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November 2, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

November 2, 2003

God is not What You Think

Here is our introduction to God as presented in the Bible, after he has done the great feat of creating the earth (for which we are given no reason; after all, what’s the point, we might ask?). God then creates a man, Adam (man of the red earth), then Eve, and this is the first time we see God as he interacts with humankind. (God was translated to English as he, but in old Hebrew, God is neuter, neither male nor female, but It).

          Genesis 3:8 They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ 10He said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.’ 11He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’

This is a very personal, next-door-neighbor/landlord kind of God, but compared to the many different gods of the middle east that we know existed at the time of the creation of this god of the Israelites, he is not so very different, but singular beyond doubt. The Old Testament is clearly Unitarian, remembering that Uni-tarian meant that the early followers did not subscribe to the Christian trinity, but that God is one, un-divided whole.

The God that we in the western world have come to understand, question, and even reject, is a god that is a challenge even to those scholars of the Bible, those theologians who spend their entire lives trying to capture the essence of what/who God is. You do not have to have set foot in a synagogue, church, or temple to know something about God. The word is everywhere, some understanding about what God is comes to us with our growing up within this culture. So, while God is ever present in the deep understanding of any culture, the picture that emerges from various cultures can be very different.

When I was as the Divinity School at Harvard, we students came from around the world, and from many different religions, but the interesting thing I saw time and time again, was that in our small groups, regardless of the doctrinal beliefs of our various sects and denominations, the God that was discussed sounded pretty much the same: a rather intellectual understanding framed by theological study, that was omnipresent, indivisible from everything, and loving. So, it seems to me that you almost always have to separate human understanding or experience of God, from doctrine and creed.

The main theological understanding I came away from Harvard with, is that no one group, much less one person, can ever know God, any more than any one of us can know the President. Or even know another person.

I recall a Confucian teaching example, meant to help explain why abstractions are never truly knowable--God naturally is the supreme abstraction, as the great theologian Paul Tillich termed God, or the essence that is all, as “ultimate reality.” In this Confucian example, four blind men are each examining an elephant. One is at elephant’s trunk, another is along the side, another is at a leg, and another is at the tail: each describes the elephant based on where he is located in relationship to the elephant. Clearly, each position is very different from the others, so no one man can describe what the whole elephant really looks like, or what the elephant does based on what he knows. This, says Eastern wisdom, is our condition regarding much of the world, and certainly anything that is not of this world.

Remember the young man Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, who was brutally beaten and left to die on a fence post outside Laramie, Wyoming? There is a preacher (and I nearly gag when I hear him referred to as Reverend-he is some kind of fundamentalist, calls himself a Baptist, I believe), Roy Phelps, who paraded with a group of his fellow bigots at the funeral of this boy, carrying a sign that said: God hates fags. He is now trying to get a monument put up in the town (where, coincidentally they have had a 10 Commandments monument for many years; a reminder why we should not do such things) that would further condemn this young man as hated by God and doomed to burn in hell for eternity.

This is not a God I could have any use for. But the example this Phelps creep puts before us, is this, that God looks like you; that is, the God you believe in, that any one person believes in, usually is a reflection of who you are, who I am. For the most part, people are not hate-filled, hate-mongers, but there are those people out there, who use religion and excised parts of the Bible or whatever holy book is part of their religion to lift up the god they want. Roy Phelps should have to live and die by the God he professes; at least, if I were God he would have to.

The God of the western world, that is God that is outlined in the Hebrew Scriptures for Judaism, and added to in the New Testament for Christians, and the Quran for Moslems, is not consistently any one thing.

As Jack Miles points out in his wonderful book, God: A Biography, God is many things. God is portrayed as Creator, Destroyer, Friend of the Family, Builder of a Nation.

My own earliest challenge around the God concept came from the daily Bible reading I was required to do in my fundamentalist Christian family, and it had to do with the Destroyer God. We are told in the Bible that the Israelites have been wandering in the desert for forty years (You know the sexist joke that God must be a man if he can’t get from Egypt to Israel in what would amount to walk of less that thirty days, for forty years, because he won’t ask for directions!). They finally get to the land of Canaan, and God tells them to claim this land for their own. But, not just claim it, they are instructed to kill every man, woman, child, and beast in the land, and claim it for God. Seems kind of drastic if you are an all-powerful God, couldn’t he have just asked them to move, or not put the Canaanites there in the first place?

I could never understand why a good God, who was supposed to be the God of love, who had all power to do all things, would need to have any killing at all in Creation. This challenge is called, theodicy. I never could find it acceptable to say, as the religion of my youth would tell me time and time again, simply that we cannot understand the ways of God. Well, that was/is certainly true. I could not understand why God would do such things, in fact do what people were commanded not to do, at least within the Israelite community-Thou shalt not kill. But killing is all over the place in the Bible.

Remember the story of Job. Satan makes a bet with God that he can get Job, who is described as a righteous man, to deny God. So God tells Satan to do whatever he wants, and soon all of Jobs wives and children and all his cattle are killed, and all his crops fail, so he is left with nothing. And, further, he is plagued with weeping sores all over his body, and still he does not deny God. The whole miserable story concludes with Job not denying God (though he comes mighty close to it several times) and God rewards him by giving him new wives and children (marriage is not what it used to be), more cattle, good crops, all his wealth is restored. (One only assumes that Job liked the new wife and children better than the old ones for all they seem to matter.) But here is a disturbing picture of a God who gambles with his people, which we see in a fashion in other places in the Bible as well.

So much for the Judeo-Christian-Islamic version of God. What about other versions of God? Depending on the culture, God looks sometimes like the God of western culture, or more home grown. God may be an idol set in the midst of a primitive village, or God may be the great abstract essence beyond the pale of earth. God may be the holder of all ancestors, and is revered through ancestors-this is typical of far Eastern religions. God, in Hinduism is a whole, a totality, the one Supreme Being, but God’s various aspects are shown to the people through avatars, a kind of sub-god who is worshipped as one way God is manifested to the people. We have our own Hindu temple near here in Hockessin, and some of our members belong there as well. I was told that there were few problems with building their temple, until it came time to chose the temple god. Since people come from all over India, they did not all grow up worshipping the same avatars, so that presented problems. Thankfully, we do not have to choose an idol for our building, but I fear we make gods of other things, like the God of Building Use.

In our self-centered human way, we usually want God to be on our side, give us a leg up in this business of life. Children are the most straightforward. Like the little boy in the old story who knelt down, bowed his head, and prayed, "Dear God, if You can discover ways to put the vitamins in chocolates and ice cream instead of in spinach and cod liver oil, I would sure appreciate it."

Our understanding of God is informed by what we are taught from the cradle, and what we experience, but rarely by really trying. We make a grand assumption that what we think God is, is fact, but like the blind man at the elephant’s tail, we only have a piece of the great story of understanding about the nature of God or creation.

