Once More on Begging

Tomorrow is "Ash Wednesday," the beginning of the Christian period of Lent.  I have mentioned in other posts my love of St. Francis of Assisi, and this year I am very excited that both he and his soul friend St. Clare will be my guides and companions on a Lenten journey thanks to the book, Lent and Easter Wisdom From St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi by John V. Kruse.  For each of the coming forty days there is an excerpt from the writings of one or the other of these saints, a passage of Christian scripture, a prayer, and a suggested action.  I am very excited about this.

I'm also reading (yet another) biography of Francis, this one called Francis:  the journey and the dream by Murray Bodo.  It's a beautifully imaginative telling of the life of Francis by a Franciscan priest and poet.  Absolutely lovely.  And apropos of my recent posts about begging and homelessness, I found these words worth sharing:

Francis had noticed from the beginning that when he went begging, especially, very few people looked into his eyes.  They seemed always to avoid eye contact, either from embarrassment or fear or contempt.  There were, of course, the few bright-eyed, often people whose eyes were surely the lamps of their whole selves radiating love and goodness and trust.

It was marvelous how people became who they really were once you reached out your hand to them in the gesture of the beggar.  Even the insight into people head had gained in his father's shop paled when compared to what he learned begging in the streets of Assisi.  So often the veneer of respectability would be sloughed off and something like a monster would emerge, cursing and destroying you with the venom of words and gestures.  It was an experience only beggars understood.

This morning I saw my friend Shaggy again after not having seen him for several weeks.  I asked him how he was doing and he said, "Ah, you know.  I'm standing here watching people walk past me."  He know.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Change

When I was a kid there was this dinosaur with a really long neck called a Brontosaurus.

There was a planet named Pluto -- the ninth and last of the planets.  And only Saturn had a ring.

The major threat to the United States was the great and powerful USSR.  A wall -- and even more solid idology -- separated East Berlin from West Berlin and the Eastern and Western worlds from each other.

Today, the Brontosaurus no longer raises his head high into the sky -- paleontologists think that it's long neck stayed lower to the ground.  And it's no longer called Brontosaurus -- it's now Apatosaurus, thank you very much.

Pluto is now a "dwarf planet" and part of the Kuiper Belt.  And all of the outer planets have rings now.

The Soviet Union disintegrated into its component parts, and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.  (I have a few pieces of it in my workroom, chiseled from the wall in those first heady days.)

And now it seems inevitable that I will live to see the full and equal recognition of same-gender relationships, as the Freedom to Marry movement sweeps across the country. 

And America has elected its first African American -- or, more accurately, multiracial -- President, a man whose wife is a descendent of enslaved Africans.

And now we've seen -- and I predict will be seeing for some time -- radical changes in the Middle East.  Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya,  . . . this seems to be just the beginning.

Is anyone else feeling that we're living in a rather historic period?

I find myself praying.  A lot.  Praying for peace.  Praying for change.  Praying for hopes to be realized.  I think of the marvelously beautiful prayer/poem from the Christian scriptures, the Magnificat, and find myself echoing its vision.

In Gassho,

RevWik

I Don't Know

The last sermon I preached while the settled preacher in Yarmouth, Maine was titled, "Everything I've Said Was Wrong."  In this sermon I looked back over eleven years of preaching and tried to show how every single thing I'd said from that pulpit was as wrong as it had ever been right; that the words we use to describe the ineffible are, by the nature of the task itself, going to be short of the mark.

I was really proud of that sermon -- proud of the intellectual and spiritual humility I believed it demonstrated, proud to see those words on the sign board out in front of the church as if they summed up my ministry.  And, in a sense, they did, although I'll confess that I put a lot of thought into the sermon that showed that my thoughts had been wrong, and the idea of being proud of your humility is a bit of a head scratcher.

This morning my friend James Ishmael Ford -- who is both a Unitarian Universalist minister and a Zen priest and teacher -- wrote a really fantast piece on his blog.  In it he said,

"[D]on’t know.


For heaven’s sake don’t know.

It is the universal solvent to all human ills.

Doesn’t mean give up.

It means don’t know. Really don’t know, right down to the soles of your feet."

Now I know all about the Zen concept of "Don't Know Mind," and have always advocated it myself.  I think that that's partly what I was trying to point to and embrace in that sermon.  Yet I was reminded again this morning of this advice and saw more clearly than I have in a while just how hard it is to put into practice.

And I mean, I want to be clear, how hard it is for me to put into practice.  I can remember the summer I first learned to juggle.  Or, to be more precise, the summer I was first taught to juggle.  Now, in the years since I have used exactly the same technique to teach a couple of thousand people how to do the basic three-ball cascade that is the foundation of most juggling.  I can teach you in an hour and, if you practice for fifteen minutes each day, you'll be juggling solidly by the end of the week.  I can say this with some certainty because I've done it so often.

Yet that summer that my friend Donna Hunt tried to teach me I just couldn't get it.  No matter what, I couldn't pick it up.  Forget the one-hour lesson, she tried for days and weeks . . . nothing.

I've come to realize that at the camp where this was all taking place I had something of a reputation.  I was a magician and a clown.  Everyone assumed that something like this should come easy to me; that I'd be a natural.  And, so, for psychological reasons of my own, I developed a real block.  I didn't want to not-know how to do this and, so, I was unable to learn.

I've seen that in other situations in my life, too.  (And I've heard about it in the lives of many of the people I've talked with over the years.)  Not-knowing requires a willingness to be a beginner, to risk appearing less than.  If I don't-know, why would anybody want to listen to my sermons (or read my blog)?  If I don't-know, how will I demonstrate my worth (having grown up so valuing intellect and knowledge)?  If I don't-know, how will I gain status, or prestige, or respect, or . . .?

And yet, not-knowing is the only way to learn.  (Unless you embrace your not-knowing you'll never have any room inside for learning anything.)  And, truth be told, not-knowing is pretty much the real state of things anyway, just as not-in-control is.  (But that might be the subject of another blog sometime.)

So todayt I'm thankful for James' reminder of the importance of not-knowing, "right down to the soles of your feet."

In Gassho

RevWik

Wondering About Worship

I've been thinking a lot about worship lately.

That may not seem like such a surprise, given that my job at the headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations is Director of the Office of Worship and Music Resources.  If I'm not thinking about worship . . . well . . . then . . . what am I doing?

Yet recently three things have come together to get me, perhaps, not so much thinking about worship as wondering about it.  Pondering.  First, I've just finished reading a fascinating book by Laurene Beth Bowers, Designing Contemporary Congregations:  strategies to attract those under 50.  This book has both affirmed some of the things that I thought -- and did -- while a parish minister and challenged others of them.  (I like that in a book!)  It's got me wondering about this thing we do week after week and how/why we do it so that it is both meaningful and relevant to folks living in the world today.  Not just its content, but its form -- its location, its time, the liturgical elements, who participates and how . . . everything.  If we were creating it today, rather than continuing it from yesterday, what would it be like?  (Next on my reading list, Emerging Worship:  creating worship gatherings for new generations by Dan Kimball!)

