Mom Spirituality

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.

Distribution of flowers

“We are, in our collective capacities, the imperfect divinity that must make the world over into the kind of abiding place that we know it ought to be.” So it is that on this Mother’s Day, we recognize all those here this morning who identify as women. Very often in our world, it is the mothers, and all women, who have quietly worked to make over the world into the kind of abiding place that we know it ought to be. I don’t mean to denigrate the efforts of those of us who identify ourselves as men — but mothers, and all women, seem to get less credit than is their due. As a small step in correcting that lack of recognition, this morning we give all women a flower, a small, fragile object of beauty in recognition of the work women have done, and are doing, behind the scenes everywhere.

If you identify as a woman, please raise your hand — and one of the children from the Sunday school will bring a flower to you where you are seated….

Readings

The first reading this morning is is a poem by Grace Paley called “On Mother’s Day”:

I went out walking
in the old neighborhood

Look! more trees on the block
forget-me-nots all around them
ivy   lantana shining
and geraniums in the window

Twenty years ago
it was believed that the roots of trees
would insert themselves into gas lines
then fall   poisoned on houses and children

or tap the city’s water pipes
or starved for nitrogen   obstruct the sewers

In those days in the afternoon I floated
by ferry to Hoboken or Staten Island
then pushed the babies in their carriages
along the river wall   observing Manhattan
See Manhattan I cried   New York!
even at sunset it doesn’t shine
but stands in fire   charcoal to the waist

But this Sunday afternoon on Mother’s Day
I walked west   and came to Hudson Street   tri-colored flags
were flying over old oak furniture for sale
brass bedsteads   copper pots and vases
by the pound from India

Suddenly before my eyes   twenty-two transvestites
in joyous parade stuffed pillows
under their lovely gowns
and entered a restaurant
under a sign which said   All Pregnant Mothers Free

I watched them place napkins over their bellies
and accept coffee and zabaglione

I am especially open to sadness and hilarity
since my father died as a child
one week ago in this his ninetieth year

…

The second reading this morning is slightly abridged, very short story by Grace Paley, titled “Politics.”

“A group of mothers from our neighborhood went downtown to the Board of Estimate Hearing and sang a song. They had contributed the facts and the tunes, but the idea for that kind of political action came from the clever head of a media man floating on the ebbtide of our lower west side culture because of the housing shortage. He was from the far middle plains and loved our well-known tribal organization. He said it was the coming thing. Oh, how he loved our old moldy pot New York.

“…the first mother stood up… when the clerk called her name. She smiled, said excuse me, jammed past the knees of her neighbors and walked proudly down the aisle of the hearing room. Then she sang, according to some sad melody learned in her mother’s kitchen, the following lament requesting better playground facilities….

    ”  ‘will someone please put a high fence up
    around the children’s playground
    they are playing a game and have only
    one more year of childhood. won’t the city come…
    to keep the bums and
    the tramps out of the yard they are too
    little now to have the old men … feeling their
    knees … can’t the cardinal
    keep all these creeps out’

“She bowed her head and stepped back modestly to allow the recitative for which all the women rose, wherever in the hearing room they happened to be. They said a lovely statement in chorus:

    ”  ‘The junkies with smiles can be stopped by intelligent reorganization of government functions….’

“No one on the Board of Estimate, including the mayor, was unimpressed. After the reiteration of the fifth singer, all the officials said so, murmuring ah and oh in a kind of startled arpeggio round lasting maybe three minutes. The comptroller, who was a famous financial nag, said, “Yes yes yes, in this case, yes, a high 16.8 fence can be put up at once, can be expedited, why not…” Then and there, he picked up the phone and called Parks, Traffic and Child Welfare. All were agreeable when they heard his strict voice and temperate language. By noon the next day, the fence was up.

“Later that night, an hour or so past moonlight, a young Tactical Patrol Force cop snipped a good-sized hole in the fence for two reasons. His first reason was public: The Big Brothers, a baseball team of young priests who absolutely required exercise, always played at night. They needed entrance and egress. His other reason was personal: There were eleven bats locked up in the locker room. These were, to his little group, an esoteric essential. He had, in fact, already gathered them into his arms like stalks of pussywillow and loaded them into a waiting paddy wagon. He had returned for half-a-dozen catcher’s mitts, when a young woman reporter from the Lower West Side Sun noticed him in the locker room.

