Home Up Contents Search What's New

October 2006    
February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2007 December 2007

 

 

October 8, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

October 8, 2006

Defending the Faith: How to Discuss your Religion

There is a wonderful line in one of the Apocryphal books, Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament)(Chp 37:13) which states: And let the counsel of thine own heart stand: for there is no [person] more faithful unto thee than it. Or in the language or our time: Cling to the wisdom or truth of your heart, for only you will care well enough to do so.

The great German poet, Heinrich Heine, once visited the gothic cathedral of Amiens with his friend Alphonse. They were overwhelmed by its magnificence, and the friend asked: Heinrich, why can we no longer build such piles? To which Heine responded: Dear Alphonse, men in those days had convictions we moderns have opinions and it requires something more than an opinion to build a Gothic cathedral.

This month marks the three year anniversary in this new building. Those of us who worked to make that happen can also affirm that it requires a lot more than opinion to build any kind of religious building--even our modest Unitarian Universalist homes, like this one. Convictions built on faith; that is what any religious edifice is in fact. We talk about these convictions in terms of belief, doctrine, creed, history, tradition; but, in all, we are really talking about convictions built on or of faith.

There are so many things that I cherish in this liberal, free faith of ours. I deeply cherish the diversity of religious belief and spiritual experience and conviction that we house in our UU congregations. I love the way children are valued, brought forward, and given permission, indeed, given encouragement, to question, to ponder, to wonder about the both the visible and invisible universe, and to know that we will try very hard to accept how they come to understand that world as the truth of their own hearts. We can so easily forget what a very rare and precious gift this is to a child and to us as adults. (This is one instance of when I am grateful for my evangelical Christian upbringing, for it gives me a deep appreciation for the contrast between that unbending, unquestionable religion, which I tried so hard to accept, and our own flexible, resilient free faith, which without a nod accepts me.)

I also value our Seven Principles, our constant efforts toward consensus-building, our stretching to be truly accepting and not just tolerant. And, so much more that could easily fill this sermon, but I also need to share a couple things I really do not like about our free faith. These are the things that are a challenge to most of us at one time or another. One is how hard it is for people to explain our religion to non-UUs. The other is our tendency to “committee” the life out of important things we just ought to do sometimes.

My sermon, though, is focused on this first challenge, which is troubling to both life-long UUs and those who are new to the faith. How do you explain a non- doctrinal/non-doctrinaire religion to those who only know doctrinal religion? How do you know what to say about something that is so broad and challenging that you might as well try to explain solar fusion to a three-year-old? This is a challenge, but the main part of the challenge is having conviction.

There is also one other thing that I really do not like to hear a Unitarian Universalist ever say when asked what it means to be a UU, and that is: Being UU means you can believe anything you want. Does that really sound like a good thing? First, you cannot believe anything you want if those beliefs violate our ethical principles. You will find no neo-Nazi skinheads in our UU congregations for example. You can certainly find a wide variety of beliefs and spiritual practices in our congregations, but beliefs and practices are expected to conform to basic decency and respect for others.

Just like in any religion there are some varying shades of belief and practice, but as an ethics-based religion, we do expect our members to behave ethically. We would never tolerate pedophiles, or blatant abusers of any kind, without intervention, for it would be antithetical to our Principles. It is simply not true that you can believe anything you want; unless, you qualify that statement in some way. Like: You can believe what you feel is true in your heart as long as it does not harm yourself and respects the worth and dignity of others.

Our biggest challenge, though, is to explain simply what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. Despite our illustrious history, we are not well known in these days, but our goal has never been fame; rather, our goal is goodness and justice which are far worthier--about which we can have convictions.

Some religions certainly have the benefit of a long tradition that is well known so that their members are not required to explain themselves in the way we often are expected to do. If someone tells us they are Jewish, we assume we know what that means, and rarely will people keep quizzing the Jew about the religion. The same holds true for Christians, Moslems, Hindus, and Buddhists. Of course, saying you are a Jew, Moslem, Hindu, or Christian hardly scratches the surface of what a person actually believes or practices. There are hundreds of sects of Christianity, and many different and significantly differing sects of all the religions of the world. Within every major religion there are many different varieties of belief and practice. We are one of the products of Protestant faction.