And then, thanks to my serving on the editorial board of Skinner House Books, I've also just recently read the manuscript for a book on the theology of preaching that's being considered for publication.  The author uses Ralph Waldo Emerson's well known Divinity School Address of 1838 as a touchstone, and essentially asks what it could mean in the twenty-first century to be a "newborn bard of the [Spirit]"?  There is a lot to chew on in this manuscript -- it was the author's D.Min. project -- and it's got me pondering, too.  What makes Unitarian Universalist preaching and worship distinctly Unitarian Universalist?  And what makes it, again, meaningful and relevant in this day and age?

These aren't, of course, new questions.  One of my favorite expressions of it goes like this:

“Is it possible to create a form of worship so wide in its humanity, so inclusive in its symbolism, its resources in art, literature, and music, that it can encompass the whole drama of [humankind’s] religious quest?”  The author goes on to note, “We are a very young religion, without the rituals and traditions of most of the other religions of the world.  We are still seeking our true voice and rightful manner in celebration.  This we cannot find without experiments in worship.”

These words were written by the Rev. Kenneth L. Patton, and come from his book A Religion for One World:  art and symbols for a universal religion.  [I don't want too digress too far, but I feel it important to note that Patton was careful in his use of language.  He was not interested in creating "a one world religion," which would be a syncrtistic religion supplanting all others.  Rather, he was interested in upholding what he understood Universalism -- and, then, Unitarian Universalism -- to already be:  a religion for people who understood themselves to be "citizens of one world," members first of the same human family.]

The picture above is a view of the sanctuary of the Charles Street Meeting House in Boston, circa 1960.  This was the congregation that Ken Patton was called to lead, and it was designed as something of a laboratory to address the question -- what would authentically Universalist (or Unitarian Universalist) worship in the modern age look like?  One answer was found in their renovated sanctuary, which placed the congregation in a circle around an inlayed map of the earth (because their concern encircled the whole world), and between the painting of the Andromeda Galaxy at one end of the sanctuary and a mobile of the atom that hung at the other (because humans reside between the atoms and the stars).  The pulpit was moveable -- because there was no single locus of authority -- and the sancturary was literally surrounded by symbols, sacred texts, and art that reflected humanity's on-going search for meaning.

This picture hangs on the wall in front of the desk in my office.  It reminds me of what is possible, even while the majority of our congregations still look more or less like the churches of the Protestant tradition from which we sprang and, if we're being honest with one another, act more or less like them too.  (Although the content may be different, the forms are so often nearly indistinguishable.)  Patton's question hangs there too -- what makes Unitarian Universalist worship specifically, uniquely, Unitarian Universalist?

The third thing that's got me pondering on all of this is that, as I noted last week, I'm looking to return to parish ministry in the fall.  My time thinking about worship -- and helping others to do so -- is drawing to a close and it'll soon be time to be doing it again.  Now, I know full well that wherever I land will already have its own patterns and practices, its own structures and forms, its own history and culture.  These will have helped to make it the congregation that it is -- and the congregation it is will be, after all, what will have attracted me to them and made them think that I would be a good fit.

Yet I'm hoping that this congregation -- wherever it turns out to be -- will be willing to see itself as a laboratory, will be willing to ask the questions and explore the answers, will be willing to risk seeing what the future might really be holding.

So I find myself pondering . . . what is and what could be; the answers we've already found and the questions that still want asking; the needs and desires of the people who are here and those of the people who are yet "outside;"  the intersections of the potential, the possible, the problematic, and the promising.

I'm looking forward to the fall.

In Gassho,

RevWik

You Are Love

The revelation came to me abruptly.  It was a moment of grokking.  An epiphany.

I was putting my youngest son to bed and saying the things I often say when putting one of my boys to bed -- that I love him.  A lot.  More than anything.  More than everything put together.  More than he could imagine.  And that somehow, mysteriously, tomorrow I'd love him even more.

At that moment I had one of those experiences like in the movie Matrix when Keanu Reeves had the entire human knowledge set about kung fu downloaded into his mind at once -- I had an instantaneous on-rushing of images, ideas, and intuitions which led to a powerful realization:  We are love. 

It'll take some upacking.

First, I thought of the expanding universe as an illustration for my son of the way I can say I'll love him more tomorrow without implying that I love him any less today.  The universe, today, consists of all there is and yet this all-there-is-universe is continuously expanding.  Tomorrow it will be bigger than it is today.  Yet today it isn't really any less than it will be tomorrow -- it is still all-that-there-is.  It's just that tomorrow it will be a bigger all-that-there-is.  So in the first microsecond I apprehended that this would be a good metaphor for the love I have for my children.

Right on top of this came the classic three-word expression of Universalist theology -- "God is love."

This was followed -- although no time passed between these thoughts -- by the question, "What if the universe is the manifested expression of God's love?"  I have a friend and colleague who likes to use the term, "tangibilify" -- what if the universe is God's love tangibilified?  What if the universe is, if you will, the "incarnation" of God's love?

I've always liked the creation story J.R.R. Tolkien wrote for his mythological world of Middle Earth.  In it, Ilúvatar, the One, sets forth a chord from which the Ainur (think "angels") begin to weave a melody.  It's a great story -- you'll find it inThe Silmarillion -- but in the end, Ilúvatar tells the Ainur to look upon what they have sung, and it turns out that they have literally sung the universe into being. 

If the universe could be the "song of the Ainur" made manifest, why couldn't it be the manifestation of God's love?  Certainly if I tried to create something to represent and give expression to the love I feel for my wife and kids it might well turn out to be something as astonishing as the Cat's Eye Nebula and the Grand Canyon.

So in no time at all I went from the idea that the expanding universe makes a good metaphor for the expanding love I feel for my kids, to the idea that God is love, to the idea that the universe is the tangible expression/manifestation of God's love.

The final step was when I thought that, literally, we are all made of star dust, that all matter in the cosmos shares the same origins in the primordial elements that flared forth in the big bang some 13.7 billion years ago.  Everything that is, comes from the "dust" of the stars and, so, in a very real and concrete way, we are all related.  And we human beings, you and I, as the poem Desiderata puts it, "have a right to be here . . . no less than the trees and the stars," because we are quite literally the children of those stars and kin to the trees.

And if the universe is the created, manifested expression of God's love -- and we are made of the same stuff as the universe -- then we, too, are the created manifested expression of God's love.  Literally then -- we are love.  Not simply loved.  Not merely capable of loving.  We -- you and I -- are love itself materialized, incarnated, made real.  And just as it can truly be said that each beat of our hearts is an echo of the Big Bang so, too, can it be said that each one of our actions is -- or, at least, can be -- an echo of Love.

Think about that for a while and see how the rest of your day goes.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Another Danger

Last week I wrote about the danger that's lurking in notion that we should not be striving for "perfection."  Rather, it's often said these days, we should recognize that we are works in progress and that our attempts -- our "trying" -- is enough.  The Twelve Step movement talks about focusing on "progress not perfection," and that's well and good as long as there is, indeed, progress.  If we're honest with ourselves, though, it's all too easy to let ourselves loose sight of the goal when we don't make attaining the goal our goal.  That's the danger, that we'll settle for trying and that that will make it too easy for us to slip into not trying.

