Inauguration Day

What an experience we, as individuals and as a nation, have just gone through! I was sitting with a number of my collegaues here at UUHQ, watching together as the 44th President was sworn in--I won't hesitate to acknowledge that I had tears running down my face.

I also had words running through my ears, other words than those being spoken on the dias. With apologies (if necessary) to my colleague the Rev. Kathleen McTigue (who wrote the original), I offer these words:

The inauguration of President Barack Obama is another day dawning, the sun rising as the sun always rises, the earth moving in its rhythms, with or without our calendars to name a certain day as the day of new beginning, separating the old from the new. So it is: everything is the same, bound into its history as we ourselves are bound.

Yet also we stand at a threshold, the new Administration something truly new, still unformed, leaving a stunning power in our hands: what shall we do with this great gift of a new era?

Let us begin by remembering that whatever justice, whatever peace and wholeness might bloom in our world this year, we are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet, the embodiment of all the best visions of our people. This new Presidency can be new ground for the seeds of our dreams.

Let us take the step forward together, onto new ground, planting our dreams well, faithfully, and in joy.

May it be so.

in Gassho,

RevWik

Amazed and Greateful

A colleague recently shared these words, apparently the conclusion of Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope (which I’ll admit I haven’t yet read). I responded that, issues of race and heritage aside, I am amazed that we elected someone so eloquent. Amazed, and deeply grateful:

At night, the great shrine is lit but often empty. Standing between marble columns, I read the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. I look out over the Reflecting Pool, imagining the crowd stilled by Dr. King's mighty cadence, and then beyond that, to the floodlit obelisk and shining Capitol dome.

And in that place, I think about America and those who built it. This nation's founders, who somehow rose above petty ambitions and narrow calculations to imagine a nation unfurling across a continent. And those like Lincoln and King, who ultimately laid down their lives in the service of perfecting an imperfect union. And all the faceless, nameless men and women, slaves and soldiers and tailors and butchers, constructing lives for themselves and their children and grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, to fill in the landscape of our collective dreams.

It is that process I wish to be a part of.

My heart is filled with love for this country.

On January 20th we are inaugurating the presidency of a man -- a human man with flaws and failings like us all. I do not expect President Obama to be a messiah or some kind of political wizard or superhero who will make everything okay again. He is a human being, like any of us.

But he appears to be to be a very intelligent man. An eloquent man. A man who understands what oppression and intolerance look like from the inside and who still sees the potential and promise in our nation and our world.

I am amazed, grateful, and filled with hope.

In Gassho,

RevWik

It makes sense

I have always thought that a response to the various ballot initiatives and referenda that have been proposed to curtail the civil rights of homosexuals would be to start an initiative to outlaw synthetic blend clothing. (After all, Leviticus 19:19 tells us not to wear clothing made from two kinds of fiber.) Here's a video with a different message but the same point of view.




May sanity one day prevail.

in Gassho,

RevWik

Bringing it (and us) all together

A while ago (July 14: Strangely Moving) I posted a video of Matt Harding dancing his way around the world--one person, one strange dance, hundreds of different countries and people coming together.

The video below seems to me to tell the same story of our human community yet in a very different way.



You can find out more about the incredible project that gave birth to this video at the website of Playing for Change

Peace.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Which Moves--the Train or the Station?

One of my goals in life has been to be the kind of father that was in the old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip--the kind who is always messing with his kids' heads. This past week we were all in Boston and took our first ride as a family on the T.

I told them, "You know what's weird? It's the stations that are moving. We're just sitting here while everything else moves around us." And, of course, with a certain perspective that's just how it seems.

My kids, of course, immediately recognized this as one of Daddy's "jokes," yet I've been finding myself thinking about it more seriously lately. I've been reading a number of books all of which have made at least passing reference to the idea that the passage of time is something of an illusion. The past, as it were, is only a memory and the future is only a dream. This moment--right NOW--is all that exists. And even the sense that this moment flows into the next "this moment," that one NOW passes into the next NOW moment is an illusion. There is only NOW.

So do I "move" through time or does time "move" around me? Is NOW a series of moments, like stations on a line, through which I move, or is there only NOW, still and stationary, like a train that remains motionless while the stations move past?

No wonder I liked Calvin and Hobbes.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Sometimes You Need No Words

I've been trying to decide how to respond to the "other" news from election night. I can add nothing to this:




In Gassho,

RevWik

And now . . .

It happened. The forty-fourth President of the United States is going to be a young, inspiringly articulate, keenly intellegent, African-American father of two.

Over and over again I find myself returning to the creation myth J.R.R. Tolkien wrote for the Silmarillian. In it--and this is the short version--Illuvatar, the One, sends out a chord which the Ainur (think angels) turn into a harmonized melody. Again and again, as Melkor introduces dischord, Illuviaar sends out new chords which incorporate the dischord, and on and on the Ainur sing.

At the end of all their singing, Illuvatar tells the Ainur to open their eyes, to see what their singing created. They behold the universe--their song made manifest. And then, of a sudden, all that they have seen vanishes from their sight. "Now go," says Illuvatar, "and make what you have seen."

Barack Obama's election shows us--many of us, at least--a vision of what the future of America can me. But we cannot rest in that. The success of the ballot initiatives in California, Arkansa, Arizona, and Florida which restrict the rights of lesbians and gays are stark reminders that it is not simply "a new day for America."

The vision which many of us see through Barack Obama's election is both beautiful and powerful Yet President Obama will not be able to fulfill this vision, will not be able to realize the dream on his own, just as Senator Obama was not able to bring about his remarkable victory without a groundswell of support.

We must now go forth and make what we have seen.

If we want affordable healthcare for all, we must work for it.

If we want civil liberties for all of nation's citizens -- and not just the ones who look like the majority, or love like majority, or think like the majority -- then we must work for it.

If we want the United States of America to be a shining example to the world of what a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, truly diverse society can be, then we must make of our lives--each one of us--such an example.

Barack Obama is not the Messiah. (And even the one who holds that title didn't "magically" make "everything okay.")

We must realize the dream.

WE must realize the dream.

We MUST realize the dream.

In Gassho,

RevWik

I Can't Resist

I was going to write a serious piece this morning, but I came across this clip and just can't resist the urge to do what little I can to help it get seen as widely as possible.

I love the satrical online "newspaper," The Onion, "America's Finest News Source." Their foray into "TV" is equally inspired. As an example, this report:



Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

If that tickled your fancy, here's another:


Obama Runs Constructive Criticism Ad Against McCain

My work for the day is done.

in Gassho,

RevWik

Good? Bad?

There's a well known Taoist story about a farmer and a series of events that bring his neighbors out to alternately console and congratulate him. He loses his only work horse; the horse returns with several young wild horses. His son breaks his leg while trying to tame one of the horses; the broken leg saves him from being drafted into a battle in which every other young man from their village is killed. At each turn of events, as the neighbors weigh in on how "good" or "bad" the situation is, the farmer replies only with the words, "good news, bad news, who's to say?"

