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December 2001 Sermons
December 2, 2001 SermonRev. Nancy D. DeanDecember 2, 2001The Festival Mind: Why We CelebrateI wonder how many of you will recognize any of the following festivals?
Finally, this may be my new favorite of world festivals:
These are but a tiny sample of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of festivals celebrated anywhere human beings congregate in every nook and cranny of this Earth globe. The obvious fact is that we human creatures have an overwhelming urge toward festivity, toward celebrating whatever is meaningful to us. Clearly, some people are more inclined to celebration than others, but if we base our beliefs purely on empirical evidence, there is not one social group, not one culture, not one tribe or clan that does not find some reason to celebrate. Humans seem to be very well-programmed towards a festival frame of mind.Right here at UUSMC we have our yearly festivities, and have had several big celebrations: The Chartering Sunday, the Tenth Anniversary, Installation of your minister, the Ceremonial Ground-breaking at the Polly Drummond site of our new building (which will soon be followed by the Actual Ground-breaking and Building Dedication). We celebrate weddings, dedicate children, and honor our dead. Most UUs, like most people everywhere, love the rites and rituals, the festivals that are connected with our culture and our way of life. The very earliest indications of human endeavor show that this was already a part of our move toward community, or civilization. As this is the first Sunday in December, also the first Sunday in Advent of the Christian calendar, and the beginning of the most festive time of the year for us in this part of the world, it seems appropriate to think about why we do all this celebrating year after year. Even when sometimes we feel that the celebrations are not what they should be, or that have become too commercial, or perhaps on a personal level, we feel less reason to celebrate. Yet, even in the face of our gravest concerns about the direction of many of the holidays, the vast majority of us continue to welcome this month of festivity.I am reminded of one of our many famous UUs, Louisa May Alcott. In her book, Little Women, the main character Jo, a teenager, speaking about the reduced circumstances of their Civil War era, says: "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents." It seems that presents often dominate our thinking about the December holidays. Hanukkah and Christmas are inextricably linked, it seems, to the giving and receiving of gifts, especially in the minds of children (and most adults), which, if we can put it in the right framework is not necessarily a bad thing. From Halloween on through Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas we are in the season of giving, when we are in a festival frame of mind. During this time of year, we desire to make the world a little more light-hearted; no doubt that is why we have made these days stand apart, especially for children. Keep in mind, too, that the children are always with us for they do not go away with age and changing shape. The child in each one of us that experienced the anticipation of any of these holidays is still inside ready to be touched once more by the surprises that hopefully will come with each new season of joy. That is, if we have not allowed the Scrooge emotion of cynicism to override that youthful place in our memories. Paul in the New Testament once likened the church to a body, an idea borrowed from the Greeks. He emphasized that all the parts make up the whole, and all are valuable and important to wholeness of the singular body. The Rev. Preston Bradley likened Christmas time to the heart for it is the pulsating, exuberant part of the year, whereas the months of January and February might be the uncluttered, cool—that is, emotionally to fit the season--arms or ears of the body. I like this metaphor of the body as a way to think about the year. For me the spring months are the eyes, the head really, alert and attuned to newness and change; and summer is the mid-section, the innards, where we feel the heat--the reactive part that notes discomfort the most quickly; then as we turn toward the withering, dying time of year for vegetation (in this hemisphere) we are deluged suddenly with all these holidays that somehow draw us back to the importance of connection and of caring so that these months, that could easily be the most depressing, have become for most people in the West a time when joy and caring are lifted up so that the heart is made glad. I am sure we could all find one or another way to expand on or make this metaphor work for us each more particularly, but as I see the effect of our varied activities as a community of faith, I also see that this time of year really does represent the heart--more often than not, but it is from the mind that all else originates, and it is our festival mindset that gets the rest of the body going. Of course, sometimes the business of presents does interfere with those initial festival impulses that are mostly heart