Unitarian Universalism – Page 26 – Dan Harper

Water ingathering ceremony

The words below were used by Rev. Dan Harper to introduce the annual water ingathering ceremony at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, what is below is a reading text. Text copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

Introduction to water ingathering

Water links all persons together in the cycle of life. Let me explain how that is literally true. A human being contains on the order of 10 to the 27th molecules of water — 10 to the 27th is a huge number, a one with 27 zeros after it. On an average day, we each probably consume about 10 to the 25th water molecules (that is, if I did my math right), and excrete the same amount. The water that comes out of us continues on in the water cycle, draining into the ocean, evaporating, forming clouds, and raining down again — so you are linked to the ocean and the sky, and to all living things that partake in the water cycle. You can also consider this historically. Since water molecules are pretty much indestructible, and since such a huge number of water molecules passes through us each day, there’s a decent chance that some of the water molecules currently in your body were formerly in the body of Socrates, Gotama Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, and/or Hildegard of Bingen. So it is scientifically true that water links all beings.

It is also poetically true to say that water links us all together. Standing on the edge of the Rio Grande River, the poet Jimmy Santiago Braca writes:

I’ve come here after drinking all night,
come here after betraying myself and others I’ve loved
come here and offered all the shame and guilt to this river,
to take it down river, pouring it out into the Gulf of Mexico
there for the whales to spout it up in the air…
to cleanse it, joining me
in their wholeness, their completeness.
I breathe part of its being in me….

When we gather here to begin a new church year together, we participate in a ritual gathering of the waters. If you get the church newsletter, you were invited to bring a small amount of water that somehow represents your summer: some of the water you used to water your garden, perhaps; or water from one of the city or town beaches that you visited this summer; or water from a place you visited; or water from a stream or river nearby that is important to you. If you didn’t get the church newsletter, or if you forgot, don’t worry: we have cups of water here for you to use; when your turn comes, you can pour one of these little cups of water into the communal bowl and tell us what it represents from your summer.

Here is how we will do this: Please line up here, to my right and your left. When your turn comes, step up onto the platform. Speak clearly into the microphone, say your name, and tell us in one or two sentences what your water represents. Please be aware that there are lots of people who will want to speak. Tell us just enough to make us curious, so that people will want to approach you during social hour and ask you about your summer.

I’ll start us off. My name is Dan Harper. This I went to visit some cousins I hadn’t seen in twenty years, and this water is from their house….

Universalism for Such a Time as This

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading comes from “Treatise on Atonement,” written in 1805 by the Universalist minister and theologian Hosea Ballou. Ballou visited New Bedford in the late 1820’s, and his preaching led to the establishment of First Universalist Church, which merged with this congregation in 1930. In arguing for the truth of the doctrine of universal salvation, Ballou wrote:

“I would argue again, from a reasonable idea, admitted by all, namely, that mankind, in their moral existence, originated in God. Why, then, do we deny his final assimilation with the fountain from whence he sprang? The streams and rivulets which water the hill-country run in every direction, as the make of land occasions. They are stained with various mines and soils through which they pass; but at last they find their entrance into the ocean, where their different courses are at an end, and they are tempered like the fountain which receives them. Though man, at present, forms an aspect similar to the waters in their various courses, yet, in the end of his race, I hope he will enjoy an union with his God, and with his fellows.”

[Treatise on Atonement, 3rd edition, 3.iii.]

***

The second reading this morning comes from the book “Foundations of Faith,” by the Universalist minister and theologian Albert Zeigler, published in 1959.

“The power of traditional Universalism was that, in its teaching of universal salvation, it spoke to every man of his infinite value. As the ancient Hebrew saw himself to be of divine importance, rescued and chosen by God; as the orthodox Christian found his eternal significance in the sacrifice of the Son of God for his welfare; so the Universalist saw his and all men’s divine stature and destiny in the unfailing love of God. If [the phrase] ‘universal salvation’ does not today carry that message to us, we must find another way to sing the great gospel that every person and what he does and how he does it is of ultimate concern, of infinite significance.”

