Unitarian Universalism – Page 4 – Dan Harper

Is It Religion? (part three): Communism and Capitalism

Readings

The first reading is from one of the Bibles of communism, the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” by Karl Marx:

“The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity — and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.”

The second reading is from one of the Bibles of capitalism, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith:

“To propose that Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their own laws, and to make peace and war as they might think proper, would be to propose such a measure as never was, and never will be adopted, by any nation in the world. No nation ever voluntarily gave up the dominion of any province, how troublesome soever it might be to govern it, and how small soever the revenue which it afforded might be in proportion to the expense which it occasioned. Such sacrifices, though they might frequently be agreeable to the interest, are always mortifying to the pride of every nation, and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, they are always contrary to the private interest of the governing part of it….”

The third reading is from an essay about Karl Marx by Charles Hartshorne, a Unitarian Universalist philosopher of the mid-twentieth century. This is from his 1983 book Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers:

“It is true that our mixed economic system has been kind enough to me, nor have I run any great risks in sometimes criticizing it. Also I can see some merits in the Soviet system, for Russia, and the Maoist system, for China, but with tragic limitations in both cases…. I still doubt that one man (or two or three, adding Engels and Feuerbach [to Marx]), writing early in the industrial revolution, can tell us in the Americas, Europe, Australia, or Japan, or even in the Third World, much of what we need to know about our problems. Population excess and pollution, or the exhaustion of fossil fuels, or the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war, for example, were poorly foreseen by any of the philosophers or economists of the past. What they nearly all missed was that our species… alone among species is capable of destroying itself and an indefinitely large portion of the other life on this planet.”

Sermon: Is It Religion? (part three): Capitalism and Communism

Is communism a religion? Is capitalism a religion? Or, at least, do these two ideologies sometimes act like religions? I’m going to try to convince you that the answer is yes — both capitalism and communism can act like religions. And I’m also going to try to convince you that the answer should be no — we don’t want capitalism or communism to act like religions.

In the United States, we usually define religion as something that is — or should be — completely separate from politics, and from economics. Our current understanding of religion is based on the assumption that the religious realm is separate from the secular realm. We adopted the separation of religion and the state in the United States in order to promote freedom of conscience. But the separation of religious and secular only dates back a couple of centuries or so. Before that, the religious world and the secular world weren’t separate at all. As one example of this, recall that our own congregation was supported by tax dollars from 1721 when it was founded up until 1824.

Now if we define religion as something completely separate from the secular realm, then obviously capitalism cannot be a religion. Similarly, communism cannot be a religion. Capitalism and communism are economic systems. Since they are part of the secular world, they cannot be religious. But once you realize that the separation of the religious realm and the secular realm has never been a perfect separation, then you can see that capitalism and communism might in fact act like religions.

Let me begin by explaining how capitalism can sometimes act like a religion.

First of all, we can pretty quickly see the ways in which capitalism resembles Western Christianity. Capitalism deifies a mythical thing called “The Market,” which can be seen as a rough equivalent of the Holy Spirit, a force with powers beyond humanity that moves in mysterious ways. Capitalism has its holy scriptures, perhaps most notably “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith; and just like the Christian Bible, “The Wealth of Nations” gets interpreted selectively. So, for example, we heard in the second reading how Adam Smith actually argued that overseas colonies were detrimental to capitalism, but this argument was conveniently ignored by the capitalists of the British Empire.

Capitalism has its prophets, economists who interpret the capitalist scriptures for us, and predict gloom and doom unless we follow their prescriptions for action. One of the the most interesting things about capitalism is how some of its prophets define sinfulness. Traditional Christianity argues that all our troubles come about because of sin, and sin comes about because humans diverge from God’s plan. Some religious followers of capitalism argue that all our troubles come about because we don’t follow the tenets of capitalism. The prophets of capitalism tell us to do one thing, and if we do something different — so they tell us — then we will suffer for it. This is true at the national level — if we don’t follow Keynesian economics, or neoliberal economics, we will suffer the torments of our sinfulness. But it’s also true at the personal level — if you live in poverty, it’s obviously because you are at fault; you have gone against the teachings of capitalism, and you’re being punished for your sins by being poor.