related. Anne Tyler, one of my favorite authors wrote in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, about three children who live with their mother, Dad is long gone. The time is in the early 1950s. The two brothers and the sister are setting about getting a present for their mother. Cody and Ezra and Jenny go shopping for a Christmas present for their mother. Tyler wrote: "Each of them had saved four weeks allowance, which meant forty cents apiece, and Cody had a dollar extra that he had taken from Miss Sauders’ center desk drawer [a problem right there. That made two dollars and twenty cents--enough for some winter gloves, Cody [the eldest] suggested. Jenny said gloves were boring and she wanted to buy a diamond ring. ‘That’s really stupid,’ Cody told her. ‘Even you ought to know you can’t buy a diamond ring for two-twenty.’ ‘I don’t mean a real one. I mean glass. Or anything, just so it’s pretty and not useful.’" The holidays are not about anything necessary in the sense of anything we have to do, though they may have originated in the belief that the ancients were propitiating the gods/goddesses. Rather, this festival mind is just so because it is what we wish for, about hopes and dreams, and a certain extravagance (whether of food or gifts) that goes beyond the mundanity of daily living. And this is precisely why the notion, as some advertisement put it once, of Christmas all year long is so very silly. Certainly it would be delightful if we could hold the spirit of goodwill all year long, but the lightness, the gaiety of the holidays is something that needs to be a time set apart. Otherwise, it would lose that very sense of difference that makes it a special time. Rev. Richard Fewkes, a fellow UU minister, writes that both Thanksgiving and Christmas are a time of giving, "of gift-giving and thanks-giving." To these two forms of giving I would add a third, namely, forgiving. The three together add up to the highest form of spiritual expression of which humans are capable, the reality of love. For Fewkes it is the deeper spiritual meaning in the reality of love given and received that is to be found in this heart time of year. He goes on to say: "It is love’s nature to want to give of itself to another for the sheer joy of giving itself. Love finds its complete fulfillment in the act of giving for the sake of the happiness and well-being of another. In so doing the self finds the deepest joy and fulfillment which is attainable in human life." The rational mind might say of this time of year: It is too commercial; too materialistic; too noisy; too much trouble; too time-consuming; too temporary; too whatever.... to be enjoyed. The rational part in us would rarely be bothered with the holidays. The stomach certainly would be ambivalent about the holidays with all the candy, cakes, cookies and rich foods of such great variety that most of us put on a few pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Yet, what glorious food it is! We used to wait all year for my mother’s special fruit salad which was only made at Thanksgiving or Christmas. The stomach is definitely ambivalent, if not totally confused. Confusion comes into this story I found some years ago about a pastor of a church in upstate New York (this was back in the 1940s), who went to Buffalo to make arrangements for a Christmas sign to be placed outside the church. But when he arrived he discovered he had lost the dimensions. He telegraphed his wife: SEND MOTTO AND SIZE OF SIGN When his wife handed the reply to the Western Union office, the clerk almost fainted. The wire read: UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN, 8 FEET LONG AND 3 FEET WIDE. I believe Preston Bradley is right when he says it is harder to hate at Christmas, and I would add during any of this great festival month of December. "It is harder to hate at Christmas when hearts are softened as the day comes. Forgotten friends are remembered suddenly, and tears spring without shame when old memories are awakened." It is the heart time of year not just for the joy of giving, but just as often because we are more aware of our losses when the ones we loved and cared for are no longer with us to receive what we might have otherwise given of gifts, and more importantly, what we would have given of love. Some in this congregation, through death, divorce, or separation for any number of reasons, have lost people whom were loved and might have shared this special time. The absent father or mother, sister or brother, husband, wife or child reminds us, all too painfully, of what we no longer can give as we once were able to give. This is the time when our sentiments are heightened, and, while we certainly feel loss throughout the year, there is often a much greater sense of just what we have lost when sharing and merry-making are around us everywhere. It is a time devoted to, as Bradley wrote: "Love, unselfishness, devotion, gladness, music, starlit nights, angel voices, and shepherd hearts . . . ." In other words, all that is the holidays, all that is Christmas, Hanukkah, Qwanzaa, and New Years Day. All this emotion is part and parcel of the festival