“She asked, because she was trained in the disciplines of curiosity followed by intelligent inquiry, what he was doing there. He replied, ‘A police force stripped of its power and shorn by vengeful politicians of the respect due it from the citizenry will arm itself as best is can.’ He had a copy of Camus’s The Rebel in his inside pocket which he showed her for identification purposes….”

[Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, pp. 137 ff.]

Sermon

It’s Mothers Day today. Mothers Day has become a day when children honor their mothers by giving them gifts or taking them out for a meal; and for some of us who don’t have mothers, Mothers Day has become a day to privately mourn the mother we lost or the mother we never had.

It is worth remembering that Mothers Day began very differently, in the late 19th C., as “Mothers Peace Day.” It was originated by Julia Ward Howe as a day for mothers to advocate for peace. Julia Ward Howe was a well-known poet and hymnodist in her day, and she was also a Unitarian. Let me read you a few excerpts from the original Mothers Peace Day proclamation:

“Arise, then, women of this day!…

“Say firmly: ‘We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’…

“In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

That’s part of what Julia Ward Howe wrote in her Mothers Peace Day proclamation. So you see, at its beginning Mothers Day was not about mothers passively receiving gifts, it was about mothers actively promoting peace so their children wouldn’t get killed in a war. Mothers Day was a day when mothers were encouraged to get political — this in a day when women were not even allowed to vote! It was a kind of early feminist holiday.

I’m not saying we should go back to that early version of Mothers Day. If you do have a mother, I’m not trying to talk you out of giving your mom a gift or taking her out to dinner, or giving her a card. And if you are a mother, I hope you are pampered by your children. At the same time, let’s take just a moment and think about the old-fashioned Mothers Day, a day when mothers could band together and take action, and make the world a better place for their children.

In the second reading this morning, the very short story by Grace Paley, we heard a about how a group of mothers who were living in the middle of the city. They grew concerned about the playground where they took their children to play. Junkies were using the playground, sick old men would come around and leer at the children, and bums and tramps would hang out there. Now we all know that junkies, bums, tramps, and the like are human beings too; at the same time we want to keep them away from the children who are trying to play on the playground.

The mothers talk over this problem among themselves. They all know that there’s no money in the city budget for such projects, and besides since when did the city ever pay attention to a playground, since when did they ever listen to a bunch of mothers? Then a newcomer to their neighborhood, a media man from the midwest, suggests that they could go to a city hearing a *sing* their request for a fence.

That’s just what they do — they go down to City Hall, to a hearing of the Board of Estimates, and they sing their request:

will someone please put a high fence up
around the children’s playground…
won’t the city come…
to keep the bums and
the tramps out of the yard…

And then my favorite part, the repeated chorus:

The junkies with smiles can be stopped by intelligent reorganization of government functions.

The mayor and the comptroller and the other men on the Board of Estimates listen to the song, they say ah and oh, and they immediately authorize a fence around the playground, which is erected the next day.

The mothers have triumphed politically! Well, they triumph politically, but not for long, because that very night a cop (of all people) comes along and cuts a hole in the fence so he and his buddies can have access to the baseball bats in the playground locker room.

I had to leave off the very end of the story, where the cop and the reporter wind up having two children together, and a new round of problems begins. There’s a lot of poetic truth in this story, isn’t there? Humanity being what we are, as soon as one problem is solved, new problems arise, generation after generation.

Mothers, simply by virtue of being mothers, find themselves right in the middle of each new round of problems. Partly this happens because mothers tend to find themselves right in the middle of the human lifespan. Mothers often have equal responsibilities both to children and the younger generations, and to parents and the older generations. Of course there are mothers whose parents died young, and mothers who never knew their parents, and so on; but even then, many mothers have older mentors and older friends who stand in for parents, members of an older generation for whom they feel some responsibility. And there are plenty of women who do not have biological children, but who are mothers nonetheless, because they care for younger siblings, or for young protegees, or for other young people.