I thought of this story when Colin Powell came out as endorsing Barack Obama's candidacy. Here he is, a standard bearer for the Republican party, a decorated general, former Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that, McCain's rhetoric aside, he believes that Barack Obama is the man with the right stuff to lead this nation. At one time Powell, himself, was discussed as a possible candidate for the Presidency, and Democrats and Republicans alike were excited at the prospect.

So this is good news, right? Well, who's to say? During the lead-in to the Iraq war Powell was excoriated by liberals as nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Bush Administration. His reputation as a man of principles, a reputation earned during the first Gulf War, seemed to have been permanently obliterated. And yet here we are, a few years later, celebrating his endorsement of Obama. Is Gen. Powell a good man? A bad man? It's hard to say.

And let's not forget that John McCain himself was once the darling of the Democrats. A straight talking maverick, he was seen as a potential running mate for John Kerry in 2004, and the possibility electrified many. So is he a good man or a bad man? It's hard to say.

I'm not advocating for a complete moral relativism. I am wanting to remind us--myself included--that in our rush to judge people "good" or "bad" we generally, usually, almost invariably, overlook the myriad shades and hues between black and white. Simple answers are almost always wrong; oversimplifications always are.

In Gassho,

RevWik

"Out beyond concepts of right-ness and wrong-ness there is a field. I will meet you there."
~ Rumi

The Springer-fication of the Electorate

This morning I sent out this letter to the editor to a number of local and national papers. I thought I'd post it here as well:

I am frightened for my country.

Economically, we are in the midst of what many experts are calling the worst financial crisis since the great depression; not just here in the US but around the world economies teeter on the brink of disaster.

Militarily, our nation is involved in two wars, and our foreign policy over the past eight years has significantly reduced our standing in the world making us less, rather than more, safe in these troubling times.And culturally, here at home, we're seeing what I've come to think of the "Springerfication" of the electorate.

Think back to the Democratic National Convention--throughout you saw people looking up at the dais through glistening eyes which revealed a spirit of hope and inspiration that permeated the convention hall.

Think of the Republican National Convention--all loud booing and derisive laughter that conveyed a mean spirit, an angry spirit. And in recent days some people at rallies at which Gov. Palin has been speaking have shouted "terrorist," and "Obama bin Laden," and "kill him" when Senator Obama's name has been mentioned. I feel like I'm watching the Jerry Springer Show.

Are Senator McCain and Gov. Palin responsible for the actions of the people who attend their rallies? Of course not. But they must take responsibility for not immediately and in no uncertain terms condemning such behavior. And we, each and every one of us, Republican and Democrat, must take responsibility for ourselves. We are America, and if America is to continue to be the great nation it boasts of being we must be a great people. Let us look for the best in one another and stop calling for blood.

In gassho,

RevWik

Happy Birthday Gandhi-ji

Today is the 139th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known in his day as both Mahatma (Great Spirit) and Bapu (Papa). Once, when asked what his message was to the world he replied, "my life is my message."

I once preached a sermon of that title, noting that Gandhi was not always the fearless figure of modern memory. In his young adulthood, as he studied at a London law school, he broke strict Hindu custom by eating meat and drinking alcohol. (In his autobiography he said that he had noticed that all of the British boys of his same age were much bigger and stronger than he was, and he thought meat might be their secret. The alcohol? He said he just wanted to fit in.) He smoked cigarettes. He even flirted with becoming a Christian.

And the first time he got up in a courtroom was a fiasco. He said that he became so terrified, so panic stricken, that he could think of nothing to say and ran, sweating, from the room. His client lost.

Yet at his death Albert Einstein uttered these memorable words: "Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this in flesh and blood did walk upon this earth."

His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, makes clear that we should not dismiss Gandhi as some sort of superhuman saint. "What can be done I will try to do," he said, and his life--his message--is that much, much can be done by those who are willing to try.

Two sites worth exploring:

• The Wikipedia article on Gandhi
  
• The "Complete Site on Mahatma Gandhi"

In Gassho,

RevWik

Would You Step Over Here Please?

Shortly after speakers at the Republican National Convention, including Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, made sport of (get ready to chuckle) community organizers, T-shirts appeared bearing the message:

"Jesus was a community organizer;
Pontius Pilate was a governor."

That got a laugh out of me, as well as the encouragement to stop and think for a moment. Many moments, actually. I'm still thinking about it and what it says about the state of our nation today.

I haven't written in a while -- I've been acclimating to the dynamics of my new life working for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. One thing that's new, and is taking some getting used to, is the three hours of commuting by bus (round trip) three days a week. But it does give me time to think.

Yesterday I was thinking again about that Jesus/Pilate thing when I remembered this picture. It is an artist's rendering of what Yeshua ben Miriam might have looked like. A forensic artist from the University of Manchester used the 2000-year-old skull of a Jewish man from Israel to recreate the face, and based the hair and skin color on third century frescoes of Jewish faces. All of this was done for a Discovery Channel documentary about the historic Jesus. That's right, this is an artist's rendering of what the actual Jesus might have looked like.

And not only was Jesus a community organizer, but if he were to walk through an airport today the screeners might well ask him to step out of line.

Again and again I find myself facing the same question: with whom am I standing? It's a question that comes up in my personal life; it's a question that comes up in my work life; and it's a question that echoes in my head as I listen to the politicians and pundits this election season.

It's a question for you, too.

In Gassho,

Rev. Wik

Love, love, love, love, love

Yesterday I was bathed in it as I preached my last sermon from the pulpit of the First Parish in Brewster's pulpit as their senior minister--and my last sermon anywhere, for a while at least, as a parish minister. We laughed, we cried. I ate fire. It was lovely.

Yet while this love-fest was going on, a man entered our congregation in Knoxville, TN, took a shotgun out of a guitar case, and started shooting. (Here's a link to a recent Associated Press story about the incident.) He killed two people--including one who apparently purposefully put himself between the gun and other people--and wounded several others. According to a letter apparently found in his car, one of the reasons he went to the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was because of that congregation's support of liberal policies.

My first response was shock. Then, admittedly, relief that it hadn't happened here. Then outrage and sorrow mixed together. Then incredulity--how could someone do this? Protest, sure. Rail against, okay. But shoot people because of what they believe in?

Of course, this is not a rational act so it will no doubt be futile to look for rational explanations. But it does reinforce for me the message in the sermon I delivered yesterday, that the words we use, the categories we create, the labels we apply (to ourselves and others) are just that -- words. What matters is not liberal or conservative, gay or non-gay, white or black -- what matters is that we're alive on the same planet, related to one another, breathing the same air. What matters is that our hearts beat to the same rythms.

I'm reminded of the poem by Alice Walker:

Love is not concerned with whom you pray,
Or where you slept the night you ran away from home.
Love is concerned that the beating of your heart
Should kill no one.

That's it, isn't it?

