number of followers of Jesus and some early monks went off to the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria to keep their freedom and to keep growing in the Spirit. They found the Church's newfound privilege--and the loss of Jesus' core values--unacceptable.  It was in these deserts that a different mind called contemplation was first perfected and taught. They came to see that they could understand spiritual things properly through contemplation alone. The Desert Fathers and Mothers gave birth to what we call the apophatic tradition, knowing by silence, symbols, and not even needing to know with words. It amounted to a deep insight into the nature of faith that was eventually called the "cloud of unknowing" or the balancing of knowing with not needing to know.  Deep acceptance of what has been call “ultimate mystery” is ironically the best way to keep the mind and heart spaces always open and always growing. It really does "work"! Today scientists might call it moving forward by theory and hypothesis. This enables you to be always ready for the next new discovery.  Admittedly, we do need enough knowing to be able to hold our ground. And the offerings at this Church and in other involvements you have - do provide a container and structure in which you can safely acknowledge that you do know a bit, and in fact just enough to hold you until you are ready for a further knowing. In the meantime you happily exist in what some have called docta ignorantia or "learned ignorance." People in this state tend to be very happy and they also make a lot of other people happy. And we are all burdened by "know-it-alls." It is amazing how religion has turned this biblical idea of faith around to mean the exact opposite: into a need and even a right to certain knowing, complete predictability, and perfect assurance about whom God likes and whom God does not like. It seems we think we can have the Infinite Mystery of God in our quite finite pocket.  We know what God is going to say or do next, because we think our particular denomination has it all figured out. In this schema, God is no longer free but must follow our rules and our theology. If God is not infinitely free, we are in trouble, because every time God forgives or shows mercy, God is breaking God's own rules and showing shocking (but merciful) freedom and inconsistency! Perhaps Brother Rohr is suggesting that when it comes to faith, being ‘out of our mind’ is not such a bad thing.

RevWik's Reflections:
I’m sure that some of what Arthur just said would be very difficult for the average – or, at least, the stereotypical – Unitarian Universalist.  And I’m not talking about the explicit “God talk.”  “Cloud of Unknowing?”  “Balancing knowing with not needing to know?”  “Learned ignorance?”  Oh, we Unitarian Universalists – again, at least the stereotype of us Unitarian Universalist – really don’t do all that well with not knowing, not understanding, not at least trying to know and understand.  The search for truth and meaning and all that.

We are – historically, generally speaking – rationalists.  Many of us, if not most of us, believe most firmly, most strongly, in what we can see, hear, taste, and touch.  We like facts.  Hard facts.  [Like this pulpit here – solid.  Real.]  In this year’s Wednesday Wonderings group we’ve been reading our way through a book written in the late 1940s by the Universalist preacher Clinton Lee Scott, which he adapted from radio addresses he’d given.  The book’s title is Religion Can Make Sense – and his fundamental stance is that Universalism is a religion that “makes sense,” that is attuned to the world as it is, and by this he means the world as it is revealed to us by science and not as described in myth.

Yet today, because of science, we know that the “hard fact” of this real and solid pulpit is, in fact, not so hard at all.  What we perceive – see, hear, touch – to be solid is actually a swirling mass of energy with far more empty space in it than matter.  And the same is true of us.  We, too, are a concentration of energy, given solid form by perception, nothing more.  Science tells us that we live in a universe in which particles pop into and out of existence on a quantum foam, and where Schrödinger’s cat can be both alive and dead simultaneously.  What we perceive as empty space all around us is filled with molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide.  And there are light waves, infrared waves, radio waves, and as Richard Feynman said, all of these are really real.

So what do you believe – that this pulpit is solid and that this hand is solid and that each is distinct from the other, or that when I put this constellation of energy (my hand) on this swirling pool of energy (the pulpit) the distinctions between the two blur?  Do you believe that you are distinct, individuated, independent, or that you and I and all that is are dynamically and fundamentally interdependent, made of the very same stuff?

A Buddhist teacher once told me that the waves of the ocean each think themselves separate and unique, yet the ocean knows that there is nothing but ocean. What do you believe?

