Rev. Nancy D. Dean

March 4, 2001

How to Believe in Nothing

What do you believe about the major Icelandic problem? Tell me what your opinion is of the newest boron superconductor ? How would you go about settling the strife between native and non-ethnic peoples of Borneo? What do you believe about the House Bill #99 before the Delaware legislature? What do you believe is the best way to keep a hollandaise from curdling?

There is so much to know and to believe that it can all be overwhelming at times. Take the child who was in a kindergarten class during "sharing time." One child said, "Well, my mother’s a Catholic and my father’s a Jew." "Oh, wow!" said another. "So, then, what do you believe?" "I believe in everything!" said the first child." "What do you mean by everything?" asked another six-year-old. "Well, you know, " said the child, "everything--Jesus, Moses, Snow White, everything."

You may know the answers to any or all of the above, and you can believe me that all of these questions entail answers or potential answers that can create great passions for certain groups of people. So when I ask you what you believe, the first or foundational layer of your ultimate response will have to do with the level of knowledge you possess about the subject at hand.

Generally, it does not occur to us that our minds are filled with not only billions of bits of information (literally everything we have seen and heard our whole lives), but our thinking processes, along with our emotional processes, are based on beliefs we have been gathering all along our particular life path.

One of my all-time favorites, often one that causes great strife among roommates and newly weds, is the correct way to handle the toothpaste tube. Tell me, how do you deal with this minor part of your morning bathroom ritual? Now, it must be mentioned that this is much less an issue today with the modern miracles of materials and standup devices for holding the all-important dentifrice than it was when I was younger and all toothpaste came in metal (I suppose it was aluminum) tubes with twist-on caps that were much more difficult to manage than those I buy these days made of plastic with flip-top lids. I had an aunt and uncle who finally fought through their native frugality and bought two tubes of Ipana (if you know this brand you are at least as old as I) because he insisted on squeezing the tube like a jet throttle stick which caused an unsightly mangle with paste always leaking around the lid. My aunt, on the other hand, neatly began to press the tube from the base, and folding down the end which helps force the remaining toothpaste upward so there is no waste, nor ugly mangled toothpaste tube. I told you—belief even about minor things entails strong passions.

Another one has to do with the handling of milk and juice containers from the refrigerator. Yet, another is the proper was to close car doors. My father was not a man to raise his voice, but slamming the door on one of his beloved Fords could earn me a bark that has made me to this day slightly paranoid about closing car doors. As a result, I have probably closed twice as many doors trying not to overdo it on the first try.

If we can have this much trouble with things that are not of any great importance on the global scale of things, then is it any wonder that humanity is weighted beneath the passions that relate to homeland, nation, and especially religion?

Yet, as the wit Michel de Montaigne once said: "There is nothing so firmly believed as what we least know."
For the most part, we do not really give too much thought to what we believe until we are challenged in some way. The advent of war, for instance, will crystallize our passions and our thoughts about what we believe faster than almost anything except personal crisis. Our nobler selves step forward in some cases, in others our greedier selves, but something definite will be activated from deep within us.

But nothing brings us closer to our most deeply held beliefs than personal crises. Unless you have personally dealt with it or someone close to you has, it is doubtful that you have very strong feelings about Alzheimer’s disease and stem-cell research, or infertility, or abortion, racial prejudice, or any number of life’s great challenges.

Our feelings and our beliefs, then, are most definitely impacted by, first, our upbringing, then by our personal experience of life, and then by our study and observations on life. For the mature, thinking person, these beliefs are constantly in a state of modification; indeed, I believe it is a sign of pathology if they are not. For example, in general I have believed that trains ran over cars--that being the usual news of train-car collisions in my experience—which made sense because the mass and force of the train are greater, but just this week I learned that a car caused the wreck of a passenger and a freight train in the north of England, causing thirteen deaths and untold injuries. For me to continue to believe as I had before would be stupid. There are always exceptions.

Asking questions is one of the ways we both form and modify our beliefs. I like to say that Unitarian Universalism begins and ends with questioning. That is what makes us unique. Our religion does not begin and end with the answers.

What do you believe about how to raise children? How to be healthy? How to have a good time? What makes for a good relationship? The existence of God? The Nature of God? Or what is the right way to deal with death?

A couple of weeks ago I was called by a Hospice chaplain who wanted me to talk to a woman whose father is dying of cancer and who does not want any kind of service or ceremony to be performed at his death, and the two of them evidently have had a great deal of difficulty talking about the subject of what to do when he dies. I wonder what has just entered your thoughts, for I can tell you that my first reaction was that the father and daughter must have different religious beliefs, and I assumed the father to be more in the Unitarian camp, as it were. Then, I was told by the Hospice chaplain that the woman had at some point attended this congregation; as it turned out, it was in the early years before I was called here.

I did get in touch with the woman and discovered that both she and her father are non-theists, and neither have any belief in an after-life, so I was even more puzzled by what was causing the lack of communication. Usually we find it much easier to communicate when we share the same or similar beliefs. This was not a case, such as I have run into on a number of occasions, of an evangelical person determined to save the dying person which naturally causes a lot of trouble and strife.

The prime issue here is that the dying man has strong feelings, strong beliefs, that dying should be a private affair, with no rite or ritual to acknowledge it. All he wants is to be cremated and his ashes scattered at a beloved spot. Nothing else. I would say, though, that the act of scattering ashes is, in and of itself, a rite, otherwise he would just request the ashes put in the funeral home trash bin and enough said and done.

The man’s daughter, who loves her father and knows that many people like and admire him wants a memorial to allow that group of friends and family to honor him and pay their respects. Of course, this is really what all death ceremonies are really about. They are for the living more than the dead.

This situation is yet to resolve, but it highlights the whole notion of belief and how we almost always do have a belief once we have any information; often, though, the source of information is itself the issue.

Some of you may have read or heard this past week that the ruling Taliban, that ultra-fundamentalist Islamic party in Afghanistan, wants to destroy all the religious artifacts that they say are offensive to their religion, Islam. The major point centers around the tallest stone carving of a standing Buddha known to exist. It is a unique work of art as well as a religious symbol. The Indian government has offered to remove the statue and keep it for the people of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, today’s New York Times states that the Taliban intends to destroy the icons and not allow them to be saved. Belief is rarely neutral, which is what brings me to the heart of my sermon today.