I always think is remarkable that people who cannot balance a checkbook, or rewire a lamp, or bake a cake, or build a house, can be so sure they know everything about God. And if anyone depends solely on the Bible or any other holy book, they are still limited. Not to mention all the room we have for misunderstanding something written in another time for people of another age. I like this story as an example:

          A Sunday school teacher asked her students to draw a picture of their favorite Old Testament story, and as she moved around the class, she saw there were many wonderful drawings being done. Then she came across Johnny who had drawn a man driving an old car. In the back seat were a scantily-clad man and woman. "It's a lovely picture," said the teacher, "but which story does it tell?"

          Johnny seemed surprised at the question. "Well," he exclaimed, "doesn't it say in the Bible that God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden?"

           

To add complication, God is often what we would wish and/or what we fear. Psychology of theology, or psycho-theology, has often described God as an extension of the parent. Certainly, in western religion, the language of God the father, Mary the holy mother, Jesus as son and savior, lend a high degree of credence to this assertion. Our parents are gods to us when we are small, I can recall vividly seeing God in my imagination as my tall, thin father with the addition white hair, beard, and robe.

Another complication in religion is the expectation of what we are supposed to do to please or appease God. The idea of charity, for instance, that extends so much out of Christianity, out of proportion that is to many other kinds of religion.

I posed in this sermon, through the title, that God is not what you think, nor what I think, nor what any one person, group, religion thinks or claims. Further, I believe it is hubris, a complete lack of humility, to believe that we could be the arbiters of all that is God.

But, to counter that, God is what you think, too, at least in part. Remember the elephant and the blind men.

Some people reject the whole notion of God. Non-theists, or atheists, are unmoved by any religious claims for the existence of a creator deity, believing instead in some other, if not defined, unexplained reason for the existence of the universe and our human existence. They no doubt also have a piece of the truth, but fundamentally a strong atheistic position is merely the reciprocal of the theist position. We can no more claim to have all knowledge of God’s non-existence, than we can claim all knowledge of God’s existence.

If we are asked to say what we believe about the creation of the universe, of human beings, we each have some understanding of what we think, or even believe. What I believed as a child is far from what I believe now, and throughout the years in between, my understanding has been changing. No doubt it will be changing until the day I die.

I have come to the place where I am less concerned with what any of us believe about God, religion, even Unitarianism, than what you or I do with what we believe.

          Two fellows are talking religion. One says to the other,

          "Sometimes I'd like to ask God why he allows poverty, famine and injustice when he could do something about it."

          "What's stopping you from asking?" asks the second.

          The first replies, "I'm afraid God might ask me the same question."

I think it is true, in the psycho-religious sense, that whatever we believe or do not believe about God is a reflection or even a personification of our own conscience. A Roy Phelps must have some real dirt in his soul, some serious hang-ups, if his idea of God is that this God would want him to persecute the suffering family of Matthew Shepard with a sign saying God Hates Fags.

Phelps’ God shows the sickness in Phelps, not the other way around. So the challenge is to have the courage to look inside and ask how the God we believe in or reject reflects our own souls.

I do not know if there is a God? Or what God is like. It seems to me too large a task for one measly human being to claim complete knowledge or to describe That Which is All. I do not believe anyone person or any one religion can tell me what God is or is not. But I do believe that we all have access to the truth that rises in our own hearts based on our experiences, and it is neither for me to accept nor deny what that truth is for you or vice versa.

But, the caveat is this, God is not what you think, but your understanding of God is in what you do. Atheist, polytheist, theist, Trinitarian, Unitarian, we are all living out the beliefs we hold in our heart of hearts. We may be challenged, encouraged, defeated, or achieve great things in those beliefs, but if our beliefs in God and in humanity do not lead us to treat one another with respect, dignity, all those forms of love that lift up people and a society, then we need a good long look in the soul-mirror.

In the book of Isaiah, we repeatedly hear God telling the people of Israel that he is beyond their understanding. That much is undeniable today, as it was then. We cannot understand what brought creation into being, nor do we necessarily have to understand. What we have to do, if we want to be whole in mind and spirit, is live by our principles, and question our understanding of what we believe. So be it.

 

November 9, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

November 9, 2003

Kristalnacht: The Truth VS Belief in Finding Our Moral Boundaries

“In all great deceivers a remarkable process is at work,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher most admired by Hitler. “They are overcome by their belief in themselves; it is this belief which then speaks, so persuasively, so miracle-like, to the audience” (Ted Gottfreid, Nazi Germany: The Face of Tyranny, p19). ‘They are overcome by their belief in themselves . . . ”

Writer C.S. Lewis talked about “real truth,” others talk about relative truth; further, logic and reason are used to understand or define truth. We can believe many things that may or may not be true. We can believe almost anything, regardless of its truth. Truth is often what a person or a group claims. Right now in the world are several religions that all claim to have the truth. So how is one to determine the difference between what we believe for its own sake, or our sake, and what we believe that is truth unclouded by beliefs? It is a challenge to all people, for how do we go about finding out what is truth, and then how do we live within those moral boundaries? Especially if the truth is not friendly to our comfort and convenience, or our position in society-and, we do like to have an elevated position in society.

What does it mean to be a person of normal decency then? What determines how you and I will behave if confronted by evil, or the more likely scenario of a potential for evil? What goes into our thinking about what we will do that is right, or, conversely, what we are able to do that is not right and still live with ourselves? That is really the bigger question. For example: Can you or I run a stop sign with a clear conscience? Can we ignore an obvious mistake by a teller who gives us change for a $20 instead of a $10? Can we receive stolen property if we believe it won’t be traced to us? Can we sit by and watch a person or group harmed if they happen to be someone or a group we do not like or a race we despise? Where, I am asking, are our moral boundaries? It is a question that every human being needs to ask him/herself.

All these questions are the foundation of the moral life, the way in which we consciously or unconsciously make decisions on any given day as we work, play, and interact with others. And, since many parts of the country have just had elections, like PA next door, and this coming year is a nationwide election year, these issues of moral boundaries come into sharper contrast because we have big decisions to make about who we will elect for public office to represent us, our children, indeed all the people, both the haves and the have-nots.

Let me set up a scenario that may be so foreign to most of us here that we have a hard time imagining it could happen to us, but I must remind you that it did happen to people just like us. If it were not true, this story would seem the most frightening of all folk tales meant to teach children lessons. But it is not fiction; it is the awful truth.

It happened in a country, considered by all of the western world to be the holder of the greatest wisdom, the greatest philosophers, theologians, musicians, artists, industrialists, engineers and scientists. You name it, they were tops. This country was a superior country in the history of the world. Unfortunately, they were so good at so much, especially military power, they decided to go to war and place their agenda above those of the people of the other neighboring countries.

It was a bloody war, and changed the whole nature of wars with advanced technology, so deaths in this war surmounted probably all wars for the century or two before in total causalities. It also took the warrior king out of the battle forever, and placed him and his generals and other high-ranking leaders, far from the danger.

