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March 2000 Sermons
March 5, 2000Rev. Nancy D. DeanMarch 5, 2000A Fig Leaf on Our Fears: Covering up Our PainWithout giving it too much thought, rather reacting from the solar plexus, consider what you, fear most right in this moment. How much power does that fear have in your life? What generally are the fears that motivate you, or debilitate you? Someone, Aristotle I think, said that all of the actions of life come out of our fears. The longer I live, the more I study both history and literature, the more often I am inclined to agree with this statement. The positive, joyful part of me says that I do many things out of love, that we all do; yet, there is the fear of the loss of love to consider. Fear has been called the "monster of grim prospects." All that we know has happened and therefore could happen, might happen, or will happen to someone if not us. I have often felt inordinately lucky. Not because I have not had my fair share of life tribulations, for I have, but more because I have not had more of them. I hear the dreadful stories of murder of children; flooding so devastating that a young mother is giving birth as she is being airlifted from a tree where she and her husband and other daughter have been clinging; car wrecks involving drunk drivers and innocent victims; so many things that could have happened to me or my family. It can make one fearful. I remember once driving back when seat belts had not long been in common use, the very early seventies (back in the 1900s!). It was a long-ish trip and my small daughter was asleep in the back seat and I realized that she had no seatbelt. I don’t think the cars yet had them in the back then. It was late at night, and I had another two hours driving ahead of me. The more I considered this, the more intense my fears of an accident happening became, until finally I removed my own lap belt (there where no shoulder belts at that time). I just decided that if we were going to have a wreck, I had to meet it the same as my daughter. With the beauty of 20-20 hindsight, I know that my fear was leading me to irrational thinking and behavior, but in my young twenty-something mind this was the only way to level my anxiety. I was like the patient whose psychiatrist gently pointed out that most of the things his patient was anxious about never actually came to pass. "I know," admitted the patient unhappily, "but then I worry about why they didn’t happen." I often like to find out how many times a given subject comes up in the combined Judeo-Christian scriptures. The word fear occurs as a noun 423 times pointedly, and many other times relatedly. The first is: Genesis 9:2 - "The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered." Poor Adam and Eve! The last in the Christian book of Revelation3:5, and states: "And from the throne came a voice saying, ‘Praise our God, all you his servants, and all who fear him, small and great."’ The text, though, that first exhibits fear though comes when Adam and Eve have eaten of the fruit (no apples mentioned) of good and evil and realize God will figure out they have. This is Gen. 3:8, "They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden." When God, seeming not to know where they are calls to them. Adam replies, Gen. 3:10, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." Adam, the naughty first child of God, who has disobeyed, will be punished along with Eve who is blamed for listening to the serpent’s tempting suggestions. They are banned from the Garden of Eden, and the ancient Hebrews understood this to be the explanation for humankinds’ never-ending suffering. Most holy texts of all religions tend to center on human fears, what to avoid, what has happened to those who have not feared correctly, what to expect that is fearful. Almost all ancient tales of the people, like fairy tales, are really scary stories of what happened to good people who did not pay attention to the frightening things of the world. The great literature of the world, including holy texts, also has its heroes and heroines who overcome the fearful things, the evils of the world. Tragedies uncover the woes of those potentially heroic men and women who did not overcome. "Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty." And, "To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom." Both statements are from the humanist philosopher Bertrand Russell, who actually talked/wrote a great deal about how fear controls so much of human behavior. He was pretty adamant that fear is the most destructive component of human imagining, and is that which is most easily abused in all of us. He was so forceful on this issue as to say: "To fear is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead." The Scientology founder and science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard, was undoubtedly a follower of Russell at some level, for his writings and teaching are totally centered on Russell’s thoughts. Fear, as Hubbard taught, is what gets between us and our ability to try and achieve our hopes and dreams, our goals. To get free of those fears is the object, as he put it to get clear. To be clear is the ideal state of being. Not surprisingly, the ancient Chinese and Japanese philosophers said the same things. Later Buddhist teachings also talk about letting go, and letting go is primarily letting go of desire which is fed by fear. Fear is a huge motivator, no doubt. Further, we need a certain amount of awareness we might call a "healthy fear" to keep safe. I think most of us believe there is a constructive element to some of our fears, but the back side of fear is how much it operates in us and how unaware we are of how much fear both motivates and inhibits our actions. People who operate mostly out of the fear that inhibits we generally call negative, or timid. Those who operate more out of the