There is an analogous danger that I've seen often among those of us with a "liberal religious" bent.  I've known it myself firsthand.  We note that, as it's often said, there are many paths up the mountain to God and no one path is necessarily "better" than another.  We recognize, and I believe rightly, that the spiritual journey takes many forms and that no one can say "this one way is THE way for all people for all time."

At the same time, we emphasize that the goal of the journey is not as important as the journey itself.  As I once put it, it doesn't really matter if you get to the top of the mountain or not.  God is the mountain, as much at the base as at the summit.  As long as you are on the journey, you have already arrived.  (This is why the great Zen masters have said that to sit on your cushion is to attain enlightement.)

And yet . . .

Once again we come to that, and yet . . .

I have noticed that this kind of thinking can lead to a spiritual laziness in which we either stand around in the crossroads admiring all the various paths there are and congratulating ourselves on our enlightened understanding that any of them could get us where we want to go, or else we take a rest at some scenic overlook, knowing that we needn't hurry to arrive at our destination, yet somehow never quite get up and get moving again.

Note this point -- no one ever said that the journey isn't important.  The journeying.  Standing still isn't enough.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Trying is Trying

I wrote on Wednesday about a new two-part resolution of mine -- from now on in my preaching I won't tell people to do things that I, myself, am not doing and won't spend so much time telling people what to do (or not do).

I've continued thinking about this because, as I said the other day, this is a whole lot of what most people think preaching is all about.  If I take this off the table, what's left?  Well, I suppose, we could explore together those things that we ought to be trying to do.  I remember hearing a Buddhist monk once talking about the sense of overwhelming dread she felt as she approached the day she was to take her vows.  "How can I vow to be mindful?" she said.  "How can I vow to be equanimous?"  There was no way, she thought, that she could promise to do those things, and so she couldn't see how she could take her vows.

And then, she said, one day she realized that the vow was not to be mindful but to "practice mindulfness."  Not to be equanimous, but to "practice equanimity."  She would only be promising to try and that, she realized with great relief, she could most certainly do.

To try.  And here I see a solution to the challenge offered by the story of Gandhi refusing to tell a young boy to give up sugar until he, Gandhi, had first done so.  Here is a solution to the challenge I gave myself of only being able to preach to the congregation about things I, myself, am already doing.  I could, instead, allow myself to include the things I am trying to do; to explore those goals I am trying to attain; those practices I am trying to make a part of my life and living.

And yet . . .

And yet there is, I think, a danger here.  My spiritual guide, the great Jedi Master Yoda, once famously said, "Do or not do.  There is no try."  "Trying" can -- and I want to emphasize that it can -- provide too easy a way out, too comfortable an escape route.  "I'm only trying to do this."  Yet even trying is doing -- you have to actively do something to be trying to do something.  You have to be trying.  And yet how easy is it for us, if we allow ourselves to think of our efforts as "only trying" to soon begin letting ourselves off the hook when we don't feel well, or the weather's bad, or it's just too inconvenient?  How easy is it for us to watch "trying" turn into "not trying?" 

From my own experience, I'll admit, it's all too easy.

And, so, maybe Yoda is right.  (And when was he ever wrong?)  Maybe there is no such thing as "try."  There is only "do or not do."  Because even our attempts at something are something we must do.

In Gassho,

RevWik

My Life is My Message

I have long loved this quote from Mohandas Ghandi.  He is reported to have said it in response to someone asking him to sum up his message in a succinct way.  "My life is my message," was his reply.  And so, in a very true and deep way, it was.

"Generations to come will not believe that such a man as this, in flesh and blood, did walk upon the earth."  That's what Albert Einstein said at the end of Gandhi's life.  He could tell that someday, people would imagine that they were listening to legends when they heard about his life.  Perhaps somebody said something similar about St. Francis.  Or Jesus.

But I was recently reminded of Ghandi when my colleague Peter Bowden used a story from Gandhi's life as a starting point for a marvelous piece in his own UU Growth Blog.  The story he used was of the time a woman brought her son to Gandhi, asking him to tell the boy to stop eating sugar because it is so unhealthy.  Surely the boy would listen to Gandhi-ji.  Gandhi said that he would do it, but asked her to bring the boy back to him in three days.  Three days later the mother and son returned, and when the boy was brought before him Gandhi simply said, "stop eating sugar.  It's bad for you."  The mother said, "Why couldn't you have said that to him when we were here three days ago?"  Gandhi replied, "Because three days ago I was still eating sugar."

I like what Peter did with this story, but I found it taking me to a different place.  How many of the sermons I've preached over the years should I have really put off preaching for a metaphorical three days until I'd taken there message fully to heart?  (How many would I still not be able to preach by this standard?)  As I prepare to return to the pulpit in the fall, I'd like to keep the following two principles in mind:

• Don't tell people to do things that I, myself, am not doing
• Don't spend a lot of time telling people what to do

The first principle is pretty obvious, in the context of the story, but the second one . . .  Isn't that what most people think preaching's all about?  Well, I don't think I did a lot of that in the congregations I've served thus far -- at least not directly and explicitly -- because we Unitarian Universalists aren't the kind of people who take well to being told what to do by some kind of external authority.  Yet, if I'm honest, I'll bet that over the years I've indicated and implied paths that I, myself, rarely if ever dare to tread.  I'd like to think not, but I'm sure it's true.

And so in this next time 'round I want to be more careful.  I want to hold my own feet to the proverbial fire even more than the congregation's.  I would like, when my time in the professional ministry is done, to be able to answer, should anyone care to ask me to sum up the message I'd delivered, that my life was my message too.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Some Inspiration for Valentine's Day

Recently, a friend of mine hooked me up with this very inspiring story from the instersection of the worlds of Texas football and Christianity:

When I first saw this I was moved, deeply moved.  Remember, this took place in the world of Texas football where they're serious about their football.  To root for the other team?  Well, that really took something.  And to ask people -- anyone, anywhere -- to step out of their comfort zones and do something out of the ordinary?  Lots of risks involved here.

Yet, really, in the grand scheme of things, you could say that this was a tiny gesture.  So the story is that such a tiny gesture could make such a huge difference in the lives of these kids from Gainesville State, the prison's school.  In fact, when I posted this video to FaceBook, one of my friends commented immediately that this one "unselfish act" on the part of the Faith Academy families could be a "defining moment" in the lives of these kids.

And maybe she's right.  It certainly seems like it was a powerful thing.

But I'll tell you what I'm interested in.  I'm actually more interested in how it changed the lives -- if it changed the lives -- of those parents and those kids from Grapevine Faith.  They had learned the Gainesville kids' names -- do they remember them?  Or have they forgotten them?  Was it one unselfish act, or was it the beginning of something?