Grace Paley’s poem “On Mother’s Day” sums up what it means to be in the middle of the human lifespan. She writes:

I am especially open to sadness and hilarity
since my father died as a child
one week ago in this his ninetieth year

Mothers are there when babies are born; mothers are there when elders become increasingly dependent and sink into helplessness and death. Not uncommonly, sadness and the hilarity may come at the same time: a mother might witness a child’s first words or a child’s graduation or a child’s wedding, and in the same day she might witness a parent’s illness or death.

The poem by Grace Paley tells us that mothers inhabit a world where memories of the past and expectations of the future merge with the sad and hilarious present. It seems to me that forces mothers to be flexible and relentless. Mothers have to be relentless: Try to make the world better for the children, and you’ll succeed in one area only to find that there is work to be done in yet another area. You put a fence up to keep the junkies out of the playground, and along comes a cop and cuts a hole through the fence. Mothers have to be flexible: You realize one day that your children grow up and become more self-sufficient, only to realize the next day that your parents and elders are have become increasingly dependent.

I’ve been thinking about how we can make our churches into places that better support mothers. And I’ve thought of at least two things that churches could do that might help support the spirituality of mothers, or “mom spirituality.” First of all, a church can support mothers who need time to find beauty. Second, a church can help build community.

I’ll start by talking about beauty. Beauty is all around us. Problem is, many of us are too busy to take the time to notice it. I don’t know about you, but I work well over forty hours a week, I try to volunteer for some causes that mean something to me, I try to keep up with my spouse and family, so this past week I had a couple of twelve hour days and hardly any time to enjoy the beautiful spring weather. That’s my life, and I’ve got it easy — my partner and I don’t have children. Most of the mothers I know are far busier than I am: job, volunteer work, plus taking care of kids, and in many households doing the majority of the housework. If a woman is that busy, when will she find time to just sit and appreciate the world?

Ideally, a church should offer a little bit of time each week when a mother can come and sit and just be, just have a moment to appreciate the beauty of the world. It may only be a moment, because some mothers teach Sunday school, and other mothers have substantial volunteer responsibilities here at church. One of our goals for worship services is to try to provide moments of concentrated spirituality for busy people. If you believe in God or the Goddess, it might be a moment at church when you can talk to God or the Goddess without interruption. If you don’t believe in God, it may be a moment of intense feeling or intense concentration. Different people get their concentrated dose of spirituality in different ways — for some people it comes when lighting a candle, for some when offering up a prayer, for some by sitting with an intentional community, for some when listening to music or poetry — so our worship services have a number of different elements to try to accommodate different people.

Since ours is a religion based on reason, Unitarian Universalist worship services also include some kind of thoughtful reflection, usually spoken words — a reading, a sermon, poetry, a meditation or prayer — to help us focus our reason, our thoughts, on what is ultimately good and true and beautiful. So our worship services aim to provide a concentrated dose of thoughtful reflection each week.

(Parenthetically, I will add that I get my concentrated dose of thoughtful spirituality by teaching Sunday school — teaching children makes me think about my religious faith, and I find it to be very healing. That’s why I come in to this church on my Sundays off to teach Sunday school — to get my concentrated dose of religion.)

Grace Paley’s poem about Mothers Day starts off as she is walking through the old neighborhood, thoughtfully appreciating the beauty there — the trees, the flowers. Then she tells about taking her children on the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island, and looking back at the rough urban beauty of the city as viewed across the Hudson River. See the city! she says to her babies, How beautiful!

Just as Grace Paley’s poem helps us to see the beauty in the trees and flowers along a street, the urban beauty of a city, the absurd and hilarious beauty of transvestites getting free pastry and coffee on Mothers Day — so our church can support mothers as they search for beauty in their lives. And if you will be giving flowers to your mother today, or taking her out to eat — or if your children bring you flowers, or make you a card, or cook you a meal — the same kind of thing is taking place: these are all ways that we can nurture a mother’s spirituality, by creating a small space where a mom can a moment of time to appreciate beauty.

This is the transcendent side of mom spirituality. There is also the very practical, down-to-earth side of mom spirituality. On the practical side, one way we can nurture the “mom spirituality” is to build a church that is a healthy community, and that serves as an incubator for the wider spread of community.