Obviously, for many people, capitalism is simply an economic system that seems to work better than any other economic system. Many people — perhaps most people — are pragmatists, and if they felt there was a better economic system out there, they would drop capitalism in favor of the better system. Yet there is also a minority of people who follow capitalism with a fervent and blind belief, people are sure that only capitalism can save humankind. By the way, some of the people who believe that only capitalism can save humankind are also conservative Christians, and some of them even argue that capitalism is affirmed by the Christian Bible — what an interesting mash-up of two seemingly incompatible religious positions!

Next, let me try to explain how communism can sometimes act like a religion.

As with capitalism, we can pretty quickly see the ways in which communism resembles Western Christianity. Communism has its holy scriptures, and its Bible is Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Communism has its own equivalent of the Holy Spirit, found in the movement of the Hegelian Geist which will propel society inexorably out of capitalism into communism. Communism also has different denominations. In one example of these different denominations, communist nations have a tendency to deify their leaders. Perhaps the most important example of this is the cult of Mao Zedong in China. Mao was worshipped as an all-knowing leader, and icons depicting Mao appeared throughout Chinese society. Mao remains an object of worship even today.

As with capitalism, communism has had its prophets, people who interpret its scriptures and predict gloom and doom unless society follows their prescriptions for action. These days, it’s more difficult to be a prophet for communism than it is to be a prophet for capitalism. If you read Marx, he was predicting the imminent end of capitalism sometime in the nineteenth century. Yet capitalism continued to thrive through the twentieth century. Then with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989, it became still more difficult for the prophets of communism to explain why communism remained a viable option.

While communism is usually vilified here in the United States, I will say that the communists I have known personally have all been highly moral individuals. The ones I have known have had a deep antipathy to economic injustice, and deep sympathy with people who are poor or economically disadvantaged. The first reading gives part of their justification for this attitude — they believe that capitalism has dehumanized people by turning them into mere commodities; instead of being ends in themselves, human beings become means to the end of capitalist profit. The principled morality of individual communists reinforces my sense that communism can act like a religion.

So it is that I feel both capitalism and communism can act like religions. The religion of communism is almost dead in the United States today, and it has little or no impact on our national life. However, the people who follow capitalism as a religion remain a strong force in our society.

Religious capitalism troubles me because the religious followers of capitalism demand unquestioning acceptance of their religious doctrine. They ask us to accept without question that capitalism is the best system, in a tone of voice that reminds me of conservative Christians who loudly proclaim, Thou shalt have no other gods before the God of Christianity. This annoys me both as a Unitarian Universalist, and as a pargmatist. As a Unitarian Universalist, I’m constitutionally averse to doctrine and dogma. When someone wants me to accept religious doctrine or dogma without question, I immediately doubt their religious doctrines, and I immediately suspect their motives. Then as a pragmatist, I know that any theory or proposition is subject to modification when new evidence arises. As a pragmatist, I won’t believe it when the religious followers of capitalism tell me to follow capitalism just because they say so; I want to see evidence; and if a new economic system comes along that performs better than capitalism I’m willing to adopt it.

All of this brings me to the third reading, by philosopher and Unitarian Universalist Charles Hartshorne. The title of his book, “Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers,” tells you everything about his approach: he is willing to accept worthy insights from the great thinkers of the past, but he is also not going to gloss over the things they got wrong. Here’s part of what Hartshorne said in the reading:

“I still doubt [he said] that one man writing early in the industrial revolution, can tell us in the Americas, Europe, Australia, or Japan, or in the Third World, much of what we need to know about our problems. Population excess and pollution, or the exhaustion of fossil fuels, or the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war, for example, were poorly foreseen by any of the philosophers or economists of the past. What they nearly all missed was that our species alone among species is capable of destroying itself and an indefinitely large portion of the other life on this planet.”