While it is true that we are believing creatures—that is humanity’s distinction. Must we always believe? Is there a place for no belief ? Or, as Michael Misita titled his book from which I took this morning’s reading: How can one believe in nothing?

We might say that to believe in nothing, is nothing more than reserving judgment. The I-will-consider-the-facts-then-make-a-decision approach. A good idea on the whole. But what about the things you all ready believe? Is it possible to take a belief you hold dearly and stand back from it so that you in effect believe nothing? Clearly, this is a much harder prospect for most of us. Yet a fair number of Unitarians have done this when it comes to their religious beliefs.

During this past week, I was called by a student from the University of Delaware who is writing a report for a journalism class. She told me that she was doing an "in depth" report on Unitarianism, yet she had only three questions to ask me--which certainly affects my current beliefs about the state of journalism and its future in this country. One of the questions was what of our beliefs keeps us "holy." I pointed out that the word "holy" has fairly broad parameters. So I asked her what did she mean by "holy"? She was flabbergasted for minute then came back with the general response that she supposed she meant what we held up as our principle guide for our religion. See, she had not considered her own beliefs before she asked me about Unitarian belief. Which means her understanding of my response is only as good as her own reflection on the nature of her belief. Which is also why I caution you to always question your questioner when anyone delves into the nature of your beliefs; without it you simply confirm what it is they all ready do or want to believe.

By the way, I am not altogether convinced she was calling for the reason purported, which is yet another realm of belief and believing.

At the root of belief is what you both truly know and what you have been given without question. I know that I am filled with beliefs about all sorts of things that came from my family of origin, my community of origin, my religion of origin, and so forth. What is most distressing about all this is how much the beliefs we are not really even aware of, or are in touch with, can affect one’s present life—often quite negatively. Not surprisingly, the goal of good therapy is to help us uncover hidden beliefs and assumptions that color the way we live now.

When I first considered some of Misita’s propositions, I was rather startled to consider that part of what drives much of what I do was not as I had assumed. I had believed that most of my motive force came out of my later learning and less from my upbringing. Now, it can be no mystery to anyone who has been in this congregation for very long, that a great deal of what drives my passion for this free faith of ours stems from my childhood in a family of fundamental Christians; yet, it goes deeper than just my holding Unitarianism dear because it allows me to live in truth with my beliefs. There is a core response to life as a deeply spiritual person that comes directly from that protestant faith of my upbringing.

Here is a case in point: I have always been reserved in my public profession, that is, my outward exhibition, of my spirituality. I do not think I will ever forget having it reported to me that someone in this congregation did not think I was "spiritual enough." My response was one of astonishment: Why do you think I left a career as a college English teacher, spent three years of rigorous study of religion at Harvard, two years of internship and a summer in chaplaincy training, and then committed my life to this new congregation if not for a deep spirituality? Surely not for the chance of wealth and fame! Obviously, the person who said that had not considered that there is more than one way to be a spiritual person. Some people exhibit their spirituality more publicly, others, like the greatest Zen masters, keep it close to the heart sharing only sparingly.

What I discovered when I put this notion of what constitutes my spirituality to the test of my core beliefs, which is the first step in the How to Believe in Nothing approach, was that the fundamental Protestantism, fueled by Puritanism in ever aspect, of my rearing always taught often, and with great emphasis, Jesus’ admonition to pray in private and not for show. As is says in Matthew 6:1- "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them . . ."; and in Matt 6:5, "And whenever you pray , do not be like the hypocrites for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you they have received their reward."

Further, I had arrived at the tender age of my fifth decade still holding some suspicion of those who did make a "show" or at least were more outward in their spirituality. Even as I was cherishing the personal responsibility tenant of our faith, I still felt that exuberant public expressions of faith should be few and far between. The private restraint of the adult me was/is still being influenced by the religion of my youth.

Does that mean I will now throw off the mantle of spiritual reserve for all this new knowledge about myself? Maybe, but not necessarily, for in light of all that I see of religious expression, I still lean more to the Zen master than the outstretched, waving arms of the evangelical Christian. Neither of us is more or less spiritual for what we claim as most meaningful to us.

Which brings me to our non-theist or atheist members among us, who inevitably provoke the reaction from theists that they are not spiritual, which, from my up close and personal experience, is simply not the case. If you are breathing you are spiritual. You have a spirit. It is what you do that makes your spirituality manifest. I often have felt that this understanding is what is meant by the religious concept of "grace." To know that you are a spiritual being who deserves love, without an obligation to prove anything.
We are not going to believe in nothing, for that is not even a possibility except as we live in ignorance of many things. What we can do is consider our beliefs, and re-consider those beliefs again and again as we go through life.

Every day each one of us is challenged in so many ways and it is ultimately our core of beliefs, our moral center, that serves as our guide. As Unitarian Universalists, it is our responsibility to be willing to look at ourselves with the critical eye that we are all so willing to turn on others. The real freedom, as well as the real joy, in life comes from our ability to let go of destructive habits and beliefs that do not serve us or any one else.

The on-going challenge is to believe in ourselves, and to know that by trying to live by the truth of our Principles we will be helping to create a better world for ourselves and all others as well. May it be so.

March 11, 2001 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

March 11, 2001

What is Unitarian Universalism?

Since our intended guest minister could not be here today, and since I had spoken last week on belief, I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and speak to the topic she had chosen. This is undoubtedly one of the toughest subjects for most UUs to talk about, so we can always do with a sermon on what this Unitarian Universalist religion is about.

There are a lot of ways to talk about UUism, but I want to start by asking you to think how you would, in a few sentences, describe what Unitarian Universalism is. For newcomers and visitors, give it your best guess, which undoubtedly will be meaningful. Now keep that in mind as this sermon unfolds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Unitarian minister, son of a Unitarian minister, wrote that all people worship something. I do not think that is arguable, for each of us shows by our actions and deeds what we think is most important, what we put our time and efforts toward. Since the dawn of time, human beings have been trying to figure our what it is that caused us to come into existence and what is our reason for being. For the vast majority the idea is that a supreme being, a creator, what most have called God is responsible for the creation and population of the universe. The debate continues. Although most of us have some ideas about God, few of us are as confident as the six-year-old boy in his elementary school art class who was drawing away intently. A visitor to the classroom walked over to see what had the boy so engaged, and asked him, "What’s that picture of?"