Now, this great country did not take into consideration the moral outrage of some people and eventually some countries it expected to stay out of their war, so when some of these other countries joined to fight back, this great country lost their war. This loss was a terrible humiliation for the people of this country who saw themselves as superior people, who did everything bigger and better than other countries. But, this country had spent so much of its wealth on the war machine that by the end of the war, and the subsequent losses of business and good will with other countries, it was plunged into great debt, and was clearly no longer such a great country.

Unemployment went through the roof, and inflation was soon so bad it took a wheelbarrow of currency to buy a loaf of bread, the same amount of currency that a few years prior would have bought a diamond necklace or a car.

The people were demoralized, poor, worried about the future, all the things they had never been concerned about before. These proud people were forced to confront the shame of their losses everyday. People being people, it was the loss of face, coupled with real privation, that made them long so desperately for the grand days of the past when they had been a nation that led. They longed to believe in a new and better time, so when a brash youthful leader came along who promised them that they would no longer have to take their hardships lying down, virtually the whole nation clung to his every word, and soon elected him to power. This great leader, and he was indeed a great leader, said it was discipline the people needed, not intellectuals and intellectual ideas, and so organization tightened and ran throughout the country from top to bottom. Elders who had a memory of the past, liberals, critics of the government, all such people who did not like the direction of this leadership and said so were condemned as being against the country. You either went along with this new leadership or you were against them, and then quickly denounced, and subject to accusations of treason. Some people/groups who had the courage to challenge this new leader and his government found themselves ostracized and many were forced to leave the country.

The discipline certainly invigorated the population, and many believed that this new leader was a savior for the people. Slogans and pledges were on the people’s lips daily as they recited the mantras of the country and its leader.

Initially the great leader said things that it would have been hard for most people to disagree with, but as he became more powerful, it was soon impossible to disagree with him or his government. Some people also became afraid that if they did not agree, and said so out loud, that they would be helping to hold the country back. Of course, no one wanted that.

The problem with a leader who gets so much power, is that he/she begins to want more, and then to take even more. You have heard the old wisdom--and wisdom like this comes from ages of witnessing human behavior-but the old saying is that Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. History clearly shows the truth of this, and has since we have had any written history of human behavior. This leader soon would broach no criticism, would allow no freedom of dissent, gradually began to take away the freedom of the press, only allowing favorable press that polarized the people even more, took away the citizens’ personal privacy freedoms, all in the name of the safety and well-being of the country.

(Remember Benjamin Franklin who said that people who would give up freedom for safety deserve neither freedom nor safety. It was a history lesson this proud people had no time for.)

By this time, the country has been improving, jobs up, inflation controlled, etc., so that people were living well again, enjoying a greater level of prosperity, they felt really good about this leadership because they were so much better off. But this leader was impatient, and he looked around and saw one relatively prosperous group who had long lived in the country as businessmen, financiers, scholars, and such, and decided that if he could control them, or more accurately get control of their property, he could make the government and the country (in that order) stronger.

But, here is where the great moral lie comes into play: you cannot lie, cheat, steal from, or destroy another person unless you can convince yourself that they are less than you, somehow not as worthy of respect and dignity as yourself. And, that is precisely what this leader did. He focused on this group, a group he had always despised, pointing out their long-time cultural disassociation from the rest of the people by virtue of their ethnic origins, and stated over and over that they had gotten ahead at the expense of the “true” people of the nation. Repeating lies, half-truths, innuendoes until it all sounded true to those listening. The leader had effectively made a scapegoat of one group of people; but, the moral lie is never easily disguised, so it became more important to lift up this so-called “true” or “right” people as inherently better by blood, birth, and religion than all other people, not just this one selected scapegoat group. (The religion piece was a big sham, since this man in fact despised all religion and planned to replace them with his own, but he readily used the existing religions that feared losing their grip on the people.) Then it was not long before other groups became victims to the lies, their freedoms taken away, their right to speak out obliterated; and they were summarily locked up, deported, killed as convenience permitted.

In all this, the people who might have been thought good, decent citizens closed their eyes to the taking away of peoples’ right to free speech, the free press, legal representation, the increasing domination of one group over another, because they were benefiting by these actions. The great moral lie becomes not just the leaders’ lie now, but the whole nations’ moral lie--save for those few brave souls who would speak out even when it meant imprisonment and death. They justified their behavior saying: If our leader says invade, then it must be the right thing to do. If our government says these people are suspect and should be locked away without recourse to lawyers or the judicial system, it must be done to protect us. If our leader says rounding up large numbers of people is for our safety, we should not question it. Whatever our leader says is done for our benefit, and should not be questioned.

As the forebears from the generation before had done to their shame, this powerful leader, with the nation’s support, now set out to finish the job the previous leaders had started-only this leader was convinced he would do a better job than they had because he was convinced of his right and might. So he began to invade neighboring countries. Surprisingly, other powerful nations stood by (even as they had previously) for quite a while before they began to see the awful possibilities in what this country under this extremely powerful leader might be able to do, not just to its immediate neighbors, but to them as well.

Once again invasion of other countries began, and this time neighbors finally saw that this leader, this government, could not be negotiated with, could not be appeased, and eventually war began. An awful war, which again, at first some powerful countries tried to ignore, but eventually they too had to get involved.

While all this is going on, the processes of propaganda and control were going full steam. There was a systematic demonizing of the scapegoated peoples, and when it was clear they would not all just leave, the extermination of these people began in numbers unlike any time before. Genocide was practiced wholesale against these people--and any one who tried to help them.

It was sin and evil on a massive scale.

This great evil, its evil leaders, the once-great country now came to symbolize evil, and was eventually over-powered, and that country has lived with the shame not of its loss in war so much as the evil it had done in killing millions of innocent women, children, men.

This is the true story of the rise of the Hitler, the Nazi party, and the deaths of six million Jews, and hundreds of thousands of protestors, homosexuals, Gypsies who also got trapped in the grand scheme to make Germany the world’s greatest nation, a nation of purebred Aryans (that alone was a stupid myth), a nation of whites, with religions of the past replaced by Hitler’s brand of quasi-Christian philosophy, a rich and powerful nation like none had seen before.

Now, this story is the story of the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party, but it is also the story of other nations before and nation that yet will be. It is the story of those nations since and those yet to come that would/will do anything for power and control of other nations.

This is a story about gross evil, evil that sadly never goes away in the human community. Kristalnacht, the night of broken glass, the night when one group of people destroyed the homes, businesses, religious buildings of another group of people whom they despised. How could that happen? Well, how that could happen should never be a mystery to any one of us. It happens because people let it happen, people who would define themselves as you and I do, as good, decent, law-abiding citizens.

God is greater than religion. . . :’ Rabbi Heschel wrote. “Faith is greater than dogma.” Dogma never listens to opposition. But, Goodness, Love, any of the constituent understandings of God, cannot ignore opposition.