Hartshorne rooted his own philosophy in the understanding that the world is constantly changing. Perhaps the most familiar example of this principle of constant change is the theory of evolution: Unitarian sympathizer Charles Darwin theorized that living organisms have been constantly evolving towards states of greater complexity. But everything is changing: the continental plates are in constant motion (just ask anyone who lives on a fault line); the universe continues to expand; and, more to the point of this sermon, human society is constantly changing.

Hartshorne would say that both Adam Smith and Karl Marx had brilliant insights into how human society works. At the same time, both Smith and Marx were products of their times. Their brilliant insights were insights into human society of a century or two ago. Human society has changed a great deal since they wrote. Thus neither Smith nor Marx anticipated how environmental pollution would come to have a significant economic impact; and neither thinker had the faintest notion of the effects of global climate change. We can respect the brilliance and insights of these two long-dead thinkers, but we must also acknowledge their oversights. We cannot treat them as holy prophets whose every word we must accept without question.

Herein lies the danger of making either capitalism or communism into a rigid doctrine. We se the same sort of problems when religion is reduced to a rigid doctrine. These problems can be summed up by saying that once you have a rigid doctrine, people stop thinking critically. Sometimes they just stop thinking at all. They stop investigating and observing. They stop trying to make their mental models conform to reality, and instead demand of reality that it conforms to their mental models. People in the thrall of rigid doctrines can wind up abandoning their humanity to become rigid ideologues.

It would be wise for us to remember that any one of us could become an ideologue — yes, even you and me. We human beings like certainty, and we become anxious when faced with uncertainty. We human beings like to be right, and we get cranky when others point out where we might be wrong. It can be so difficult for us to remember that things are constantly changing. It can be so difficult for us to face up to the fact that a brilliant idea from a hundred and fifty years ago no longer fits our current reality.

So how do we keep ourselves from becoming rigid ideologues? One way to keep from falling into the trap of ideology is to remember that human beings are ends in themselves, not means to an end. Human beings do not exist to serve capitalism, or communism, or any other religion. Capitalism, communism, and religion are things that are only good insofar as they serve all human beings. An idea, or an economic system, or a religion, is only good when and if it serves real human beings, or when it helps pull real human beings out of poverty, or when it reduces human suffering, or when it increases love.

May we save ourselves from becoming rigid ideologues. When we’re confronted with a new reality, may we learn to adjust our mental models to fit that new reality. May we be constantly thinking and observing and investigating. And may all our actions, and all our thoughts, be guided by love.

Why I’m a Mystic (But Maybe You Shouldn’t Be)

Readings

From the essay “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty.

From Louisa May Alcott’s satire on Transcendentalism, “Transcendental Wild Oats”:

“Each member [of the community] is to perform the work for which experience, strength, and taste best fit him,” continued Dictator Lion. “Thus drudgery and disorder will be avoided and harmony prevail. We shall rise at dawn, begin the day by bathing, followed by music, and then a chaste repast of fruit and bread. Each one finds congenial occupation till the meridian meal; when some deep-searching conversation gives rest to the body and development to the mind. Healthful labor again engages us till the last meal, when we assemble in social communion, prolonged till sunset, when we retire to sweet repose, ready for the next day’s activity.”

“What part of the work do you incline to yourself?” asked Sister Hope, with a humorous glimmer in her keen eyes.

“I shall wait till it is made clear to me. Being in preference to doing is the great aim, and this comes to us rather by a resigned willingness than a wilful activity, which is a check to all divine growth,” responded Brother Timon.

“I thought so.” And Mrs. Lamb sighed audibly, for during the year he had spent in her family Brother Timon had so faithfully carried out his idea of “being, not doing,” that she had found his “divine growth” both an expensive and unsatisfactory process.