And what about those of us who've watched the video?  What kind of moment has it been in our lives?

It's easy to see those kids and all they had to gain from this experience.  From my position of privilege it's easy to listen to this story and see the gifts going one way.  But that's not the way Love works . . . that's never the way Love works.

In Gassho,

RevWik

To The Least of These, part 2

Yesterday I wrote about a link that I've been thinking about for some time between the homeless people on our streets who beg for their livelihood and the monks and holy people in every religious traditions who have chosen poverty and begging as a way of life.  I said that I'd been reading about the life of St. Francis and found that even these holy beggars were often ridiculed and reviled.  The question I left hanging at the end was, why?

I suggested in an even earlier piece that one way of looking at the poor and homeless is that they have a job -- an incredibly difficult job.  They remind society that life isn't fair.  That, "there but for the Grace of God go I."  Or you.  That, in the words of the folksinger Greg Brown, "No matter how we plan and rehearse, we're at pink slip's mercy in a paper universe."  Or, as an old friend used to say, "that's why they call it life and not picnic."

Most of us walk around most of the time doing all that we can -- both consciously and unconsciously -- to ensure (or, at least, to convince ourselves) that things will be okay .  We want to believe that, like a fairy tale, there will be a happy ending and that, like a sitcom, even the most difficult situations will work themselves out in the end.  We want security, and we're willing to settle for the appearance of security.

But beggars threaten this.  Those who choose their life of poverty and want are a threat because they call into question my sense that I "need" to be so secure -- and, of course, can cause me to wonder about all the things that I give up to gain my semblance of security.  Those who have their poverty "thrust upon them," as it were, are threatening, too, because they show me that it may not actually be up to me -- one catastrophic illness, one layoff, one bad break and I could watch my carefully constructed house of cards come crashing down around me.

Now . . . the mystics and spiritual teachers who choose, as Francis called it, "Lady Poverty," do so because they believe that the rest of us need to see these facts -- that life isn't fair and that our so-called security isn't as secure as we work so hard to convince ourselves that it is.  They also want us to see that, if that's indeed true, perhaps we don't need to work so hard at building a house of cards but, rather, could put our energy into creating Beloved Community instead . . . something that is real, and enduring. 

Yet some of us are so afraid.  We hang on so tightly to the things we're afraid to lose and, so, must attack those who threaten us.  And so we mock (and worse) those who need us the most.  People like my friends Shaggy, Mike, Jim, and Brother John.  People like St. Francis, and St. Clare, and Brother Juniper.  But it might be worth remembering that in the Christian tradition, God identified himself with the poor and the homeless -- Jesus described himself as having "no place to lay his head," and taught that while all women and men should be seen as our kin, it is by our behavior to "the least of these" that we will be most truly judged.  (Matthew 25: 35-40)

In Gassho,

RevWik

To the Least of These

I saw Shaggy this morning.  He's one of the four homeless men I pass regularly on my walk to the office in Boston whose name I've learned and who I've gotten to know a bit.  There's Michael, Jim, Shaggy, and Brother John.  I rarely carry cash so I don't often have any money for them, but I do stop and talk with them and try to give them what I can -- recognition and respect.  I've learned a lot from them about what it's like to live on the streets.

I've written previously ("Get A Job?  They've Got One Thanks.") about how frustrated I get when I hear people denegrate the poor, the jobless, the homeless by calling them "lazy," or "unmotivated," and telling them derisively to, "get a job."  I wrote,

"[W]hen I look through [the spiritual] lens I see people who remind me -- who remind us all -- that the world is far from fair. That those of us living comfortable lives do not represent the vast majority of people on the planet and that part of our comfort comes at the cost of their discomfort. They remind me that there is want and misery and pain and that, as Jesus himself is remembered as saying, "the poor shall always be with you." These people I pass each day put a human face on that proverb."

 Recently I've been reading about the life of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the great Christian saints.  He choose a life of extreme austerity, and made his living by begging for his daily food.  He made that the way of his Order.  Holy women and men in other traditions, as in the photo of Buddhist monks above, have also included this as part of their spiritual practice.

I understand that the intentional adoption of begging as a spiritual practice has two primary foci -- for the person who begs, it is a practice of humility and of trust.  I remind myself that I am not the be-all and end-all of things, and allow myself to be taken care of by others -- be at their mercy, in fact.  I remind myself that without the care of others I am nothing.  "We need one another" means, put in terms we hardly ever use in our culture, that I need you.

And for the person who gives, there is the benefit of allowing for the experience of generosity and freedom.  I could be afraid that whatever I give away is less that I will have for myself and, so, be tied to my possessions.  But when I give to one who begs I remind myself of my own innate freedom and allow my inherent generosity to blosson.

This seems so clear.  So obvious.  So beautiful, really.  Why, then, the disdain heaped upon those like my friends Shaggy, Michael, Jim, and Brother John?  It's not a new phenomena of our modern society, if that's what you're thinking.  As I said, I've been reading the biography of St. Francis, and he and his brothers were ridiculed and reviled because of their choice to become beggars.  They were considered madmen, and worse.  (In some of the stories the men say that it's because of the scorn that would be heaped upon them that they embraced such a life, but that's another story.)  Tomorrow I'll explore a possible explanation.

In Gassho,

RevWik

On Creativity

I was thinking about creativity last night, and looking through some old sermons for some source materials for something I was working on, when I came upon this:

Apparently, when St. Petersburg was being laid out in the early eighteenth century the town planners faced the problem of the many large boulders brought by a glacier from Finland that had to be removed.

 

And there was a particularly large rock in the path of one of the principal avenues that had been planned, so bids were solicited for its removal. All were very high, which was understandable because, in the early eighteenth century, there was no heavy equipment like front-end loaders and back hoes and there were no high-powered explosives. As the officials pondered what to do, a peasant presented himself and offered to get rid of the boulder for a much lower price than anyone else had said possible. Since they had nothing to lose, they officials gave him the job.

 

The next morning the peasant showed up with a crowd of other peasants carrying shovels. They began digging a hole next to the rock. They carefully propped up the rock with timbers to prevent it from rolling into the hole. All afternoon they dug, with a curious crown gathering because they seemed to be making the problem worse—not only was there a huge bolder in the way of the street construction, but now there was an ever-growing hole as well. Undetered, the peasants continued digging, and when the hole was deep enough, the timbers were removed and the rock dropped into the hole below the street level. It was then covered with dirt, the excess dirt was easily carted away, and the construction of St. Petersburgh could continue.  [This story was in Bits & Pieces, October 15, 1992, pp. 9-10.]

 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I would have been that peasant. Oh, I’d like to be, and I try, sometimes I come close, but most of the time I don’t “rearrange what I know in order to find out what I do not know” (as George Kneller, a professor of the philosophy of education, defines creative thinking).  Most of the time I don’t live my life creatively, and that’s too bad because over and over again I find myself coming up against bolders that are too large to move out of my way, problems that appear insoluable because I’m looking for a particular kind of answer. Over and over again I find myself spending more than I need to of my emotional, intellectual, and spiritual capital to overcome a block in my life because I can’t see past the most obvious approach.