Sermon

We call ourselves “Unitarian Universalists,” a cumbersome name that came about in 1961 when the American Unitarian Association merged with the Universalist Church of America. These days, many of us leave off the second half of our name — instead of saying “Unitarian Universalist,” we just shorten our name to “Unitarian.” We call ourselves “Unitarian” not just because it’s a shorter name, but also because some of the old Universalist ideas seem thoroughly outdated.

Take, for example, the idea of universal salvation — the idea for which Universalism was originally named. Back in the 18th C., most people living in British North America, later the United States of America, believed that if you were good you’d get to go to heaven when you died, but if you were bad, you’d spend all eternity in the torments of hell after you died. But in the middle part of the 18th C., a few radical preachers in North America began to question the doctrine of eternal punishment for sin. These radical preachers, people like George DeBenneville in Philadelphia and Caleb Rich in Massachusetts began to teach that God is loving, and therefore God would not condemn anyone to eternal torment; they said that everyone gets to go to heaven. In short, they preached the idea of universal salvation, that everyone gets saved.

When the Universalist preacher John Murray arrived in the New World in 1770, this radical new idea began to spread more widely British North America. John Murray preached about universal salvation through the mid-Atlantic states and New England, greatly raising the profile of the emerging movement.

Murray and other early Universalist preachers faced ridicule and scorn for daring to preach that everyone would be saved. The more orthodox Christians believed you had to threaten people with hell and damnation to get them to behave well; they said that Universalists would destroy society be teaching that hell doesn’t exist — for if the people didn’t believe in hell, then they would indulge themselves in evil and sinful behavior. To which the Universalists drily replied that there was plenty of evil and sinful behavior in spite of the threat of hell, and they pointed out that in general Universalists behaved better, or at least no worse, than the rest of society. The early Universalists were great debaters; they had to be; for wherever they tried to start a new Universalist church, the orthodox Christians would challenge them to a debate.

On one memorable occasion, John Murray was telling a crowd about Universalism when his opponents began throwing stones in the windows. In his autobiography, Murray later recalled, “At length a large rugged stone, weighing about a pound and a half, was forcibly thrown in at the window behind my back; it missed me. Had it sped as it was aimed, it must have killed me. Lifting it up, and waving it in the view of the people, I observed: This argument is solid and weighty, but it is neither rational nor convincing.”

The Universalist movement in America reached its peak in the middle of the 19th C. At one time, it had perhaps the fifth largest membership of any denomination in the United States. But then a funny thing happened. The other Protestant churches began to leave behind the idea of hell. The other Protestant ministers stopped preaching hellfire and damnation, at least, in the larger, more powerful denominations. After 80 or 90 years of debating, the Universalists basically won the debate, and it killed them.

Because of this, because there wasn’t much to distinguish Universalism from other mainstream Protestant denominations, Universalism began a long, slow decline. The denomination declined greatly in power and influence, and in the 1930’s began cooperating more and more with the Unitarians, until finally in 1961 the Unitarian and the Universalist denominations merged.

By the time of that 1961 merger that created the Unitarian Universalist Association, Universalism seemed almost irrelevant. In 1961, the big theological debates were about the death of God, not about hell and damnation. By 1961, probably half of all Universalists were humanists and didn’t believe in God anyway, let alone believe in damnation or salvation. To many Universalists, Universalism seemed little more than a pleasant tradition, a traditional holdover from times long past, charming but more than a little antiquated. Maybe they felt that the belief in hell was disappearing.

But here we are 46 years later, and belief in hell has not disappeared. In a Gallup Poll conducted in May, 2007, 69% of the American population reported that they believe in hell. The current president of the United States and many of our other elected representatives believe in hell, and believe in damnation. If these people believe in hell, that says to me that they believe in a God who is vengeful enough to condemn some human souls to eternal misery and torment. These are people who believe in the power of vengeance, who may believe that vengeance is as acceptable as diplomacy, and who may believe that vengeance is stronger than love and compassion. I sometimes wonder if such beliefs have an influence on foreign policy decisions — I suspect they do have an influence, although it seems to be an indirect influence, an unconscious influence.

