None Of This Matters

This morning I delivered what might well be the first sermon of my new ministry with the good folks of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church – Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, VA.  Here's what I said:

Reading: On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, [and maybe we could say "religious persons generally"] sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ~ Annie Dillard, from Teaching a Stone to Talk

* * *

This . . . is a little weird.

I mean standing here, in this place, at this time, with all of you – it’s a little . . . weird. Don’t you think? I mean, this could be the first sermon of the next chapter of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church’s mutual ministry with its next settled minister. I mean, this could be . . . historic!

Which, of course, leads me to thinking that, in a way, this is a little bit like a job interview. With a few hundred people, ultimately. Kind of intimidating.

So to keep myself grounded as I prepared I focused on the reality that – no matter what else might be going on this week and no matter what the future holds for you and me – today I am a guest preacher who’s been asked to offer a sermon to a congregation of Unitarian Universalists. As such I have two opportunities – this week and next week – (and perhaps only two opportunities) to share with you some thoughts on Life’s Big Questions.

I want to begin by telling you a story, a story of the Sufi holy man Nasreddin Hodja. It is said that the Hodja was once invited to a certain city to share his wisdom. On the appointed day he entered the mosque, ascended to the pulpit, and cried out, “People of Aksehir, do you know the truth?” “No!” the people shouted, eager to hear his wisdom. “Well,” the Hodja replied, “why should I waste my time with such a bunch of ignorant fools?” And with that he left.

The next week the Hodja returned, as did the congregation still eager to hear this famous holy man. Once again the Hodja stepped into the pulpit and surveyed the gathered crowd. “Oh people of Aksehir,” he shouted. “Do you know the truth?” “Yes!” the people responded whole-heartedly, having learned their lesson the week before. The Hodja smiled. “Well then,” he said, “I needn’t tell you what you already know.” And again, he turned and left.

The third week—perhaps this was some kind of extended candidating process, I don’t know—the Hodja once more entered the mosque and once more ascended to the pulpit. Once more he looked out upon the congregation. And once more he cried out, “Oh good people of Aksehir. Do you know the truth?” It is safe to say that by this point the people were more than a little confused. Some of them halfheartedly said, “Yes?” while others called out, “No?” “Well then,” the Hodja boomed, “those of you who know tell the ones who don’t.” And with that he left the pulpit, and the mosque, and the town of Aksehir.

I’m tempted to ask you all a question.

But, really, the question’s already been asked. It’s been asked in our wider culture by the sociological trends that indicate that the fastest growing religious affiliation these days – and “fastest” by far – is “None.” The question’s been asked by leaders of our movement, and in our congregations – even, I’m sure, this congregation – who wonder why it is that we can’t seem to generate greater enthusiasm for pledging to the church (money or time) and why it seems that we can’t quite get to the place of being able to do and be all that we know we’re capable of. The question, asked in greater or lesser amounts of frustration and perplexity, is: Does any of this really matter anymore?

Does any of this – any of the things we do here on Sunday mornings – the words, the music, the space, the silence – does any of it matter? Really matter?

I think that there are probably at least two valid answers to this question, and I plan to – as we learned to say in seminary – “unpack” them both over the next two weeks. Today it’s my intention to assert that, contrary to all of the energy and effort we put into the things we do here week after week, no . . . none of it matters in the least.

And I want to be clear that I don’t say this because we’re Unitarian Universalists. It is true that while we have had a rich and storied history, today we are seen by many as little more than the but of Garrison Keiler’s jokes. You’ve heard it, I’m sure:

• What do you get when a cross a Unitarian Universalist with a Jehovah’s Witness? Some who’ll come knock on your door for no apparent reason.


• Unitarian Universalist churches can be found halfway between the Methodists and the golf course.