In sorrow, in hope, and in gassho,

RevWik

leaf by leaf

If you looked up the word "spartan" and checked out the antonyms, you'd find a picture of my office. Virtually every space has something on it or in it -- icons, photos of my kids, a collection of batmobiles from various eras, my two-foot tall talking Yoda. I suspect that some people have made appointments to see me just to check out my stuff -- to see if they can get a handle on me, perhaps, or just to find out where I got my "Believe in God Instantly" breath spray. (It was a gift from a friend.)

And while all of these tchochkes actually do have meaning to me--and might well give a Jungian analyst insightful keys to my psyche--the thing which in many ways matters most to me is the wall of books. Literally. One of the things I loved about this office at first sight was that it has built-in book shelves covering an entire wall. And I had no problem filling them up. To overflowing.

My library is as eclectic as everything else: from my old friend Chuck Crisafulli's Go To Hell: A Heated History to the Underworld, to the six-volume "tenth completed edition" of the works of William Ellery Channing and a first edition of Emerson's Divinity School Address, to my friends James Ishmael Ford's Zen Master Who? A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen, Paul Rasor's Faith Without Certainty: Liberal Theology in the 21st Century, and Peter Richardson's Four Spiritualities: Expressions of Self, Expression of Spirit. Lots in between.

I am a collector of many things--books foremost among them. If I read a book I like, I buy others by the same author. If I hear an interesting interview on public radio's Speaking of Faith I go to Amazon.com and buy the book. And one book, or one author, leads me to others, and my library is the case wherein I display this collection of ideas.

And now I'm packing it up. The shelves are emptying and the boxes are filling as I'm preparing to exit my role as Senior Minister of First Parish in Brewster and take on my new job as Worship and Music Resources Director for the Unitarian Universalist Association. And I find that I'm resisting this work.

To be sure, I'm tremendously excited about the adventure awaiting me as part of the staff of the Association, yet I'm also realizing the losses associated with leaving my long-held role of "parish minister." As I'm packing up my books on the religions of humanity, for instance, I'm realizing that I won't be unpacking most of them in a new church office. Except for the ones dealing with worship and celebration they'll remain packed, along with my books on small group ministry, and the ones on pastoral care. And many of the books I've held on to "because someone might be interested in that" or "I might one day do an adult ed program about that" will be going to the second-hand book store down the street from my house, never to be unpacked by me again.

As each books goes off the shelf and into the box I feel as though I'm a warrior removing one piece of my armor after another. Or, to use a less militaristic metaphor, as though I'm removing another brick in the persona I've so carefully crafted over the past fourteen years--Erik Walker Wikstrom, parish minister.

Who am I if not the guy with the big collection of books on Buddhism, and Jesus, and management theory? Who am I if not the person who can put his hands on a book where this quote or that thought can be found? Who am I without this wall of ideas around me? Well, that'll be interesting to find out, won't it?

And that's one of those questions, isn't it? Who are we without the things we have or the things we do which so often are the ways we define ourselves? "Becoming who you already are," is one of the ways the Christian monk Thomas Merton described the spiritual life. It's one of the things I hope to do during this next phase of my journey.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Strangely Moving

I've written before about the guy who attached helium balloons to his lawnchair and flew--three times, as of recently, and for several hundred miles at aircraft altitude. I wrote about the guy who made a lifesize sculpture of Jesus out of chocolate. And I've said that just knowing that people like these exist in our world gives me hope.

Well, today a friend e-mailed me a link to this video. It is, apparently, something of an internet sensation, but this was my introduction. Anyway, I found it oddly moving; it honestly brought me close to tears--what my kids and I call "happy tears." I can't articulate why. So I offer it to you. Perhaps you can tell me what moved me so. Or what, if anything, moves you.



It looks so much better in high defination, and I can't figure out how to embedd that version on this site so, if you want, click here to go to YouTube and watch it again. Before playing the video select "watch it in high definition" (under the video box). To find out more, go to wherethehellismatt?.com It loads slowly, but it'll give you more information about this guy and his long strange trip.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Wisdom from Freddy and the boys

This winter I "discovered" Queen. I'd heard Bohemian Rhapsody, of course, but they were all a little too glam for my taste and at the time I tended to eschew anything that was too popular as a matter of principle. So I missed the Queen bandwagon.

Having discovered them now I have a number of their tunes loaded onto my iPod and I like to listen to them while working out in the morning. This morning a lyric from the song "Play the Game" caught my ear:

This is your life. Don't play hard to get.

It reminds me of a line from that famous passage by Marianne Williamson--the one that's often erroneously attributed to Nelson Mandela--"Your playing small does not serve the world."

Why is it that so many of us so often find it so easy to sell ourselves short, the shift into "I can't" mode before ever really even exploring the possibility of "I can"? Why do we find it easy to nod our heads at the "wisdom" of the great Despair.com poster that's attached to this posting?

In one of his books Frederich Buechner writes of the Christian story that far from being too good to be true it's "too good not to be true!" Perhaps that's true of us as well. Perhaps, if we spread our wings, we'll find we can soar. Perhaps, if we stop playing small, we'll discover how large we actually are.

This is your life--don't play hard to get.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Leave No Answers Unquestioned

It has been said that there are three kinds of people in the world--those who are good with numbers and those who aren't.

I've said that there are Four Questions, but I really could just as easily--and just as correctly--said that there are eight, or eighteen, or eighteen hundred and eighty-eight. In fact, it seems to me that there are no end to questions; that life itself is fundamentally a question or, to put it another way, that our living of our lives is fundamentally a process of questioning since the heart of existence is Mystery. (Not a mystery, mind you, but Mystery itself.)

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard reportedly asked seven questions:

"Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, Where is the director? I want to see him."

Perhaps the most well known quotation about questions comes from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:

"...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

May we all.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Question FOUR

So here we are, the question at which so many religious traditions--or, at least, so many religious professionals--usually begin the conversation: Whose am I?

The traditional theistic response, of course, is that we belong to God. As the 100th Psalm puts it, "It is God who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are God's people and the sheep of God's pasture." (NRSV, adapted) So that provides a tidy answer for those who believe in God, no help at all to those who don't, and yet only addresses one possible layer to which that question could point.

John Donne aside, are you an island entire unto yourself? In other words, do you belong to yourself, or do you belong (at least in some sense) to your family, or your community, or to the human family, or to the planet?

Driving in to work I listened to a bit of conservative talk radio and the host was saying that he was tired of being told that he should have a smaller house and fewer cars and give more of his time and his treasure to help others who have been less fortunate. He, no doubt, would say that he--and all of his stuff--belongs to himself. And, too, that these "less fortunate folk" belong to themselves and should take care of themselves and stop asking for handouts.

On the other hand there are folks in the environmental movement, for instance, who say that we belong to one another and to all living things on the planet and so even if I could afford a gas-guzzling SUV my behavior is not entirely up to me because I do not belong to myself alone. Or progressive economic justice folks who say that because we belong to one another we are obliged to help one another. (Ghandi once said that he tried to weigh his actions by their impact on the poorest person he could imagine.)