Sermon: “Why I’m a Mystic (But Maybe You Shouldn’t Be)”

When I was 16, the summer camp I worked for sent me to a weekend workshop led by Steve van Matre, an environmental educator. Steve van Matre was an observant educator. After several years of working with kids, he noticed that conventional environmental education, with its emphasis on teaching identification skills and intellectual concepts, didn’t wind up producing environmentalists. So he, and the other environmental educators with whom he worked, began developing activities that would — to use his words — “turn people on to Nature.”

One group of these new activities was called “solitude enhancing activities.” Van Matre felt that most of the time when we are supposedly in solitude, we are actually listening to a little internal voice that is constantly talking. Van Matre called this voice “the little reprobate in the attic of your mind,” and he said that it was a dangerous voice in some ways, because it keeps us from living in the present. (1)

When he said this, for the first time I became aware of that little voice in my own head. And that little reprobate in the attic of my mind did in fact talk on and on with no respite. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice it: it was constantly talking, on and on and on, and saying (if I were to be honest with myself) little or nothing of interest.

Van Matre outlined several activities that environmental educators could use to help quiet that “little reprobate in the attic of your mind.” I decided that I wanted to teach those activities to this children I worked with in the summer. Since I was brought up in a family of educators, I knew that if you’re going to teach something, it’s a good idea to try doing it yourself first. So I tried some of van Matre’s solitude enhancing activities.

One of these activities, which called “Seton-Watching,” was to sit outdoors somewhere and do nothing but simply be aware. Van Matre had told us about a time when he did this: He went outdoors, and settled down to stay absolutely still for some lengthy period of time, perhaps half an hour. After sitting absolutely still and in silence for perhaps a quarter of an hour, a hummingbird came along to look at his red hat band. This prompted van Matre to look up, so he could see the hummingbird. The motion of his head startled the bird and it flew away before he could see it, and he concluded he would have been better off remaining motionless, instead of listening to the little voice in his head that told him to look up.

I began trying this “Seton Watching” activity. One afternoon while sitting at the foot of a birch tree, the little reprobate in the attic of my mind finally stopped talking. In that moment, I suddenly became aware of — for want of a better way of describing it — the connectedness of the entire universe. It was quite a sensation. I then discovered that words were not adequate to describe this sensation — it was not in fact a sense of the connectedness of the universe, but something that couldn’t be put into words. Which makes sense, because this sensation only occurred when that little voice in my head stopped talking. Words are very powerful and very useful, but there are other kinds of knowing that have nothing to do with words; and trying to describe those other kinds of knowing with words must obviously be a pointless exercise.

It turns out that experiences like this are fairly common. These experiences have been classed together under the title “mystical experiences.” When the psychologist William James studied mystical experiences, he argued they had two defining features. First, said James, the person who has a mystical experience “immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.” James goes on to add: “It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others.” Second, James said, mystical states are experienced by those who have them as a kind of knowing: “They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect.” James also pointed out that mystical experiences tend to be short-lived and transient, and they are generally passive. (2)

Mystical experiences are fairly common — William James believed that as many as a quarter of all people have them. And that makes me wonder — what good are these experiences? I’m less interested in whether these experiences are useful, but instead I wonder whether these experiences tend to move you towards or away from truth and goodness. To use the language of the Unitarian minister and mystic Theodore Parker: the moral arc of the universe is long, and the question is whether these experiences help bend it towards justice, or not.

I think mystical experiences can lead to justice, but they can also lead to injustice. In my observation, mystical experiences, when supported by the right kind of community, can strengthen individuals to help bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. However, I’ve also seen how mystical experiences may twist an individual towards psychopathologies like narcissism and delusion, or embolden an individual to abuse their power and indulge their greed.