And while I cannot prove it, I suspect the widespread belief in hell affects domestic policy decisions as well. Someone who believes in hell believes that some people are disposable. Hell, by definition, is a place where God disposes of some non-trivial number of souls, implying that at least some souls are disposable. If your religion tells you that some people are disposable, I would tend to think that such a belief could influence your decisions regarding domestic policy.

But because I don’t believe in hell myself, I have to admit that I don’t know how such a belief would affect a person’s actions. The real point is that hell has made a come-back in popular culture in the United States. Therefore, I believe it is time for us to dust off our old Universalist beliefs, look them over, and see what parts of Universalism could be useful to us in such a time as this.

Let us begin be stating Universalist beliefs in positive terms. Instead of saying that Universalists don’t believe in hell and eternal damnation, let us state what it is that Universalists believe in. And we may wish to use different language to state our beliefs positively. In 1959, Albert Ziegler said that if the phrase “universal salvation” no longer has much meaning for us, we need to find another way of saying the same thing. With that in mind, let me offer three positive statements of Universalist belief, and then apply them to a current issue in our community.

Albert Ziegler gave one positive statement of Universalist beliefs when he said, “The power of traditional Universalism was that, in its teaching of universal salvation, it spoke to every man of his infinite value.” Today, we would remove the gender-specific language, saying that Universalism speaks to every person, to all people, of their infinite value. A second statement of Universalist beliefs may be found among the so-called seven principles of Unitarian Universalism, the principle that states that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. We could put these two statements together, saying: Each and every person is of infinite value, and so we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. There are no disposable human beings.

And here’s a third way of restating and updating traditional Universalist beliefs: all human beings share in the same final destiny. We heard one statement of that in the first reading this morning. Originally, the phrase “final destiny” was meant to refer to heaven, or final union with God. Today, when we are worrying about the effects of global climate change, when the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has set its Doomsday Clock a little closer to midnight, when we are engaged in a war that seems to be out of control — today, the term “final destiny” may take on a somewhat different meaning. If our species is going to survive, we had better figure out how to treat each other, and treat the earth, better. As the saying goes, we had better all hang together, or we will all hang separately.

Now let’s apply these issues to a current issue in our community, an issue that has particular relevance to our church. Our church bylaws specifically state that we will not discriminate against persons because of their gender, race, national origin, class, sexual orientation, physical ability. And each week when I read the welcoming words before our worship service, I say, “Here at First Unitarian, we value our differences of age, gender, race, national origin, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, and theology.” On one level, this is simply another way of saying that we value the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. But on a deeper level, this is a pretty radical statement.

Our community, the greater New Bedford region, is a community that, on the surface, is relatively peaceful and tolerant. But like much of New England, there are deep divisions between the people who live in our community. We are divided by age — our youth are divided from older people, sometimes in very public and acrimonious arguments; our elders are often divided from younger people. We are divided by race — while we don’t have much outright racial violence, you can still find lots of racial division and racial discrimination in our community. We are divided by national origin — with the current uncertainty around immigration, and the recent raid at the Michael Bianco plant, our community is divided by national origin. We are deeply divided by class — with physical divisions between wealthy and not-so-wealthy neighborhoods, and psychic divisions because lower income people feel politically voiceless.

I could go on, but you get the point: we have some significant divisions in our community. I hasten to assure you that our community is fairly peaceful, certainly more peaceful than some other cities in Massachusetts. And I hasten to assure you that we a relatively tolerant community; compared to much of the United States, we are quite tolerant indeed. So compared to the rest of the world, you could truthfully say that we’re doing quite well.