"God," replied the boy. The astonished visitor said:

"But no one knows what God looks like."

"Well," the boy said, coloring away with more intensity than ever, "they will when I finish this picture."

Earl Morse Wilbur is not a name that means much to most people in the pews and chairs of most UU congregations, but to Unitarian divinity school students he is a great hero and we compete to find copies of his now out-of-print history of Unitarianism, Our Unitarian Heritage, the first and most scholarly text on the subject. I was lucky enough to find one, and it my most prized book. Dr. Wilbur was a theologian and historian, but he went so far as to learn the languages of Czech, Romanian, Hungarian dialects of Eastern Europe in order to translate what would have undoubtedly become lost sources of earliest Unitarian writings. Wilbur wrote in the 1920’s: "To the Unitarian of today the marks of true religion are spiritual freedom, enlightened reason, broad and tolerant sympathy, upright character and unselfish service."

I would say that this statement still holds true even today, maybe more so today. The Rev. Jack Mendelsohn wrote in one of my favorite top five books on Unitarianism:

Because Unitarians find the essence of religion in character and conduct rather than in doctrines, creeds, dogmas and catechisms, those who normally think of religion as a series of theological definitions find it frustrating to understand the Unitarian position. We are believers, but our beliefs are centered in a method, a process of the religious life, rather than in closed articles of faith.

I have had dozens of calls since I became a UU minister asking me to tell the caller what this Unitarian religion is all about, and I know many of you have had to address this question, too. When I first became a Unitarian back in mid-1980s, I found that my tendency was to say what my Unitarian faith was not—which clearly is not a very positive approach. It took me a few years to figure out the best approach to explaining this essentially basic, even simple religion. I also learned in the process exactly how powerful the propaganda of any given religion can be, especially those of the western world. To a great degree it is true that religion is often reduced to a sound-bite, to use a term from the media world. We have: Judaism--God’s Chosen people; Christians--The One True Religion; Puritanism--Salvation by Predestination. Which is why I ultimately reduced my own understanding of UUism to the truth as I see it: Unitarian Universalism--The Ethics-based Religion.

The primary reason most of us UUs have difficulty explaining UUism, is that we are contending with a much better know products, those with a long history of successful advertising, and a much larger share of the market. If someone says they are a Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc., any of the so-called "main-line" religions, they rarely are asked to explain their religion, for most people know they are "Christians" meaning they believe that Jesus was the son of God who came to earth to save all the people. Ask the average Christian man or woman to explain the tenants of their faith, and you will find most will get hung up very quickly after they have given the message line that they learned from childhood.

To put this is very mundane terms, people have all kinds of preferences for brand names, some people only drive Toyotas, others Fords, etc., but if someone says "I drive a Prism hybrid car," then they will have to explain what that means, because it is different, not a commonly known name. To go even further, ask the average Ford driver or the Prism driver to explain how their car actually works, and the number of people who can do that drops even more dramatically. The same goes with just about anything, especially those brand names. I remember my mother always used Cheer detergent and my aunt who lived across the road used Tide, they both swore that their choice was superior, but neither could have told you what constitutes a detergent, what it is made of, or probably what made their choice superior. Which reminds me, have you ever noticed that every year Tide, Crest, and practically every major product is "new and improved"? Have they never gotten it right? I think somebody’s missing the boat with the tag "tried and true."

A little bit of silliness to point out that it is also silly to think that everyone can explain the tenants of his/her religion in a sound-bite. Further, I will let you off the hook by suggesting that if you believe someone is really interested in knowing more about Unitarian Universalism than our sound bite that UUism is an ethics based religion, then tell that person to call your minister. She is the one who spent years in divinity school and is trained to do that.

What everyone needs to know about Unitarian Universalism is encompassed in these statements:

1. Our heritage comes out of the Protestant Reformation. We were one among the dozens that the quickly arose in the mid-1500s following Martin Luther’s challenge to the "Church," which gave people the courage to engage the questions that had previously been labeled heresy and could earn a heretic a very personal barbeque. Our Unitarian heretics of that period were Servetus and Socinus who pointed out correctly that there is nothing in the New Testament that gives support for the notion of the Trinity, that was a creation of the Fourth Century Council of Nicea that formalized much of what became Church doctrine.
2. Unitarian thought thrived in the Enlightenment, and especially in the Revolutionary Period of American History, and Unitarian congregations became heart of enlightened thinking, especially of open questioning of these centuries-old beliefs. Science, travel, a move away from aristocracy to democracy all promoted more independence of thought and belief.
3. The belief that no one person can claim to know who and what God is, or how God may act in the world, or even if God does act in the world.
4. That an individual’s character, the acts that demonstrate one’s real beliefs were more important than memorized creeds or doctrinal statements.

Jack Mendelsohn wrote what I believe of our faith: "The most fundamental of all Unitarian principles, then, is individual freedom of religious belief—the principle of the free mind."

You can begin to understand why it is so hard to explain Unitarianism in light of creedal or doctrinal religions. The part that can be especially difficult comes when people say something like, "Oh, Unitarianism is that religion where you can believe anything you want." Please never allow that statement to go unchallenged, because the message underlying it is all negative, and it is simply not true. What is true is that each Unitarian must sort out what his/her beliefs really and truly are, and how we think that we can best express those beliefs. Underlying our beliefs are the deeply held Principles of ethical conduct that are universal in all free societies.

Many religions are more focused on power and control and make claims to have the Truth (with a capital T), that unless you do what they say, you will be damned for all eternity, or you will have a cursed life, or some such. These religions believe they have God or salvation or holiness in their particular box, and only by saying the right words, doing the correct rituals can you have access to God.

Unitarian Universalists do not believe that God belongs to any one religion, one group of people, one building. We believe that the stuff of the good life, of sacred knowing, is like the air we breathe; it pervades the world, is free to all, and necessary to all.