In Grace Paley’s story, the way the mothers got the fence put up around the playground was that they banded together in a small community. The mothers in that story served as support group for each other, and a group that worked together to get something done. If Grace Paley didn’t happen to be a Jewish atheist, the mothers in her story might have met each other at church — actually, if it were a Unitarian Universalist church where the mothers met it wouldn’t matter if Grace Paley happened to be a Jewish atheist, you can actually find a fair number of Jewish atheists in some Unitarian Universalist congregations, but I digress. The real point is that our churches should be places where you can find people for spiritual support, friendship, or political action. Not only that, our churches should be healthy communities themselves so that they both nurture and set a good example for smaller groups and mini-communities within them.

This represents the pragmatic, relentlessly practical side of “mom spirituality.” Moms need that dose of concentrated beauty; moms also need practical support from a supportive community. So those of you who have accompanied your mom to church; or those of you who are here because your children told you to go to church; or those of you who are here because you’re trying to set a good example for your mom — you’re doing exactly the right thing on Mothers Day, by helping moms stay connected with a good supportive community.

Mom spirituality needs both the transcendent, and the pragmatic. We should give Moms flowers, but we should also give them the time to attend Julia Ward Howe’s international congress of women to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, and the great and general interests of peace. It’s important to give Moms time to go down to City Hall to get a fence for around the playground, but it’s equally important to let them write a song to sing when they get to City Hall.

“Mom spirituality” is both transcendent and practical, both radical and beautiful. May our church provide both moments of transcendent beauty, and a pragmatic sense of community. In doing so, we will feed the souls of mothers; we will feed all our souls; we will transform the world for the better.

Music Sunday: “Rhapsody in Blue”

This service was conducted by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, in cooperation with Randy Fayan.

Readings

This is our annual music service, a chance for us to reflect on the importance of music in the life of our church, and in our own lives.

First reading and commentary

The first reading is short and requires commentary. In an essay titled “Vonnegut’s Blues For America”, an essay about the blues, Kurt Vonnegut wrote:

“No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

    “THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
    FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
    WAS MUSIC.”

[Scotland, Sunday Herald, 7 January 2006.]

By way of commentary, it must be noted that Vonnegut was a humanist, that is someone who did not believe in the existence of God. During one interview, Vonnegut told this story:

“…I am a humanist. I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association… I succeeded Isaac Asimov as president, and we humanists try to behave as well as we can without any expectation of a reward or punishment in an after life. So since God is unknown to us, the highest abstraction to which we serve is our community. That’s as high as we can go, and we have some understanding of that. Now at a memorial service for Isaac Asimov a few years ago on the West Coast I spoke and I said, ‘Isaac is in heaven now,’ to a crowd of humanists. It was quite awhile before order could be restored. Humanists were rolling in the aisles.”

If Vonnegut did not believe in God, for him to say that music is an adequate proof of God is certainly humorous. Yet he was also a member of a Unitarian Universalist church, so I would expect that he wouldn’t fall into the trap of humanist fundamentalism. Therefore, I believe he is clearly saying that if you do believe in God, music is the only proof you need for God’s existence; and if you don’t believe in God, music can provide an adequate salvation for your soul.

Second reading and commentary

The sermon this morning will consist of our music director, Randy Fayan, performing George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” And for the second reading, I have a short quotations about this piece of music from Gershwin himself; who told his biographer, Isaac Goldberg, how the composition of “Rhapsody in Blue” came to him, all at once, on a train ride from New York to Boston:

“It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer — I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise… And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper — the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.”

[George Gershwin, quoted by Isaac Goldberg. “George Gershwin: A Study in American Music.” 1931. Quoted in Orrin Howard, program notes LA Philharmonic
http://www.laphil.org/resources/piece_detail.cfm?id=314, accessed 5/3/07]

Some brief commentary on this reading: “Rhapsody in Blue” represents some of the best of the American national mythology: our ideal of a multicultural society that can bring together many different cultures; the energy that can arise from that multiculturalism; all grounded in the blues, our great national music, a music of personal liberation.