George Santyana, rephrasing Aristotle some 2400 years before, stated during that critical phase of a little more than twenty years between World War I and World War II, that people who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. He was saying, as did another writer, that: “History repeats itself because no one was listening the first time" (Anon). And again the people will fight back, and we will be as Shakespeare wrote in Richard II, once again welcom[ing] home discarded faith.

This is a story about gross evil, evil which never goes away in the human community. It is the great sadness of our human condition. Evil, the sins of materialism, greed, and power that will always rise again with a new name and new excuses, unless we remember human history.

The British writer Aldous Huxley <http://www.intheheart.net/huxley.html> said in the 1950s, with the Second World War still fresh in memory: "That men [people] do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."

You and I cannot be complacent as were those German peoples of the last two World Wars, and believe we are above what they thought they were above. We cannot be so foolish as to think that whatever we do that deprives people of their freedoms and right to legal representation is somehow more noble or different than it was in the past. All that changes is the victims. Evil is still evil, sin is still sin, wrong is still wrong; but, thank goodness, God, and love, right is still right. This is the lesson of our Seven Principles, the lesson of our Unitarian Universalist faith, that we always want Love-God-Goodness to define the moral and ethical boundaries in which we live, in which we bring up our children, in which we are guided as a nation.

So be it.

November 16, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

Sunday Nov. 16, 2003

Frost Moon, Beaver Moon: The Coming Time of Trial

The moon and religion have a long association. The moon has also long been recognized as a mysterious force on our world, because of the connection to human physical cycles, sleep, the reproductive cycles, and so force. The moon was even considered potentially dangerous, especially the time of the full moon: animals and humans were noted to react differently. Lunatic, lunacy, both derive from the Latin term for the moon, Luna. Certainly, the brightness of the moon as it shows in the long nights of autumn and winter, brightened by the clarity of cool weather skies, and its position in relation to the earth and sun, are all factors that increase the mystery that pre-modern humans felt for the moon. But all of nature held a different and special place for peoples of an earlier, less complicated time. Certainly a time when less stood between a person and nature.

The earliest recorded history, all that is given up in the archeological record, tells us that these things of the natural world, and of the heavens above us-sun, moon, stars-all have at various times been worshipped as divinity itself, or aspects of a greater divinity. As monotheism came into being, first with the Egyptians, who worshipped Ra the sun god, then Judaism with the invisible god, divinity was removed from the basic things of the earth (from the trees, and streams, etc), but the rituals continued to rise out of the earlier forms of worship for life. And, they continue to do so today. We Unitarian Universalists lift up our value for human life in our worship service with fire using candles, even as those Druids who gathered around the altar in what we call Stonehenge in England used fire. Whether we worship a deity that feels present on this land and in this building, or we worship some higher appreciation for the sacred spark of life that is in each one of us, what we are celebrating or worshiping is life itself. (In the Shorter OED, the first meanings listed for worship are: worth, dignity; worthy of honor and esteem, all of which parallel our Seven Principles.)

At this time of the year, especially, we find that the longer nights bring the moon into sharper relief, as does our earth’s tilt in our swing around the sun. All these things work to make the moon seem much larger and brighter than it is at other time so the year. Of course, the moon is also significant for we know the approximately 28 day cycle of the moon is connected with our tides, winds, and indeed our human physiology, especially as noted in women’s bodies. And, as learned in more recent decades, but was probably known in those ancient times, we all have biorhythms connected to these earthly and lunar cycles.

All of this seems rather cut and dried in light of our modern scientific understanding, but imagine our prehistoric ancestors of 15-20,000 years ago, the hunter-gathers; and in a few thousand years we come upon the world we begin to know as that of civilization, with less nomadic existence, and more settled communities, the development of agriculture, more involved forms of governance and religion, and eventually to nation building (many scholars of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament state that the primary focus of the Hebrew Bible is nation building, that of the Israelites). All of this led to our own modern forms of existence.

Despite our lives in this modern world, you and I are much more closely tied to that prehistoric world than we generally realize. Keep in mind that human beings are roughly three million years in the making; homo sapiens are around 200-300,000 years old, prehistoric human beings, the so-called cave dwellers that possessed rudimentary tools and fire, are about 15-20,000 years in our past, and what we know as literary human existence is about 5000 years old for oral history, and written language is only about 3000 years old. Our own world with modern forms of communication, advanced medicine and transportation, is roughly 150 years old. The Communication Age of the present, with computers, fiber optics, and satellite telecommunications is approximately 30-50 years old. So human beings have been in evolution as preliterate for roughly 2,997,000. If we had a piece of string a mile long to represent this time line, the modern world would only be barely visible in the frayed edges at the end.

Further, we are still evolving, only probably at a far faster rate due to all our interventions in the workings of the natural world. In chemicals alone that we either consume through food, medicines, water, or breathe, or absorb through our skin, we alter our bodies with pounds of chemicals every year, which is undoubtedly having an effect on our physiology.

For one thing, we live longer and much healthier than in any age prior to the 20th Century. We do not die of all sorts of diseases that killed many in the age prior to sulfa drugs and antibiotics that came into use in the 1920s-30s. My maternal great-grandparents both died of diphtheria in their early 30s, in the 1890s. Diphtheria does not kill people in the developed world any longer, though many of these diseases are still rampant in many of the under developed parts of our world.

Biology, chemistry, and chemicals have indeed changed much of the world, and we are far from able to say that it is all positive despite our great gains in longer lives; for, many harmful chemicals have damaged people, sometime by accident, sometimes on purpose. We know that the millions of gallons of Agent Orange, or dioxin (a powerful poisonous herbicide), was dumped on Vietnam and both soldiers and citizens have suffered the ill effects in the decades since that war. The land was clearly impacted, to what extent and for how long, no one seems to know. So, I fall back on my favorite saying of Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism: Every front has a back.

Besides our own human intervention comes, also, the always-present natural interventions of wet-dry, hot-cold climatic cycles. Human survival is always much more in question than we usually ever consider; it behooves us to remember that the dinosaurs existed over 250 million years ago (the earliest traces of humanines/austrolapithicus is three million years ago), before humans (there were no cave men chasing down dinosaurs, despite Hollywood’s depictions of such). The dinosaurs are widely believed to have died due to a massive asteroid hitting the earth and raising such a cloud of dust and debris that it ushered in an ice age that killed off all but alligators and cockroaches (A little hyperbole, but not much.). It is often stated that humans might not have had the opportunity to evolve as we did without this dramatic event that made human survival much easier without all those massive flesh-eaters out there

The world of today is very different on the surface from the world of just 20,000 years ago, but I would suggest that in our physical bodies we are not so very different if we consider all those millions of years of evolution that have gone into our human development.

The spiritual/religious development of humanity has also been evolving over all these last many thousands of years, actually most archeological evidence show the first signs of such advanced behavior only about 13,000 years in existence (cave painting in Lascaux, France are about 13,000 years old, and Stonehenge is between 1000-3000 years old); again, a drop in the bucket of our human evolutionary time-line.