And within our church, I think we manage to do better than even the surrounding community. Compared to the surrounding community, First Unitarian is a relatively tolerant place. No, we’re not perfect — far from it — but compared to the rest of the world, you could truthfully say that we’re a fairly tolerant and welcoming place.

But as a Universalist, I want to go further than that. If our community is relatively tolerant compared to the rest of the world, why not take it to the next level? If our church is relatively tolerant compared to our community, why not take it to the next level? We may be good, but surely we can be better. As a Universalist, I am an incurable optimist. I know every person has inherent worth and dignity, and I want to try to live my life as if that’s really true. And I want to hold this up as an ideal for the whole community.

I may be an optimist, but I also want to know how we could make this idea into reality. Speaking realistically, I know we’re not going to completely erase racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, ableism, or other forms of discrimination in the greater New Bedford area. Nor are we going to completely erase all discrimination within our own church.

Yet I do believe it is possible for us to get better at acting as if each and every person has inherent worth and dignity. I don’t have any final answers, but I believe it would be helpful to talk more openly about the divisions that do exist in the surrounding community. Not that we should indulge ourselves in guilt and shame, for in my experience guilt and shame are not particularly effective ways to change people’s behavior. But we do need to be able to talk openly about continuing racism in our community — discrimination such as racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination based on economic status, and so on. Thus a key skill for us to practice will be to listen deeply and carefully to one another — for it is impossible someone to talk openly unless the rest of us listen deeply and openly.

I believe that we have to spend more time talking about and examining our religious and theological reasons for ending discrimination. We have some compelling religious reasons to do away with discrimination, not just from our Universalist side, but also from our Unitarian side. I believe, too, that we have to be able to clearly state, in religious terms, why we believe each person has inherent worth and dignity. Once we can talk about our faith, once we can clearly articulate what we value and who we are, it is but a few short steps to living out our values in day-to-day life.

I believe that in this church we have to act always as if all people are valuable. Perhaps this is one of the first steps we can take towards living out our religious beliefs:– to practice living out our religious beliefs here in a relatively safe church community. Racism and sexism and homophobia and classism have been around for centuries, and we’d be naive to think we can put an end to them tomorrow. But as a first step, perhaps we can put an end to them for a couple of hours each Sunday, while we’re here at church.

And so we wind up facing the age-old question: How do we live out our deeply-held beliefs? How do we live out our most cherished values? As you would expect, I don’t have any firm and final pronouncements to offer — no person can tell person exactly how to live out his or her values. But I raise this as an important issue, a key issue for us. And I do believe that the religious insights of Universalism have much to offer us. We know that all persons are of equal value, we know that there are no disposable human beings, we know that all human beings share in the same final destination. Once we are clear about those religious values, all we have to do is figure out how to act upon them.

Can You Fix It, Dad?

Bridging ceremony

Each year, a few young people from this church end their time in high school. Usually after they are through with high school, they head off to find a job, to join the military, or to attend college or further education. And often that means that these young people move out of town, or have busy schedules that don’t permit them to come to church as often.

Our young people enrich the life of this church immeasurably. They bring their own perspective to church life, they bring their own talents and enthusiasms. Sometimes, they can help to challenge the assumptions of older generations, which can inject new energy and life into this church. So when the end of high school requires some young people to move on, it’s a real loss to the church.

But it’s also a time of excitement. We are so pleased that these young people are entering a new phase of life! They may not be around as much as in the past, but we want them to know that we will always be glad to see them here, that we hope they continue to be a part of this church. We want them to know, too, that we will support them as they make the big transition away from high school and into something new — we will support them in their dreams, and their emerging new lives.

This is our chance to recognize these people in what has become known as a “Bridging Ceremony,” bridging the gap between youth and adulthood.

***

First, I’d like to ask anyone who, like me, spent part or all of their growing-up years in a Unitarian, Universalist, or Unitarian Universalist church, to join me up here at the pulpit.