We know that saying you are Christian is not enough for devout Christians, who will want to know what variety of Christian you are. Catholics and Protestants all call themselves Christian, but there is a wide gulf separating them.

Still, if someone says I’m a Methodist or a Catholic or a Presbyterian, we have at least the basic notion that they believe in the Holy Trinity, and that Jesus died for the sins of all humanity, and that they celebrate Christmas and Easter. If someone says they are a Moslem, we assume they follow the teachings of the prophet Mohammed, that they may pray five times a day, and will make a pilgrimage to Mecca if at all possible, and that Ramadan is their holy month.

In other words, these religions have what marketers call “brand recognition.”

If you chat with someone and the subject of religion crops up, as it very often does, and you ask what faith they practice, and they say, “I’m a Christian.” You take away from that word Christian enough already known information that you may not ask anything more. If, however, you ask beyond that, to what variety of Christian the person is, and they say, “I’m a Catholic”; again, you get enough already known information that you may not keep pressing the point. However, if the person says, “I’m a Wesleyan,” you may or may not be able to connect that with the larger branch of Methodism. If you did, you might eventually find out that the Wesleyans split off the main body of Methodism in the 1840's over the issue of slavery, and many Wesleyans were active abolitionists. But, the truth is, many a Wesleyan would not be able to tell you that. In fact, if you keep asking believers within any of the main bodies of the religions of the world, probably eight-of-ten would not be able to tell you very much. Most people really are not very well versed in the religions they claim, beyond the obvious. Still, they benefit from that brand recognition quality and rarely are asked to explicate on the nature of those founding religious principles.

We UUs, though, because we do not have such wide recognition, will be asked to explain our religion. And for all too many of us, the knees buckle and we find ourselves hard-pressed to give a nice, neat explanation of what being Unitarian means. Because this has been such an issue for many of us, there has been a trend developing over the last ten years or so to be attentive to coming up with a brief, positive explanation—or as some call it, our “elevator speech.” (Also, if you don’t want to talk about this stuff, tell them to call your minister. I love talking about it!)

The one I developed is more or less this: Unitarianism is an ethics-based religion that initially emerged out of the Protestant Reformation, which stressed the teaching that God is one. Our guiding principles teach first and most importantly to respect the worth and dignity of each person—especially regarding our differences in religious belief and practice.

Now, I have several years of experience in doing this explaining of our faith, but I know that when I first became a UU, and prior to my three years of divinity school, I was often flummoxed by how to explain this wonderful religion. But something happened to me that helped me more than all the practicing of elevator speeches ever could. And it has to do with recognizing that religious people have convictions about their faith, and we UUs also need to have such convictions.

Now I am not quick-witted. I usually think of the right thing to say well after the fact, and I envy my children who must have gotten an errant gene in the family, for they rarely get pinned in corners the way I do.

Bennet Cerf, the intellectual and humor writer of a generation ago, tells a story about the 27th president, William Howard Taft. President Taft was from Ohio, and also has the reputation for being the most rotund of presidents. We UUs are partial to him because he was born and remained all his life a Unitarian. Taft, like most presidents, had to put up with his fair share of hecklers. Fortunately, though, he was quick-witted. Cerf writes:

      Not only was William Howard Taft the largest president in pounds, but also the sharpest in dealing with hecklers. A heckler once tossed a cabbage at Taft during a political speech. Taft paused, peered at the vegetable, and then placidly said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I see that one of my opponents has lost his head."

I have learned that one can compensate for not being quick-witted. But even more importantly, one can learn to discern the situation in which such issues may arise. This is the key to being quick-witted. This is also the key in learning how to talk about our UU faith, and the key in learning how to defend the faith when necessary. One thing which is a testament to our religious principles, which is true for most of the UUs I know, is that we are polite—we do respect other people. I was reared to be polite, and still believe it is important, which means I resist being rude even when people are not always being especially polite to me. And this is where my experience comes in that I alluded to earlier.