The earliest indication of any deity is of the earth-mother goddess; all around the world these small fat-bellied, heavy breasted goddess statutes/amulets have been found. It makes a lot of sense that the greatest miracle in the lives of a primitive people would be pregnancy and childbirth. The earth itself was also recognized as a living thing, for seemed to give birth as plants came forth from the earth in the spring, and blossomed and transformed into the fruits, nuts, berries that we part of the prehistoric diet; so too did the animals of the earth reproduce. So reproduction would quite naturally be seen as integral to the super-powers of the earth, herself a mother, giving birth to all things. Goddesses were worshipped most frequently until about 5000-6000 years ago, then male gods began to replaced, though they are still central in many religious traditions such as Hinduism, Native or aboriginal religions, and even reemerged in the early church with the cult of Mary or Mariolatry as it is termed.

Religious understandings have been evolving ever since, and have ranged far and wide in belief, ritual, spiritual language and practice. Religion changes dramatically, but our essential human spirituality has changed less so. Our value for life, our concerns for safety, companionship, creativity, are fairly constant since we have first shown evidence of our minds developing into our modern way of being.

So for just a few minutes I want us to suspend our modern way of thinking, and move back in time to understand the reality, the physical and emotional aspects of being in a world that is far more uncertain to those early ancestors than ours appears to us. To a time on a piece of land, like this land, but then it had been relatively untouched, but populated by tribal peoples who live in consonance with the land in a way we no longer do. They have to get all their food, their clothing, all their food and clothing comes from plants they gather and animals they hunt themselves. There is no cultivation, no harvest, no way to really store up much for winter except as they store fat on their bodies during times of relative plenty. This ability to store fat is a miraculous evolutionary device for mammals, without which early mammals, including humans, would not have survived. Today this seems to work against us in an age of such plenty, but it is important to be reminded that we would quickly die without this advantage during most of our human history.

Nothing impedes the landscape but trees, scrub, the rise and fall of the hills that rise up from the river a days walk from here. There are trails worn here and there where our people walk down the hill just beyond to the stream where we get our water, or trails to the woods to gather berries and nuts, and hunting trails. We walk through woods down to the creek that is very high now, for the rains have been plentiful. A long warm summer has come to an end. We, who have wandered the hills and dales, sat by the streams, who have fed well on the berries, roots, grasses that grow so plentifully here, now begin to feel a rise of concern. The nights, so welcome for their coolness only a moon or two back, are now quite chilly, and we in our sheltered place no long move apart to sleep, but huddle close together, covering ourselves with animal skins, layering leaves inside the cave on which to lie down at night. All these acts are done so familiarly, have been done for so long, no one questions them, we simply act.

We have shelter, for caves are to be found in these parts, not far from this hill from which our gaze wanders. Just over that hill to the northwest is our shelter. A cave just large enough for our clan, nestled into the side of a hill, looking down toward the stream from which we get our water.

Animals are plentiful here, too. Deer, raccoon, opossum, squirrel, birds of many kinds, and other larger animals, all excellent food for us. Other staples of our diet, many kinds of nuts, berries, roots, and grasses grow in abundance here most years. This year there are somewhat fewer roots, nuts and berries, for the summer was late with much rain, heavy rains with storms that are not so usual, and the summer was not so warm or so long as some years.

We have not so much fattening in our bodies as we would like for now the full moon of the frost time has come, and we must prepare ourselves for the coming time of trial. For the cold time is a time when we die as the world dies, when animals of all kinds die who cannot find enough to eat and sustain them through the long cold time ahead.

We have carefully prepared our altar to our mountain lion totem that protects us. On the altar we are placing items to please the lion that is our link to the Mother Goddess. We know that this lion is sent by the Mother, for we have seen the lion here in this cave, when we first found it. The lion came to us, emerging from the dark narrow place at the back of our cave. We asked for permission to stay in this cave, and the lion did not return. This, we knew, was our sign to stay here and be under his protection. We see also, bones of lions from before, and we know that this is our totem because of these two things. So, to honor the Mother and the lion, we dance and sing and chant for the lion, and look for signs of him at all times. We do not hunt the lion, our totem, for it would mean a loss of his powerful protection. We see his shadow on the walls, in the gloaming of the setting sun, so we are comforted by his presence. We hear his terrible scream, like that of a baby, out in the woods and ridges beyond this place. He hunts and we hunt. He prowls the hills and forest for food, and we do the same. We are blessed by this great lion totem.

We are on the trail of a large deer, with a wide span of antlers, such good tools, and a thick strong hide that will be both sturdy and warm, and much flesh, which will sustain us. We hope he also is fat, for the fat will be the most important in giving us strength through the cold. We can also dry out the meat and grind it into powder and mix it with dried berries, nuts, and fat to eat through out the winter. The bones will be food and tools, for we eat the marrow, and the bones become hammers, stakes, pins, and have all manner of uses that are important to us. The antlers and bones are especially good for fashioning as weapons.

Lately we have had a new concern. There is a clan moving closer to us, and we want them to stay away, for they are a large clan, and will use many of our resources; resources we need to survive. We might want to exchange some food, spend some time together, perhaps select mates, which means some of us will go to live with their clan and some of theirs with us. We need more women, so we would like to bring some here if that clan has a need for more men. We have many boys who will soon be going for their first hunt and will become men if they can make a kill. Still, it is a concern, for sometimes clans try to chase weaker clans away and take their territories. We in our clan have done this when we first came here, or so the ancestors tell us as they speak through our shaman. And, we too have been the ones to be driven away. This is how it is to live, for it is not always easy to live. We all struggle to survive.

If all the world were in the warmth of summer, we would not be so worried. It is the coming time of trial now that the Frost Moon is shining that makes our fears grow, and will make us fight with the other clan for this territory. It is our territory, which means food and water. We bring our fears to our shaman and to our protector the lion totem.

We have heard from our shaman that in times before this time that the cold of winter did not end, and went on and on until many died for want of food, or froze in search of food. We look to our lion totem for safety, for while he hunts and is seen, we can hunt and we can live. Much depends on the totem, much we cannot understand or question. We bring our offerings, we sing our songs, chant late into the night before the fire we never let go out.

We have fire because the Mother gives us fire out of the storms, the fire that come out of the sky, and strikes a tree. We gather the burning wood and bring it home, and keep our fires going; it is very bad luck to let the fire die out, for the nights are dark and cold, especially now. We cannot keep the hungry beasts at bay without the fire, nor can the Mother Spirit find us without the fire. So we have always to watch our fires. We have smaller fires in warm weather, but we need big fires in the frost and snow times. Children must bring wood to the cave every day. Sometimes women and men help bring in larger wood fallen in the forest. Women are usually feeding their young and caring for the skins that clothe us; the men go to hunt for food. As we are today on the path of the deer, and will soon chase him into the trap we have set that will enable us to bring home a grand feast.

The wind blows cold this morning, and we trot along to keep warm.