This isn’t new. Our opening hymn, written in 1928 by Edwin Henry Wilson, a Unitarian minister and the co-founder of the American Humanist Association, was parodied by the Unitarian Universalist minister Peter Raible in 1968. At the time there was a supplement to the then current hymnal that was called Hymns for the Celebration of Life. Raible called his booklet, Hymns for the Cerebration of Strife, and it contained this gem:

"Where is our holy church? We only wish we knew; it might be those now gathered here, except we are so few.


Where is our holy writ? We really cannot say; it gives us that for which to search, and that for which to pray.


Where is our holy one? Our answer is not clear; we've looked -- and looked -- and looked -- and looked, one must be somewhere near!


Where is our holy land? We cannot answer now; but if we find one, rest assured we'll tell the world somehow.


Why do we sing this song? What answer can we give? Faith and conviction, so we've heard, we all must have to live."

Now, I happen to think a lot more of us and our movement. I do believe that we’d have a reason to knock on doors, and I think that we have a lot more answers than the stereotype of us would suggest. And I think that for however storied our past might be, our future can be even richer.

So I don’t say that “none of this matters” because so many think so little of what we do here. No. I say it because I think that it’s important for us to confront head-on this truth: What we do here week after week and month after month doesn’t really matter.

And, after all, don’t you think that this is part of what Annie Dillard was trying to say to her Christian compatriots when she pronounced that, “outside of the catacombs,” —meaning once the initial period of martyrdom and persecution had come to an end—she finds most of her co-religionists “[in]sufficiently sensible of conditions”? (e.g., unable to deal with things the way they really are.) How else can we understand her image of a bunch of children playing on the floor “to kill a Sunday morning” as her metaphor for worship? She’s saying that we’re fooling ourselves if we think these things we’re doing here really mean anything . . . at least, the way she’s seeing them being done.

Now, if you’re thinking that this is an odd way for a ministerial candidate to greet his potential congregation, if you think that this is a surprising thing for the UUA’s staff person who focuses on worship to be saying, well, to paraphrase the late, great Paul Harvey, you’ll have to listen to “the rest” of the sermon.

You see, what I really want to say this morning is that none of this matters . . . IF . . . this is all that we do.

I can already hear you responding, “This is hardly all that we do around here! There’s Active Minds, and Covenant Groups, and the Labyrinth Ministry. There’s IMPACT and PACEM, and Undoing Racism, and the Green Sanctuary Movement. There’s CareNet, and the Councils, the Christian Fellowship, the Humanists, the Buddhist sanga, and the Pagans. There’s RE teachers and mentors, coffee makers and weed pullers. There’s the UUGuys and those UUpity women. A lot of things happen outside of the Sunday service.” (And I know . . . I left a LOT of things out!)

Yet there is a long-standing critique of the, let’s call them, “institutionally religious” – those folks who go to church (or synagogue or mosque) on Sunday (or Saturday or Friday) but who live the rest of their lives as though they’ve never even heard of Jesus (or Moses or the Prophet – peace be upon him). These folks make a sharp distinction between the sacred and the secular, between their religion and the rest of their lives. These folks take where they are in their spiritual lives pretty much for granted and see their religious community as essentially that – a place for community. Sunday worship is a time for beautiful music and interesting sermons and a chance to be with our friends. But if this is all we do here, then none of what we do matters.

In preparing for this service I got to collaborate with your entire team of Worship Associates – in my previous congregations we came to call them the Worship Weavers Guild. I love this kind of co-equal collaboration. And during our exchanges Thomas mentioned that he says to his 7th graders whenever they complain that something is hard: “Of COURSE this is hard, if math was always easy then you would always be on the same level – THE SEVENTH GRADE level!!” He then asks them to stand up if they want to remain on the Seventh Grade Level for the rest of lives, and then encourages them to give what they’re working on their best shot and see what they can come up with. When I read this I was immediately put in mind of a comment made by a UCC minister friend of mine. He said that everyone in his church was content to be “children of God,” and that that frustrated him no end because he knew that God wanted them to grow up and become “adults of God.”