And I ask that both as something for you to ponder, and as a rhetorical device to lead us into the question I want us to explore this morning:  “Can a Unitarian Universalist believe anything she or he wants to?”  This is something that’s often said of us, you know.  “Unitarian Universalists … well … they can believe anything they want.”  We even say it of ourselves sometimes.  “One of the great things about being a UU is that you can believe anything you want!”  And it’s true to the extent that there is no Higher Authority dictating what we must believe in order to be a UU.  There is no creed or dogma to which we must assent to belong.

This, then, hardly seems like a topic worthy of our examination.  The answer is obvious!  Of course!  Of course a UU is free to believe whatever she or he wants to believe!

And yet …

And yet someone will usually come up with the retort, “But what about a member of the modern Nazi party, or a member of the Klu Klux Klan, or the Westboro Baptist Church?  Could they believe what they believe and still be welcome here?” 

Now that is precisely the kind of conundrum that, as the Oracle said to Neo, will really “bake your noodle.”  On the one hand, people in our faith tradition are freed from the necessity of believing any particular thing, yet it does seem as though we’re not open to just any thing a person might believe.  Where do we draw that line?  How do we draw that line?

How about someone who believes in shamanic journeying?  Of life after death?  Or multiple lives?  Or channeled teaching?  Would people with these beliefs be welcomed here?

How about that Jesus is not just a great guy who had some good ideas but was, in fact, a manifestation of God and that he not just was but still is?  Or that God is real?  Or that there is no such thing as that to which the word “God” is meant to point?

I can tell you from my direct experience that there are UUs, there are members of TJMC, who hold each one of these beliefs.  And I know of folks who think them extremely odd for doing so.  Can you believe anything you want to here?

Let’s step back for a moment and try to clear something up.  A lot of people conflate the ideas of belief, on the one hand, and faith, on the other.  A lot of people use the words interchangeably, as if they were synonyms.  “What is your faith?”  “I believe in God.”  “How strong is your faith?”  “I believe, I believe, I believe …”

The trouble is … they’re not the same thing.  Look at it this way: belief is an intellectual proposition, it’s something that you think; faith, on the other hand, is something that you do.  Faith is living in the world as if you believed what you say you believe.  Let me say that again:  faith is living in the world as if you believed what you say you believe.

There are people who say that they believe in God and that God will never give you more than you can handle, yet when things get rough they act as though there’s no way they could ever possibly handle all that’s come their way.  There are people who say that they believe people are fundamentally good, yet who feel more than a little anxious and, so, cross the street when the see a stranger coming toward them.  Belief is easy.  Faith is hard.

And it’s hard, at least in part, because our minds are smart enough to know that accidents can happen.  We know that we could be wrong about that thing we believe, whatever it is.  I had a philosophy professor who said that a philosopher can only say that she knows something when she is absolutely certain.  How often does that happen?  I mean not a doubt in the world, absolutely no possibility that you’re wrong, 100% solid? How often does that happen?    As a friend of mine used to say a lot, “you could always get hit by a bus on the way home.”

And so our protective little egos – which think that it’s their job to protect us from, I don’t know, death or, maybe even worse, looking foolish – our protective little egos throw up a dust storm of doubt just as we’re about to take that leap of faith.  And so we come to a screeching halt and find ourselves poised precariously at the peak of a precipice, and our sneaky little ego says, “I told you so.”  “You may not have faith,” it says to us a little later, “but at least you can content yourself with all the good things you believe.”

Putting your beliefs into practice.  Trusting your beliefs.  Living in the world as if you believed what you say you believe.  That, my friends, is faith.  And we’ve been told time and time again that faith can move mountains.

So how do we bypass our all-too rational egos so that we might take that leap?  Richard Rohr, in that passage Arthur read earlier, spoke of a kind of knowing that makes use of “silence, symbols, and not even needing to know with words.”  That’s a start.  Going even further, Arthur himself talked about how our being “out of our mind” might not be such a bad thing.  When I was writing my first book – Teacher, Guide, Companion – Mary Benard, the incredible editor I was blessed to have been working with, had a whole lot of suggestions for me of things I really ought to change.  She was usually right.  But I held my ground on one sentence, because I thought that poetry should trump grammar:

“… you must be willing to loose your mind [she’d wanted me to change that to “lose”], to loosen the vice grip of the sensible and rational in order to allow the imaginative and intuitive ways of knowing to come to bear.”