As we go we remember our shaman’s words last night. Our shaman, our holy one, who knows the past of our people and tells us the meaning of things. Only a night or two ago the face of the moon was darkened, and we know that this is an omen of evil to come. We are alert for this evil we cannot name. The moon of the frost time is bright, though the shadow has passed across its face. When we first saw the shadow crossing the moon we were so afraid, but our shaman silenced our shouts and we heard the cry of the lion in the distance. The shaman has been gathering the bones of rodents and the skins of snakes to read for signs, and tells us the darkening of the moon is a bad sign for us. We must work more diligently now to look for dangers.

The moon is very important to us. It is our timekeeper, that we have the passing of the moon from birth to fullness to its death even as the sun rises and sets to make a time of light and a time of night, the moon comes in its different ways clearer, redder, high, lower, to tell us that we are in the turning of the seasons from warm to hot to cool to cold. Our shaman reads the signs of the moon and all stars in the heavens, and all that the Mother wants us to know.

Should we be found in disfavor, the Mother may make our lives harder. So it is not to be taken lightly that the shadow passed over the face of the moon. If we fail in our hunt, if a child dies, if illness strikes all in our clan, we know that the totem is not protecting us, that the Mother is angry.

Now that we have had many long moons when our clan has grown with new life, when fewer have died except as they are old, or foolish, we have felt safe. The time of the frost and cold are times of trial and testing, and if we pass through all these coming trials, so says our Shaman, then the Mother of us all will be generous and bring back the long warm days and food and water will once more be abundant. There is no certainty, but that we must be wary, always wary; that we must always keep the fire, that we must honor our totem.

We return now to our own time, our own comfort here in this late age of our evolution, when we worry less about honoring our various gods, goddesses, and totems than in paying bills, and finding time for all we want to do. The beauty of the eclipse this last week was a source of pleasure and entertainment, rather than fear and uncertainty. The light of the moon is an event of science, not the benison or petulance of some deity. No longer is the moon our calendar; rather we are as likely to be unaware of the moon as aware of it. We are very distant from our ancestors who read the signs of the world and the heavens the way we read the newspapers. Yet, our bodies, the primitive memory of our genes, our cells, tells us that we are approaching the frost time, the cold time of trial, and many of us experience the slowing down in our natural rhythms as these shorter days and longer nights prevail. Many people suffer more symptoms of depression as the days grow short. Illness increases, too.

I have noticed for years now that from about mid-November until January when the days start getting longer, that I move into what I jokingly call my cave phase, when I need more sleep, want to eat more and do less, and generally feel the need to stay closer to home, around the fireplace, and drink lots of hot beverages. I do not think it is at all surprising that so much of our feasting occurs during this phase, not only because it is the natural follow up to the harvest time, but because our physical selves feel the need to store up and reserve our energy for the coming time of trial-as it certainly would have been in ancient times.

The moon figures so much in this looking back to our prehistoric days, precisely because of the reliability of the lunar phases. As children we are always drawn to the moon and stars, and we can appreciate that the reading of those signs in nature were bound to evolve as people evolved.

Archeological historians know that the moon was the first calendar, and the Egyptians first codified the way in which the lunar calendar functioned some five or six thousand years ago. The Mayans of Central America relied not only on the sun and moon, but also the planet Venus, to establish 260-day and 365-day calendars. Muslims use a purely lunar calendar. They measured the passing of time (longer than weeks) only by months. Celtic Irish Druids, had a calendar of 13 months and a day. Each month has 28 days and is named for a tree that signifies in quality each particular lunar cycle. Inherent in the original calendar, which was a carefully guarded secret, were the keys to knowledge and the code for the Druidic alphabet.

Native North American Indians named the moons for animals/and weather significant for the time of year, so at this time of year when the beavers were building up their dams in readiness for the icing over of the ponds and stream, the Native peoples connected the bright clear moon of November the Beaver Moon, also it was called Woodchuck Moon by Plains Indians, but more frequently, the Frost Moon, since the hard frosts of autumn set in for the duration in most cases. Other such moon names show us this. For example:

          September: Hunting Moon/Squirrel Moon/Harvest moon

          October: Big Chestnut Moon/Falling Leaf Moon/Birds Fly Moon

          November: Frost Moon/Beaver Moon/Woodchuck Moon

          December: Big Winter Moon/Long Night Moon/Long Sleep Moon

Even today, most modern calendars will indicate the moon phases for the month.

Here in the mid-Atlantic we have had an unusual couple of years, that have perhaps made us pay more attention to the weather cycles than usually, first with the draught of last year, then the over abundance of rain and flooding this past year. We are, though, generally more and more removed from the natural world, and even the heavens despite our travels to the moon and probes to other planets.

We are super-sheltered, and very few in this country have any memory of more connectedness to our environment. My father and mother, people of their age, were really the last of a long line of agricultural people that really built this country from coast to coast, who lived with the sure and certain knowledge that nature was in control all the time. My father always would say, “If we’re lucky, we’ll have a good crop.” They understood in a way that we who live more apart from nature do not, that nature is the boss; that Nature is the Mother, the God of our living. For most of us, it is not until great winds, storms, draughts, or earthquakes strike that we have any real sense of how frighteningly powerful and holy the natural world was to almost all people before us.

So, I believe that one of the virtues of this time of year is that we are often drawn more to recall those days of old that shaped us as physical beings, but let us also remember that they undoubtedly set in motion the ritual ways we have come to understand ourselves as spiritual people. Ways that have changed as we change, and will continue to change.

Emerson wrote: “Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts.”

Our new thoughts are sometimes old thoughts revisited. We who are of this age can learn from ages past, indeed without this learning our path forward may be impeded. So let us look to the Mother Earth, to the moon, to this the Frost Moon, so that we may know ourselves, and may call up the sacred in our existence as it lives and breathes all around us, and most assuredly within us.

So be it.

November 23, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

November 23, 2003

Come Ye Thankful People

I have always felt a special connection to Thanksgiving, partly because my birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day three times in my growing up years, and birthdays are very important when you are at child. So, in addition to all food on the table, all the desserts in the pantry, there was also a big birthday cake. Since we celebrated with many of my relatives, it gave me a special feeling of importance. But the whole spirit of the holiday was important to my family, indeed our whole community. I grew up in rural Idaho, in an agricultural community, my family were principally fruit-growers, mostly apples. So Thanksgiving meant something special; our 320 acres of fruit was all gone to market, and it marked the end of one season, and the beginning of a much quieter time when I might actually see my father other than mealtimes.

The services at all the churches were also special, and the hymn we sang earlier has always been my favorite Thanksgiving hymn. I learned that its phrases had multiple meanings. For instance, the words harvest home refer to the idea that the harvest is gathered in, or home. Harvest Home also refers to the very old practice in England of having a great feast, at the expense of the landowners, and all the agricultural working people (which was most of the people) dressed up, enjoyed a massive dinner, had a good bit of drink, and sang and danced. Also, the song imparts the idea of the people coming in thankfulness to the Harvest Home festival, being thankful and acting thankful. The only parts of this heritage my fundamental Christian family held on to were the singing and eating, and the understanding that all we had, whatever the quality of our lives, we owed to God.