I’ve recently had the privilege of being able to publish a book that’s being very nicely received within our Association. In it, I suggest that our congregations ought to think of themselves as the spiritual equivalent of total immersion language schools – only for us it’d be the language of spirituality. Everything we do here, I suggest, should be focused on the purpose of helping people to deepen and expand their spiritual lives. This, I suggest, is why we’re here – to deepen, to grow, to expand.

Of course, for some of us this might raise up the question of “just what is spirituality”? I actually have an answer to this now! I was asked this last year at a conference and it suddenly occurred to me that the answer can be found within our own tradition. The great Henry David Thoreau said that he went into the woods around Walden Pond so that he could “live deliberately” and not have to look back from the end of his life to discover that he “had not lived.” This makes me think that he saw a distinction between living “life” and living “not life,” a distinction that I’d argue can be found under one description or another in every religious tradition we humans have ever developed. We are asleep and need to wake up; we are dead and need to be reborn into new life; we are living “life that is not life” and need to find out how to begin living “life that is life.”

And that, I’d contend, is what spirituality is all about – living life that is life. Or learning how to. Or both, really, because both the learning and the living are on-going works-in-progress, and unless we want to remain “children,” or stay at the “seventh grade level” we must continue to deepen and develop our capacity to be truly alive. And that’s what we need to be doing in communities such as this, or else nothing else we do matters.

There’s a great quote from the legendary civil rights leader, author, activist, and theologian, and pastor, Howard Thurman:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then go do that thing. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.”

“To this house we come bringing our boldest dreams,” we heard at the beginning of the service, “seeking here the inspiration and strength to make them be! . . . Strange place, this house -- here we cry, sing, laugh, hurt, dance, touch, survive, celebrate, grow, search, doubt, hope, rejoice, pray, trust, care, learn, think, wonder, be, become!” And if that becoming isn’t happening, if we allow ourselves to be content to stay where we are without expansion and evolution, then I’m afraid it’s true –none of this matters.

But if we do it, then nothing else matters. (But that’s the sermon for next week.)

Right now I invite us to rise in body or spirit, yet put our whole body and soul into the singing of the civil rights era spiritual, “When The Spirit Says Do.” (1024 in Singing The Journey)



Parting Words: If you are who you were,
and if the person next to you is who he or she was,
if none of us has changed
since the day we came in here—
we have failed.

The purposed of this community—
of any church, temple, zendo, mosque—
is to help its people grow.

We do this through encounters with the unknown—in ourselves,
in one another,
in “The Other”—whoever that might be for us,
however hard that might be—
because these encounters have many gifts to offer.

So may you go forth from here this morning
not who you were,
but who you could be.

So may we all.

~ Erik Walker Wikstrom

Choices

As I've noted I've been reading Fr. Murray Bodo's meditative biography of St. Francis of Assisi, Francis:  the journey and the dream.  A lovely book, and a powerful one.  Much of what I've read has moved me deeply.

Here, for instance, is a portion of the chapter titled, "Barefoot in the Dirt":

One of the hardest trials of poverty, that sometimes made Francis forget how glorious was the service of his Lady Poverty, was the inconvenience of the poor life.  To be poor was to be subject to countless little annoyances that the lords, or even the rich merchants like his father, could buy their way out of.

To be poor was to take the road on foot while the rich rode.  To be poor was to wait long hours in the shops while the rich went before you.  To be poor was to beg and eat what was placed before you, and that monotonously the same gruel, while the rich ate at tables ever varying their fare.  To be poor was to mingle with those who were petty, narrow-minded and whose conversation was dull and uninspired, while the rich chose companions with care and welcomed the educated, the artist, the entertainer.  To be poor was to live among those who had given up hope and whose lives were lived from moment to moment with no star to lead them on, while the rich still had ambition and the will to accomplish something in life. . . .

[It was] the sacred penetration of dirt when you wanted to be clean, of a cold stone slab when you wanted a warm bed, of sleeping alone when you wanted someone beside you, of the will of others when your own was wiser and more efficient, of routine when you longed for variety."