Answering this question, then--whose am I?--can help us navigate our way through the myriad of confusing options and opinions we'll meet on a daily, hourly, and moment-by-moment basis. Worth pondering.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Question THREE

The third question we all must answer--that is, if we want to live the "examined life"--is "Where Am I?"

When I was in Japan I asked my friend Takeo how to ask this question in Japanese. He said that you can't, that no Japanese person would ask "Where am I?" because the answer is so obvious -- you are here. Doko des ka?, he said, doesn't really mean "where am I?" it means "Where is here?"

So, where is here--this place where you live? This could bring us back to the question I lifted up last week--is this a friendly or unfriendly universe? It could also lead us to examine the nature of the natural world--do I live on (in) a material world whose resources are ripe for my picking, or do I live within an organic whole the care of which is my charge?

It could also lead you to explore the current realities of your life--where is here in my life's journey? What is the terrain of this place in my life, it's contours and features? What is the flora and fauna of this moment in my life? What are its resources and its points of interest?

Good questions, all.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Question TWO

If the first question we have to answer is, "Who am I?" one that comes in pretty close afterward is "With whom am I?" Another way of putting this is, "Who are my people?" Or, "Where do I belong?"

One answer which might be especially comfortable for progressive folks--and, perhaps, especially for progressive, well-educated, male, European-American, non-gay people--is "I am part of the human family! All of the world's people are "my people" and I belong wherever I am!" And this is, certainly, true in a sense. There is, in a deep way, only one human race and, as it says on the header of my blog, "we are one human family, on one fragile planet, in one miraculous universe, bound by love."

And yet we are also particular people. In the incredible documentary by Lee Mun Wah, The Color of Fear, an African-American man asks a European-American man what it's like to be white. When the man can't answer, the African-American man asks, "Don't you think that's strange?" And it is strange, yet the closer one is to the "cultural norm"--and as a straight, white, well-educated male I'm a veritable poster-child for the dominant culture's norm--the more one is encouraged to see one's own experience as "universal." But a lot of what I've experienced as "universal" has not been the experience of gay people, or black people, or women, or poor people, or people with physical handicaps, or . . . well . . . it turns out . . . most other people!

So yes, of course, we belong to the human family, but this question encourages us to examine the question of who it is with whom we identify, who it is we connect with--who is our particular family within the larger human family? In Richard Bach's wonderfull book, Illusions: adventures of a reluctant messiah, the character of Donald Shimoda carries something called "The Messiah's Handook" (which can now be purchased as a stand-alone book), and among its pithy wisdom is this:

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy
in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the
same roof.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. makes the same point in one of his works--that our real network of identity is far more vast and complex than simple bloodline. But as Jane Howard wrote,

"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a
family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”

So Question Two encourages us to ask, "With Whom Am I?"

In Gassho,

RevWik

Joe Bless You, George Carlin

Since learning about the death of George Carlin I've been trying to figure out a way to pay my respects. I grew up on his comedy and think that besides being incredibly funny he also fulfilled many of the important aspects of a true prophet--charging in to challenge, speaking truth to the Powers (whichever "powers" were being particularly stupid at the time.) I never met him, yet in that odd way that happens when celebreties die, I know that I will miss him.

Then I read the UU Blogger Peace Bang's tribute, which essentially consisted of a link to a video clip of one of Carlin's routines about religion that (while having some language some might find offensive) absolutely cracks me up. Maybe you, too. And while I don't agree with the theological conclusion he draws, his analysis of traditional (Christian) religion seems to me to be right on the money.

So check it out for yourself. And may I say,

Joe bless you, George Carlin. Joe bless us all.

(You'll know if you watch the video to the end . . .)

In Gassho,

RevWik

Question ONE

Okay, so yesterday I implied that the only question we need to engage is, "is the universe friendly or not" or one of its variants. And in some ways I believe that that's true.

I also think, though, that there are at least four questions we need to look at or that, at least, we find ourselves drawn to over and over again in our lives and in the recorded history of our species. So maybe we only need to answer the one, but we sure seem to want to answer the other four. Here they are:

• Who Am I?
• Whith Whom Am I?
• Where Am I?
• Whose Am I?

People often answer the first question with a list of their activities and engagements: I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister; I'm a husband and father; I'm an enthusiastic video viewer; I'm a juggler. But these are really answers to the question, "What do you do?" and we're often reminded that "you are not what you do." (You've no doubt seen the bumper sticker, "We are human beings not human doings!")

So going a bit deeper we then usually bring out our relationships: I am Erik, son of Walter, grandson of Frank; husband of Mary; father of Theo and Lester; brother of Patrick and Paul; child of God. And that gets closer, but is it as deep as we can go. Would "I" still be "me" if any of these relationships changed or ended (or never existed)?

At its deepest, I think that this first question--who am I?--really encourages us to explore human nature itself. Here are some other ways of getting at this question:

• Am I good or evil, free or determined, some of both, or a blank slate?
• Am I the center of the universe?
• Does life—my life?—have a purpose? (If so, what is it?)
• What do I value?
• What gives me strength and solace and what depletes me?

Try answering these questions sometime. Tomorrow we'll move on to Question Two.

In Gassho,

RevWik

THE question

Albert Einstein once said, "I think the most important question facing humanity is, 'Is the universe a friendly place?' This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves." He continued:

"For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly-- and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.

"If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially 'playing dice with the universe', then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.

"But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives."

Thomas Merton once said, "Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no one can make anything, or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infintely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into the infitie futher possibilities for study and contemplation and praise."

The good people at Despair, Inc. have created this wonderful pessimist's mug so that you'll know the exact moment at which the glass becomes half-empty. Of course, this assumes an answer to the perennial question--that the glass is half-empty rather than half-full.

And yet, as I've written before, it's both. And, no doubt, the universe is both friendly and unfriendly, a "very poor creation" and "infinitely rich [and] full of inexhaustible interest." We live in a both/and universe--where light is both wave and particle and only "becomes" one when we look at it that way. Which way will you look at life? At your life?

In the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 30, God is remembered as telling the people, "I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. . . . I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses," and God then encourages them to "choose life."

Which do you choose? Which will you choose right now?

In Gassho,

RevWik

The Girl Who Silenced the World at the UN

This video recently came to my attention, and I absolutely must bring it to all of yours. I've written before about people who've inspired me by their courage in "speaking truth to power" and in standing up and doing the something that they can do. (One of the Greek terms that is usually translated in the Christian Scriptures as "sin" actually means, "lying down when you should have been standing up.")

Born and raised in Vancouver, Severn Suzuki has been working on environmental and social justice issues since kindergarten. At age 9, she and some friends started the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They traveled to 1992's UN Earth Summit, where 12 year-old Severn gave this powerful speech that deeply affected (and silenced) some of the most prominent world leaders. The speech had such an impact that she has become a frequent invitee to many UN conferences.