mind of this heart-centered time of year. There is a sense beyond the gift-giving, as Fewkes said, that is purely about just giving. We want to be givers at this time of year. The three children in Anne Tyler’s story are concerned, as children almost always are, about the giving; yet, as for Jenny in the tale, it must be more than something purely necessary; the gift must somehow fulfill a deep wish that the receiver experience joy and know that they are loved. For the Jenny, her mother must know that they love her enough to give a gift they chose from a deeper level of thought. Regardless of the gift, though, most gifts are about taking some trouble and initiative so that another person can know joy. This is why I do not tend to get upset about the all the gift giving. I remember being about eleven or twelve years old and asking my father what he was going to give Mother for Christmas. "She can buy what she wants," was his rather cold reply, at least to my young sensibilities. My parents did not make much of the holidays, and, when I would ask what they wanted for Christmas, both were frustratingly stubborn in telling me that they wanted nothing but for us to be good Christian children. That is not what I, the sentimental child, wanted to hear, especially since I readily could give a lengthy list of what I wanted. In past years, I have given sermons on the mind-body connection, and have talked about how various organs in our bodies have been shown to actually correspond with certain emotions. For example, fear is usually felt in the stomach; hence, the butterflies or queasiness that comes with nervousness or fear. Likewise, joy is felt in the upper chest, in the heart, if you will. When we are in love, or experience loving and joyful feelings, we feel, as we say, light-hearted. So we actually do feel physically all that we think, so while we can feel light-hearted, we can also feel heavy-hearted when the joy has gone from our celebrations. This is the season of caring, the festival mind is a celebration of the heart, however we experience it, when and where there is love. We celebrate, not just because we want to have a good time, but apparently because we must. Perhaps it all comes from our need to express gratitude for the privilege and opportunity to make the dream of goodness and joy in our world, even for a day or two, become more and more a living reality in our lives and the lives of others. Beyond the goofiness that sometimes goes along with our entirely too materialistic society, there really is a wonderful outpouring of genuine love that extends beyond friends and family to others. This year we know that these feelings are heightened following so closely upon the September 11th terrorism, and the on-going war against the terrorist network responsible for so much death and destruction here at home. As Unitarians, we clearly feel this sense of deeper caring, as seen through our giving to the Adopt-a-Family program; gifts on the mitten tree go to the children in need; money for the Agape and Minister’s Discretionary funds, the UUSC Guest at Your Table program, and special gifts for the church just to name what happens at UUSMC. I know further that most of you give to many other worthy causes as well as attend to the family celebrations. We here do feel the deep spiritual need to express our gratitude and thanksgiving for our gift of life. This is the season of love, and we rightly celebrate with festivals of the heart. Be joyful that we have within us the capacity for this joy, and relish even the pain of loss when that expression is no longer possible. We witness in this time the transforming power of love, which does truly make all things new, even as we lift up the old in our rituals. It is this love, as Richard Fewkes reminds us, that makes us become what we each were meant to be, a human being who is whole and loving and free. December 9, 2001 SermonRev. Nancy D. Dean Children’s ServiceDecember 9, 2001Taking the Chalice Light into the Home[The UUSMC children performed two holiday songs and handed out chalice votive lights they made to members of the congregation.] The children are in themselves a light for all of us, especially a light in our congregation. The children remind us that life is now and life is also forward looking. All the best fuel for the flame of the spirit, the light of the soul, that internal brightness of the mind or heart, for all of these the best fuel is most unconsciously present in youth. The fuel is hope, trust, empathy, and all the manifestations of love. It is only in growing awareness that the dampening effects of cynicism born of despair and frustration spoil much of that fuel in us. Part of what we strive to do as spiritual seekers in this congregation is to re-supply that fuel source in order that our inner light may burn brighter. All of life is spiritual, this I know with certainty, and what I hope each and every one of us comes to understand in the deep center of our being. The spirit within is the light within. It is in what direction we take that spirituality, what direction we take our spirits, that counts; for, as I said in my sermon of