There is so much in there to reflect on.  How many of us could willingly accept such a life?  I was especially struck by the emphasis on the inconvenience of it -- how contrary that is to our modern preocupation, perhaps even obsession, with making all things ever-more convenient?  And the thought of choosing the companionship of the "dull and uninspired" -- how would that play in a religious tradition such as Unitarian Universalism which tends to draw more people with advanced degrees than any other (even while we affirm the principle of "the inherent worth and dignity of every person")?  And what about choosing to follow the will of someone else "when [my] own was wiser and more efficient" -- what might that do to our experiences in our work places or our homes?  What a commitment to peace.

Inconvenience.  As Modo puts it, "The earthiness of it all, the gritty, day-to-day reality of poverty was what would kill the Dream for many."  Perhaps we could muster the energy to mount a glorious campaign of some kind, but to willingly accept a life of mundane inconvenience? 

There is so much here to reflect on.  Lent might just be a good time to do so.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Surrounded by Friendship

I had to drive for a little over an hour to get to the airport for my last trip.  I took with me one of my favorite CDs -- Dane Zane's House Party.  Zanes was once the front man for the band the Del Fuegos, and now has made a new career for himself as quite possibly the hippest purveyor of "children's music."  (Of course, to paraphrase Leo Tolstoy's comment about literature, "There is no such thing as good children's music; there's simply good music.")

One of the songs on this album, written by Cynthia Hopkins, is called "Surrounded by Friendship."  As I listened I found myself musing that St. Francis would have approved . . . and probably would have started singing along. 

Maybe you will, too.

In Gassho,

RevWik

PS -- You can find more dan zanes albums at Myspace Music , or at Zane's own website.

On Love and Suffering

Today is Speak Up For Universalism Day -- a day designed to coincide with the publication of Rob Bell's new book Love Wins:  A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  This new book espouses the view that God's love is all embracing, leaving no one out.  It is being greeted as heresy in some circles, and as a daring new teaching in others.  Among Unitarian Universalists, however, this is one of our foundational theological assertions.  The Universalist church has always maintained that "God is love" and that that love knows no bounds.

A colleague of mine posted this on FaceBook:

How can we affirm all-embracing inescapable love as the most powerful force of the universe in the face of catastrophe, with Japanese bodies washing ashore in the thousands and nuclear meltdown threatening? We do not know the answers, but we know they have something to do with our hearts breaking for all the suffering in the world. The truth that "love wins" does not mean there is universal happiness. Suffering is not noble, but it is a fact of life and the recognition of it connects us around the world.

I responded that I had once heard someone say "If God is Love, then God can do only what Love can do." This is still saying quite a lot -- love is a very powerful force -- but it is not all-powerful. An "all-embracing inescapable love" cannot control tectonic plates, but it can comfort and console the suffering of those devestated by an event such as the ongoin tragedy in Japan. And it can move observers to action.

I like the metaphor of God-as-Parent.  A parent cares for her or his children, wants the best for them, longs to see them happy and healthy.  The bottom line, though, is that children have their own (free) will and can make their own choices.  A truly loving parent recognizes that and gives their children the freedom to grow and develop in his or her own way.  She watches them, cares for them, celebrates them and consoles them, but does not even try to control them.

So too, I think, with God.  What kind of God would control every facet of our life and living?  An overly-controlling God, that's what.  And what kind of God would cause bad things to happen, even if they "teach a lesson"?  A cruel and caricious one, that's what.  I simply cannot believe in a God like that; such a "God" doesn't deserve the name.

We Universalists have always asserted that God is love and that this love knows no bounds.  It holds us, but doesn't control us.  It fuels our living, but doesn't force us to suffer for the sake of some inscruitable "plan."

I have summarized my theology with this phrase:  We are one human family, on one fragile planet, in one miraculous universe, bound by love."  This love, which binds us together, is what I call "God."  And it is there in Japan, and in your own heart, too.

In Gassho,

RevWik

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