Third reading and commentary

The conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas, who revived the original orchestration of “Rhapsody in Blue” in 1976, in a performance with the Columbia Jazz Band, told a writer for the Washington Post:

“[Gershwin] took the Jewish tradition, the African-American tradition, and the symphonic tradition, and he made a language out of that which was accessible and understandable to all kinds of people.”

[Ron Cowen, “George Gershwin: He Got Rhythm”, The Washington Post, 1998. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/horizon/nov98/gershwin.htm, accessed 5/3/07.]

Tilson-Thomas’s words need a little bit of commentary: In this one piece of music we have Gershwin’s own European Jewish tradition, a tradition shaped in part by a tremendous sense of the history of the Jews, and part of that history is the story of a people who retained their identity in the face of persecution by a majority Christian culture. And we have Gershwin’s deep knowledge of African American music — the blues, and jazz — a musical tradition shaped in part by the history of the African peoples in North America, and a part of that history is the story of a people who retained significant portions of their musical culture in the face of their enslavement and brutal treatment at the hands of a majority white culture.

Music does many things, but one thing music does is to help us remain human in the face of devastating trouble and loss. Music seeps into our very souls, and confirms that we are indeed human — vitally human, full of life and passion. It is a form of salvation that is available to us here and now, in this life; we don’t have to wait for some afterlife.

Music is also fleeting; it lasts for a certain amount of time, and then it’s done. Randy’s performance of “Rhapsody in Blue” will last for sixteen minutes and thirty seconds, give or take a few seconds; and then it will be done. Once the music is done, where will our salvation be then?

Yet I persist in believing that we can accomplish some measure of salvation here in this life; that we can somehow build a heaven here on earth, here and now. Music can light a spark within our souls; music can relight the flame within us, the fire of love, and commitment, and passion, and deep humanity.

That’s why we have music in our worship services: to heal our souls. As we listen to “Rhapsody in Blue,” we can find a measure of salvation in this music. And when Randy has finished playing, we’ll sit in silence for a moment — no applause, this is a worship service — we’ll sit and let the healing sounds soak in a little bit. And then we’ll greet one another, and wind up the worship service as we always do….

Sermon

For the sermon, Music Director Randy Fayan played George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Ecojustice

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.

Story

“The Quails and the Net”

Gautama Buddha was a great holy man who lived long, long ago in India. He was so wise that people came from far and wide to learn from him. Many of these people stayed with him, and became his disicples, or followers.

Once upon a time, Buddha noticed that several of his disciples were spending a great deal of time arguing among themselves. As a result, these disciples began to disturb the other people who had come to learn from Buddha. Not only that, but Buddha felt that because of their arguing, they were not making any progress toward becoming truly enlightened beings.

That evening, Buddha sat all his followers down together, and he told them this story:

*****

“Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a large flock of quails in a forest. Now in near this very same forest there lived a hunter who made his living from capturing quails and selling them to people who wanted to eat them. Every day this hunter would slip quietly into the forest and sit hidden behind a big bush. Then he would imitate the call of a quail. He did it so perfectly that the quail thought the hunter was one of them.

“Upon hearing the hunter’s call, the quail would come out of the safe places where they had been gathering food. Once the quail came out into the open, the hunter would leap out from his hiding place and throw a big net over as many quails as he could reach. He would bundle up the net and take all the quail away to the marketplace to be sold to people who wanted to eat them for dinner.

“As you might expect, this state of affairs did not please the quail at all. In fact, they were scared silly because this hunter was capturing so many of them.

“The quail decided to hold a meeting to discuss the problem. One wise quail brought up a good point. She said:

“‘You know, that net the hunter throws over us isn’t very heavy. If we all agreed to work together, we could escape. As soon as he throws the net over us, if we all fly up together at the same time, we can lift the net up with us and get away.’

“The other quails thought this was a good plan. They all agreed to work together to escape the next time the hunter threw the net over them.

“The very next day, the hunter came back to the forest. He imitated the call of a quail so perfectly that all the quail were fooled again. Then he threw the net over as many quail as he could reach, expecting to bundle them up as always.

“But this time the quail who were caught under the net knew what to do. Instantly, before the hunter could bundle them up, they all flew up in the air together. They lifted the net up with them, and settled down together into a nearby rose bush. The net got tangled up in the thorns of the rose bush, and the quail scurried away to safety.