Here’s what I think causes someone to follow one or the other of these two possible paths. If someone has a mystical experience and they think it makes them special and somehow better than other people, that can prove to be the path to psychopathology or abusiveness. These people tend to have mystical experiences outside of a supportive and critical community. They are hyper-individualists, and the combination of mysticism and individualism can create a toxic brew. On the other hand, if someone has a mystical experience and is part of a community that holds them accountable for their actions, then a mystical experience can help that person bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. A mystical experience can provide a vision for a better future where Earth shall be fair and all her people one.

In the second reading this morning, the excerpt from “Transcendental Wild Oats,” Louisa May Alcott tells a story of how mysticism can be destructive. “Transcendental Wild Oats” is based on Alcott’s lived experience. When she was a girl, her father moved his family to Fruitlands, a utopian community in Harvard, Massachusetts. The men who started the Fruitlands community were mystics, and their mystical insights informed them — so they said — of how to run the perfect human community. But the Fruitlands community fell apart in seven short months. The male mystics in charge of the community were unable to grow the crops they were depending on, unable to do anything practical, while the women in the community did their best to keep the children safe and feed everyone. Louisa May Alcott’s story “Transcendental Wild Oats” is a thinly disguised satire of the Fruitlands community. Alcott lays bare the sexism and the ignorance of the men whose abuse of their mystical experiences made the lives of other people miserable.

(I should note in passing that Louisa May Alcott was a Unitarian. But hers was not an individualistic religion; hers was a religion of community, connection, and mutual support.)

In our first reading, another Unitarian, Ralph Waldo Emerson, described one of his own mystical experiences. In a now-famous image, Emerson wrote: “…All mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” Christopher Cranch, a contemporary of Emerson’s and a fellow Unitarian minister, drew a cartoon making fun of Emerson’s transparent eye-ball: the cartoon shows an eyeball wearing a top hat atop a tiny body with long spindly legs. (3) I think what makes Emerson’s transparent eye-ball image so prone to mockery is the fact that it’s too individualistic. This is my criticism of Emerson’s mysticism: he is too self-centered. Emerson had the opportunity to go out and wander in the fields and become a transparent eye-ball in part because he left all the housework, all the management of their children, to his wife, Lidian. (4) This sounds too much like the mysticism that Louisa May Alcott satirized. If you become a transparent eye-ball while wandering the fields in leisure, that will be quite different from the mystical experiences you might have while caring for children, or mending clothes, or cooking dinner for your family.

And this brings me to another well-known mystic, Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was raised as a Unitarian, but left in his early twenties because the church in Concord, where he was a member, refused to offer wholehearted support to the abolition of slavery. Thoreau’s most famous descriptions of his own mystical experiences occur in this book Walden. Once again, Thoreau’s mysticism is open to mockery. Critics of Thoreau love to tell the story of how Thoreau didn’t actually lead the life of a mystical hermit at Walden Pond — he went home regularly so his mother could do his laundry and cook him dinner. It’s easy to be a mystic when your mom cooks you dinner.

But I think Thoreau’s critics miss the point. While it is true that Thoreau didn’t break out of the strict gender roles of his time, at least he did much of his own cooking and cleaning while living at Walden. And Thoreau had to go home regularly to help his father run the family business of manufacturing pencils (an appropriate role for his gender in those times). Equally important for our purposes, Thoreau also went home to attend meetings of the anti-slavery group led by his mother. The Thoreau family was part of the Underground Railroad, and Thoreau wrote that his cabin at Walden Pond served as a place to harbor fugitive slaves. And while he lived at Walden Pond, Thoreau spent that famous night in jail because he refused to pay taxes that went to support an unjust war.

We can rightly criticize Thoreau for his sexism, the unquestioned sexism of his time. And it’s easy to make fun of his mysticism. But unlike the mysticism of the organizers of Fruitlands, Thoreau’s mysticism didn’t keep him from successfully growing his own food, and building his own house. And while Emerson’s mysticism can come across as self-indulgent, Thoreau’s mysticism gave him the strength to take courageous action against slavery, and against unjust war.