three weeks ago, we are always moving spiritually towards either a positive or negative position. Like a dimmer on a light switch, we can move toward greater en-lighten-ment, or towards the self-centeredness that is so focused on the self, or ego, alone that very little light can come into us, or shine out from our hearts. We are growing in some direction, be it towards understanding and compassion, or be it towards bitterness and despair. When we talk about the light within, we are talking about the essence of the self, however you understand that self, be it mind, spirit, soul, or some combination. The self, the spirit housed in this body, inseparable from it in this life, and perhaps ever, is what constitutes life. We hardly realize the distinction, but at some level almost all of us understand that the body without the warmth of the spirit is not really life as we generally speak about it. I recall when I first learned of the birth defect that causes a fetus to develop without the brain, only the brain stem where mostly involuntary actions are stimulated. I reacted with sadness, and to some degree with horror, to think that a baby could be born without the stuff that makes us the human living beings that we recognize as life. The light that shines in our eyes is of the spirit that makes us say things like: "Her eyes light up when she hears about Santa." "His eyes were dull and lifeless." That a body is dead is most potently clear in the absence of that light in the eyes, and the warmth of the living flesh. It is no wonder, then, that throughout human existence, warmth, light, fire, sun, moon, stars, all those things that are related to light and warmth have been central to religious rites and rituals. At the most basic, instinctive place, human beings have always known that we could not survive without that light. Ancient religions revolved around central fires, we know this from the archeological record, from drawings on cave walls and stele; fire worship was part of many pagan cults, the Druids, like many of the Celtic religious people, built their altars and worship sites to note the solstice, the high and low points of the sun. Great bon fires were kindled in celebration and sacrifice, and that tradition has come down to us today in many forms. For instance, Norse religious practice gave us the Yule log. Traditionally, a Yule log was brought home from the woods (never bought) and placed in the hearth, where it was lit by a scrap of the Yule log from the last year. In Egypt, Akhenaten, the founder of monotheism, and likely the influence that made the people of Israel imprisoned there so many years develop their own monotheism that came down to Christianity and Islam set a course that may have changed humanity for millennia to come. Akhenaten is the earliest known creator of a new religion. This new cult "broke with Egypt's traditional polytheism and focused its worship on a single deity, the sun god Aten," and was called the religion of light. Hebrew tradition always had a lamp lighted in the Holy of Holies, and lighting lamps to honor God is central to most Jewish celebrations, especially Hanukkah, when the eight candles on the menorah are lighted to symbolize the miracle of the oil that was only thought to be enough for one day, but burned instead for eight, and helped the Maccabees to defeat their enemy. In the Pagan wildernesses of what is now France and Germany the early missionaries from Rome found people who celebrated the winter solstice. These Pagans believed that as the days got shorter the sun was going away, and feared that if it did not come back, everyone would die. They would go in search of the living things, like evergreen trees and holly. An evergreen tree was proof that life still existed even in the dark of winter. In addition to the evergreen tree, the celebration to bring back the sun involved getting as much light as possible, and usually a large bonfire burned non-stop while torches lit the homes of the pagans. Later, the living evergreens were decorated with lights to woo the sun back into existence, and we continue to celebrate with decorated trees, though our motivations have changed. So ancient and deeply rooted in earlier pagan primitive religious traditions, that celebrating December 25th as Christmas day probably evolved to increase the probability of converting the believers of Mithras, a god of soldiers, sailors, and merchants, who celebrated his birthday on the 25th of December. Thus, it was not terribly difficult to show the natives to the north that they too had a winter solstice holiday. In an effort to be even more appealing to these Pagans, they to cut down large green trees and incorporated them into the worship of Christ. Of course, that process is how all religions develop and evolve, to some extent, as people strive to hang on to the most deeply loved traditions, yet change with growing knowledge of the world. For us here today, light is so pervasive that we complain about it. "Light pollution" is a term that star-gazers coined to indicate the areas, like ours here on the eastern seaboard, that have so much light emanating from artificial light