“The hunter was left to pick his net out of the sharp thorns. After hours of work, he finally untangled his net, and walked home, tired and discouraged.

“The next day, the hunter came back to try his luck again. He gave his imitation of the quail’s call. All the quail came running. When they felt the net settle over them, they instantly began to fly to a nearby patch of brambles. They settled down into the brambles leaving the net caught on the sharp thorns. Once again, the hunter was left to untangle his net from the sharp thorns.

“This went on for some days. The hunter was growing more and more discouraged. Finally, one day the hunter came back into the forest, gave his perfect imitation of the quail’s call, and threw his net over the quail when they came out into the open.

“But this time, when it came time for all the quail to fly up together, one quail happened to step on the foot of another quail.

“‘Hey,’ said the second quail, ‘who kicked me?

“‘Nobody kicked you,’ said a third, ‘It’s just your imagination.’

“Yet a fourth quail said, ‘Oh, he’s just ocmplaing because he’s lazy. he never lifts his share of the net.’

“Still another quail said, ‘And who are you to talk? Yesterday I noticed that you did very little of the flying, leaving all the hard work to the rest of us.’

“As the quail fought and bickered among themselves, the hunter bundled them up in his net and carried them off to market. They were all fat, plump quails, and the hunter got a very good price for them.”

*****

The followers of Buddha listened very carefully. They all believed that they had lived many lives in the past, sometimes as animals and sometimes as humans. The Buddha told them that the story of the quails was really a story of them in one of their past lives.

“When you were on this earth as quails,” said the Buddha, “you argued among yourselves, and were caught by the hunter, and were eaten for dinner that very night. You are no longer quails. Is it not time for you to stop arguing among yourselves?”

The disciples who had been arguing so much grew embarrassed and ashamed, and from that day on, so it is told, they no longer engaged in silly arguments.

Readings

The first reading this morning is from “Philosophical Creed” by Abner Kneeland (1833).

“A Pantheist’s Creed”

“I believe in the existence of a universe of suns and planets, among which there is one sun belonging to our planetary system; and that other suns, being more remote, are called stars; but that they are indeed suns to other planetary systems. I believe that the whole universe is Nature, and that the word Nature embraces the whole universe, and so far as we can attach any rational idea to either, that God and Nature are perfectly synonymous terms. I am not an Atheist, but a Pantheist; instead of believing that there is no God, I believe that, in the abstract, all is God. I believe that God is all in all, and God is in each of us; and that it is in God that we live, move, and have our being….”

The second reading this morning is a very short poem written by the Universalist Edwin Markham:

        “Outwitted”
    They drew a circle that shut me out —
    Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
    But Love and I had the wit to win:
    We drew a circle that took them in.

Sermon

It’s Earth Day weekend, and at last we have real spring weather; which means that we have been able to celebrate Earth Day in the most appropriate way possible, by spending time outdoors. In fact, we have set up chairs in the garden so you can enjoy your coffee there after the service.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to make Earth Day into a pleasant holiday designed for middle class white folks who like to spend time outdoors. Many of us, however, believe Earth Day should be more than that; that includes most of us here in this congregation. Earth Day isn’t just about saving the Earth, it’s about saving ourselves as well, because we human beings are just as much a part of the earth as polar bears and penguins. It is true that we human beings have invented ways to have a disproportionately large impact on the earth, but we are also very much a part of the ecosystem we are impacting. Thus the philosophy of Earth Day cannot be fully captured by the usual environmentalist slogans of “Save the planet!” — it’s ourselves we are trying to save; we are trying to save all of humanity, along with polar bears and penguins.

How do we do that? Can we do more than repeat the usual slogans of “save the earth” and “reduce carbon emissions”? I have come to believe that we must get to the moral and ethical and religious roots of saving the planet — that we have to fundamentally change the way we think and feel about what it means to be human, and how humans relate to all other living beings. In other words, we have soul work to do.