motivating factors we generally call optimistic and/or aggressive in thoughts and actions. It is easy to pick this up in any group discussion where some action is required. What we find most helpful is some balance between too much negativism and too much optimism. Having grown up with a great deal of negativism stemming from a religion that was much more focused on God damning people than loving them, I have become acutely aware of how damaging too much of the negative can be. I developed insomnia as a child because I would lie awake trying to remember everything I had done all day so I could ask God to forgive me of my sins. I was once told by a friend that I was taught to fear God, and I really did. I consider that sort of religion emotionally abusive, at least for some perhaps more sensitive people. Which may be why so many people in western mental institutions tend to perseverate on and act out of fear of biblical things. I read quite an interesting study several years ago about the unusual incidence of this phenomenon in western cultures. My family in Idaho were orchardists, we grew apples and a variety of blue plums called Stanley plums. I grew up we eating lots of fresh fruit, also prunes which is what Stanley plums are called when they are dried. (I just heard last week that the prune industry is renaming this redoubtable fruit to "dried plums" which won’t matter a wit to those who dislike them and their noted purging effect.) One prune-hater was eight-year-old Robbie who finally got fed up (pun intended) and refused to eat his prunes one morning. Robbie was a good little boy of strict and very devout Calvinist parents. Normally he was up bright and early, worked hard at school, did his chores, was just generally helpful and obedient, so his parents were astonished at this rebellion. Besides the family could not afford to let good food go to waste. Robbie was reminded that God commanded children to honor and obey their parents, and God would punish those who did not. But Robbie steadfastly refused to eat the prunes, so his angry parents sent him to his room to think about it and the prunes were put in the refrigerator. A few minutes later, a terrible thunderstorm blew in with great roaring wind, loud clashing claps of thunder, and brilliant streaks of lightening. Poised strategically in the hall, the mother said to the father: "This will teach him a lesson." Shortly, following yet another great clap of thunder, Robbie came tearing down the stairs, went to the kitchen and stood before the open refrigerator looking at the prunes. A great bolt of lightening lit up the darkened sky, and the boy’s voice was heard saying as he took out the despised dish of prunes: "Heck of a lot of fuss to make about a few stupid prunes!" Fear of God’s or the gods/goddesses retribution has been a very effective tool for many thousands of years. Remember the phrase, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Franklin D. Roosevelt said that upon entering World War II. The truth in this statement, though, goes far beyond war and right at the heart of human endeavor. Between guarding ourselves against hunger and the elements and ignoring the likely dangers of life, there is a place of serenity that we need to trust, for the decisions and actions we make that are fear-based are the least reliable. The decisions and actions we make from love and peace of mind are those that ultimately lead us to the greatest contentment and joy. The problem is being willing to face our fears in the first place. There are many people whose lives become filled with unpleasantness, unhappiness, all sorts of destructive behaviors that are the direct product of unacknowledged fears. Most of us do not like looking at the stuff we are afraid of, or the fears that lead us to do the things we do. Freud, among others, noted that these underlying fears that reside in our subconscious are the most harmful part of our human psyche. The writer James Baldwin said: "To defend one’s self against fear is simply to ensure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced." It can be quite surprising to learn what fears are operating undercover in our souls, yet it is the truth of these fears, looking at them and calling them by name that gets us to the place of love and mental health that is most sacred to us. We can be surprised by learning about our own fears, but also those others have. Like the famous painter Maxfield Parrish. Parrish, known for his glorious illustrations of The Arabian Nights, was notorious for procrastination, even though one of his specialties was painting voluptuous nudes. One morning, a beautiful young model arrived at his studio to pose, but Parrish said, "I don‘t feel like working right now. Let’s have a cup of coffee, instead." Parrish got the coffee, and they sat down to chat. At that moment, the studio door buzzer rang. Parrish answered it and then turned to the model. "Young lady," he cried, "for pity’s sake take off your clothes! My wife is coming up to check up on me." A good look at human history and present human behavior makes it clear that we have been countering our mistakes, fears, and uncertainties by covering or masking them so as not to be discovered. The price we pay for such behavior can often be very high indeed. What most psychiatrists, psychologists and ministers see regularly is fear hiding behind cloaks of various kinds. The most common reactions to any difficulty, real or perceived, is born of fear. The worst reactions are those born of fears that are not addressed or acknowledged. My belief is that all the things we least like about ourselves come directly from our deepest, most often unacknowledged fears. And like a deep splinter which left unattended will fester and make itself known, so too our fears. It has been well established in the last twenty years that many--certainly not all--but many severely obese men