I was fascinated by a story on National Public Radio on Wednesday morning. The story talked about this remote village in India (remote as in Appalachia or northern Idaho) where there is a long tradition of men growing great, bushy mustaches which are a symbol of masculinity and of belonging to that society. There are songs sung that extol the virtue of mustaches and the virility of men with wonderful mustaches. It seems, though, that some of the young men recently, teens and early twenties primarily, have been refusing to grow mustaches. The head of the village responded to the outrage of parents and citizens in general by imposing a fine of 500 rupees for any young man who did not start growing his mustaches within the month. Some of the young men interviewed said that they were teased so much and made to feel different in school, where young people from different communities now come together. They would like to throw off the old ways and fit in with the rest of the country. Some of the young men were clearly torn by their desire to change and their desire please, they said they would rather not have to grow the mustaches, but they did not want to shame or cause pain for their families. Others said they would start growing them only because they could not afford to pay the fine.

Now people in this country hearing that story may laugh and say how ridiculous it is for those people to make such a fetish of mustaches, but for anyone who would make that statement, I would ask, what things are there of which you/we make a fetish. To the villagers who venerate the wearing of mustaches, there are many things we do that would to them appear ridiculous as well--especially the rites and rituals of western religions.

I suspect that times are changing for that village, as times have been changing for religions of the world. All religions change over time, including our own. If we had lived in the England or New England of 1850s we would have seen great mustaches there, as well. The point is that if one is reared in a religion or practice that is dominant, then anything different is suspect. The challenge is always placed on the person or group who steps out of the circle of the familiar.

Our religion is about the free mind, ethical behavior, and living in truth with our beliefs. This is newer, even with our five-hundred years of history, so we are the ones put on the defensive, as it were. The ones asked to explain our faith. I suggest you are not bound by those expectations, any more than you would feel bound to explain other personal parts of your life, say your finances or child-rearing methods. But, if you chose to engage, then it is important to remember that we have a religious faith which is a wonderful, special thing in that we truly do believe that you are the responsible agent for your life and beliefs, not the government (as George Bush would remind us), not the minister, not any one book or religion.

The Rev. Dr. Alice Blair Wesley, Myths of Time and History, wrote:

Our 20th century religious situation is one of fierce competition among different myths, having different presuppositions, different characters, and different periodizations of history.

[and]

The characters of our implicit UU myth are: the inherent worth and dignity of every individual, the covenant of congregational polity, and the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part. These terms are but our transpositions of traditional theology, discussed for centuries under the rubrics of the nature of humanity, the nature of the Church and the nature of God. Our terms have been abstracted from concrete, imaginative stories, myths, e.g., from the stories of the Exodus and the Prophets, of the Prodigal Son and the Lost Sheep, of the Pilgrims and the Puritans, and of Yahweh, Lord of (interdependent) Creation and History, who must not be imaged lest the representation of the Divine itself become an idol. However, most Unitarian Universalists don’t understand our links with these stories, or know from where our abstract "characters" came.

As the Rev. Wesley correctly points out, we need to be educated about the sources of our myths, be they our national, American, myths, or our religious myths, even our UU myths. We are myth-making beings, because of our long human history of trying to find reasons for our existence. I encourage you to take some of the Adult Religious Education offerings we have each year to know more about what it means to be not just Unitarian, but to be a religious person.

All too often we struggle to respond to the question of: What is Unitarian Universalism? without considering who is asking and what their motive might be. These people usually fall into two camps, either the person is really interested in learning about our faith, and may even ask for more information, may even call me, or the person is purely interested in trying to show you that you are wrong. Do not attempt to engage with the latter. You cannot have a discussion with someone who is only interested in telling you what you ought to believe. They have an agenda of proselytizing that is absolutely one-sided.

I am reminded me of the religious education teacher of my youth I heard about who was asking the little kids in the 6-7 year-old group riddles to enliven the Sunday school class a bit. He asked: "What is it that collects nuts for winter, climbs trees, and has a bushy tail?"

An eager little girl waved her hand to answer: "Well," she said, suddenly more tentative having thought about it, "I know the answer’s supposed to be Jesus, but it sure sounds like squirrel to me."

What is most important in the question, What is UUism? is that you first understand for yourself what brings you here and what it would be like if we had no option of this free faith in which to live the truth of our beliefs.

Unitarian Universalism is an ethics-based religion that stress the worth and dignity of all humanity and that believes that God, whose nature we do not know or ascribe for others, is equally available to each of us without benefit of intermediaries, and that no one person is endowed with the right to deny the truth of another person’s own heart and mind. May it always be so.

March 18, 2001 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

March 18, 2001

Service: The Rent We Pay for Living

I begin with a poem, the source is unknown, but it dates from some time following the infamous Scopes "monkey" trial (from Timely and Timeless, Burdette Backus):

Now Listen You Two

Three monkeys sat in a coconut tree

Discussing things as they’re said to be.

Said one to the others: "Now listen, you two!

There’s a certain rumor that can’t be true,

That man descended from our noble race.

The very idea! It’s a dire disgrace!

No monkey ever deserted his wife,

Starved his baby and ruined her life.

And another thing: you’ll never see

A monk build a fence ‘round a coconut tree,

And let the coconuts go to waste,

Forbidding all other monks to taste.

Why, if I’d put a fence ’round this tree,

Starvation would force you to steal from me.

Here’s another thing a monk won’t do—

Go out at night and get on a stew;

Or use a gun or club or knife,

To take some other monkey’s life.

Yes, man descended, the ornery cuss,

But brothers, he didn’t descend from us!

I doubt seriously that anyone who sits in this room on Sunday morning is still pondering the merits of the theory of evolution, but I am here to suggest we are not done yet. We have certainly evolved a long way in the roughly three million years since the earliest ancestors of humanity were born. We learned to walk upright, to work in social groups in cooperative ways to benefit the whole clan, we found resources that enabled us to improved the quality of our work, skills building on skills, knowledge building on knowledge, and the whole while the human brain expanding larger and larger until we developed a clear sense of our identity and our superior place as thinking beings who can recall the past to inform the present and future—well, some did. And, for the most of that existence, we have had limited competition, which has enabled us to become the most prolific of the higher hominids, so that while it took millions of years to reach a million human beings, in just a few short decades, thanks to the quality of numbers called geometric progression, we have surpassed the six-billion mark. A number very few of us can truly comprehend. Consider that a billion gnats would barely fit into the space of this auditorium.