Like all UU candidates for the ministry, I had to spend a term in a hospital doing chaplaincy training; most ministry students do so. This is called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). Most of the Harvard students went to one of the Harvard hospitals in Boston for CPE, but I knew I would live in the suburbs, so I sought out a CPE program in a suburban hospital that I believed would more accurately reflect the kind of real life pastoral care I would be doing as a minister. That is why I went up to the Beverly, MA general hospital on Boston’s North Shore. What I did not know when I signed up for this whole summer of the most challenging ministry any of us would experience to that point, was that Beverly, Massachusetts happens to be next door to South Hamilton, the home of Gordon-Conwell, a conservative evangelical Christian seminary. What that meant was that I spent this whole summer, meeting first thing every single morning of the week with five males, four of whom were from Gordon-Conwell, who were bent on showing me the error of my Unitarian ways. One other young man already had been ordained an Episcopal priest and was working in a very poor and very tough neighborhood in Boston. He was gentle and quiet, and doing additional CPE towards a career in chaplaincy. (A fair number of UUs are chaplains, one I know is a Navy chaplain.)

I should first explain, that the training comes in two ways. First, students spend most of the day in the various wards to which they are assigned. I was assigned the emergency room and the ICU or critical care ward. From those very challenging experiences, we then had to write up some of our various interactions, and talk about them from the place of spirituality and faith. How we handled, for example, the death of a child, or the patient who threw us out of the room, and so on. This was meant to help us get in touch with our hidden issues related to death, religion, etc—to test our convictions. We met each morning with our CPE supervisor to share our experiences, and discuss them in some depth. Certainly our religious beliefs played a large roll in how we would interpret our experiences.

The short of it was that for about six of the ten weeks of CPE, I was cowed by politeness, as one or the other of these ministers-in-training told me what a weak, wimpy, overly-intellectual, Pollyanna-ish, and downright wrong religion I claimed. Where was sin and salvation? Where was the Bible? But most importantly, where was Jesus? Without Jesus all are lost and in danger of hell fire—yada, yada, yada.

Of these, one was by far the most fire-y, spirit-filled, evangelical, and vocal in his faith. I have no doubt he has brought many souls to Christ. Bill was ruthless in his attacks on my UU faith. He would say things like: Unitarians can believe anything. If you don’t believe in something, in what the Bible says, you believe in nothing. He was very disrespectful out of his beliefs and convictions.

I would drive home talking out loud nearly every day, saying all the things I wish I had thought of at the time.

Then one morning as we sat around the big table, I was looking at that quiet Episcopal young minister, John. I had learned he came from a wealthy family, and had entered the seminary over his family’s objection. But there he was, born of privilege, working in the slums; such a kind young man, very humble in his speech and I thought that he was the most like Jesus of all those in the room who claimed to be Christian. He truly lived his faith.

We were going around discussing the case I had put forward, and predictably Bill “lit into me”—as we say out West, and something clicked in me. I had been raised in the same kind of evangelical religion as Bill, fed on the militant Christianity he professed, so I had heard it all. But it came to me that the most important message I had learned as a child growing up in that faith, was that each of us should be like Christ. As I looked at Bill, glowering, preaching at me the sin and error of my ways, I realized what was wrong with him and with that kind of religion for me, and why I had turned my back on it so completely. I looked Bill in the eye, and said: “Bill, I don’t see Jesus in you. I don’t see anything of the savior Christ in you.” Silence! I went on to say that the only person in the room who seemed to be at all truly like Christ was John—thereby embarrassing him into a deep blush. But it was true.