Please listen not only to this young person's words, but to the deeper message in the fact that a 12 year-old is speaking them to the United Nations. What could you be doing?

in Gassho,

Rev. Wik

To get a text copy of the speech, click here

Why I'm Voting Republican

Things have been a little tumultous at First Parish in Brewster, since the announcement of my resignation to take a job at the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston. I'm very excited about the new position--and will write more about it anon--but it has set me off my blogging schedule.

This doesn't quite make up for my missed posts, but since I've now learned how to embedd these YouTube videos, I'll share this one with you as well.

in Gassho,

Rev. Wik

After all these years . . .

I just can't resist posting this so that you, too, can finally learn the answer to the mystery that has plagued the ages . . . just what the heck was Joe Cocker singing at Woodstock in 1969?

A word of warning. This may change the way you hear the song forever. It may also get you interested in probiotics. (Watch, and you'll know why.)

in Gassho,

RevWik

Rev. Wright in a Different Light

The following was written William A. Von Hoene Jr. and published in the Chicago Tribune on March 26, 2008. I think it needs a wider audience.

As a preacher myself I know that I've said a few things over the years that, if pulled from their context, would sound far different than they had when I preached them. I've even preached some things that if they were heard in their totality would be controversial.

Why is it so hard for some people to understand that you can be angry--really volcanically angry--without that being all you're capable of? I think of the wonderful scene in the movie The Apostle, in which Robert Duvall's character prays, "I'm mad at you God. I love you. But I'm mad at you." I think, too, of just about every parent I've ever known who at some time(s) or other just wants to kill their kids yet who still love them with every fiber of their being.

Anyway, here's William A. Von Hoene Jr.'s column:

During the last two weeks, excerpts from sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., pastor for more than 35 years at Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side, have flooded the airwaves and dominated our discourse about the presidential campaign and race. Wright has been depicted as a racial extremist, or just a plain racist. A number of political figures and news commentators have attempted to use Sen. Barack Obama's association with him to call into question Obama's judgment and the sincerity of his commitment to unity.I have been a member of Trinity, a church with an almost entirely African-American congregation, for more than 25 years. I am, however, a white male. From a decidedly different perspective than most Trinitarians, I have heard Wright preach about racial inequality many times, in unvarnished and passionate terms.In Obama's recent speech in Philadelphia on racial issues confronting our nation, the senator eloquently observed that Rev. Wright's sermons reflect the difficult experiences and frustrations of a generation.

It is important that we understand the dynamic Obama spoke about.

It also is important that we not let media coverage and political gamesmanship isolate selected remarks by Wright to the exclusion of anything else that might define him more accurately and completely.

I find it very troubling that we have distilled Wright's 35-year ministry to a few phrases; no context whatsoever has been offered or explored.

I do have a bit of personal context. About 26 years ago, I became engaged to my wife, an African-American. She was at that time and remains a member of Trinity. Somewhere between the ring and the altar, my wife had second thoughts and broke off the engagement. Her decision was grounded in race: So committed to black causes, the daughter of parents subjected to unthinkable prejudice over the years, an "up-and-coming" leader in the young black community, how could she marry a white man?

Rev. Wright, whom I had met only in passing at the time and who was equally if not more outspoken about "black" issues than he is today, somehow found out about my wife's decision. He called and asked her to "drop everything" and meet with him at Trinity. He spent four hours explaining his reaction to her decision. Racial divisions were unacceptable, he said, no matter how great or prolonged the pain that caused them. God would not want us to assess or make decisions about people based on race. The world could make progress on issues of race only if people were prepared to break down barriers that were much easier to let stand.

Rev. Wright was pretty persuasive; he presided over our wedding a few months later. In the years since, I have watched in utter awe as Wright has overseen and constructed a support system for thousands in need on the South Side that is far more impressive and effective than any governmental program possibly could approach. And never in my life have I been welcomed more warmly and sincerely than at Trinity. Never.

I hope that as a nation, we take advantage of the opportunity the recent focus on Rev. Wright presents—to advance our dialogue on race in a meaningful and unprecedented way. To do so, however, we need to appreciate that passion born of difficulty does not always manifest itself in the kind of words with which we are most comfortable. We also need to recognize that the basic goodness of people like Jeremiah Wright is not always packaged conventionally.

The problems of race confronting us are immense. But if we sensationalize isolated words for political advantage, casting aside the depth of feeling, circumstances and context which inform them, those problems not only will remain immense, they will be insoluble.

William A. Von Hoene Jr. of Chicago is a member of Trinity United
Church of Christ.

Our popular culture does not seem to do well with complexity and nuance. Life, on the other hand, seems to have pretty much nothing but.

In Gassho,

RevWik

The Wisdom of Willie Nelson

A while ago I had the idea of preaching a sermon series called "The Wisdom of . . ." with each week focusing on the wisdom of another figure. The idea came to me one day while I was cleaning the house and having my CD player shuffle through a number of different artists. "Wow! There's a sermon in that!" I kept thinking again and again and again. So I imagined preaching on the Wisdom of Stevie Wonder, the Wisdom of Sting, the Wisdom of Chris Williamson. You get the idea.

The closest I've come to seeing this idea reach fruition is a sermon I called "Willie Nelson and the Non-Toothache," in which I took a stanza from a Willie Nelson song and linked it with a teaching of the Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh about the state of "non-toothache."

Simply put, this teaching is that it's worth noting that most of the time we don't have a toothache. That may not seem overly important, but take a minute to think about that! When we DO have a toothache we're crying and moaning and saying, "If only I didn't have a toothache . . ." Well, unless you have a toothache right now (in which case you need the non-charlie-horse meditation) you are presently in that longed for state. Are you aware of that? Are you appreciating it?

There's a great Willie Nelson song called "Good Times" in which he reminisces about times past that were the kinds of moments from a life that you remember as the good times. The last verse goes like this:

Here I sit with a drink and a memory. / I'm not cold, I'm not wet,
and I'm not hungry. / Classify these as good times. / Good times.

I'm not cold, I'm not wet, and I'm not hungry. I don't have a toothache. And neither, probably, do you.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Can you believe your eyes?

Isn't this amazing? In actual, objective fact this is a static picture. Yet our minds create the sense of movement in it. (If you really want to get it spinning, click on the image to blow it up. You can get it to stop if you stare at one point for a couple of seconds. )

Do you know what's even more amazing? The computer screen on which you're looking at this, the desk on which the computer screen sits, the chair on which you sit--you, yourself, if you want to go all out with this--all seem to be static objects and yet, in actual, objective fact are collectives of infinitesimally small bits of energy whirling and swirling around mind numbingly huge expanses of empty space

I went to see Horton Hears a Who the other day and was reminded of all those late night conversations I had in high school and college about whether or not our whole universe is really a microscopic organism in some giant's big toe. And I recently read an article in a popular science magazine about the lively conversation among scienctists about concepts of a multiverse in which our universe is but one of an infinite number of universes.