Next, I’d like to ask everyone who is in high school, and those adults who have served as youth advisors, to come stand up here in front of the pulpit.

Jarrod Hines and Dani Everton have graduated from high school and both will be attending Bristol Community College. Would you two please join us up here in the pulpit?

Welcome, Dani and Jarrod! We welcome you into the community of adult Unitarian Universalists.

Those of us standing here at the pulpit also grew up as Unitarian Universalists, and we have either stayed, or we have come back. Know that you will be welcomed into other Unitarian Universalist churches (and if you aren’t welcomed, you can do what some of us did and demand to be welcomed in!). Know that you will always be welcome here — come back and visit, or remain here as members.

And I deliver this charge to all the adults in this church: whenever you meet a young adult who grew up in a Unitarian Universalist church, you have the privilege and the responsibility to welcome them here in this church — just as other Unitarian Universalist congregations will have the privilege (and responsibility) to welcome some of our young people into their congregations.

Readings

The first reading this morning comes from Kenneth Patton:

“The family is the center of devotion; we declare it so. The child justifies the family, for no child survives without its nurture. We live for the family, more than we live for nation, corporation, or religion. Parents have one superlative function, to bring new lives into the world, to share in the creation of persons. The old man, sorting essential works from trivia, knows fatherhood was the best of what he had to do.”

[Patton, Hymns for Humanity.]

(I would add, that those of us whose families are child-free are equally responsible for children, for all children, the children of humanity.)

The second reading consists of two aphorisms from Ben Franklin’s 1739 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac:

“Honour thy Father and Mother, i. e. Live so as to be an Honour to them tho’ they are dead.”

“Let our Fathers and Grandfathers be valued for their Goodness, ourselves for our own.”

So end this morning’s readings. Though I have to admit, as I thought about these two sayings, the less sure of them I became. The sermon will, in part, be an attempt to make these sayings a little less slippery.

Sermon

“Can you fix it, Dad?” I’m not sure I ever asked that exact question of my own father, but it’s the classic question for children to ask of their parents.

And right at the outset, I should point out that even though we’re in the fourth wave of feminism in North America, our culture still thinks that men are better at fixing things and women are better at nurturing;– thus, in families with two parents of opposite gender, when we hear the question, “Can you fix it?” many of us are likely to imagine that the child is asking her or his father to fix something. Of course, that’s not necessarily the case in the real world. In my family of origin, both my mother and my father were equally good at fixing things for us when we were small. So both mothers and fathers are perfectly good at fixing things. But because it’s Father’s Day today, I’m going to talk about fathers.

“Can you fix it, Dad?” It seems to me that young children are most likely to ask to have very concrete things fixed:– a broken doll loses its arm, or a broken toy truck loses a wheel, and the child asks, “Can you fix it?” What adult could resist such an appeal from a child? Dad bends down and fixes the doll or the toy truck. Maybe it’s not the best repair job in the world, but from the child’s point of view it’s a miracle, and the child is impressed by Dad’s love and power and kindness.

A string of repair jobs follows. Dad stitches together a toy tiger which has somehow lost its head. The repair jobs get more complex. The child presents Dad with a broken tricycle, and Dad has to ask some friends at work how in tunket you repair a broken spoke on a tricycle, and then Dad has to borrow a spoke wrench, find out where you can buy a tricycle spoke, turn the cussed thing upside down, tell the child to go away so as not to hear Dad’s swearing, and repair the stupid thing. At last it’s done, and again the child is impressed by Dad’s love and power and kindness — and perhaps has learned some new words too boot.

These repair jobs get progressively more difficult. The difficulty increases exponentially with the age of the child. Soon they get so difficult that even Dad can’t fix it. The family cat or dog dies, the child is at last old enough to understand death, and the child realizes that Dad can’t fix death. The family experiences discrimination of some kind, the child is old enough to realize the emotional impact of discrimination, and the child sees that Dad can’t seem to do anything about it. In my own case, Dad and I were playing baseball in the back yard. I pitched the ball to Dad, he hit a little pop fly straight at me, and I was too slow and clueless to either duck or put my glove in front of my face. The ball whacked me on the forehead, and though it didn’t hurt that much, that whack on the head provided a moment of enlightenment that made me realize first of all that Dad couldn’t protect me from myself; and then I realized that Dad couldn’t fix my essential inability to play team sports.