Ahhh! In a lifetime of never thinking of the right thing at the right time, I for once had hit the mark. Neither Bill, nor in fact, any of the others, ever laid into me again with their holier-than-thou rancor for the rest of CPE. They saw that I also had convictions. Devout believers, evangelical or fundamental believers, are convicted, and know that there is strength in conviction, and they also know there is a weakness in polite religion.

Now here is what I learned in that summer of defending my faith. First, you have to know with whom you are engaged. Do they really want to know about Unitarian Universalism? Or do they simply want to show you that you are wrong? This is very important, for you might do some good with the former, with someone who is truly interested in learning about us; but, with the latter, you are just wasting your breath, unless you feel like engaging in battle as I did that morning with Bill (and most of the time we don’t)

Einstein once said: Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. That would be battle method, but most of us don’t want to do battle.

What happened to me was accidental, and more like the guy who had to fill out an accident form for his insurance company, on which he stated plainly: The pedestrian had no idea of which way to go--so I ran over him.

Upon reflection, I realized that what is most astounding in all this, is that people can think it is all right to disparage or ridicule another person’s religion. It is amazing how many people think it is all right to say such things if they are doing so in the name of their religion. What is even more amazing is that we allow it. We would never tolerate such disrespect towards our children, or even our politics, but we will meekly allow someone to say or imply that our religion is wrong, bad, or inferior. This is politeness gone wrong.

Even if my child was the worst sort of bounder, I would never allow anyone else to demean him or her to me. Neither would you. They have no right. They are violating all the boundaries of respecting the dignity of another person.

So why should we ever allow someone to demean our faith? Our faith, what we think or believe, is us.

I realized in the months and years after this incident, that if I did not learn how to talk about and defend my faith, I did not deserve it. I value this liberal religious tradition far too much to not treat it with all the same emotional depth of feeling I would one of my children; my faith is me, it is who I am. People are welcome to discuss, to share religious ideas, but the rights of even the most rabid of religious evangelicals stops at the line I believe Jesus drew in the sand.

Jesus, who was always getting the rough side of somebody’s tongue who wanted to silence him, to make him submit to the religious traditions of his time, said that after loving God, the most important commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself. Which is Bible talk for treat other people with respect.

Each of us in this country has the freedom of religion, indeed the freedom from religion as well. We UUs believe, further, that each of us is equally able to know the truth of our hearts, and to know God, without the need for any intermediary telling us what we “should” believe.

I love this Unitarian Universalist faith. I esteem this rational and very spiritual religion. I also respect other people’s right to believe in other ways, and to practice whatever form of religion they think is right. But no one has the right to tell another person that their religion is wrong or bad. That is not what the Buddha would do. That is not what Mohammed would do. That is not what Jesus would do.

Our faith deserves to be presented with its best features put forward. Our best features, which will always be our best defense, come in the form of our ethical Principles, and especially in our understanding of loving one another as a First principle.

Now, when I am confronted by someone like Bill, I usually say something to the effect that my religion is very important to me, and I would be/or am offended if anyone should be disrespectful about it.

Learning to talk about religion means respecting that respect itself is a two-way street. I could never again be part of any religion that did not teach as great an emphasis on respecting others as on chalking up points with God.

The main thing I try to emphasize to those who are really interested in learning about UUism, is that after treating others with respect and dignity, we think that what a person believes is not as important as what you do with what you believe.

Our religious beliefs and our religious practice are the children of our souls. They need nurture, they need experience, they need protection, and they need expression. Of all the things I believe our religion offers, the one I most appreciate is this understanding of valuing oneself. This is what we emphasize for the children, and what I want to emphasize for each one of us. Value yourself, value your beliefs, value your right to be treated with respect—then you will have conviction.

Repeat with me our Chalice Lighting response, spoken here every Sunday as a reminder of who we are and what we value:

      We gather this hour as people of faith, with joys and sorrows, gifts and needs. We light this beacon of hope, sign of our quest for truth and meaning, in celebration of the life we share together.

So be it.