that seeing the stars is difficult. Where I grew up in Idaho, the valley around Boise is 3000 feet above sea-level, and during my growing up years, much of the state had not even received electricity. I recall fondly lying on the grass in the summer, gazing up at the billions of stars overhead, wondering how it all came to be. (I’m still wondering that!) Now, in 21st century, there are no inhabited corners of the "lower 48" that are without this miracle of light. But commonplace miracles like electric light, become merely commonplace. We can stay up as late as we like, arise as early as we like; we can explore the deepest, darkest recesses of the planet, even deep underwater caves, all because of the ready access to light. Indeed, light has been so harnessed that we have laser beams that can cut through the hardest metals, and be so controlled that vision can be corrected with laser surgery. Yet, in spite of the commonplace of available light, nothing can move us so readily as a power outage when we have to scurry around finding flashlights and candles. Unless I am in the middle of a project on the computer, or baking bread, I can even relish the peacefulness of a "brief" power outage. The world suddenly comes in closer, the noise that is also pervasive suddenly ceases to intrude, the significance of this miracle of light returns and for brief moments the cave and the sun and the vulnerability of human life is once more brought home. In all the years since I came here, we have had a solstice service on the night of the solstice, until a couple of years ago, we had those at the Ashland Nature Center down by the creek, standing around our bonfire, when some years it was so cold my feet went numb. That small gathering of 20 to 30 devotees of the light felt so much more connected in that dark night with only our fire to light the faces, and shadows looming all about. The last two years, we have met at the site of our new home on Polly Drummond Road, which has its own special significance, but I think most of us who have been gathering these last years, still prefer the creek and the absence of so much light, for the new building site is fortunately on a well-lit street with many well-lit homes all around. Even so, the gathering around the bonfire continues to stir our primitive imaginations, and if you cannot make it to the Solstice service next Friday week, on the 21st, try turning out the lights in your house, sitting with only the glow of your fireplace or candles, and remember for a little while how great is this miracle of light. Unitarianism and Universalism, as they developed in this country, is the product of the period in history known as the Enlightenment. We also think humor is a way to be enlightened. No doubt some of you have heard the UU light bulb jokes. How many UUs does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: A minimum of three to insure a majority vote. Or First, they have to get a discussion group going, and a committee working on it, write a questionnaire and then tally the response, but they probably won’t come to an exact number. Or None. They believe it must change by itself.
Enlightenment: To bring light or shine light upon the world. We recoil at the thought of restrictions on knowledge, and, clergy particularly, are reminded of the Dark Ages when knowledge was forced to fit a mould or be considered heretical. We of the Unitarian Universalist persuasion are quick to remind those who would keep us in the dark of the dangers inherent in such restriction, and within our memories reach, like the Nazi era, or the McCarthy period here at home. The flaming chalice that we light here every Sunday is a product of that concern for and devotion to knowledge, to enlightenment. As a reminder I share with you some of the history from Rev. Daniel Hotchkiss who wrote our pamphlet on the Chalice:
Today, the flaming chalice is the official symbol of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Officially or unofficially, it functions as a logo for hundreds of congregations. A version of the symbol was adopted by the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in Britain. . . .[M]ost importantly, it has become a focal point for worship. No one meaning or interpretation is official. The flaming chalice, like our faith, stands open to receive new truths that pass the tests of reason, justice, and compassion. Today, the children of this congregation have asked you to take the light of the chalice into your homes. To remember that we need light in our hearts as much as for our physical natures. The flame of the chalice, be it merely a candle you place on a plate, is truly a symbol for all that is most important in life: safety and love. Even if you are not drawn to acts of ritual, let me encourage you to try to light these chalices as an act of love for the children and for the world, and hope that the children who made them may know the safety and love that we gather here to preserve. December 16, 2001 SermonRev. Nancy D. DeanDecember 16, 2001The Polynesian Cult of ChristmasEvery year as I work on my sermon outlines for the December holidays I find myself wondering