and women were physically and sexually abused as children. The layers of fat are a kind of protection, they make the person large and more formidable. People who are greedy often are reacting from fears of being poor; those who are jealous fear loss of love; those who are over-protective fear dangers they perhaps barely avoided in childhood. Most of us who are parents of teens are often so tough on our youth because we remember all too well our own close calls. Men and women in relationships that are unsatisfactory all too commonly will not talk about the things they feel are lacking or that are hurtful and keep hoping that somehow, some way that everything will just get better. These women and men are ripe for affairs. We find ourselves gravitating to people who will give us the courage to leave, or to shock our partners into recognizing that all is not well on the home front. Children who cannot or later do not recognize the pain in their minds and souls will also act out trying to get some relief. Ours is not a culture that encourages or teaches being honest in our communications with those we love, in the main because we fear the loss of that love. We procrastinate, obfuscate, lie, become angry and abusive, hit, cry, run away, do all kinds of things to get relief from our pain, but more often than not just cover it up under layers of activities and statements that make the problems only get worse. Three weeks ago I talked about saving face, and how in the process of recovering when someone has offended us, hurt us, we typically show anger, resentment, passive behaviors--a whole range of behaviors that only mask the hurt we feel. When what we would be better off doing is telling the person that they are crossing the boundary between respect and disrespect. That it is more useful to say to a person in such circumstances that the conversation has gone from helpful to hurtful. What I mentioned then and restate now, is that the hurtful things that happen to us do not dissolve from our consciousness; rather, they lie there piling up making us yet more defensive or more aggressive as they add to the fuel of our fears. What we can do is remember the biblical injunction that the "truth shall make you free." One way or another the truth will out. What is true in us, the expectations, the hopes, and the fears will always come out in our actions and our interactions with others. It is only by learning what these concerns and fears are within us that we become free to work with them, rather than constantly fighting against them. The Peanuts comic character Charlie Brown never kicked the football because Lucy always pulled it away and he would go head over heels as he kicked and nothing was there to kick. Yet, he never quit trying to kick that football. Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, once said, "I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time." Such wisdom. We may not quit doing the things that come out of our fears, but at least we will know the fears and purposefully keeping going at life in spite of them. Our souls, our hearts, are easily bruised, it is fear that makes us so fragile, knowledge of our fears makes us strong, and competent to face each new day. For while the fearful things in life do not go away, we can become much more adept at facing them and removing the fig leaves, the coverings, and there finding the joys that they hide from us. March 26, 2000Rev. Nancy D. DeanMarch 26, 2000Wisdom of the World’s ReligionsSometimes I challenge myself more than I intended to when I realize I have consulted several volumes of weighty text to create a Sunday morning message--this is how a minister begins by saying that you are getting a very brief talk on a very big subject. As the new missionary heard when he was sent out to a tribe reported to be cannibals. Upon meeting the chief of the tribe, he asked, "Do your people know anything about religion?" The Chief replied, "Well, when the last missionary was here we got a little taste of it . So, too, are you getting a little taste of the wisdom of the world’s religions this morning. It was not until I took the class titled "World Religions" with the famous scholar Diana Eck at Harvard that I knew I had to make the study of religion and ministry my life’s work. Always fascinated by why people believe and what they believe, this course hooked me. Coupled with this was my own very strong need for religious expression and understanding which caused me to come away from that first semester appreciating as I never had before that people are innately spiritual and lean toward religious expression. While that expression varies, sometimes dramatically, from culture to culture, place to place, the inner longing for connection is powerful within all of humanity. Further, the greatest teachers of how to be in touch with that deep inner longing have spoken or taught their messages in so many ways that we now have the largest body of written information that has ever existed directed toward this very subject. Religious texts have been, since the beginning of literacy, the primary objects for our writing, first on clay tablets, then parchment, papyri, paper, and now computer files. Perhaps even the internet--though I believe spam or junk e-mail is the largest volume of text there. The first printed materials were Bibles, and to this day, world wide, religious texts are the most printed and sold texts, with the Bible the best seller of all time, and the Koran rapidly approaching it. From the standpoint of most teachers of philosophy and religion the greatest teachers have been Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. These have been the greatest teachers of ethics and religion. Religion being the institutional form where ethics and moral behaviors are taught. While there are some basic ethical principles that cross all traditions, for instance, you should not