 

October 15, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

October 15, 2006

Celebrating Life

This coming Saturday the 21st marks the Hindu holiday known as Diwali or Deepawali which is the Festival of Lights. It was a great pleasure this morning to have Annika Vaidyanathan performing an ancient Hindu dance to honor Diwali. As one source states:

Diwali is a five day Hindu festival which occurs on the fifteenth day of Kartika. Diwali means ‘rows of lighted lamps’ and the celebration is often referred to as the Festival of Lights. During this time, homes are thoroughly cleaned and windows are opened to welcome Laksmi, goddess of wealth. Candles and lamps are lit as a greeting to Laksmi. Gifts are exchanged and festive meals are prepared during Diwali. The celebration means as much to Hindus as Christmas does to Christians.

The various religious beliefs and practices that get bundled together under the rubric or term Hindu are among the oldest on earth. Hinduism and the sacred texts of Hinduism represent the oldest, continuous religion that is known. There is in this ancient religion many ways to understand God or Ultimate Reality (as the theologian Paul Tillich termed that essence of all generally called God). Light is a fascinating part of that understanding, a large part of the way in which all that is of mind and/or spirit is expressed in beliefs, rituals, and writings. And, as we would see if we examined most of the religions of the world, this is also true across religions.

At this time of year for us in this hemisphere, we are now beginning to note the changing light of day as the days grow ever shorter leading to the winter solstice in late December when the days are their shortest of the year. All of the holidays of this time of year include light as a primary symbol.

As we can well imagine, in ancient days during our human evolution, the discovery of fire must have been a wonderful advancement. Fire light could ward off the evils of the night filled with its predators; it could warm the cold days and nights; it could provide entertainment in the shadows playing on the walls of the caves which no doubt inspired all those cave paintings. Light still does all that for us today, though we usually take it for granted-- until the power goes out.

Light for humans has been and remains a major symbol for God, for religion, and for Reason. Light equals power; so it makes sense that most people down through the ages have equated both the religious and the rational with light.

Our Unitarian and Universalist religions (they were two separate religions until 1961) developed most during the period known as the Enlightenment that period which followed the Dark Ages of the medieval period. Even our symbol of the lighted chalice remains true to that deep sense all of us have that to be without light is be without the source of life itself.

But we who have known nothing more than brief absences of light or of power tend to not see how very foundational it is. Even as I sit in front of my computer typing away on my sermon, I must make myself stop and back up what I have written so that I won’t lose it if the power goes on a blip—a reminder of the uncertainty of power and light. It is easy to forget that it was not all that long ago that all sermons (indeed all writing) were handwritten by candlelight. Those of us who have come to depend on the power supply, not only for light, but for our computers are the most rabid for energy conservation and developing new, clean sources of power. We fear we might quickly descend into another period that might be called the Darker Age.

One can almost imagine what the stone-faced comedian Steven Wright once said: There was a transformer blown out at ConEdison, the New York power & light company, thousands of people were stranded on escalators.

Light, the powers associated with light, are life to this planet. We often hear these days about the dwindling supply of fossil fuels, of oil in terms of powering our cars, and while all of us would certainly feel the impact on transportation, the bigger impact is on the sources of power needed to light the world. If you ever see a night-time map of the United States and Europe, it is astonishing how much light is constantly radiated, and especially how much is concentrated on the eastern coast of the U.S.

Religiously, light is the power over the night; in Genesis of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, the first thing God does is create light, and separates the day from the night. In all creation myths around the world, this is a first action. First there must be light. In science this is no less true. The Big Bang Theory is the creation of light, of power, and all that evolves from that first great enlightenment.

Religiously God is light. Light then is associated with holiness, goodness, with knowing or intelligence, with salvation or renewal, and with all that is in opposition to goodness: the absence of light, the dark of night, that which is without goodness, without intelligence--or more simply, with all that is evil.

Light is also symbolic for life itself, and for the divine spark that is each human life or spirit.

In the book of Mark, the oldest book in the Christian New Testament, Jesus uses this metaphor familiar to many in Chapter 4:

21: And he said to them, "Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel [basket], or under a bed, and not on a stand?