all over again how I can make some sense of the jumble of different religious celebrations that are part of our culture, and most certainly dear to our hearts even though most Unitarian Universalists have no attachment to the central beliefs that were initially the motivation for the various sacrifices and rituals of the solstice, or Roman Saturnalia, or Christmas. As I preached about last week, what is quite clear is the fact human beings are creatures who have some inborn sense of the celebratory mind, the festival mind, I call it. There are always celebrations, festivals, great holidays anywhere there are groups of people. No group, culture, tribe is free of celebration; the significant part of most people is how that need to be celebratory is manifested. For, all too often, one or another group becomes convinced that what they are celebrating and their particular way of celebrating is the "right." Which, to my way of thinking, is how we get in trouble in the world. The only thing that is absolute about spirituality, is that we are spiritual beings, and that we do have a deeply seated need to celebrate. This having to be right is yet another of the urges to control the world around us, perhaps seated in the same place in our brains as the need to celebrate. What has happened throughout our known history is the ever-present desire to conform or make others conform to one groups’ way of being. We are still evolving and as the news any day of the week will demonstrate, we are a long way from reaching any pure civilization. I continue to ask the question: Why? Why can we value diversity in the natural world, know that diversity is necessary for the health of the natural environment, but still have so many people who want to make all the world of human beings be just their way. How dull, how boring, how completely lacking in imagination! Part of what makes my ministry such a joy for me is that I can follow my love of history, that I can read and research how the different peoples of the world, past and present, have been religious. It is a fascinating study, one that could never cease to be interesting to me. I have read about so many different religious customs, and find that the underlying impulses are similar, though the manifestations are as varied as snowflakes. The ways we have of being human are absolutely fascinating. Today, I want to share a story that shows how it is we all have come to the place we are today in our methods of celebrating. The story is about the Polynesian Cult of Christmas that I read about in the work of the Rev. Douglas Gallagher a year or so ago. It seems that during World War II, on a small tropical island in the South Pacific, a group of military men built an airstrip. This was a dramatic event for these island people, who had never before seen airplanes, and probably never before seen white men. The commander of the company was a thoughtful and practical man whose leadership was enlightened, and he wanted to make every effort to be cordial and considerate of the islanders. So the islanders were invited to help in the project, for which they received food and other things that might be useful, and the Americans joined in their celebrations, and so forth. The chaplain, too, made "a sincere, if slightly chauvinistic, attempt to get the islanders to participate" with his religious Sunday celebrations. That fall, as the holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas approached, the chaplain started early on to find ways of making the troops feel better, for clearly there in the South Pacific, so far from home, battling to end the war, they found the Christmas season more difficult, so the singing of carols, the gift exchanging, the partying all went on for a few more weeks than usual. And the islanders responded "enthusiastically," we are told. They brought gifts of fruit and flowers, and so on, and learned the carols, and generally learned the story of the birth of Jesus as Anglo-Americans have learned it: the star in the east, Joseph and Mary, riding into Bethlehem, finding no room at the inn, the baby Jesus born in a stable, and so forth. The Christmas services were a big success for the Americans and the islanders, a friendly and thoughtful interaction between two very different groups. Not necessarily the norm at the time. Soon after New Year’s Day 1944, the base was abandoned as the airbase was no longer considered "strategically located." Some twelve years later, in March of 1957, that same chaplain made a journey out to the island on his way to the Philippines. He toured the once too familiar island and met up with an old woman he had known during the occupation of the island. He was more than pleased when she told him that she was on her way to church, and invited him to go with her. This was a Christian minister’s dream, that a primitive people would be converted, which her use of the term "church," implied. According to the story:
This reminds me of the story about one little six-year-old boy who was inordinately fond of dogs. As Christmas approached he begged to be allowed to be in the church Christmas pageant, and his grandmother said she hoped he got to do so, which he did. The boy came to his granny’s house, and said he was going to practice for the Christmas play, but she couldn’t figure out what he expected when she found him down on all fours barking away in front of the Christmas tree. She asked him what he was doing, and he replied, "I have to practice." Gave a few more yelps, then said, "I’m going to be one of the shepherds." Historians of religion call what happened with the Polynesian Christmas Cult a cross-cultural exchange, in this case it was American to native islander. We, as human beings, learn from one another. We learn good things, certainly bad things, and lots of seemingly little or benign things, too. What the story does not tell us is whether the Chaplain tried to set the islanders straight, and disabuse them of their notion of Christianity. I would like to hope that he did not, for they had the most joyous, caring, sharing of the Christian celebrations. No doubt it was because it was enough like some of their own celebrations that the Christmas celebration became their own, for I have read a number of times about the gentle and generous spirit that was seen in early South Pacific island communities. Our culture is also influenced by other cultures, perhaps not so dramatically, but we see it all around us now in this time of year. I know many devoutly Jewish families that put up a tree, and use the tree in their Hanukkah celebrations, decorated with symbols that are traditionally a part of Hanukkah. Many African-American Christians have come to celebrate Quanzaa, which incorporates traditional African and Caribbean elements. I have a menorah at home, and we light one here. People can send cards for whatever tradition they celebrate, though cards started as a Christmas tradition. The foods we eat are also a part of the amalgam of cultures, from sweet potatoes to plum pudding. The Nutcraker ballet, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, are other influences that would not have been present a century or more ago. While the story of the Polynesian Christmas Cult may seem amusing to us, we have traveled the same path without realizing it. In fact, I would say Americans are the greatest "adopters" from other cultures of any in the world. The area I find most noticeable is that of food. I grew up on plain American food, meaning an amalgam of English and European foods that consisted of meat, veg, fruit, baked goods consisting mostly of white bread, cakes, pies, and cookies. My mother considered spaghetti "foreign" food, for she had not eaten it growing up, and we had it rarely. I never ate a pizza until my last year of high school, or what most of us call "Chinese food," or sushi, or latkes, or tacos, or mango, or curry, none of the wonderful foods we can find within a ten mile radius of this spot, until I was a young adult. This has perhaps been to my detriment, since I was a skinny girl with very little interest in food, who now loves to find new and exciting recipes from around the world (my auction dinner this year was of Scandinavian foods), and I enjoy many foods far more than I should. All the peoples of the world have learned from their neighbors, and travelers to and from different parts of the world. Marco Polo, we are told, found pasta in China and introduced it to Italy. The Italians gave the world ice cream. And so it goes. Consider what you know of the world. What are your origins? What are the influences on your habits, on your dinner table, etc? What have you taken on from other people, other cultures? The Christmas after my children’s father and I divorced, my son Adam and I adopted something we had seen on the hilarious movie, Jean Shepherd’s "Christmas Story." Some of you may remember that the family turkey is spoiled and they all wind up in a Chinese restaurant for a late night Christmas dinner of roast duck (with it’s head still on!). Since only the two of us were together for Christmas, Adam suggested we do the same, and we went to our favorite Chinese food restaurant, the Bon House, and had a delightfully different Christmas dinner. I was amazed by how many people were there, but I have since learned that many Jewish families go out for Chinese on Christmas day, as well. We do not know with any certainty why the Polynesian islanders adopted the Christmas celebration, but chances are pretty good that it was just because they liked the singing and sharing of gifts. I wonder how many Christians would like Christmas half so much if those two things were missing? As UUs, we of all people, should be willing to look at the variety of ways people are spiritual, and the myriad ways people have of expressing their spirituality without expecting or demanding conformity. Most of us do, but I still occasionally run into the my-way-is-the-right-way-to-be-religious mode of thinking. If you have that mode, please give it up. There are present today, here, as many different ways of being religious as there are different sets of fingerprints. This is alone perhaps the very best reason to celebrate, and that is what I lift up to you today. |
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