When I had my own first mystical experience, I lived in Concord, where Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau had all lived. The Concord public schools gave us a heavy dose of the Concord authors, so at age sixteen I knew their stories. I had even started to read Thoreau’s Walden, and liked him the best of all the Concord authors. So when I had my own mystical experience, I had Thoreau’s example to show that mystical experiences could move one towards making the world a better place.

The justification for a mystical experience is to help bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. This helps explain Martin Luther King’s fascination with Thoreau. I suspect King had his own mystical experiences, which he no doubt understood from within his progressive Christian worldview. King understood how his deeply-felt religious experiences could give him the strength he needed to confront injustice. Nor is he the only one whose mystical experiences helped them bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. Hildegard de Bingen drew strength from her mysticism to enlarge the role of women within the confines of her medieval European society. Mahatma Gandhi drew on his mystical experiences to help him confront the evils of colonialism in India. And so on.

Just remember that you don’t need to be a mystic in order to help bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. Some people have mystical experiences, and some people don’t. Having a mystical experience doesn’t make you a better person; what makes you a better person is furthering the cause of truth and justice. But if you are one of those people who happens to have a mystical experience or two, may you use it to strengthen you to help make the world a better place.

Notes

(1) Van Matre’s approach is outlined in his books Acclimatizing, a Personal and Reflective Approach to a Natural Relationship (American Camping Assoc., 1974) and Acclimatization : A S ensory and Conceptual Approach to Ecological Involvement (American Camping Assoc., 1972). The quote comes from my notes of van Matre’s workshop on 6 May 1977.

(2) William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 381.

(3) Here’s Cranch’s cartoon:

A sketch of a transparent eyeball on long spindly legs. — from Wikimedia Commons, public domain image

(4) For an account of busy Lidian’s daily life, see the biography by her daughter, Ellen Tucker Emerson, The Life of Lidian Jackson Emerson, ed. by Delores Bird Carpenter (Boston: Twayne, 1981).

Chant as a Spiritual Practice

Readings

The first reading is titled “Meditative Singing,” instructions on singing, from the website of the Taizé community in France:

“Singing is one of the most essential elements of worship. Short songs, repeated again and again, give it a meditative character. Using just a few words they express a basic reality of faith, quickly grasped by the mind. As the words are sung over many times, this reality gradually penetrates the whole being. Meditative singing thus becomes a way of listening to God. It allows everyone to take part in a time of prayer together and to remain together in attentive waiting on God, without having to fix the length of time too exactly….Nothing can replace the beauty of human voices united in song. This beauty can give us a glimpse of ‘heaven’s joy on earth,’ as Eastern Christians put it. And an inner life begins to blossom within us.

“These songs also sustain personal prayer…. They can continue in the silence of our hearts when we are at work, speaking with others or resting. In this way prayer and daily life are united. They allow us to keep on praying even when we are unaware of it, in the silence of our hearts….”

The second reading is from The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, a 1979 book by Starhawk:

“Witchcraft has always been a religion of poetry, not theology. The myths, legends, and teachings are recognized as metaphors for “That-Which-Cannot-Be-Told,” the absolute reality our limited minds can never completely know. The mysteries of the absolute can never be explained-only felt or intuited. Symbols and ritual acts are used to trigger altered states of awareness, in which insights that go beyond words are revealed.

“When we speak of ‘the secrets that cannot be told,’ we do not mean merely that rules prevent us from speaking freely. We mean that the inner knowledge literally cannot be expressed in words. It can only be conveyed by experience, and no one can legislate what insight another person may draw from any given experience. For example, after the ritual described at the opening of this chapter, one woman said, ‘As we were chanting, I felt that we blended together and became one voice; I sensed the oneness of everybody.’ Another woman said, ‘I became aware of how different the chant sounded for each of us, of how unique each person is.’ A man said simply, ‘I felt loved.’ To a Witch, all of these statements are equally true and valid….”