Recently we heard in the news the announcement from the Genome Project that there is very little difference in the number of genes between a fruit fly and human being. We, one hopes, are humbled by that news.

The Rev. Burdett Backus, a great Unitarian minister of middle of the 20^th Century, wrote (I have corrected for gender neutrality):

The theory of evolution confronts us with a doctrine of [humankind]. It is a doctrine derived from the evidence presented by the various sciences dealing with the origin and nature of [humanity]. An interpretation of this evidence indicates clearly that [humanity] in all that [it] is, [human] mind as well as [human] body, is a product of the tremendously long process in which there gradually emerged those qualities which are most distinctive of our humanity. That which we call ‘soul’ is not an entity intruded from some external, supernatural source, but is itself the end product of the process itself. Soul is the name which we give to the mental aspect of [a human] life. We humbly acknowledge that as yet we have no adequate explanation of the relation between thought and brain, between ideals and the nervous system. But it seems highly probable that those aspects which we call ‘spiritual’ are in some way a function of the physical organism rather than an intrusion from an alien realm. We are going to have to accept the full consequences of this conclusion.

And

In other words, it is important that [we] shall think of [ourselves] and act not so much in terms of [our] origin as in terms of what [we are] and may become. It is true that there is in us an animal heritage some portions of which are in conflict with those reaches of our nature which we like to consider as distinctively human. Our problem is to subordinate that which is low in us to that which is high, but we express that problem in terms that derived from our sciences rather than the theology of the past.

 

Which brings me to Albert Schweitzer, a man of great intellectual brilliance, a man well-schooled in language, music, philosophy, theology, and medicine. Those who have examined his life claim that he could easily have made his mark in any one of those areas, in fact did to a greater degree than most of us realize. He was an authority on Bach and a noted performer of Bach’s work. Yet, what he chose to do with his life had nothing to do with fame and fortune, and everything to do with the subject of this sermon—service.

Schweitzer who abandoned the religion of his youth to accept Unitarian religious beliefs, went to the jungles of eastern equatorial Africa, the area now of Gabon, where he set up a hospital, and devoted his life to the service of the tribal peoples of that place. His work continues on there. For his great service he won the Nobel Peace Prize in1952. Schweitzer stated that "’reverence for life’" was the "essence of his religion" (Backus 149).

To care about life, about the nature and quality of our own lives, and the lives of others is the essence of the religious impulse. Without it, there can be no family, there can be no community or society. And it does not matter one little bit whether that caring arises out of a great biological imperative, or whether it arises from something greater than all of human life; what matters is that it exists.

The only way we as a species can claim any real superiority is in our ability to care far beyond the confines of our small clans, to which our own self-interest is tightly connected, but to care, also, for those whom we may never see, but with whom we nonetheless have a human sympathy that will not let us hear about the suffering of any man, woman, or child, and even other animals, without feeling a sadness and regret for that suffering. Otherwise, the monkeys really do have it way over on us.

Marion Wright Edelman, Director of the Children’s Defense Fund, and a Unitarian Universalist, wrote that "service is the rent we pay for living." A curious expression on the one hand, for few of us consider that we pay rent for the living we are doing. We may consider it more a hapless event, a fluke, a biologically random act that we exist, that we live. Others among us may believe that we have existed in some previous realm and are here temporarily by some design that is outside our present knowing, but that our existence was meant to be and therefore not subject to any owing in this realm per se, rather more an expectation of learning. Others might perceive that these self-same reasons are precisely why we owe something for our existence.

I used to think it was all a great accident, but that because I was born I had an obligation so defined by the Christianity of my youth, as Jesus commanded, that after the greatest commandment, which is to love God above all else, the second greatest commandment is to "love your neighbor as yourself"; i.e., to care for other people as I would like to be cared for. I still think it was all a great accident, but I believe now that what Jesus said, all great thinkers have said, and that historically we always lift up, to the greatest heights, those people for whom concern for others and service to humanity have been the driving force. And, that this is as it should be no matter our origin, evolutionary, supernatural, or otherwise. Without the understanding of love that we call "service" we are no better than pigs pushing and shoving to get all they can of what is in the trough.

Deep within each of us is a basic longing beyond our instinctive drives that lift us up beyond the realm of biology, even if it is in and of itself from biology, but lifts us still to connect with those around us. We long to be part of our social groups, to fit in, to belong. We long for, even crave the attention of our human brothers and sisters, and even crave for the attention and companion ship of other animals. Dogs, cats, gerbils, birds, monkeys, fish and snakes all have been brought into the scope of our affection, though clearly they do not all return affection to the same degree. Dogs and cats remain the most popular of pets precisely because they do seek us out, desire our good will, which highlights the depth of our longing for recognition and affection.

There is an old story about a stranger in the neighborhood who stopped and asked a woman where he might find one Webber, president of the local social club.

"Oh, you mean the Mumbler, who is also know as the Plague. He lives down near the club itself," she said, far from kindly.

When the visitor got nearer the club he stopped a man outside the market and asked him where he could see Webber. "You mean the guy with the gout who beats his wife? He lives over there in a filthy hovel."

The caller went into the store to enquire further, puzzled as he was by the first two encounters, but the proprietor responded: "You want Webber, the guy who never pays his bills and is always trying o get a bargain, that’s the one you want?" He lives in that house over there." Pointing toward the same house as had the previous man.

Finally the caller found Webber and after greeting him, asked; "Why on earth do you hold such a post as president of the social club? What can you get out of it in a place like this?"

"Nothing whatever," said Webber.

"Then why do it?" asked the astonished visitor.

"Oh, you know how it is," said Webber with a smile. "Every man likes a little glory."

Within the scope of our families, we do not see the things we do for each other as service. That is for most of us love, or perhaps obligation in some cases, yet it falls into a specific familial case. It is the understanding that a family takes care of its own.

The reach of our sense of service and our commitment to those beyond our immediate circle, though, becomes less clear and less intense. There is an old saying that charity begins at home, which is a good thing. As Amitai Etzioni the well-known George Washington University sociologist and communitarian writes:

"First, people have a moral responsibility to help themselves as best they can." Then: "The second line of responsibility lies with those closest to the person." Further, "as a rule every community ought to be expected to do the best it can to take care of its own." Then, finally, but just as importantly, "societies (which are nothing but communities of communities) must help those communities who ability to help their members is severely limited."