That “vice grip of the sensible and the rational” is what gets in the way for so many of us when we try to live into our faith.  Yet that’s exactly what we need to do.  Because faith trumps belief every time – it’s not our beliefs that matter, it’s the way we live our lives; it’s not what we think that counts most, it’s what we do.

During our newcomer orientations I often say that one of the things that makes Unitarian Universalism unique is that our first question isn’t, “what do you believe?”  Instead, we ask “what kind of world do you want to live in?”  We ask, “how do you – or how do you want to – live your life?”  In other words, we ask about your faith.

And it is our faith that brings us together – our faith that this is a beautiful world, and that all things that live on or in it are deserving of respect; our faith that love is strong and that we should reach out to others, ever widening the circle of inclusion; our faith in hope, that no matter how much to the contrary things might seem, there is always a way.

Can a UU believe anything she wants?  Of course, because to us the question of belief is merely interesting – a chance to get to know one another better and, perhaps, see the world through a different lens.  The real question, what matters to us most, the “so what” of all this is the vision of the world all these differing beliefs point us toward, and the ways we put our oh so lovely beliefs into action. 

None of us will do this perfectly.  I know I sure can’t.  Yet if none of us can then we each don’t have to worry so much whenever we, ourselves, get stuck on the edge, unable to leap.  And that’s why places like TJMC exist – so that we can help each other; and remind each other; and reach out to one another; and support, and celebrate, and encourage one another.  Be there for one another.

So please, own and honor your beliefs – whatever they are and however … odd … they might seem to me or to anyone else.  And then, with me, with us, try to put them into practice.  The world doesn’t need more believers but, rather, more people of faith.  May we, at least some of the time, be those people.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Farewell, Robin Williams

When I was young, I wanted to become a performer.  And I did, in more ways than not.  I've got a somewhat serious and steady gig these days -- every Sunday morning -- but in my day I was a juggler, a magician, an escape artist, a fire eater.  Truth is, though, each of those specialties was really an excuse to talk.  I have been for most of my life, and still am, a professional talker.

When I was a kid, one of my friends and I memorized every word of Woody Allen's Standup Comic album.  And, of course, I wore the grooves off my copy of Steve Martin's Let's Get Small.  And if you could watch videos of my earliest performances you'd be able to hear the rhythms and pacing of Bill Murray, something I consciously tried to copy.  But hands down, if I could have become a clone of anyone in those days, it'd have been Robin Williams.

I had never seen a comedic brain move more quickly.  (And never did, until I discovered Eddie Izzard.)  So fast.  So smart. A master, a true master. Thanks to my parents I was already familiar with Williams' hero Jonathan Winter, and I admired him tremendously.  But I loved Robin Williams.

This morning Robin Williams apparently committed suicide.  If someone as loved, as respected, as admired, as appreciated as this could give in to the suicidal urge, it is proof positive that that act has nothing to do with those things.  Looking in from the outside it can be so hard to see how someone who has "so much going for them" could find life unbearably painful or, perhaps worse, utterly meaningless. And yet, from this inside, those outside can seem to be speaking another language, or about someone else.

Williams' wife has said that she hopes people will not remember him for the way he died, but for the joy he gave others while he was alive.  I want to remember both.  Because the struggles he faced were real.  His suffering was real.  The depression, and the isolation, and the despair, and the meaningless, and the desperation, and the pain ... these were all real.

Yet so was the joy, and the wonder, and the child-like playfulness, and the intelligence, and the daring, and the compassion (and mischief) you could see in his eyes, and the appreciation of life that poured off of him ... these were real, too. 

And, I suppose, the most important thing to remember is that the were both true.  Those of us who know depression from the inside know it can be hard to see anything else about ourselves at times.  And yet many of us know that there are people who see us and can't believe we're depressed.  Both can be true in one and the same person, even at one in the same time.

So thank you, Robin Williams, for all the ways your life, your gifts, have impacted mine and the lives of millions of others.  You will be missed.  You will be remembered.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

R.I.P Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 ~ August 11, 2014)