 

In his book A Whack on the Side of the Head, Roger von Oech lists ten ideas that block creativity: 

1. The idea that there is a “right” answer—knowing that, or assuming that, there is a “right” answer has kept many people from finding the solution to their problem;
2. The idea that “That's not logical”—apparently the guy who invented Nike shoes began by simply wondering what would happen if he poured rubber into his waffle iron;
3. The idea that you must follow the rules
4. The idea that you must be practical
5. The idea that you must, at all costs, avoid ambiguity
6. The idea that “to err is wrong”—I once heard a colleague say that ministers had to become better at “conducting funeral services for ideas” because far too many churches were so afraid of having an idea fail that they rarely tried anything new; I think that that could apply beyond churches . . . ;
7. The idea that play is frivolous—it is so easy to get so serious about problem solving, but I’ve heard that Albert Einstein said that he knew his theory of relativity was right not just because all of the formula worked out but because it was “beautiful;”
8. The idea that “that's not my area”—I remember reading that Thomas Edison credited his success with figuring out how to create the filiment for his lightbulb to the fact that he knew nothing about metallurgy so that he didn’t know that what he was trying to do couldn’t be done;
9. The idea that we shouldn’t be foolish;
10. And, probably, the biggest stumbling block of them all, the idea that “I'm not creative.”

 And here the example of so many of our experiences with the creative arts can illuminate a wider field. “I can’t sing;” “I can’t paint;” “I can’t draw;”—these mantras have kept literally millions of people from exploring and expressing their own creativity. What’s sad is that the unspoken half of these ideas is what gives them their power, yet they are also the half that is relatively easily debated. What we really mean when we say “I can’t sing” or “I can’t paint” is that “I can’t sing like Ella Fitzgerald,” and “I can’t paint like Georgia O’Keefe.” Of course not. No one can. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t sing or paint like Erik Wikstrom. (A freind once confessed about going to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and seeing some of O’Keefe’s paintings and thinking, “these really aren’t very good. The only reason that they’re hanging in this museum is because they were done by Georgia O’Keefe.” Even O’Keefe, it seems, can’t always paint like O’Keefe!)

 

If creativity, whether in the traditional arts or the art of living, is about looking “afresh at what we normally take for granted” (George Kneller again) and “breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way” (Edward De Bono, an expert in creative thinking, puts it), then that is something we can all do. It might take some work; it might involve some intentionality; but the sculptor Pegot Waring was right, “Creative imagination is given to everyone, [even though] most [people] do not realize that they possess it.”

 

In Gassho,

RevWik

Wondering Through the Bible

Several years ago my wife and I learned about Edgar Cayce, famous in his day as "America's Sleeping Prophet."  His was a truly fascinating life, and I'm sure that now that I've brought him up I'll get around to blogging about him at some point.  But what makes me think about him today was his habit of reading through the full Bible annually, year after year after year.  I was so inspired at the time that I purchased a copy of The One Year Bible, which takes the Christian Scriptures and divides it up so that there is a reading (Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, Proverbs, and Psalm) for each day of the year that will, over the course of the year, take you consecutively from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 21:27.

I've already done this once or twice.  I recently decided that 2011 seemed like a good year to do it again.

Now, why would one want to read the entire Christian Bible from cover to cover?  Isn't there a lot of excess and repetition in there and things entirely irrelevant to life in the 21st century?  (After all, wasn't Reader's Digest able, when it came out with its version of the Bible in 1982, to cut the New Testament by approximately 25% and the Old Testament by a whopping 55%?)  And for somebody, like me, who grew up within the Christian tradition(s), don't I already know pretty much what the thing's about anyway?

Well, yes and no.  I must say that I'm only on my fourth day of reading -- I started on 1/1/11 -- but I've already come across some fascinating things that I've never noticed before.  You see, I'm reading with an eye open for surprises, with a wondering perspective -- "why does it say that?  what could this mean?"  Some day I may find myself learning Greek and Hebrew so that I can go even deeper with this, but for now even reading in translation has revealed some wonderful things to wonder about.  Here are a few:

• In Genesis 3:22, after Adam and Eve have eaten that apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and, then, been discovered by God, God says, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”  Yet back in Genesis 2:16 God had said, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”  Does this mean that it would have been okay for Adam and Eve to have eaten from the Tree of Life?  God had only forbidden them from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that makes it sound like the Tree of Life was okay.  How things might have turned out differently . . .
• Genesis 5 begins like this (1-3):  "This is the written account of Adam’s family line. When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind”when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth."  Two questions here -- first, what does it mean that Adam and Eve were "made in the image, the likeness of God," while Seth was made in the likeness and image of Adam?  Second, this wasn't said of Adam's first children -- Cain and Abel.  Why not?
• In Genesis 9:4, after Noah (and company) have left the ark, God commands, "But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being."  I'm intrigued with this statement that God will demand an accounting from every human being and from every other animal.  Is this the answer to the classic question, do animals have souls?

These may not seem like very weighty issues.  Not when there are hungry people living on the streets, and the devistation of disesase and natural disasters causing untolled suffering, and people wondering how they're going to make it past the next paycheck, or through their divorce, or . . .

And yet, the Christian Bible -- like the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita, the Three-fold Lotus Sutra -- is an attempt by our forebears to wrestle with "the twin facts of being alive and having to die."  It is one of humanities depositories of wisdom.  Reading it with a wondering eye, asking questions, looking for meanings, is one way of continuing the exploration that our forebears began.

That seems like a worthwhile use of time in 2011.

In Gassho,

RevWik

If You'[re Going To Put The Christ In Christmas . . .

I have been getting tired of hearing myself say some of the same things over and over and over again.  As the so-called "right wing" of our political scene rallies against what the decry as the "liberal socialist agenda," and latch on to phrases like "redistribution of wealth" as though these were bad things, I often notice that these folks are often the same ones who claim to be Christian and say that this was -- and should be again -- a "Christian Nation."

And I find myself asking, "Have they ever read The Book?"

Because in the Bible that I read, there are passages that make the most radical proposals in play today look weak and timid.  In the book of Leviticus there is described a plan known as "the year of jubilee," in which all slaves were to be freed, all debts were to be forgiven, and all land was to be returned to its original owners.  What would that do to our economic system today?

In the book of Matthew, Jesus is rememberd as saying that the Kingdom of Heaven will be like a place where the owner of a vineyard goes out in the early morning and hires workers, arranging with them a fair salary for a day's work.  Throughout the day, the owner goes out and hires more workers, telling them only that he'd do right by them.  At the end of the day, he pays everyone the same amount -- from the ones who'd worked all day to the ones who'd only been there for the last hour.

In the book of Acts we're told that the earliest Christians lived communally, combining all their possessions so that everyone might have all that they needed and that no one might be in want.

If these right wing folks want this to be a Christian Nation, I say over and over again, then how about getting behind some of the things that the God of the Christian Bible makes pretty clear a priority.  (Read the well-known "Magnificat" of Mary if you have any question what the whole thing's supposed to be about.)