The understanding of service encompasses all these four layers. Some wit once wrote this definition of service: "Service: The concept of doing something for nothing while doing someone for something." The understanding is not completely tongue-in-cheek, for the fact is that we do realize that service comes at some expense, be it financial or emotional, and always our time is involved.

When most of us lived in small towns and villages, or even within the villages that are the urban neighborhoods, where the people, the families, lived for many generations, one’s reputation was much more important than it is nowadays. These days often we barely know our neighbors, and can fairly easily move to another place if we feel the present location in uncongenial. In the days of more permanence, what each person did or failed to do governed a lot of how people behaved. This is still a part of how we live, but much less so, for there is a community to be found if we do not like the one in which we find less acceptance.

Obviously, this is much less true the fewer your resources. But, what we see in that past which created some of the compassion of the smaller community had to do with one’s standing. Or, as E.W. Howe put it: "What people say behind your back is your standing in the community." That hardly has faded from our lives, yet, oddly in some ways it is even a greater issue for those in public life that ever before, perhaps because those are the lives that we know the most about in an age when we know less and less about the people with whom we live in our neighborhoods. I can tell you that after nearly three years in my present neighborhood, I barely know a half-dozen of the seventy families that live in my small development. We know each other’s names, but unless the families have small children, very little beyond a superficial conversation when we see each other out at yard work ever takes place.

So the need to be seen as a good and caring person comes ever more from one’s own sense of what is needed, of doing something good with one’s life, and less from the pressures and pleasures of community. That is not altogether a bad thing, for as with almost all issues related to human behavior and social conduct, the ancient wisdom of the Confucian philosopher, LaoTzu holds true (and remains my favorite aphorism), that says: "Every front has a back."

That so many people continue to want to do for others selflessly underscores for me that people are basically good, and that most people want to be able to help those who are least able to help themselves.

Every day I hear stories that can only be called horror stories about the struggles of people around the world, yet the reason we are hearing these stories is that there are people who are trying to help find a way to ease the suffering they see. I heard an especially sad story yesterday on the public radio station I listen to daily, that reported the efforts of a group working in southeast Asia, related to child slavery. Yes, child slavery exists, indeed the report cited that there are more slaves today than ever before in history. There are today 27,000,000 children, men and women who are enslaved. A horrid statistic.

The specific story was about the rescue of a boy who had been kidnapped at age six and put to work in rug-making in remote India, and the Indian service agency was talking about the problems of finding and rescuing the children who are often stolen from their families at large gatherings such as religious festivals, and kept hidden away at rug-making until they die or grow up and continue in all that they know to do. One man who had escaped as a teenager, said those who have not been enslaved cannot understand what it is to be a slave and a slave cannot understand what it is to not be a slave. The system closes these children off from normal society and through various forms of threats and abuse, keeps them mentally as well as physically enslaved. What is surprising to many Americans, is that some of this is happening right here in this country, too, especially with immigrants who are coaxed to come here, then cut off from information and any independence.

Yet, none of these things would be known if it were not for the scores of people who make it their mission to let these things be known, and get help for those who truly cannot help themselves.

These are only the most dramatic cases. All around us, yes, right here in this room, in this Wilmington-Pike Creek-Hockessin- Southern Chester County, PA area, are people who lives are not in their control, or only barely so. There are many who need us for a short time, and many who need the larger services that we provide through our government programs, county, state, and federal.

Etzioni is right when he affirms what I believe most of us think is right, which is that we move outwardly from where we are: "We start with our responsibility to ourselves and to members of our community; we expand the reach of our moral claims and duties from there."

Service is not only caring that comes home, but a sense that we are acknowledging our privilege even if that privilege is not financial, even if that privilege is our good health, freedom, and desire to be of use.

As the great Unitarian Edward Everett Hale minister affirmed:

I am only one,

But still I am one.

I cannot do everything,

But still I can do something.

And because I cannot do everything

I will not refuse to do the

something that I can do.

Service is the way we remember that we too may find ourselves or those we love in precarious times, precarious circumstances, and have look to the "kindness of strangers," as Tennessee Williams wrote.

If our lives are good, they are good not by our efforts alone, if our lives are bad they are rarely bad by our actions alone. And, service comes as much from the poor as it comes from the rich.

We of this congregation are the beloved community, and we hold service to be the a sign that we truly believe in the worth and dignity of all people. It is our call to reach out in whatever ways we can to respond to the needs around us, and pay the rent for living that is a sure sign of a good and worthy life.

March 25, 2001 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

March 25, 2001

Susan B. Anthony: Warrior for Equality

As many of you doubtless know, this is the weekend for the annual Women’s Retreat--at least it has been annual since I have been here. We gather at Jane Frelick’s beach house in Rehoboth on a Friday afternoon and spend the weekend enjoying each other’s company. I came back late yesterday in order to be here with you, but I like thinking about all those women, especially those younger women with children, who during this weekend are able to sit for a few minutes, or take a long walk on the beach without any telephone calls to answer, or tugging from hands of needy children, or requests from partners for various items; but, can just relax with no expectations for this brief period of time.

I am reminded of a family where there were four small children, and the father had gone off to work, leaving the mother sick in bed with the flu and instructions for the oldest child. The telephone rang and the seven-year-old answered it. "Hello?"

"Yes?" she said, to some unknown question.

After a pause she recalled her father’s instruction and said: "I’m sorry. Our computer is down. Please call back tomorrow."

I have encouraged this time for retreat for the men of this congregation as well, and we have had a couple of retreats for men in the past few years. Of course, we are so blessed to have the great generosity of the Frelick family that makes this all possible at a very little cost. I hope that if any willing male among us will be the point person—and by-the-way arrangements for these retreats is casual in the extreme—that you too, can have a quiet weekend at the beach. We all need that little break from time to time; it is very therapeutic

My friend and colleague the Rev. Patrick O’Neill of the First Church in Wilmington many years ago coined the term, "sermonic temperature," to categorize the content of sermons from cool to hot. As he suggested, some topics get us more energized or excited than others. Generally, he said, and most ministers agree, sermons dealing with our UU history tend to fall into the cool category. Yet, I like to think, that sermons need to be a little bit like the weather. Most of us would not appreciate only cold or only hot or even only lukewarm days. Generally, most us enjoy some variety, if for no other reason that it reminds us, by the contrast, of the days we find most pleasurable. So my goal in any given year is to range through the seasons of sermonic temperature. I shall leave it to you to decide the temperature of this history sermon.