take another human life, the expressions of moral behavior can vary quite a bit. In the Middle East polygamy has been seen as acceptable, but in western tradition not so, and unacceptable to the degree that the early Mormon religious groups who tried to bring this into practice found themselves persecuted and forced to leave; and even after going to live in the deserts of Utah around the great Salt Lake, eventually had to conform to achieve acceptance and statehood. This is but one of many examples of difference and congruence as traditions move, change, modernize. We have heard words from the head of the Roman Catholic Church this week, healing words to Jews and Moslems, that would have been unthinkable for a Pope to utter fifty, even twenty-five, years ago. I am immensely hopeful for further religious tolerance and soon perhaps acceptance because of this. All religions have something of value in them for the believers, or they would not exist. Many cults (understand that the term cult in not negative in the teaching of philosophy and religion, cult merely expresses the idea of religious group.) Ultimately, as Philip Novak writes, religious cults that survive and go on to become major religions all have both "inspirational power" and "instructional value." We do not necessarily see the inspiration in equal amounts to instruction, for some religions stress one over the other. Unitarians and Universalists did not have these in equal proportions, and when we merged in 1961, it became popular to say that Unitarians were the head, and Universalists the heart. Even in our congregations, for those of us who gather here this morning, one side tends to be stronger. There are a few of us, myself included, who would like to get up and sing and dance and shout our praises for our faith (I get to do a little of this at General Assembly), but others would not, as they say, be caught dead doing that. Religions then are almost by definition different ways of expressing all the things we consider ethical, moral, that is, religious, or more accurately, spiritual. I believe strongly that religion rises out of human need for belonging and for order, hence ethics and morality. And they reflect their time and place of origin. So even if you take an established religion like Christianity and, as the missionary zealots of the past did, go to Africa or South America the Christianity looks different in expression in those places than it does in England or the U.S. Or, as Novak writes: "Religions share profound family resemblances, but each is also unique." The main divisions of the world’s religions are: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the primal or native religions. We can learn a lot, not only from learning a little about other religions, but we also learn more about ourselves in the process. Which takes me first to Socrates, the great Greek thinker, who said the most important spiritual and intellectual work for us is to "know thyself." Socrates lived about 450 years before Jesus, his thoughts and words were given to us through his brilliant pupil Plato and through his pupil Aristotle, so that Greek ethics, logic, and the form of governance they promoted out of them, democracy, became the major influence for human behavior to this day. Ethics, is about the ways we understand are the good or right ways to treat one another. They have been most famously been codified in the Hebrew’s Ten Commandments. Here they are in our seven Principles. Socrates’ religiousness was in the question-answer dialogues that became known as the Socratic Method of inquiry. We learn, he said, what is most important by asking and attempting to answer questions. This was a major shift from cosmology, the stories of how we came to be, to ethics or we will be together. Socrates argued that the good life comes by way of reason, and he tried to show his pupils, like Plato, who engaged with him in these questions, the inconsistencies in their beliefs. He was passionate about being consistent in one’s beliefs. (One logical inconsistency that rises to passion in me, is how people can be against abortion because it is murder but be for capital punishment.) He was condemned for impiety, but went to his death rather than take the easy out that was offered. Greek thought, especially that which ultimately spread over the Roman world, certainly into the Middle East, influenced Jewish teaching, and the Jewish teacher Jesus of Nazareth. I believe that to know oneself is the only way to be truly free, for unless we know what the ideas, beliefs, experiences are that make us do the things we do, we continue to fall into the traps that ego sets up for us. There is a great chasm between the rational and the emotional in most of us. Daniel Goldman wrote a splendid book about this entitled, Emotional I.Q. We often operate as if blind, or in Plato’s allegory of the cave, assuming things to be true, but only seeing reality in shadow. If you want to know why someone does harm to another, you don’t look at the violent act alone, but the source of it. To use a medical example, a cough is but a symptom, not the disease itself. The oldest religious texts come from the Hindu and Hebrew religions. The Hindu body of religious writings is by far the largest. The Vedas alone, represent thousands of years of doctrines. Those most of us associate with Hinduism deal with the eternal cycle of reincarnations that as Novak writes are "driven by karma and the liberation from this [worldly] bondage by means of yogic discipline." There are in the Upanishads, which is the collection of this vedic literature, rites for all sorts of sacrifice and offerings to the gods, performed by priests "specially trained to chant sacred hymns. The hymns themselves were known as Vedas or ‘sacred knowledge.’" The main thing I like to explain about Hindu religion is that it has great variety, as do all religions that