Come ye thankful people come, raise a song of harvest home. (The rest of hymn bears attention as well.)

This is the fourteenth year that this community of faith has celebrated Thanksgiving Sunday--this is my ninth Thanksgiving service with you. I have little doubt that those who have been here all these past fourteen years, and all of us who have come along since, regard this day with a special great sense of gratitude. From that first small group of fifty-one souls, we have nearly tripled our membership, and had the faith and hope to build, on this wonderful site, this beautiful new home for our Unitarian faith. We do indeed have much for which to be thankful.

Of course, as is always the case when making a big change, we are running into a few problems as we learn how to live in this new space, so our gratitude of today, may be tempered by issues of tomorrow. This is life. I’m reminded of grandmother who got a note from her son saying that her grandchildren would be coming to spend a week with her. She loved her two little grand-children, and when she thought about all the fun she would have with them in her home, she went to church and, as a token of anticipation, put five dollars in the offering plate. She had a wonderful week with the two little ones, and what a week it was. The day after they went home, she went back to church, and this time, as a token of thanksgiving, she put a twenty-dollar bill in the offering plate.

We here in this very wealthy nation, a nation of plenty such as the world has never known before (that alone bears consideration!), we do have a lot for which to be thankful. I am very happy that we have this holiday that inclines us to think about our great bounty, our great comfort, all the good things that we have in our lives. Otherwise, we might take it all for granted more than we already do.

It is a tradition in my home for us to offer up the one or two things for which we are most thankful as part of our blessing before the meal. It is rare that anyone is most thankful for things, and we usually are most thankful for those we love being safe, healthy, returned to us, or something that lifts up the people who matter most. Although I do recall one year when my son was seven, he looked at the table spread before us and offered up with great solemnity, “I am very thankful I’m not that turkey.”

Most of us do not have to think too hard to find things to lift up in sincere thanksgiving. But, as the Rev. Peter Gomes suggests [from the reading], the processes of Thanksgiving Day, from the story to our ritual behavior often have become too familiar, so that we really do not do much thinking about what we have that is worthy of thanks and praise. For Gomes the issue is that the story of Thanksgiving is too much of a slim telling of a story that few people can even relate to. Further, the point of giving thanks whether it was the Plymouth colonists, or us now, is to remember that Thanksgiving must begin and end with God. God-Love-Goodness, all those ways we as Unitarians have of understanding that Something which is greater than ourselves, that Something is the beginning and the end of thanksgiving. For, the fact is, we are unable to be thankful if we really believe we are the beginning and end of whatever good is in our lives. That is the fatal flaw, as it were, of a Thanksgiving Day that for many people is merely a reason for a big dinner and an afternoon of snoozing before the television.

Thanksgiving Day, as we understand it in this country, focuses on the story of the thirty-five Puritan separatists who made a pilgrimage aboard the Mayflower to find their biblical, City on the Hill, and settled into the Plymouth colony in 1620, barely survived, and at that only because of the Native American Indians who helped them learn how to survive in this very new, very raw land. The next year they had a decent harvest, and hosted the Indians at a grand three-day feast. Still it behooves us to remember that, as Gomes noted, the coming of the Pilgrims was the beginning of the end of freedom and a whole way of life for the native peoples of this land, many of whom now look upon Thanksgiving Day as a day of mourning--and, rightfully so.

Thanksgiving Day is an outgrowth of the harvest festivals celebrated all over Europe ever since agriculture was adopted in the pre-Christian era. It was important then to offer a portion to the gods or goddesses who were believed to be the source of the bounty of the harvest, and equally the source/cause if the harvest failed--this was carried over into Christian times. Still, in the world today, there remain some few of those primitive tribes that live so closely to the earth, who hunt, gather, and till the soil to bring forth whatever food they have, all that will allow for their survival. They too offer up their portion to the god/s of their knowing in gratitude for the elements of life we call food, our daily bread.

Whether our country had had its start with a bunch of Puritans or a group of some other transplants, we still would be having a Thanksgiving Feast Day; every body does. Maybe the dates vary a bit, but this season is the time of the Harvest Feast in this hemisphere, and we would expect to have some ritual Harvest Thanksgiving regardless of our founding. Of course, the Pilgrims were not the only people on the Mayflower, nor the only people who settled in the New World, but they did found the Plymouth Colony and we have that rich history of religious zealots, persecuted in England, unable to practice their form of Christianity, and forced to flee, first to the Netherlands, then finally to make the arduous trip across the Atlantic to wind up, somewhat by accident, at the cove encompassed by the arm of the land now called Cape Cod. There they set up the Plymouth community that was a theocracy, and practiced their form of Christianity and allowed no other forms. Thereby doing precisely the same thing as England, the place that they fled. Those Puritans would all be horrified that this country has become multi-cultural, with many different Christian denominations, many different religions and spiritual paths all accepted as part of our greatness. They would be marching with the Native American Indians and declaring their own day of mourning.

Well, it all helps to support the adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I spent yesterday morning in Wilmington listening to the noted Christian theologian Marcus Borg, who has written several books highly acclaimed for their accessibility to the average church-person. He talked about the different ways Christians understand faith. Of the four principle ways he outlines, the first is that which has become the most common, which is faith based on belief. It has been the most common way to understand faith since the Protestant Reformation, and especially the last 150 years, and has crossed into most other Christian religions as well, and was certainly highlighted by the Puritan Pilgrims. That is, faith is based on agreeing with a set of beliefs, and the understanding that God is most concerned with what is in our minds. What people agree to vis-à-vis religious beliefs-what people will affirm as their beliefs. Of course, the problem with this, as Borg points out, is that you can believe all the “right” things, but still be an unkind or mean person, or a person who feels empty, who is hurting emotionally, who does not feel the presence of God or Love as active in one’s life.

The other three forms of faith, which were certainly in the very early church--and we can read in the earliest gospel texts--all these forms of faith are what Borg terms “relational.” I can only just touch on them now, but the other forms are defined as: faith as trust in God; faith as fidelity to God (the First Commandment, “you shall worship no gods before me”); faith as vision, or seeing God in the world (this form was most clearly the nature of Unitarian minister, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalist faith).

In relational faith, the heart is as important than the mind. That is, one’s intentions, one’s motivations, one’s actions are not less important that the rules, but work in consonance with the ethical rules that govern human cultures. The story of the prodigal son, that Jesus tells, is a good case in point. The “bad” son violates the rules of proper behavior, demands what his father is expected to give (according to custom), and goes off and blows all his portion, on wine, women, and whatever. The “good” son, stays put, follows the rules, does everything the right way according to the beliefs of the Jewish community of that age. The bad son winds up on the skids, has no money, no food, nothing. He is sunk so low that he is working at a lowly job on a pig farm. He comes to realize what a complete fool he has been. He truly regrets his behavior and is repentant, and decides to go home. What does the father do? The parable says the father was filled with compassion and rushed to embrace and kiss his son. The son says: I’m not worthy of your forgiveness. I’ve sinned against heaven and you. The father forgives his son and orders a new garment for him and a great feast to be prepared.