Lift up the name of Susan B. Anthony and you will get a fairly predictable response from most people of this day and age. She was a suffragette; that is, she fought for women to get the vote. Beyond that, most people know very little about her life and the extent to which she gave her life for the cause of women’s suffrage and equality for women far beyond the right to vote. Since this is Gender Equality Month (I wonder how many people know that? I didn’t until I saw it on a special calendar.), I thought there could be no better hero to celebrate this event than Susan B. Anthony. Susan B. Anthony was not just a feminist or a women’s lib-er, though, she was far more; in fact, she was more than anything else, Susan B. Anthony was a warrior for equality.

We of this country have seen a good many warriors arise out of the fertile soil of our Revolutionary spirit, and we can expect the numbers to continue to rise as time goes on. I was gratified this November that several more women were voted into the Senate, and while they remain a small number, the number is growing, and with the country more than 50% female, we may hope that one day our legislative bodies reflect that population. The change would be good.

I use that term warrior carefully, for the designation warrior almost exclusively has attended to men; despite the fantasy Amazon-woman tales, like Wonder Woman or Zena of comics and television. Little by little, though, we are coming to appreciate women for more than their delicate features and ability to give birth. I read a rather new humorous story that illustrates things are changing:

A little nine-year-old boy came home from the playground with a bloody nose, black eye, and torn clothing. It was obvious that he had been in a fight, and lost. His dad patched him up and asked him what happened.

"Well, Dad," he said, "I challenged Larry to duel, and gave him his choice of weapons."

"Okay, said his father, "that seems fair."
"I know, but I never thought he’d chose his sister!"

A warrior has traditionally been, as it continues to be defined today in Webster’s, as "a fighting man; soldier." So when I tell you that one of the charges flung at Anthony was a "manly woman," you may feel, as I do, that if being a man is what it means to be a strong and/or independent, and if being a warrior is to be fighter, then Susan B. Anthony who was strong, independent, and a fighter for justice, could have no better label than "warrior for equality." I think she would have liked that, in spite of her basic Quaker pacifism.

Certainly, I cannot omit that one of the reasons I wanted to talk about Anthony is that she was also a part of our Unitarian free faith; that, and the fact that our history of being open to radical causes is part of what we celebrate and continue to uphold as our reason for needing these faith communities that are the safe havens for the on-going struggles, wars—if you will—for justice.

Anthony was born into the Quaker tradition, and remained her long life devoted to the principles of pacifism and Christian living that she was brought up to in her family. (Here I would direct you to one of the best Susan B. Anthony biographies, written by Lynn Sherr, which is heavily weighted to Anthony’s diaries, is titled Failure is Impossible.)

Susan Brownell Anthony was born in Massachusetts, February 15, 1820, to Daniel and Lucy Read Anthony, who taught all their six children that "it was the first duty of every human being to do what he or she could to be useful to the world . . . (Not Entirely for Ourselves, Geoffery Ward and Ken Burns)."

They were a farming family of Quakers, though the signs of independence may have been in the maternal blood, for Susan B.’s mother Lucy, who was reared in the northern Baptist church, while marrying a Quaker, and agreeing that her children should be Quaker, never became one herself. One of the characteristics of the Quaker community that also fostered this female warrior was that women were treated far more equally than in other religions, and a good many women became Quaker ministers. Since the late 17^th Century to this day, the Quakers, Unitarians, Universalists (with whom we merged in 1960), and Congregationalists, have shared a bond in being forward thinking regarding a progressive openness to equality and racial justice. It is our greatest strength.

Anthony’s parents also believed in education for girls, and Susan was sent to a school where she trained to be a teacher. She began as the assistant teacher at Eunice Kenyon’s boarding school in New Rochelle, New York, in 1839, and later that year went to Center Falls, NY, where she had to show her mettle at the age of nineteen, when, we are told, " a loutish older boy repeatedly defied her, she ‘proceeded to use the rod. He fought viciously but she finally flogged him into complete submission.’"

An important corollary set of events was happening during this time with the development of the abolitionist movement. Women were among the forefront of the anti-slavery agitation in both Britain and the states. And, not coincidentally, the temperance movement was developing into a full-scale movement, as well. Sherr states that Anthony "always credited her temperance work with turning her into a feminist." In Anthony’s words in a letter of 1848: "I am tired of theory. I want to hear how we must act to have a happier & more glorious world . . . reform, reform needs to be the watch word. And somebody must preach it, who does not depend on the popular nod for his dinner."

The fight against slavery, though, would bring her father, and her whole family, into the Unitarian fold. "Anthony believed unequivocally in religious freedom but had no tolerance for what she saw as the hypocrisy of most organized sects." And, her family "switched to the Unitarian church when the Rochester Quakers (by this time her father had set up a business in New York) did not support the Anthony position against slavery. She continued all her life to see herself as a Quaker, though she left many of the Quaker traditions of plain speech and dress behind, and disagreed with many of their positions. So she was very Unitarian in that. She was indeed a Quaker-Unitarian. Further, she had life-long relationships with women from other Christian denominations, as well as Jews and Mormons—a rare thing in itself in those days. Her understanding of the larger scope of faith and action certainly set a model that we Unitarians continue to support in our own time.

Anthony developed a life-long distrust of clergymen, who during her early temperance speaking tour of 1852. "[S]he discovered she was barred from lecturing in many churches, and thus reaching many people because of the gentlemen who regularly preached there." And, certainly when her fight turned to the fight for women’s rights, she found the clergymen among her greatest detractors. She stated in an interview in 1895:

‘Let your women keep silence in the churches.’ That was the [New Testament] text they always hurled at our heads. Before giving a lecture I have known every minister in the town to denounce us from the pulpit beforehand, calling us infidels, because they said our speaking in public was in direct opposition to St. Paul’s teaching. As a rule, on the night of the lecture, the minister arranged prayer-meetings at the same hours, and made the women understand that their soul’s salvation depended on attending the meeting.