What is "real"? Am I, as Chuan Tzu asked, a person dreaming I'm a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I'm a person? Am I a concrete independent person or a swirling pattern of energy? Am I a static two-dimensional image or a moving picture?

in Gassho,

RevWik

Epiphany

There might be some who would say that Eastertide is the wrong time to be writing about ephiphany. But "epiphany" is not only the Christian holy day twelve days after Christmas. AN epiphany is defined as, "a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something," or, "a comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization." For those who remember their Robert Heinlein, an epiphany is extremely similar to the Martian notion of grokking, which means, "to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed." (That's from Stranger in a Strange Land.)

An epiphany could be described as a spiritual realization, one in which you do not simply understand something new but through which you and the world around you become something new. Once experienced, things are forever different.

I thought of this recently when I found myself musing on an experience I keep having since my partner gave me an ipod for my birthday. I've downloaded a number of songs that I'd listened to growing up, and I keep hearing things--bass lines, drum rhythms--that I hadn't noticed before. Now that I've heard them, though, I can't not hear them, even when I'm listening to my old LPs in less than perfect conditions. What once was inaudible to me, now that I'm aware of it, sings out crystal clear.

And that reminded me of those old optical illusions in which two images are together in one picture. Is this an image of a young woman with her face turned away from us, or is it an elderly woman with her chin tucked into the fur of her coat? Usually people see only one or the other at first. Sometimes it takes a real (and oft times frustrating) effort to see the other. When one does, though, it becomes virtually impossible not to see the image--sometimes to the point of it being hard now to see the image one saw at first.

And so it is with the spiritual realization. What at first was unseen or unheard--what was in the background is now the foreground. Take, for instance, the idea that the real question of Eastertime is not "do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus" but "have you experienced resurrection in your own life?" The most important thing to consider this season is not whether or not a Jewish teacher of some two thousand years ago got up and walked out of his tomb, but whether or not you have ever gotten free from the "tomb" of your own experience.

Perhaps that "tomb" was a depression, or the crushing end of a relationship, the loss of a job (or hope), the death of a loved one, an encounter with your own mortality. The real question raised by Easter is whether or not you have ever risen from your tomb, whether you've ever been raised to new life, renewed life.

Once we realize that these ancient stories are our stories, are pointers to our own lived experiences, you and the world around you become something new.

Hallelujah.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Let’s Just Follow The Rules

In this campaign season politicians and commentators on the Right are continuing to maintain that the United States was, is, and always should be “a Christian Nation.” Folks on the left seem to be falling over themselves to establish their own bona fides as God fearing religious women and men. Whether or not this is a good thing is open for debate. It is, however, the way things are. Religion and the religiosity of the candidates is clearly and firmly on the table for discussion. And since this is the way things are, I have a suggestion to make to all of the candidates and all of their supporters: let’s just follow the rules.

I want to be clear, from my perspective as a Unitarian Universalist clergy person I am not talking about the rules laid down by the RNC or the DNC, by the Federal Elections Committee or even the US Constitution. I’m suggesting that the candidates follow THE rule, the so-called “Golden Rule,” the rule that says, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” That’s the Christian version of this rule, but it shows up in just about every one of humanity’s religions. Buddhism says, “hurt not others in ways you would find hurtful.” Islam says, “No one of you is a believer until you desire for your brothers and sisters what you desire for yourself.” Judaism says, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellows.” The British Humanist Society says, “Don’t do things you wouldn’t want done to you.” From Bah’ai’ to Zoroastrianism there are numerous other variations, yet among them all there is a remarkable consistency in the core message.

And it translates well, I think, into the political realm. So, for all of you candidates—and all of your supporters—for whom being religious is so important, here are some translations of the rules into terms appropriate for you:

• Do not run such ads as you’d call “false” and “misleading” if your opponents ran them about you.
• Do not distort statistics in a way that if your opponent did it you’d call it unfair.
• Do not present your opponent’s positions in ways you’d not want them to do of your own.
• Do not present your own positions in ways you’d begrudge your opponent. (See again the rule about statistics, for instance.)
• Do not decry behavior in your opponent which you yourself (or your supporters) are doing.

This does not mean, of course, that you can’t point out real differences. It just means that you shouldn’t do it by means you wouldn’t want your opponent to use. Naturally you will highlight your strengths and try to obscure your weaknesses. And so will your opponent. It’s human nature. So don’t waste time and energy complaining about it when they do—especially don’t accuse them of being misleading or dishonest, since you know you’re doing it too. And when you do it, don’t do it in a way that if they did it you’d have something to complain about. Follow the rules.

The popular wisdom may be that all that we, the electorate, want is drama, but the truth is that what we’d really like is the solid information we need in order to make a truly informed decision come November. Show us who you really are and not who you think we want you to be. Forget the pretty packaging, and show us the truth. Forget manipulating the data and tell us who you are—warts and all, strengths and weaknesses both. We may dream of a perfect President, yet we know we’re going to have to settle for a human being. So show us who you are, and if you really are the best candidate—with both your flaws and your greatness in place—we’ll know. After all, if you’re elected we’ll find out soon enough.

It’s one thing to be seen showing up at a church or other religious buildings and to put religious words and phrases into your stump speeches, but that’s not what being religious is really all about. As the Jerry Rubin once put it, “Don’t tell me what you believe. Show me what you do 24 hours a day and I’ll tell you what you believe.” If you want to convincince me that you’re a religious person, then run a campaign that follows the rules.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Tell Me Where The Miracles End

I have told the story many times in sermons of a walk in the woods I took once during a silent retreat. I came across a piece of quartz sticking out of the ground--it was about the size of a human head, and it was in a clearing so that it had been soaking in sunshine all morning.

It seemed like an auspicious site to me, so I sat down to meditate. At some point I "heard" the words (that's the only way I can describe it), "Take off your shoes, this is holy ground." I did as I was told, I reverently removed my sneakers and set them aside.

When my meditation was over I decided to continue my walk and was about to put my shoes back on when I suddenly realized that I couldn't tell where the "holy ground" stopped and the regular old ground began. So I kept my shoes off for the rest of the walk.

When I got back to the retreat center I was about to put my shoes back on but wondered why the ground outside was "holy" but the floors inside were not. So I kept my shoes off. I'd like to say that I never put my shoes on again, but I did. Still, to remind myself of this experience I do take my shoes off whenever I preach or lead a workshop. Everything, I'd learned, is holy ground.

Yesterday I was flying back to Cape Cod from a conference I'd been attending in Kentucky. I love to fly, and while I understand the physics of flight it never ceases to be a magical, a miraculous experience for me. During my flight yesterday I started thinking about other magical, miraculous experiences. I started thinking about how amazing our "horseless carriages" are. Or that we can press a button and suddenly see moving pictures . Or that we can flick a switch and have light. Or that we can eat food and turn it into body parts. Or that the energy that makes our hearts beat comes from the Big Bang itself.