I was recently overjoyed to hear someone else sounding this same call:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog March to Keep Fear Alive

Thanks, Stephen.

In Gassho,

RevWik

I Have Some Idea Where I Am Going Thanks To You

Today, December 10th 2010, is the forty-second anniversary of the death of the Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton.  The Trappists are traditionally a silent order, yet Merton's voluminous writings continue to inspire generations of seekers -- Catholic and non-Catholic alike.  Although many of his works seem dated now, and certainly his language could be more inclusive, Merton had a way of getting to the heart of things which still speaks to people, and his willingness to see past dogma and doctrine to what one might dare call "spirit and truth" is still inspiring. 

When Merton met the then relatively unknown Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh he declared that he had more in common with him than he did with most Catholics, because in this fellow contemplative monastic he recognized someone who'd gone deeper than the surface and found the place where all was One.  (It didn't bother Merton that for Christians it was all One Presence while for Buddhists it was all One Emptiness; it didn't bother Nhat Hanh either.  They both recognized that they'd had similar experiences of life's essential and underlying Oneness.)

One of my favorite prayers -- and I've written about it before -- was first uttered by Thomas Merton.  He published it in his book Thoughts in Solitude, an excellent book and well worth reading.  In my own book on prayer, Simply Pray, I confess that I think this prayer of Merton's is more perfect than the so-called "Lord's Prayer."  It speaks so eloquently and so clearly to the situation in which I so often find myself, and it manages to both challenge me and comfort me at the same time:

My Lord God,  I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.  Amen.

In Simply Pray I analyze this prayer at some length.  Most days, though, I simply find myself praying it.  Meditating on its words.  And finding that while I do not see the road ahead of me with any greater clarity, if I am honest with myself, and truly cannot know for certain where it will end, I often feel (at least) that I have some idea of where I am going thanks to the wisdom, and the compassion, and the love Father Merton shared with the world.
 
In Gassho,
 
and in gratitude for the life of this monk,
 
RevWik

A Sign and a Symbol

This morning I saw a link to an article while on FaceBook that had a photo of a woman wearing the hijab, the head scarf that some Muslims understand Islamic tradition as requiring a woman to wear.  In the past few years, the hijab has become the focal point of international ire -- a symbol, some say, of repression or a sign for religious rights.  (The photo at right is of Sura Al-Shawk, a Swiss citizen of Iraqi origin, a twenty-year old woman who has been told that she cannot play professional basketball unless she removes her hijab.  She is considering appealing the case the the Switzerland's highest court.)

When I looked at this photo this morning, though, I suddenly saw another image -- one I grew up with.  Oh how I loved the comedic exploits of Sally Field as Sister Bertrille, the Flying Nun.  Yet she wore her habit whenever she went out in public.  (And often wore that absolutely ridiculous hat, too!)  Where was the furor then?

And I have colleagues who always where a clerical shirt when they go out and about.  They want to be identifiable as ordained ministers, visible signs to the world of the vows they've taken and the vocations that have taken them. 

Perhaps you may argue that these folks have all chosen to wear what they wear.  And perhaps so.  But then it seems to me that those countries -- and those individuals -- who would consider banning the wearing of the hijab are making the same mistake as those who would require it.

In Gassho,

RevWik

All Will Be Well

One of the most well known phrases to come out of the Christian mystic tradition would have to be:  All Will Be Well.

It came to the English mystic Julian of Norwich, a fifteenth century anchoress at the Church of St. Julian in Norwich.  In her 30s she suffered from a terrible illness and thought she was dying.  During this time she had intense visions of Jesus which, after her recovery she wrote down in both a short form and then, twenty years later and with more commentary, a longer form.  Within these visions she saw and heard God say to her, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

This morning I awoke with a similar vision, although I am sure in a form quite different than that experienced by Julian.  I feel as though the message was much the same, though.

In Gassho,

RevWik

What Is This Thing Called God?

My friend and colleague the Rev. Stefan Jonnason recently posted a story to FaceBook about an exchange he overheard in one of the congregations he's served.  This church has a banner that proclaims its historic three-word theology: 

GOD

IS

LOVE

One especially ardant secular humanist approached another person he knew to be of a complimentary mind-set and asked, "Doesn't it drive you crazy to see that banner week after week?"

To which the other person responded, "Oh, you must be reading it wrong.  It's supposed to be read from bottom to top."

I've previously written about this idea that if "God is Love" then "Love is God."  Some folks within the various 12 Step movements have found this a way to make sense of the Higher Power concept.  Others have found that it helps with all sorts of theistic "language of reverence."  Try reading the famous passage on love found in the Christian scriptures -- 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 -- replacing the word "love" with the word "God."  Changes the image of God for most people, doesn't it?

Here's another one.  I woke up with it actually.  The song's an old Cole Porter classic, What is This Thing Called Love?  What if the incomperable Sarah Vaugh were singing about God?

In Gassho,

RevWik

Looking For That Perfect Gift?

Are you looking for a great holiday gift for that certain someone?  How about the book about which James R. Adams, President of the Center for Progressive Christianity said, "Anyone with curiosity about the Jesus Seminar or the writing of Bishop John Shelby Spong will find [this] an excellent place to begin"?  The Rev. Dr. Tilden Edwards, founder of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation said of it, "This book will especially appeal to people educated with a modern world view who have had difficulty appreciating Jesus' giftedness for us and who are open to a new understanding of his vision and his way."

Teacher, Guide, Companion:  rediscovering Jesus in a secular world  was my first book, published by Skinner House in 2004.  In it I attempt to wrestle with the questions:  who was this man, Jesus, and who might he be for a person living in the world today?  To do so I explore the work of those who "search for the historical Jesus;" I examine the various portraits in the four cannonical Gospels (as well as in the Gospel of Thomas); and I look into my own heart and lived experiences.

Teacher, Guide, Companion is not a hefty tome.  At under one hundred pages it can be read in a night, yet over the years I have heard of people who have read and re-read it, and that it has provided many with more than enough substance to inspire deep conversation and rich encounters.

If you grew up within a Christian tradition and wonder if there's a way to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater, or if you'd like an introduction to this man (as well as his myth and legend) to see what he might have to offer you, I heartily encourage you to get a copy of Teacher, Guide, Companion.  And if you know someone like this, get one for her or for him.  (And what better time than when the world is preparing to celebrate his birthday?)


Teacher, Guide, Companion is available from Amazon.com as well as through the UUA Bookstore (where small group study guides can also be downloaded for free).


In Gassho,

RevWik

God is a Playful Puppy

I recently read a book about St. Francis of Assisi -- John Michael Talbot's The Lessons of St. Francis:  how to bring simplicity and spirituality into your daily life -- in which I came across this marvelous passage:

"What is it about some religious people -- whether in Francis' day or our own -- that makes them think God is a cosmic killjoy?  That sancity must lead straight to solemnity?  That hymns must be funeral dirges?  They certainly don't get such ideas from God, who rejoiced as he created the universe, or Jesus, whose first miracle was to turn water into wine at a wedding feast.  Many people obviously don't understand what the anonymous medieval author of The Cloud of Unknowing meant when he talked about 'the delight of the Lord's playfulness.'"