are old and have spread to very many people. Just think of all the different denominations of Protestant Christianity in this country. So too with Hinduism. Equally important, is that Hindu teachings focus on God, Brahman, as the source of all, and the many different gods and goddesses are merely various aspects or incarnations of God. About four thousand years ago, pastoral nomads came to the Indus Valley of ancient India, they were called Aryans, or Noble Ones, this genesis group of Hindus focused on a fire sacrifice that was intended to bring well-being and prosperity for this life, it was in later times that the doctrines of reincarnation came into being. The writings of the Upanishads are not well-known in the West, with the exception of the scripture called Bhagavad-Gita. Of the four collections of Vedas, the Rig-Veda is the foundational and most important one. One aspect of the God is the god Varuna, omniscient, he is the protector of the moral order of the world, he is said to be hidden even in the "small drop of water." An example of holy text: "If a man stand, walks, or sneaks about, if he goes slinking away, if he goes into his hiding-place; if two persons sit together and scheme, King Varuna is there a third, and knows it." Always keep in mind, that translations lose much of the beauty and poetry of the original language, and often much of the meaning. which makes me think of my elderly Aunt Bell who thought God himself wrote the King James Version of the Bible. There is also the story of an elderly woman told her friends that she had decided to take up the study of Hebrew. When they asked why she did this at such an advanced age, she explained, "When I go to heaven, I want to be able to speak to God in his own language." In the teachings of Hinduism as all traditions do, are teachings related to creation, customs of the people, ritual to please God, or gods/goddesses. Moral teachings, also, such as, "see all beings in your own self and your self in all beings." Sound familiar? Buddhism, which came about some 2600 years ago, has been called the "light of Asia." Siddhartha Gotama, a man born to great privilege renounced it all to find the peace of the soul, to know himself, and came to be called the Buddha, or the awakened or enlightened one. His life itself became the instruction for millions of both intellectual and simple people, even to this day. Over time the various sects or cults of Buddhism have given it the aspects we are familiar with in a miraculous birth, a visitation from a wise man, a seer, becoming a teacher who has renounced the material pleasures and hold of the world, visions of old age, disease and death. The insight out of all that comes the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, and moral teachings about right action, which as the Buddha taught, are what ennobles, not ritual. So we see Buddha reacting to his native religion in much the same way we see Jesus reacting to his. The central doctrines of Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths are that life is suffering, that suffering comes from our cravings or desires, that to let go of the desire is the way to cease to suffer, and the way that leads to the cessation of suffering is the eightfold path of right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. The major distinction that we can see between religions are those that are doctrine-based and those that are ethics-based. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are doctrine-based. That is, you make a profession of belief in certain precepts. My tradition of origin is Methodist. Each Sunday, we stood up and said the Apostle’s Creed, written in the fourth century, that encompassed the doctrine of most Christian belief. Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and modern Unitarian Universalism are ethics-based traditions. The form of spirituality or the rituals of our faith are much more personal; ethics are the grounding for how we live out our beliefs. I sometimes get a bit hot under the collar when I hear someone say that Unitarians or Buddhists are those people who can believe anything they want, as if anything means all things negative included. That is not true, for the beliefs, the expressions of our beliefs, must conform to a set of strong ethical values. You will find no neo-Nazis in our congregations, or people like the Rev. Phelps who paraded with a banner at Matthew Shepard’s funeral (you remember the young gay man in Wyoming who was brutally beaten to death)--this so-called reverend Phelps’ banner read, "God Hates Fags." Phelps also has a web-site by the same name. Religion can take many forms, not all are positive. Indeed, as you heard in the reading for Philip Novak: "Religion shows an ugly face to many contemporary eyes. In group prejudice, violence perpetrated in its name, sexism, [homophobia], commercialism, and quackery--these crude surfaces often blind us to the liberating wisdom . . . ." Ethics-based traditions are much less concerned about what label you claim, what religion you say you are, and much more concerned about how you live what you believe. Confucius was a great teacher in China, who lived about 500 years before Jesus, so roughly a contemporary of Socrates, who was devoted to the ideals of how humanity could or should live together. Religion, for Confucius, as Novak writes, is about relating "a view of the ultimate nature of reality to a set of ideas of how [humankind] is well advised . . . to live." Confucius spent much more time, then, on examining ethical behavior in the here and now, than contemplating the source of it, that is ultimate reality or what the nature of God might be. Confucius ultimately influenced millions through his disciples, teaching that "the right and good life depends utterly upon its harmony with reality’s larger patterns. [And his] ". . .conviction that human affairs can prosper