Oh, for the most part I understand the science behind these things. Yet tell me, where do the miracles stop? Albert Einstein said that we have a choice between two ways of living in the world--as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is.

In Gassho,

Rev Wik

First Tinky Winky . . .

J.K. Rowling, author of the wildly popular Harry Potter books, recently announced that she'd always thought that Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is gay. (Click here to see how Publisher's Weekly reported this story, and here for a New York Times piece about how the blogosphere is responding.)

Some are saying that she should have been more explicit about it; others are calling it much ado about nothing. I, for one, am glad to know and glad that it was never more of an issue. (I'll happily admit to being a huge fan of the series!)

There are so many things that go into a person's identity and our sexual orientation--or "affectional preference"--is but one piece of it. Does my being a one-time french horn player make me unfit for military service, underserving of the same opportunities to rent or buy real estate, or unable to make a life-long commitment? Does my being a lover of comic books make me a poor choice to be a preacher? (There are impressionable youngsters around, you know.)

I know I'm being silly. One's sexual orienation is considerably more important an element of a person's identity than whether or not one plays an instrument or follows the exploits of the Batman. Still, it is only one element, no matter how vigorously some try to make it the defining element.

I am glad to know that Dumbledore is gay. It's one more think I know about this "person" I've come to admire. And I'm glad that I didn't know before this, because there was absolutely no way in which his sexual orientation played any part in the story.

As is so often the case.

In Gassho,

RevWik

All Work and No Play

One of my favorite quotations comes from the poet Louise Bogan. She wrote,

"I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering;
surely the strange beauty of the world must somwhere rest on pure joy."

I had to post this photo of the Elders as a counterpoint to the more formal shot I used in my last post.

RevWik

A New Day Dawning

I have written before about stories from the news that have given me hope--that someone somewhere is crazy enough to get into a lawn chair rigged with balloons and go for a ride, that someone else will get on a Torro mower and drive from Alaska to Maryland. These things, I've said, have been for me like the sight of a blade of grass that has pushed its way through the asphalt--a reminder and the promise that life will always be free.

Yesterday I came across a story that I had heard nothing about but which fills me with true, deep hope for our future as a species and which feels to me a signal that a new day is indeed dawning. In July, on Nelson Mandela's 89th birthday, Mandela and several others announced the formation of a new group--The Elders. Like traditional elders for our global village, these women and men have come together to "support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is conflict, and inspire hope where there is despair."\

The list of founding members is indeed illustrious: Nelson Mandela, Graça Machel, Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Lakhdar Brahimi, Gro Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Fernando H Cardoso, Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson, Muhammad Yunus.

"This group," quoting Mandela again, "can speak freely and boldly, working both publicly and behind the scenes on whatever actions need to be taken."

A brief video introduces the group, and a press release gives more details (see "Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu announce The Elders .")

I think a remark from Desmond Tutu, the group's chair, puts it in perspective for me:

"Despite all the ghastliness that is around, human beings are made for goodness. The ones who ought to be held in high regard are not the ones who are militarily powerful, nor even econcomically prosperious. They are the ones who have a commitment to try and make the world a better place. We--the Elders--will endeavor to support those people and do our best for humanity."

This may sound corny, but I really do think I'll sleep better tonight.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Many Lives

I was recently reading a friend's blog and was reminded of the reason Henry David Thoreau gave for leaving his little house on Walden Pond. "I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one." (See chapter 18)

My friend, David Heald, was writing about his decision to leave the parish ministry--check out his Transparent Eyeball Blog entry, "Many More Lives To Live." I've also known people who left careers to become parish ministers. My own older brother, after many years in the computer field, recently became a social worker. All around us there are people who, as Thoreau also said, are living "lives of quiet desperation," yet also all around us there are people who have the courage to strike out and do something new.

One of the things that always appealed to me about the Highlander TV show was the idea of these immortals who'd had "many lifetimes" in which they could pursue many different paths--the same woman or man who'd been a concert pianist, a surgeon, a mercinary, a monk. I always thought it would be a wonderful thing to have the opportunity to live many different lives, and here's old Henry David talking about doing so within his own, limited, lifespan; about leaving one life for any of the "several more" that were waiting for him. And, as it turns out, I've known people who've done it.

I haven't before solicited comments on my blog, but I'm going to try it out. I'd really love to hear from people who've "changed lives":

• How did you know it was time to move on?
• How did you go about doing it?
• What was it like to do something new?
• How do you feel about it now?

There are so many reasons for despair in our world, and there are so many reasons for hope. Which stories would you rather hear?

In Gassho,

RevWik

What a Wonderful World (cont'd.)

Okay, so we have Paul Woods, the guy who's riding across the country on his Torro mower. Now we have Kent Couch, a 47-year old gas station owner who recently settled back and traveled nearly two hundred miles . . . carried by the 105 large helium balloons he'd attached to his lawn chair! [Read the AP story here.]

Mr. Couch is not the first person to go flying in a lawn chair. That honor goes to Larry Walters who, in 1982 flew for a distance of only about ten miles but acheived an altitude of three miles on a lawnchair to which he'd attached forty five weather balloons. This put him up where the airplanes fly, and two pilots radioed air traffic control to report seeing a man flying on a chair. The FAA took this seriously and immdediately reported that they would charge him "as soon as we figure out which part [of the FAA code] he violated." [Check his story out here.]

I've written this before and will no doubt come back to this theme again: we live in a wonderful world.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Doing the Numbers

In every broadcast of American Public Media's Marketplace a point comes when the host says, "Let's do the numbers." And every morning, on my way to work, I hear the media doing numbers of a different kind: the number of casualties from the latest suicide bombing in Iraq, the number of American military killed in the most recent skirmish.

I suppose it's important for us to know about these numbers. They help us to understand what's called "the human cost" of our species' penchant for violence. And if we can think of them as people and not just numbers, perhaps our hearts will be moved to really work for peace. (Remember Stalin's famous remark, "The death of one person is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic.")

Yet it seems to me that if we need to know these numbers, there are some other numbers we should know as well:

• The number of children who died since yesterday because of a lack of access to healthcare;
• The number of people of color who were harrassed and arrested simply because of the color of their skin and a police officer's assumptions about that;
• The number of gay, lesbian, and transgender kids who were taunted, shunned, and even beaten just for being who they are;

And better yet, what about these numbers:

• The number of alcoholics who lived one more day of sobriety;
• The number of stressed out, overworked parents who didn't hit their kids;
• The number of people facing seemingly impossible odds who made a decision to change their lives . . . and began to act on it;
• The number of acts of kindness performed without thought to recompense;
• The number of strangers who became friends;
• The number of people who's lives were saved by acts of love

Surely there are many numbers we need to know about in order to make sense out of the world we live in. And, as it's often been noted, what we choose to make the focus of our attention helps determine our experience of that world. So next time you "do the numbers," think carefully about what numbers you do.