22: For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light.

23: If any man has ears to hear, let him hear."

For our Unitarian ancestors this was really a call to use the mind. Since God granted us with brains and the ability to think, then it was our religious duty to use our brains. We should question, explore alternatives, quest for new meaning; otherwise we were abandoning the very first gift of the creator which was the light of life and the mind. Even today, one way we interpret the light of our flaming chalice and our way of understanding our UU faith, is to say that as UUs we don’t ask you to check you mind at the door; for every idea for us is open to question, which is why we often have a period for discussion following the sermon, to acknowledge that the minister’s is but one voice, one opinion, and that all of us here have a voice.

So it is then that light has been and remains the ultimate symbol for all that is most holy for humanity, whether it be God or Reason.

Prof. Reuven Tsur, Prof of Hebrew Literature, at Tel Aviv University explores this stating:

[L]ight affords seeing and finding the right way. Darkness deprives you of this ability. In some circumstances it is justified perhaps to equate with understanding this ability to find one's way, or to judge what is presented to one's perception. This is, certainly, one conspicuous potential of light . . . . But light has many other potentials as well, frequently exploited in poetry, religion and philosophy.

[and]

The two most conspicuous potentials of light exploited in this image is that it is a thing-free and shape-free substance, and that the further away it travels from its source, the less intense, the fainter it becomes. There is an interesting trace of the KNOWING IS SEEING ingredient in this image. The stronger the light, the more "spiritual" it is. Near its source, it is purely spiritual; the further away from its source, it becomes less spiritual . . ..

All the literature, poetry, art, and music of the west uses this age-old accepted understanding of the real and spiritual power of light as the source of all life and the source of all that is good in life. This is equally true in the realms of non-fiction, of academic and scholarly writing, too. For, regardless of where we individually place our religious beliefs from non-theist to theist, nonbelievers and believers, we know that ultimate reality, whether we call that God or something else, is rooted in the light of the universe, and for us on this planet, for our lives, that light is the sun.

In painting, especially the specifically religious paintings that crowd the art galleries of the west, one of the most common features is the halo, that sun- or moon-like orb behind the heads of Jesus and the saints. God is usually represented by the brightest of lights without any form, just as the supreme light.

As some of you have heard me talk about before, I had what is commonly called a near-death experience twenty-four years ago next week, October 24, 1982. I recall the date easily, as do all people who have these experiences. My life was dramatically changed because of this event, for it taught me that death is nothing to fear, indeed it is the most peaceful of experiences. And it led me to become a Unitarian.

You see, the thing most of us fear the most is death, and I was reared in a religion that taught that when you die you have a very good chance of going to hell for all eternity. That is a terrible thing to grow up believing; it was for me a very intellectually abusive teaching. Following my close brush with death, I read everything I could find on the subject of these near-death experiences, and found that the only consistent thing was this fascinating experience of being drawn to a brilliant light.

What the literature offered was two primary answers to this manifestation of light. If the person was religious, the light would be understood as the most light-associated being or deity in his/her religion. For Christians the light was almost always Jesus; for Hindus it was one or another of the faces of the Supreme being, like Shiva or Lord Rama or Shakti; for Buddhists it was the Buddha; and so on according to religious tradition. For humanists, agnostics, or atheists, it was simply the first light, which from a scientific or rational point of view is the first experience of birth, that first emergence into the world we know, and to which we regress as the brain shuts down. This is what I personally believe it is.

Still, it was a powerful experience which gave me the courage to live the truth of my own heart and mind, and not be ruled by fear of death. To become a Unitarian was the first testament of that change in my life, but becoming a UU did not mean that I left behind all was in me of my Protestant Christian upbringing. In fact, it gave me greater clarity about the messages of the Rabbi Jesus who said such things as don’t hide your light, the light that is your life, under a bushel basket, which I translate as saying to use your mind, use your heart as the truth appears there.