I've said before that I think one of the better images we could have of the divine is that of a playful puppy -- literally falling all over itself with exuberant energy and slobbering all over you and me with affection.  Nothing we can do will ever diminish the puppy's enthusiasm, its excitement and delight, its devotion . . . and so I think it is with God. 

If God's an old man in the clouds, then there's a twinkle in his eyes and he loves to pretend to pull a quarter out of your ear just so that he can see the way your face lights up.

The ancients didn't tell us that God feels love or is loving towards us, but that God is love.  Some have interpreted the mysterious revelation to Moses -- "I am that I am" -- as God saying "I am existence itself,"  Note that this doesn't mean, "I am all the things in existence," but rather, that God is existence or, as some have put it, is IS-ness itself.  God is love and, I would add, is exuberance, is delight, is joy.

For this, may we be truly grateful.

In Gassho,

RevWik

A Lesson in Perspective

This morning I heard it reported that six billion dollars was spent on this election, making it the costliest election in U.S. history.  Six Billion dollars.  That's a six and nine zeros:   $6,000,000,000.00. 

I immediately began to fantasize about a world in which that money was used for more useful things -- like feeding the hungry, or housing the homeless, or providing healthcare to those who need it, or supporting literacy programs, or dealing with any of the other truly serious problems facing the people of our country and the world.

And then the announcer said that that six billion dollars was just one third of what Americans spent getting ready for Halloween.

And I remembered what world I was really living in.

Lord forgive us.  We know not what we do.

In Gassho,

RevWik

W-T-M-G-H ?

One of my favorite prayers, one I find myself coming back to again and again, was written by the Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton.  It goes like this: 

My Lord God,  I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I even really know myself, and the fact that I think I am doing your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do that, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I appear to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me and will never leave me to face my perils alone.  Amen.  (from Thoughts in Solitude)

I love this prayer for it's straightforward and unflinching acknowledgment of my frequent state of fundamental cluelessness.  And it offers a sense of assurance that that's alright, that it's okay not to know what I'm doing because, in the "grand scheme of things," the most important thing is the attitude with which I do them.  "It's the thought that counts," I suppose.

Yes, good intentions may pave the path to hell -- a thought attributed to people the likes of Samuel Johnson and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux -- yet they are, after all, realistically the only thing we've got.  We can't know the outcome of our acts, all the paths and permutations that any behaviors of ours will precipitate.  And we can't be entirely clear of our own motives because we are a tangled mess of free will, patterns, and programming.  So all we can do is the best we can do.  And then, seeing what resulted from that, correct our next action to aim for even better outcomes.

Merton offers one tool for discernment.  "I believe that the desire to please you [God] does, in fact, please you."  Note his humility here.  He doesn't say that he knows this to be so but that he believes it to be true.  He continues, "And I hope that I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire."

This reminds me of a passage from that wonderful 17th century work, The Practice of the Presence of God in which Brother Lawrence declares that he has taught himself to so live his life for the pleasure of God that, "I would not take up a straw from the ground against [God's] order, or from any other motive but purely that of love to [God]."  In everything Brother Lawrence did, no matter how mundane, he asked himself, "Is this expressing my love of God?"

Which brings me to the acronym that titles this post.  A decade or so it was all the rage for some to wear bracelets bearing the letters W-W-J-D ?  What Would Jesus Do?  The idea was that this would encourage the wearers to pause, before acting, and ask themselves that question -- in this situation, what would Jesus do? 

Of course, for some people it's difficult to imagine what a first century itinerant Jewish preacher, teacher, and healer would do in the face of twenty-first century problems.  And some people found it hard to liken themselves to Jesus -- despite Paul's assertion that "Christ was like us in all things but sin," many people have what I call the Sunday School Cardboard Cutout image of Jesus in which he is some kind of cross between Superman and Obi-Wan Kenobe (without the violence).

Last night I had reason to pray Merton's prayer again and I found myself struck by that phrase -- "the desire to please you . . ."  For that to make sense, of course, you need to anthropomorphize the divine so that you have some kind of Sacred Someone/Something who can "be pleased" by the things we do.  But let's go with that.  There's a dimension of imagination and poetry in all of spirituality any way.

So what if the question we ask ourselves is not, "What Would Jesus Do?" but, rather, "Would This Make God Happy?"

The Great Soul Mohandas Gandhi said that he would ask himself what affect an action would have on the poorest person he could imagine before he would take it.  Perhaps he did this only before taking some big step -- initiating some new campaign, for instance -- or maybe he did it when deciding mundane things, too.  But can you imagine living your life with such a measure to apply to the choices that face you day in and day out?

Last night I found myself caught up with the idea of asking myself the question, "Would this make God happy?"  When I'm tempted to engage in some unhealthy behavior -- scarf down some fast food, for instance, instead of deal with some uncomfortable feelings:  would this make God happy?  When I'm on the verge of taking out my stress and anxiety on my spouse or my kids:  would this make God happy?  When I can feel that it's just laziness that's making me lean toward watching reality TV instead of engaging my regular prayer practice:  would this make God happy?

I don't know how well I'll be able to do this, but I take heart that Brother Lawrence entered the monastery when he was about 24 and he died at age 77 -- he had 53 years in which to practice his practice.  And he does say that it was as hard, at the beginning, for him to do it as it was, at the end, for him not to. 

That gives me hope.

In Gassho,

RevWik

A Fall From Grace

Today I had the great joy of facilitating the weekly chapel for my colleagues on the staff of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  I'd described the service like this:

This summer, Erik fell down his basement stairs and shattered his shoulder. Ever the preacher, he’s been dying to get into a pulpit and talk about it ever since. Come find out what the comminuted fracture of his proximal humerus, an ancient Semitic story, and that thing that sometimes gnaws at you in the middle of the night might all have in common, and what our Unitarian Universalist faith has to say about them.

I thought I'd share the homily I wrote (along with the opening and closing words).

In Gassho,

RevWik

Fall From Grace

a service for the UUA Staff Chapel

October 26, 2010

Call to Worship: At times this is a meeting room, and the work of the Association is done here. At times it is a stop on a tour, and the history of who and where we’ve been is remembered. At this time – right at this very moment in time – there is the opportunity for it to be a sanctuary, a sacred place.

And we are a collection of clergy and laity, Administrative Assistants and Directors, important people and . . . other important people, but in this time and place – including this cyberspace – we have the opportunity to be a congregation.

May we bring all that we are, to all that is here, and create all that can be.

Blessed be, and amen.



Reading: On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."

Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

(The Christian Scriptures, the Gospel of Luke 10:25-37)

* * *

My formal religious education was begun by the good people at the First Presbyterian Church of Baldwin, NY. (They must have done something right there, because First Presby is, I believe, the only Presbyterian Church to have the distinction of producing not just one, but two Unitarian Universalist ministers.) I graduated to the Presbyterian’s summer camp programs, and my advanced training, if you will, took place over at the camping programs of the New York Conference of the United Methodist Church. In other words, you could say that I had a fairly mainstream Christian upbringing.