In Gassho,

RevWik

What You See Is What You Get

Okay, so let's assume that we agree that the fundamental Big Question is whether or not there is a Go(o)d. What if the answer is both "yes" and "no" and the determination is made when we choose our answer? What if this question is like the poll that's been on this site for so long--is the glass half full or half empty? The answer to that one, of course, is that it is both, or either, and that you and I get to choose which it is.

This may seem to be some kind of wishy-washy cop out. How can there both be and not be a Go(o)d? Certainly the theists or the atheists must be right, one or the other. Certainly there is an answer, how else can we possibly act with any kind of assurance that the answer we've "chosen" is the right one?

I know that it's dangerous to take scientific theories and apply them to philosophies or social constructs, but religious language is essentially poetic; it doesn't deal with facts and figures but with the sense of things. So it seems perfectly appropriate to apply the language of science--as poetry--to the Big Questions we face in our living.

And one of the things we've learned from modern science is that we live in a pretty weird world. The scientist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark once wrote, "The universe is not only more strange than you imagine. It is more strange than you can imagine." And it does seem that we live in a fundamentally both/and universe.

Consider light. Physics tells us that there are essentially two distinct states--waves and particles. Yet quantum physics tells us that light appears to be both or, perhaps more confusingly, it can be either depending on what you're looking for. If you conduct an experiment to examine light as a wave, then it shows up as a wave; if your experiment is designed to look at light as a particle, it is there as a particle. And taking this a step further, physicists tell us that it is more accurate to say that light is either, or neither, wave or particle until you look at it as one or the other at which point it becomes precisely what you're looking for.

Hard as this is to wrap our heads around, it seems that it's not only light that can exist in two seemingly discreet and contradictory states simultaneously. Even more weird than the state of protons there is the famous thought experiment that has come to be called Schrodinger's Cat in which a cat is placed in a sealed box along with a mechanism that creates a 50/50 chance of killing the cat. According to an application of quantum law the cat can be meaningfully said to be both alive and dead until an observer opens the box. (Here's an explanation of all this . . . in verse no less!)

Alive and dead; wave and particle; half full and half empty. To paraphrase the Preacher of the Jewish book of Ecclesiastes, "Paradox, paradox! All is paradox."

What if God is the same way? (And here I'll just start using the three-letter version because I hope it's evident by now that I'm not talking that God when I use the term--whatever "that God" is for you.) What if God can be meaningfully said to be both existent and non-existent, both real and a delusion with the determinant being what it is that you're looking for? Like the scientist looking at light it's a particle if that's what the experiment is looking at and it's a wave when that's what's being studied. So God is for those who seek God, and equally is not for those who don't.

Perhaps this is what Jesus meant in the phrase he is remembered as saying so often, "for those who have eyes, let them see . . ." or where comes the certainty in the encouragement, "seek and you will find."

In Gassho,

RevWik

Is There A Go(o)d?

I've often said that one of the purposes of religions is to help us wrestle with life's Big Questions. (And thanks to A.A. Milne and Pooh for the idea that Very Important Words should always be capitalized!) The Big Questions are things like: Why am I here? What's the meaning of life? What happens when we die? How should I live? Things like that.

It seems to me that one of the biggest Big Questions is, Is There A God? Now, by this I am not meaning is there an anthropomorphized deity, a big daddy or big mama in the sky, or, as a teen once put it, "a buff Santa in a toga" looking down on us from the heavens. That question, it seems to me, is too specific. It's like wondering if there's something called water but asking if there's Perrier.

So let's start at the most general. A philosopher's definition of God might be, "That Than Which No Greater Can Be Conceived," because whatever other specific attributes have been conferred on humanity's various god and goddess images, all religions have held god to be the ultimate, the absolute. So whatever else might be said about something deserving of the name “god” it must be the best, the preeminent, the unsurpassable.

And this, it seems to me, is the foundational Question we need to wrestle with: is there an absolute, preeminent, unsurpassable, ultimate . . . something? Plato called it “The Good,” and for him it was an ideal, a conception, not a tangible thing. Theists, obviously, call their "good" God and give it consciousness and will. Taoists see it as an impersonal flowing movement, the Tao. What all of them have in common is the assumption of an underlying, all-pervading, ultimate.

This question is foundational because if you believe there is a "go(o)d" then that in which you believe can provide order and meaning for life. If there is no "go(o)d" then this is a truly relativistic universe and there is no direction. Answering this Big Question, then, provides a basis to help with answering all of the others.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Where It's All About You

A colleague recently posted a link to a video from the website SermonSpice.com. It's a Christian source for short video clips preachers can insert in their sermons. One of them, the one linked here, is called "MeChurch" and, well, it speaks for itself.

I am often tempted to root some of the problems I wrestle with as a parish minister in Unitarian Universalism itself. (And some no doubt are rooted there.) Yet watching the MeChurch video reminds me that the "cult of the individual" has been enshrined not just within UU congregations. Another clip from the same site is a mock ad for a new collection of worship songs called It's All About Me which features such songs as "Now I Lift My Name On High," "I Exalt Me," "How Great I Am," and, "O Come Let Us Adore Me." It's definately aimed at a Christian audience.

So how do we combat our culture's emphasis on the individual without going too far and dismissing the individual? How do we reconnect people to the power of the whole without letting go of the much needed affirmation of the parts? And, more specifically, how do we change the culture in our congregations so that individuals know themselves to be part of something larger than themselves--so that the first question isn't "what do I need?" but, rather, "what do we need?" I think of this in terms of such endemic problems as: low levels of financial support; one "interest group" battling another; those without kids wondering about the importance of religious education for our kids and those with kids wondering about the importance of resources for our elders; people leaving the church in a huff over this slight or that slight. I see this in church after church after church.

How do we make that shift? No answers; only some of the questions that I'm wrestling with.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Size matters

Back in 1776, the United States of America consisted of 13 colonies, and there were roughly 2.5 million people living here. Today there are 50 states, and an estimated 301,139,947 people. This may not seem like an overly insightful observation, but we're a whole lot bigger than we were when those "founding fathers" established the forms of government which by and large are still in place today.

I was thinking about this recently during a presentation about a proposed new governance structure that was being given to the congregation I serve. One of the things noted is that all of the experts agree that when a church with an average attendance of, say, 50 grows into a church of 500 it needs to organize and govern itself differently. The two churches are not just different sizes, they are effectively different animals. (In fact, the church growth expert Lyle Schaller describes different sized churches not as "family," "pastoral," "program," and "corporate," as they're often called in the literature but "cat," "collie," "garden," etc. as a way of accentuating the essential differences of different sized churches.) In short, church experts agree that when it comes to organizational structure, size matters.

Now the growth of a 5o member church into a 500 member church is a ten-fold increase. The growth of a 2.5 million "member" country into an over 300 million "member" country is more than a one hundred-fold increase. Yet we are operating under essentially the same governance structure now that we're a "nation" as when were when we were a "cat" (to use Schaller's terms). Could this be at least part of the reason for why our "body politic" seems so unwell?

Just a thought.

In Gassho,

RevWik