Sermon: “Chant as a Spiritual Practice”

One of the most interesting aspects of being a Unitarian Universalist is that we are not told what kind of spiritual practice we are supposed to do. No one tells us that we should read the Bible regularly, as happens for many Protestants. No one suggests that we light the shabbat candles on Friday evening, as is true for many Jews. No one reminds us to pray salat five times a day, which is the case for many Muslims. No one calls on us to do chant the sutras, something which is true for many Buddhists.

We Unitarian Universalists don’t have a prescribed spiritual practice. I believe this is mostly for very pragmatic reasons. We have learned that individuals can be quite different from one another. While we generally feel that having some kind of spiritual practice is a good idea (most of the time), we recognize that what works for one person may not work for another. So we might suggest to one another that we find some kind of spiritual practice, if that’s something we feel the need for. But there are no requirements, no guilt if you don’t need a spiritual practice. (Guilt if you don’t help make the world a better place, maybe, but no guilt around spiritual practices.)

There is one downside to this pragmatic flexibility. If you decide that you’d like to engage in some kind of spiritual practice, sometimes it’s hard to know which one to try. How do we find spiritual practices that work for us?

This is more or less the situation I found myself in back in the 1990s. As a young adult Unitarian Universalist, I had tried and given up on prayer and meditation. I still attended Sunday services when I could, but I had a vague feeling that it would be nice to have something I could do not just on Sundays, but all week long.

It was about this time that I started going to some Unitarian Universalist young adult conferences, and I went to a Unitarian Universalist summer conference for the first time. Back in the 1990s, there were a lot of Unitarian Universalists who were also involved in Neo-paganism and other earth-centered traditions. I met some of these Neo-pagans both at the young adult conferences and at the summer conference, and discovered that they all seemed to repertoire of earth-centered chants and songs. I had never run into chanting before. I liked the simple repetitive feeling of the chants, because they stuck in my memory better. I also liked the meaning of the lyrics — a deep feeling of connection with the non-human world, and with the human world as well. As Starhawk said in the second reading, when I sang these chants with these Neo-pagans, we blended together and became one voice.

Chant lies somewhere between the spoken word and singing, and it has both the power of music and the power of the spoken word. It is deceptively simple, and it can be inspiring and moving. I soon found out that chanting of this type is found in almost every culture around the world. Here, for example, is a chant from Hawai’i…. [At this point, Mike Nakashima sang “Oli Mahalo,” or “Gratitude Chant,” an oli (chant) composed by Kehau Camara]

After listening to, and participating in, various kinds of earth-centered chant, I began to become aware of the existence of other types of chant.

In particular, I kept hearing about something people were calling Taizé. My first direct experience with Taizé song and chant involved one person teaching a simple song, and then leading a group of us as we sang it over and over again. The melodies were a bit more complex than the earth-centered chants I already knew, but it didn’t seem all that interesting. It turns out that Taizé chant is more than just simple melodies that are sung over and over. Most Taizé chants are meant to be sung as rounds, or with four-part harmony. If people can’t sing all the harmony parts, there might be someone like Mary Beth to play those other parts on a piano or other instrument.

I found that, for me, Taizé chants were not as elemental and ecstatic as the earth-centered chants I had heard and sung. But they were deeply meditative. Because they were repeated over and over, it was easier for me to learn one of the harmony parts. And even though it was far more structured than the earth-centered chant, Taizé chant also gave me that same feeling of connection to the people I was singing with.