And so I learned the story we just heard, the story of The Good Samaritan, and knew that it’s moral, it’s point, was that we—that I—should strive to be like the Samaritan and do good things for people who were in tough situations, the less fortunate than me. It was all right there in Jesus’ last words, “Go and do likewise.”

It would be a number of years before I learned that most scholars believe that those last words, that whole setting of the story in fact, is a later addition, written so as to try to clarify this otherwise fairly confusing story. It’d be some time before I learned that it is the fact that that neat and tidy moral is, indeed, not the moral of the story which makes scholars believe that this parable may well originate with the rabbi Yeshua himself. And it’ll be some time before I come back to all of this this morning.

First I want to tell you about falling down the stairs.

I work at home three days a week, and I was walking downstairs to my home office when my sneaker caught on a step – you know how your sneaker sometimes has a little too much traction and catches on the floor and you swing your other foot up quickly to regain your footing? Well, I did that, but because I was on a staircase, so there was no floor to regain my footing on. I did a forward roll down the stairs. I bounced off the bottom two steps on my head and then came to a crashing stop on my shoulder.

My wife, who was home at the time, came running down stairs, surveyed the situation, and ran to get an ice pack and call 911. I have to tell you – the pain was pretty intense. I couldn’t move. I felt like my shoulder was dislocated or something. It was really scary. So Mary came back with the ice pack and put it right on my forehead. You see, she could see that I had a lump the size of a baseball and shaped like a horn sticking out of my head. But I could feel the pain in my arm, so I moved the ice to my shoulder. She moved it back to my head. I moved it back to my shoulder. Luckily the ambulance arrived pretty quickly and took me to the hospital.

It’s too late to make a long story short, but it turns out that I shattered the bone in my arm up near the shoulder – the proximal humerus – and broke it into several pieces – a comminuted fracture. A couple of months for the bone to heal. “Long” and “painful” physical therapy to follow on that. And, as you might have guessed, I’m right handed.

When I got out of the hospital the pain was still pretty intense, and the bone itself – although now screwed together with titanium screws – still had to heal, so I was given some pretty powerful pain medication and told to stay in bed. My sister-in-law Judith, my oldest brother’s wife, flew up from North Carolina to spend a week with us, because this week was also the last week of the kids’ summer vacation – during which they didn’t have any camp (they’re six and nine) – and my wife’s first week of nursing school.

Yeah. Take all that in. I broke my shoulder the week that my kids had no summer camp and my wife was starting school. So the worst part of all of this was not the pain. And it wasn’t the weird drug buzz. It was the feeling of letting everyone down. I was supposed to have been picking up the slack. I was supposed to have been supporting my wife as she started this new adventure, reducing the stress in our household, and thanks to this damn fall I was now adding to it.

Ever feel like that?

Ever feel the fear that no matter what you do you can’t do what you most need to do?

Ever feel like a failure? Like you’re not good enough? Or smart enough? Or capable enough? Or strong enough? Or calm enough? Or wise enough? Or sensitive enough? Or perceptive enough? Or savvy enough? Or financially secure enough? Or emotional secure enough? Or just plain enough enough?

Ever feel like that?

I’m guessing you have. I’m guessing you have and that sometimes it keeps you up at night. Or maybe for you it doesn’t hit you at night but comes on you when you’re driving home from work. Or jogging in the morning. The “I’m not enoughs.” But you know them, don’t you? You know them. And at some time they’ve knocked you to the ground, haven’t they? Knocked you flat on your . . . back, haven’t they?

I once had the opportunity to listen to a wonderful Catholic Priest who said that the one of the greatest mistakes the Christian church had made was to forget that Jesus was not a theologian, but a storyteller, and so the parables need to be read from a storyteller’s perspective. And from that perspective, he said, it is impossible for the story we heard earlier to be the story of The Good Samaritan.

For one reason, at the time Jesus would have told it, the Samaritans were a really outside, outcast group, reviled and rejected. Despised. It would have been an incredibly rare Jew who would have been able to put herself or himself into the place of a Samaritan character, yet that’s what you’d have to do if the moral of the story is, “be like the Samaritan.” It’d be like saying, “and after a while, a Tea Bagger came by and tended to his wounds,” or “and after a while, Glenn Beck came by . . .,” or, “after a while Fred Phelps came by . . .” “Go and do likewise.”

Also, oral storytellers usually begin by introducing us to their main character, so that we know instantly who we’re supposed to identify with and who we should focus our attention on. And this story doesn’t start off, “There once was a good Samaritan.” It begins, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers.”

The character we are to identify with is the person who fell prey to the robbers and, so, the moral of the story is not, “be like the Samaritan.” It’s: you are in a heap of trouble. You’re lying, beaten and bloody, on the side of the road. You’re batter and bruised. And it hurts. Life hurts.

But there is another part to the message, too: Help is on the way. Help is coming, but you’ll need to keep your eyes open and your heart open and keep yourself receptive because it might be coming from a direction you’d never expect. But rest assured, help is coming.

Now our Unitarian Universalist faith has not always been so good at dealing with the first part of this teaching. Oh, we’re pretty good at dealing with the world’s brokenness, the world’s wounds, the systemic problems, but our own? Not always so much. But we’re getting better at it. We’re getting better at finding the ways – the words and the wordless ways – of naming and knowing the pains and the fears and the brokenness we all share because we are, after all, only human.

But we have been good – very good – at sharing the good news that we are not alone and that help is on its way. To our core we believe that and have since the time of our forebears. As I like to put it, “We are one human family, on one fragile planet, in our miraculous universe, bound by love” – that is our message. Love, embodied in this human community, is a force to be reckoned with. It can heal any wound, fix any brokenness, comfort any fear, make anything whole . . . and, therefore, holy.

That love, known in so many ways and by so many names, is the heartbeat of our faith. And when we fall – when I fall . . . when you fall – we can count on it to pick us up, and care for our woundedness, and do what it takes to get us back on our feet again.

I’d like to invite us, now, to sing one of our movement’s favorite songs about this love. We’ll sing it through three times. You don’t need your hymnals – you either know it or you will. I’ll call out the words, and if you really don’t know them be sure to mumble or hum along with feeling. [We then sang Carolyn McDade's "Spirit of Life"]


Closing Words: The Buddha tells us that “life is suffering,” and Christian scriptures tells us that “all have sinned and fallen short,” and if we don’t know this then we at least suspect that it might be true. We’ve all known times when we could believe it. Yet they tell another truth as well – “everything is perfect, just as it is,” and “you are loved beyond your comprehension.” Perhaps they might just be right about this, too. As Sister Julian was taught, “All will be well; all will be well; and all manner of things will be well.”

Blessed me.  Namaste.  Assalamu Alaikum.  Ashe.  Shalom.  Amen.