only when they are morally derived. . . ." Most of us are reasonably familiar with Judaism and Christianity, for they are the dominant religions of the western world. We know that a group of Semitic peoples came to follow a leader called Moses who brought them to the land of "milk and honey" called Canaan, they were the Hebrews who gave us the Hebrew scriptures now called by Christians the Old Testament. Moses was given the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai on tablets of stone that codified the beliefs of his people. Unlike most of the peoples of the world, they worshiped only one god they called Yahweh. Some three thousand years later, a young Jew named Jesus, felt that his religion had become much too rule and regulation oriented and less about God and about how to treat other people, so he started teaching what he believed, and like all such great teachers he had a gathering of men and women who believed him and became his disciples, teaching what he had taught long after he died in his early thirties. Jesus is best known by the stories written about him by some of his disciples, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and for his parables and the famous Sermon on the Mount where he taught that the most important thing after love for God is love for one’s neighbor, i.e., other people. Islam is related to Judaism, for the teachings of Mohammed the prophet in the Koran tell us that the Moslems are the descendants of Ishmael, who was the son of Abraham by his concubine Hagar, as told in the book of Genesis. The teachings of the Koran look much like the Hebrew scriptures in form. Native or primal religions also hold great wisdom. Native American Indian religion teaches that all things come from the Great Spirit and the earth is our Mother. Most native religions are strongly linked to pagan beliefs, that is nature worship; respect and worship for the natural world which they live so close to. They see holiness in the plants and animals, the wind and sea, and all that most closely relates to where they live. We in this century are coming to value the native respect for Mother Earth in a new way. The wisdom of all the world’s religions lies in how they teach our human history, the traditions, the beliefs and values that have profoundly influenced our ancestors and now us today. The world’s religions all teach an ethical core, they also teach how people came to be agrarian, literate, democratic, dictatorial, and all the phases of human behavior and conduct that we witness in history and in our present day. To study the religions of otherpeoples in the world is to learn more about what we want from religion now. About human longing, needs, troubles, fears, goodness, hope and love. We also can learn that religions change, they transmute with time and contact with other groups, which is why in this year 2000 of the Common Era, we have the Pope shaking hands and speaking with the leaders of Jewish Israel and Moslem Palestine. Unthinkable any time before in this 2000 years. This is the Age of Communication, when we can learn that people in other places are not demons in human form, or heathen devils out to destroy our way of life. Rather, people are people, but people who are reared in many different religious traditions. Our religion of birth was a result (some would say an accident) of the time and place we were born. Clearly humanity seeks to have religious expression, for we see it everywhere. The importance of religion to humanity comes from the ethics we understand at core to be the source of our survival. We need places that this can happen, so we have the holy mound, the altar, the church, the mosque, the temple, the society. The importance of spiritual seeking and the safety of a place to do it like UUSMC is no mystery to those of us who gather here in this former school cafeteria to celebrate human goodness, to learn, and to challenge ourselves to be better people. We know also that the greater our own wisdom, the more we can pass on the importance of ethical behavior to our children, and the closer we get to a peaceful and just society. These are ideals, big goals, but what is the alternative if we do not work for the best that is possible for humankind. The God of our deepest longing is visible to all who know us, for each of us is driven by our internal spirituality. But this is an ever changing process, or can be if we are seekers, if we strive always to learn more about ourselves and others. My fervent belief is that the most holy and visible form of human spirituality is the love and caring we show to one another. My teenage son, who would argue with a blank billboard as my grandmother used to say of me, said to me that religion would cease to exist as people continue to evolve and learn more. Au contraire mon fils! People may grow in knowledge, but whether they will grow in wisdom is an entirely a different picture. I believe that as long as there are people, we will need to be reminded of what the greatest teachers of ethics and religion have been saying all along--and we haven’t got it yet--whether related to the nature of god or to human virtue; which is, that we need to differentiate the material from spiritual. They have all taught a fairly basic set of principles, though their simple teachings have repeatedly been complicated by the institutions of religion. We continue to need reminding, all of us do, that it is better to love than hate, better to give and receive, that it is not money that is the "root of all evil," but the "love of money." All the teachings that make for happy and successful communities. Some day, I do hope that the world will come to see itself as one community and not a set of dominions all seeking to be to biggest and most powerful. That would indeed be the greatest wisdom the great spirituality of all. |
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