There are other aspects of Taizé chant that I especially valued. First, while Taizé chants are distinctly Christian, there is a real effort to make them non-sectarian. The Taizé community in France, home of the chants, is a monastic community that welcomes anyone from any Christian denomination. Second, in an era when most Western religious groups seem to ignore young adults, the Taizé community makes a point to especially welcome young adults. Finally, the Taizé community has a distinctly internationalist perspective: an individual Taizé chant might be translated into twenty or more languages. “Nada Te Turbe,” a Taizé chant that we’ve been learning here at First Parish, and that we’ll sing in just a moment, has been translated into twenty-one languages. Thus, Taizé chant is meant to bind together a world that has become divided by religion, by age, and by language. Let’s sing together a Taizé chant that we’ve been singing a lot recently, “Nada Te Turbe.”

The third type of chant that I’d like to introduce to you comes from the Threshold Choir. The Threshold Choir was started by a woman named Kate Munger, who felt a need for a kind of healing music that could be sung to people who were dying. She began teaching others her singing techniques and her repertoire of songs, until now there are many Threshold Choirs. This past July, Kate Munger and the original Threshold Choir honored for their work by being invited to sing in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.

About fifteen years ago, I took a workshop with Kate Munger, and learned some of her techniques for singing to people who are dying. She has singers sit around the person who is dying. The singers sing gently and quietly, but with power. Thus the person in the middle of the circle of singers is surrounding with gentle song. When her Threshold Choir groups are practicing, they take turns sitting in the center of the circle so they can experience what it feels like to be sung to. This helps all the singers listen better to one another, and it helps the singers to have great empathy with the people for whom they sing.

Some people have expanded the Threshold Choir concept to include singing to people who are ill or unwell, but not actually dying. My home congregation has such a choir, which they call the By Your Side Singers. My family had direct experience of the By Your Side Signers: in the last year and a half of my father’s life, they would go to his residential facility and sing to him. He was no longer able to talk so I don’t really know what he thought about it, but I liked the fact that someone would come and pay that kind of attention to my dad.

Even though I took a workshop with Kate Munger, I’ve never actually participated in a Threshold Choir myself, nor in one of the healing choirs like the one that sang to my father. But some of the Threshold Choir songs have stuck with me all these years, and I find myself singing them to myself. In the past couple of weeks, with all the turmoil in the world, I find myself singing one of these songs called “In These Times,” a short song I learned from my exposure to the Threshold Choir.

Chant begins as a communal activity: it’s something we do together; it’s something that is done in cultures around the world; it’s something that can bind us to people who are quite unlike ourselves. At the same time, chant can also be an individual practice as well, a kind of meditative singing that — to use the words of the Taizé community — “can continue in the silence of our hearts when we are at work, speaking with others, or resting.”

This means that chant is one of those spiritual practices that helps build community. Even when you practice it on your own, it is at heart a communal activity. Actually, this is true of any kind of singing — as you probably know, singing in community leads to all kinds of benefits, including relieving stress, boosting your immune response, develops a sense of wellbeing and meaningful connection to others, enhances memory including enhancing memory in dementia patients, helps with grief, calms your heart rate, improves sleep, and on and on.

This, by the way, is the pragmatic reason behind singing hymns in our Sunday services — singing is good for us. But honestly, some of our hymns are difficult to sing. By contrast, because many chants are relatively simple songs they can be learned more easily, even someone with little or no musical ability. At the same time, chant can provide interesting possibilities for skilled musicians: a more skilled singer might be able to sing a harmony part, or add accompaniment with a musical instrument that doesn’t overwhelm the simplicity of the chant.

Whether you’re a skilled musician or someone with no musical ability, the key to participating in chant is learning how to listen. Whether it’s chanting or singing, listen to the people with whom you’re singing or chanting. It is by listening while chanting in a group that the chants stick in your heart and mind; and in that way they can become a part of your everyday spiritual practice. This reveals to us a great religious truth. We can’t just follow a song leader or some other authority figure. We have to actually participate. Participating requires us to listen to those around us. So it is we give voice to what’s in our hearts and minds, and at the same time listening to what others are voicing is in their hearts and minds. This is how community is built: by listening, and by putting yourself out there, both at the same time.