In the wings, while all this reunion is taking place, is Bob, the good son (remember him?). And is he ever ticked off. He won’t come inside to the feast. And finally his father goes out to entreat him to come inside and join in the celebration. But Bob is mad, and says: What’s the point of having rules, what’s the point of doing the right thing, if a person can do out and do whatever he wants and can just come traipsing home and get forgiven. I didn’t get any party for doing the right thing. The father reminds him, you were always with me and all I have is yours, but we must celebrate that your brother is returned to us, he that was lost, now is found.

Jesus is teaching in this parable something so simple it is quite profound-or must be since we have to keep learning in over and over from generation to generation: See, Jesus says, there is more to life than just following rules; more to faith than just believing a doctrine or set of statements. The rules have their place, yes, but what matters most to God, is that you love your brother, that you have compassion, that you are capable of forgiveness.

Most religious groups nowadays, as Borg says, are focused or centered in the first form of faith as belief. So if another group of people do not believe the same things, they are discounted as not as important to God or to the believer. Compassion for others is not so important as conforming to beliefs. Such believers feel they are more important to God than other people who are not believers.

Of course, we as Unitarians and Universalists (remember we were two separate denominations prior to our 1961 merger) began in that faith-as-belief vein since we come directly out of New England Congregationalism, which is what Puritanism evolved into (or devolved into, depending on your point of view). But along the way, we gradually made a shift toward faith as relational. That is, living out of love, which is how we understand the nature of God or That Which is All or as the theologian Paul Tillich termed God, that “Ultimate Reality.” To live out of love and compassion, we say, is more important than being able to say I believe these things, these rules or doctrines. So we do not all necessarily believe the same things about God or what constitutes the spiritual life, but we accept that living out of love is what is most important. Indeed, Jesus said it was the second greatest commandment; to love others as we love ourselves. So we do not say you must believe this thing or than; rather, we say you must live in an ethical and loving way. This is what Jesus was saying to his own Jewish community.

Which brings me to the story that Kate sent me about the soldiers stranded along with all the other weary travelers who wanted to get home to California last month. The writer said in his concluding remarks that when the people in great numbers went to give up their seats to the service men and women, he was deeply touched by this large act of compassion, and it made him proud to be an American. Well, I am pretty patriotic myself, but the actions of all those people who gave up their seats, despite the fact that according to the rules, they had every right to claim their seat, did not strike me at the patriotic level so much as at the faith level, or more accurately, at the love level. They related to these service people and knew it was the right thing to do to show this form of love we call compassion.

Clearly patriotism stirred many people to act out of love; but, I wonder, would they have acted similarly if it had been another group of people, with a comparable need, not wearing the uniform of the United States of America? In some cases, I imagine many people would. That is what it means to be a person whose faith is grounded relationally.

Thankfulness that is genuine is also grounded in this relational understanding; that is, grounded in love, hope, and forgiveness. Being a thankful person means you can look outside yourself, outside your own wants and desire, your own need to have your own way. Being a person who understands gratitude, or feels gratitude, means you and I can learn to see the bigger picture, can recognize our blessings and want to share them with others. Genuine thankfulness is grounded in relation, our relation to one another: this is what Jesus was teaching, and what all great religious teachers have taught down through the ages.

Thanksgiving Day reminds us of a pilgrim story known rather too well, but it also can remind us of a time when a group of very rigid Puritans, stepped outside their faith as a set of beliefs for a moment, and stepped into a moment of relational faith that meant bringing the Indians into the feasting, even though the Indians did not believe as they believed. But, that moment passed, and then they went back to the ways that they had come to this land to establish. It was not long until the Native peoples were being killed and pushed out of the way. But consider this, what if the Puritans had decided to continue in their relational faith and had supported and even protected the Indians?

In my sermon a couple of Sundays ago, I said that God is not just what you think, after all, how could God be so limited? If God is all, no one of us, no one group of us is not limited in our ability to know that great All. Love and gratitude, though, are the least limiting of our ways of being human. We can love boundlessly, we can have an equally boundless gratitude.

It is good to be thankful for our food, our families, our homes, our work, our liberal religious faith, this wonderful sanctuary, but we have only just begun to understand what is good in our lives for which to be thankful. In fact, there may be things we perceive as negative, or bad, that could in reality be good if our hearts and minds were open. Some people think it would be terrible to allow same sex marriage. But, then, people in the past thought it would be terrible and against God’s law if women owned property or voted. Well, the world did not end because of those changes, and would not if legal protections of marriage were granted to same sex couples. I sometimes imagine God looking at us saying: Geez, these people slow are to figure out loving kindness, and do unto others.

I read somewhere that: There's always a lot to be thankful for if you take time to look for it. For example (and this is especially important for those of us no longer young), think how nice it is that wrinkles don't hurt.

At the lecture yesterday, during the question period, I asked Marcus Borg how we could overcome the fact that this country has become so polarized with, on one side, those whose faith and politics is based in “right believing” and, on the other side those whose faith and politics is based in a faith that is relational? It seems to me we are becoming unable to find common ground. I must say, Borg was much more positive than I am inclined to be, reminding me that even in the conservative evangelical wing of American religion, many religious leaders and laity are often willing to put beliefs to one side in order to dialogue. I needed that reassurance. I am thankful to him for that reminder.

This is what people have done for each other since we began to live in communities, working together to survive, creating a higher order of living, developing rules and laws, lifting up the common ethical and moral understandings into religious teachings and rites and rituals. Celebrating marriage, and birth, honoring the dead. Recognizing the time of planting by asking for blessings, celebrating the fruition of the growing season with a ritual festival to mark the end of the harvest. This is faith at work in real life; faith that comes out of a love for life, a love for one another. We were meant to live our lives fully, relationally, hopefully, and thankfully. If we understand that, Love, in all its forms, is the highest achievement of humankind, whether we term that greater Love as God or Goodness, we will seek to live out of that love. And, that will lead us to gratitude for the real richness and fullness of life. Then Thanksgiving Day means something substantial that is far beyond the pilgrims, far beyond any one group of people, and becomes centered in the greater good for all.

The Rev. Gomes writes that this season is such a welcome time, and that is why it has such a high claim upon the affections of people of great and of little faith. We are not washed up, the book is not closed, the last word has not been spoken or written, and we have cause for thanksgiving that we are privileged to live, as [the poet] Auden says, “for the time being.”

Such is our harvest this day: that we live and can yet love and can yet be thankful.

Come ye thankful people come, raise a song of harvest home

So be it.

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