The light of truth that became so important to me was that it was/is totally illogical to believe that the God would create people just to send them to hell for anything from minor infractions to torture and murder. Further, if all these religions exist, there must be a reason for their differences, and that no one religion is superior to all others. I always remember that there is also in the gospel of Mark(9:40) a message to this effect. Jesus is talking with his disciples who are concerned that there is a man on the other side of town who is driving out demons in Jesus’ name, but was not one of their group. Jesus is unconcerned, and says: Whoever is not against us is for us. This seems to me to uphold religious freedom, and that to try to put all people under one religious umbrella is unnecessary.

Hinduism has many interesting aspects, and ranges in beliefs and practices as widely as Christianity. One of the sages of Hinduism taught that all the rivers run to the sea, as a way of expressing that regardless of how different we are in our various cultural and religious ways of being, we all arrive from and return to the same source. Scientists of the most humanistic bent can readily agree with that understanding of human existence.

To try to find meaning for our lives is part of each human beings experience. We all have at some level a need to make sense of our existence. We UUs are really no different in that search for meaning, and no different in our need to ritualize our ways of knowing. For instance, we gather in community, we light a chalice, we light candles, we use the metaphors of light all to symbolize both light as life, and the light of the mind that is enlightenment. People, though, clearly are not all at the same places religiously or intellectually, nor do we all have the same capacities or opportunities for enlightenment, either.

There’s an old story to illustrate:

Out in the frontier west a man’s wife went into labor in the middle of the night. A doctor was called out to assist in the difficult delivery.

To keep the nervous man busy, the doctor handed him a lantern and said, "Here, Jacob, you hold this high so I can see what I'm doing.” Soon, a wee baby boy was brought into the world.

"Whoa there Jacob!" said the doctor. "Don't be in a rush to put the lantern down...I think there's yet another wee one to come." Sure enough, within minutes he had delivered another little baby.

"No, no, don't be in a great hurry to be putting down that lantern, young man...It seems there's yet another one besides!" cried the doctor.

The poor man scratched his head in bewilderment and asked the doctor, "Do ye think it's this here light that's attractin' 'em?"

I am a westerner from Idaho, and grew up on frontier history, which is the history of my family. Out west in the frontier times people had limitations of all kinds, and certainly limits to their understanding of things that went beyond basic survival. Religion was accepted as hard as their experience of the land and survival, this was reasonable to them. This for me explains in part why some religions seem so hard.

There was a picture in the church in my hometown that I learned only fifteen or twenty years ago was a replica of the British painter Holman Hunt’s Light of the World painting which hangs in Keble College, Oxford, England. This painting shows a tall lean, very WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) Jesus carrying a hurricane lamp through the night, with the moon giving a halo behind his head. The message was clear: Jesus brings light to the darkness; Jesus is the light of the world.

For me as a UU, this painting still means both of those things. Only, now I see Jesus as one in a long line of people willing to question the religious and secular authorities of their times and places, and of our need to continue that line, to be one of those who carry the lamp. Wherever, whatever, however, and whenever we see injustice, we each have the responsibility of our moral being, our conscience, to help right that injustice—to bring light to the darkness of wrongs in the world, is but one example.

One science writer stated, about the phenomenon of light, when asked by a non-science person like me, what is the life expectancy of light: Light is a form of energy. It does not have ‘life expectancy’ in the sense you are thinking. A photon of light will continue traveling through space until it strikes an object that absorbs it.

If we think of our lives in terms of the meaning we want for our lives, then light is a wonderful and true metaphor. Our individual lives come up against other lives, and to the degree that the good in us is absorbed by those around us it has done the good it can in this life and from that our life has meaning.

To celebrate light is to celebrate life. May it be that each of us lets our lights out from the bushels of our existence, to shine in the world, and brighten the lives of all.

So be it.

Send mail to webmaster@uusmc.org with questions or comments about this web site.
Designed by Vega Computing Solutions.
Copyright © 1999-2008 Unitarian Universalist Society of Mill Creek.