At some point, each one of us realizes that our parents aren’t all-powerful. That moment came for me with a dramatic whack on the head when I was seven or eight years old. That’s a pretty common age for children to come to the realization that our parents aren’t quite as all-powerful as we had originally believed. The effects of this realization can reach far and wide in the child’s life. The effects can be relatively trivial — not long after I got that whack on the head, I gave up on baseball, joined the Cub Scouts, and followed in Dad’s footsteps by pursuing outdoors sports like fishing and boating and hiking.

Or the effects can be quite profound….

By the age of seven or eight, many children have finally become aware that their parents are not all-powerful, and I think that’s why many traditional religions have a rite of passage for children of that age. Some traditional Christian churches allow children to participate in their first communion when the child is seven or eight. Although I can’t accept the theology behind it, the ritual of first communion makes good psychological sense. Just when the child has come to doubt that his or her own father is all-powerful and capable of fixing anything, the religious community comes along and affirms the existence of an all-powerful father-God with whom one can have mystical union through the ritual of communion.

Of course, the idea of an all-powerful father-God doesn’t work any better in the long run than the idea that your own flesh-and-blood father is all-powerful. In some traditional religious communities, people of that religion learn to talk to their father-God through prayer and they might even ask, “Can you fix it, Father? Can you fix it, God?” From what I’ve seen, the notion that God can fix anything only lasts until the teenage years. But the moment always seems to come when the young person’s prayer goes unanswered, at which point the young person either has to develop a more subtle way of understanding God, or the young person winds up rejecting the notion of an all-powerful father-figure and often rejecting her or his childhood religion. Both options seem to be perfectly valid — perfectly valid, that is, as long as the young person comes to realize that the world is a flawed place, filled with injustice and many kinds of evils, and that there is no one out there — not your own dad, not God — who can fix your life and make everything all better.

And if you want to know why some young teenagers seem to be really, really cranky, who wouldn’t be cranky when you have to face up to the fact that the world is filled with injustice and evil and no one’s going to fix it for you?

We adults know that the world is filled with injustice and evil, and we know that no one is going to fix things for us. When I hear the question, “Can you fix it, Dad?”, I have a twinge of nostalgia, remembering my days as a young child when I thought Dad could fix anything. As an adult, I now know that no one can fix everything. From my religious point of view, that means that I can’t honestly believe in a God that is all-knowing, completely good, and all-powerful — because such a God would surely know when bad things happen to me, such a God would want to fix the bad things that happen to me, and such a God would have the power to fix the bad things that happen to me. And since bad things keep happening to me, the evidence leads me to conclude that there is no God that is all-knowing, completely good, and all-powerful. The answer to the question, “Can you fix it, Dad?” is always — No, not really.

Many people, when they reach to this conclusion, just give up the whole notion of God — I’ll talk about that option in just a moment. But many people find alternative ways to understand God, and I’ll tell you about two such God-concepts that happen to be current in Unitarian Universalist circles.

First, there’s so-called “process theology,” which I have to admit that I don’t fully understand. But as I understand it, the process theologians tell us that God is changing and growing and evolving — that’s why it’s called “process theology,” because God is in process. Well, that would imply that God is not all-knowing, completely good, and all-powerful. It’s sort of like when you go into the photocopy shop, and you see the sign on the wall that says, “Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick two.” So maybe if you walk into the office of a process theologian, you’d see a sign on the wall that says: “All-knowing. Completely good. All-powerful. Pick two.” But I’ll tell you what it’s really like. It’s really like your younger self suddenly realizing that your Dad can’t fix everything in the world, and that he is fallible and growing and changing, just as you yourself are. That’s process theology.