Surprisingly, it was religion that most came between Susan B. Anthony and her closest friend and cohort, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton "criticized Anthony for extending a hand to all women—including those who still followed orthodox religion—in her effort to broaden the base of suffrage support." [Sherr] And when Stanton published the highly controversial The Women’s Bible, a re-writing of the scriptures from a purely feminist perspective, Susan B. found it a great distraction to the suffrage movement, and refused to have her name on the Bible committee. She saw that the negative publicity was drawing attention away from the main thrust of the suffragette’s political fight to gain the vote.

Let me back up to what triggered Anthony to focus her energy toward women’s rights. It was in 1853, just about 150 years ago, not all that long, that she attended a conference of the New York Teacher’s Association in Rochester, and she was shocked, and angered to hear not even one mention of "recognition for women . . . no speaker even intimated that women had any part or lot in the great question of Education." [Sherr 17]

In her words:

My heart was filled with grief and honest indignation, thus to see the minority of the Convention, simply because they were men, presuming that in them, was rooted all wisdom and knowledge . . . And what was the most humiliation of all was to look into the faces of those women and see that by far the larger proportion were perfectly satisfied with the position assigned to them.

She set out from that point to change things for women. "For the next nine years, she would attend every state teacher’s convention, insisting that women should speak, hold offices, serve on committees, exercise free speech, and, of course, get equal pay. Her tirades and pleas exasperated the delegates." As Sherr writes of Anthony, she was a "pain" to those convention leaders, and the majority of women at that time were embarrassed that one of their own sex could be so outrageous. During this period she met and began to work with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Their goals broadened and the began to fight further for girls/women to have admittance to the University of Rochester, NY, get the Radcliffe school, then known as the Annex at Harvard, into coeducation (which did not happen at Harvard until World War II when so many men were gone the numbers needed to be strengthened), and gradually this feminist movement took on the big challenge of get an amendment to the Constitution granting women the vote.

Motto of the Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton newspaper, The Revolution, tells it all: "Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less."

Here, I am forced to condense a lifetime of work which has been the subject of countless books and documentaries, to say that after nearly thirty years of constant work, speaking, writing, organizing, and the troubles of radical change that she and her co-feminists endured, the first suffrage amendment was introduced into Congress in 1878. Forty years later, on January 10, 1918, the House of Representatives passed the amendment to give all American women the vote, the Senate passed it a year and a half later, and then it went to the states for ratification.

From Sherr’s biography:

August 26, 1920: Just days after Tennessee becomes the thirty-sixth (and last-needed) state to ratify, the U.S. secretary of state signs the proclamation, and what had been proposed as the Sixteenth Amendment in 1878 become the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The National American Woman Suffrage Association, transformed into the League of Women Voters, helps women learn how to use their new privilege. That November, for the first time ever, 26 million American women are eligible to vote. By a coincidence of luck and drama, it comes during the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Susan B. Anthony.

Sadly, neither Susan B. Anthony, nor Elizabeth Cady Stanton survived to see this vote. Stanton died in 1902, and Anthony in 1906 at age 86. By the time of her death, Anthony was no longer a pariah, but, truly, a beloved warrior for equality. And one who devoted her life to the battle regardless the odds. A warrior who said in her final public statement at a meeting where she had received birthday greetings from President Theodore Roosevelt, a great admirer of Anthony and a supporter for her cause:

"There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause—I wish I could name everyone—but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible."

She died believing the battle would be won by the legions of women who had taken up the cause, and as we know, and now take for granted in 2001, she was right.

Today the cause for women’s rights is moving around the world, as witnessed by a story from this week’s news about the RAWA, or Radical Afghan Women’s Association. At present a small group of about 2000 women have organized to fight the insane repression and brutality of the governing fundamentalist Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan. These women are truly warriors, for they are fighting against even greater, certainly more brutal forces, than Anthony faced, yet she has modeled for them a way to go. Some of these women have already been imprisoned or executed for their efforts to change things for women in Afghanistan. At this time, a woman may not go anywhere in that country unescorted by a male relative, which means if you have no male relative, or one unreliably accessible, you can not go to the even the hospital for an emergency without facing a sentence for contempt. No education is permitted for women, and in all aspects women are slaves within their society. The main tool for RAWA is to get educational materials to these women through covert means, in the hope of educating them to a better way. This will be a tremendous battle, and we of this country should be willing to help the women there who in increasing numbers seek freedom from this extremely repressive regime. A regime, I must add with shame, that was supported in the 1980s by our government against the Soviet forces that were perceived as a threat. Yet another circumstance from that period of U.S. support for repressive forces that have been shown to be worse than any Soviet threat could have been. So now, I believe strongly, we owe it to the women and children of Afghanistan to help bring them some semblance of freedom.

We are Unitarian Universalists, and this religion of ours supports and promotes a set of principles that states our reverence for life and freedom and the right to pursue the goals of education and happiness. These are democratic principles, and you and I are the ones who must be the on-going voices of support for causes of equality. All change is hard for a culture, as we witness now in the battle for equality our gay and lesbian friends and family members are struggling to win. All of the work of our Unitarian and Universalist predecessors is ours to carry on.

Susan B. Anthony, and the other radical reformers we have embraced and supported in our history, are like the front edge of a plow. That sharp point of the wedge-shaped metal is the "cutting edge," the place where the ground is broken, where the greatest force meets the greatest opposition. You and I are the mass behind that cutting edge of the iron plow, the mass that pushes it through the ground to make the furrow in which the planting will be done. Keep that image in your minds whenever you think that as one person you make little difference in the world.

To keep with the metaphor of the warrior, we know that there is always the initial force that breaks through, but it is the thrust of the supporting battalions that wins the battlefield.

You may be one of the few, the called or chosen, who are on that leading front, or cutting edge, but most of us, here I include myself, as we join in our communities of faith to support these causes, are part of the mass that pushes them through. We need all of that effort, all of that triangle of power, for real justice to happen. We all count in our efforts.

This is the message of Susan B. Anthony, the message of all our reformers, and this is the message of our Unitarian Universalist faith. So be it.