Another way that some Unitarian Universalists understand God goes under the general heading of Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is a pretty vague term these days, and it can include everyone from Emersonians to Goddess worshippers to ecological activists. Most Transcendentalists see divinity in the processes of Nature, and some would even say that all of Nature is divine, is God. Transcendentalists impress me as being essentially optimistic, believing that the arc of the universe tends towards goodness, which leads to them fighting against human-created injustice. If Transcendentalists had to choose from all-knowing, completely good, and all-powerful, I think most of them would choose just one — that God is completely good — the rest is up to us. And that’s like your younger self realizing that what your dad really offers you is his love, and pretty much everything else is going to be up to you.

What about those among us who don’t believe in God? There are many ways to not believe in God, but I’ll just talk about the one most common option that happens to be current in Unitarian Universalist circles today.

The best-known option for religious people who don’t believe in God is humanism. I would define humanism as deep trust in the human capacity for good. Humanists also acknowledge that humans beings do not always act in good ways, which means that we have to figure out how to build a society that helps us act in the best ways possible. Humanism requires of us that we work together with other human beings to address the very real problems that we’re facing. Perhaps humanism can best be compared to your younger self coming to the long, slow realization that your dad is not superhuman, but that he is human just like you, he’s just another human being that maybe you can work with to address the world’s problems.

At some point in your life, you realize that your dad can’t fix everything because your dad is fallible, and he is growing and changing. At some point in your life, you realize that what your dad really offers is his love, and even though it must be admitted that not all dads are able to offer that we can acknowledge more generally that love is the most powerful force in the universe. At some point in your life, you realize that your dad is fully human, with all that statement implies.

I began by asking the questions: “Can you fix it, dad?” The short answer is no. When I finally figured that out, I got along much better with my dad; and it was easier on my dad when he knew that I knew that he couldn’t fix everything about my life. I know my dad can’t fix the world. My dad doesn’t try to fix my world. We’ve gotten to the point where we just talk like two human beings.

And what do Dad and I talk about? Well, we often talk about what’s wrong with the world; that is to say, we often talk about what needs to be fixed.

I don’t want to speak for my dad, but I think he and I both agree that the primary moral and ethical problem confronting anyone living in the United States today is the fact that we are involved in a long-running war in Iraq. My dad and I both happen to believe that the Iraq war is immoral and unethical; but neither one of us believes that some father-God is going to come and end the war for me. Nor do we believe that the United States has some father-God on my side, and that therefore anyone who disagrees with our country is automatically wrong.

That is to say, we do not believe that some magically powerful figure is going to fix all the problems of the world. And that means that we know full well that if something is going to be done about the war in Iraq, it’s up to us to do it. Dad belongs to Veterans for Peace — he’s a veteran of the Second World War — and he marches with the Veterans for Peace in town parades. He also witnesses for peace in his Unitarian Universalist church. For my part, I preach peace from this pulpit once in a while — not so much as to bore you — and I try to carve out enough time to witness publicly for peace; so I joined some Quakers in a public witness for peace in front of the Capitol building in Washington, DC, a couple of months ago.

I no longer say to my father, “Can you fix it, dad?” Now we say to each other, “How can we fix it together?” My wish for fathers, and for all parents, is that their children grow and mature enough so that they can ask that same question of their children: How can we fix it together? And my wish for all children is that they might have a relationship with their parents where they can ask: How can we fix it together? This will not be possible for all parents nor for all children; it is an ideal, limited by the realities of parent-child relationships.

But if I had one wish on this Father’s Day, this is what I would wish: That, to the extent possible, children will grow up and mature to the point where they can look their parents steadily in the eye and say, Let’s work together to fix this mess we’re in. That allows us to value our parents for their Goodness, and it allows us to value ourselves for our own goodness. So we would honor the human race, honor ourselves by fixing injustices as best we can, slowly building a heaven here on earth.