And I have discovered a relatively simple idea that helps me with my ecological soul work: the idea of ecojustice. “Ecojustice” is not the same thing as “environmental activism.” Ecojustice — that’s the prefix “eco” in front of the word “justice” — is meant to encompass both ecological justice, and economic justice; so ecojustice helps me understand the relationship of my soul with all other living beings, both human and non-human living beings. Ecojustice grows out of theology and morality, whereas I see environmental activism as predominantly political in nature.

So I would like to tell you about the religious principles behind ecojustice. As I see it, the religious principles behind ecojustice are very much the core religious values of this congregation. Therefore, you might decide, as I have, that ecojustice makes sense as a primary focus for what we do together here at First Unitarian, as a religious community.

Let me begin by stating what I believe is our deepest religious value. I believe our deepest religious value, the taproot, as it were, of our entire faith, is a deep and abiding respect for all sentient beings, growing out of the idea of radical love. Historically, we Unitarian Universalists have come out of Christianity, and one of the gifts we received from Christianity was the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, who summed up everything he taught in two commandments: love your God with all your heart and mind and soul; and love your neighbor as yourself. We Unitarian Universalists have now become what I call post-Christians; and a large part of our becoming has been to extend Jesus’s teachings on love.

So as we heard in the first reading this morning, the Universalist minister Abner Kneeland proclaimed in 1833 that: “I believe that the whole universe is Nature, and that the word Nature embraces the whole universe, and so far as we can attach any rational idea to either, that God and Nature are perfectly synonymous terms.” Jesus taught that we should love God with all our hearts and minds and souls; when Abner Kneeland extended that and taught us to consider all of Nature as God, that implies that we should love all of Nature with all our hearts and minds and souls.

Another example: in 1866, a Unitarian minister, Henry Bergh, founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Not that Bergh limited himself to extending rights to animals; he also helped found the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Bergh believed that all human beings, including children, have moral rights; he believed that animals have moral rights, that they have their own inherent dignity and respect just as human beings do. Jesus taught that we should love our neighbors as ourselves; and Henry Bergh taught us to extend our concept of neighbors beyond adults to include children and animals, and people who are not like us; all these are neighbors whom we shall love as we love ourselves.

Since the time of Abner Kneeland and Henry Bergh, Unitarian Universalists have continued to pursue these theological ideas. This is not to say that we have arrived at any kind of theological consensus; Unitarian Universalists have no particular interest in arriving at a single theological consensus. Yet all of us, or nearly all of us, would say that Nature is sacred; some of us would agree with Abner Kneeland and say that Nature is God, while others of us would find other ways of proclaiming that Nature is sacred. And all of us, or nearly all of us, would say that animals have moral and ethical rights; I think most Unitarian Universalists would agree that all sentient beings have moral and ethical rights.

All sentient beings have moral and ethical rights, but what do I mean by all sentient beings? I mean this:– people who look like us and talk like us are clearly sentient beings; people who are less similar to us but who live near us are clearly sentient beings; really all human beings constitute sentient beings; as do other large mammals like dolphins and elephants and chimpanzees. Since it’s hard to define exactly what we mean by “sentient,” to be on the safe side I would include all living beings; and finally I would include all beings. So we move out in widening circles: from those who are most like us, to those living begins who are least like us.

This is where it becomes a religious act. It’s easy to love those who are like us; if someone has the same color skin as yours, if someone talks the same language as you do, if someone looks like you; then it is easy to love them as you love yourself. But it gets more difficult when someone speaks a different language than we do, looks different than we do, has a different religion than we do; then it is more difficult to love them as we love ourselves. And when someone is a different species than we are, especially one of the species that aren’t cute and cuddly, species like turkey vultures and shelf fungus; then it becomes more even difficult to love those beings as we love ourselves.

The religious principle of radical love, found in all great religious traditions in one form or another, can help us grow beyond what is easy. As we grow and deepen our religious faith, we shall grow into loving all our neighbors, all sentient beings, as we love ourselves. As we grow and deepen in this way, we widen our circles of love.

A short poem by poet Edwin Markham gives voice to how this can happen:

They drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took them in.

I suspect most of us have had this kind of experience, when others drew a circle to shut us out. Some Unitarian Universalists have experienced this on the basis of our religious faith:– we’re considered heretics by many Christians in the United States, and so we have been shut out in a variety of ways; perhaps you have been shut out by your childhood faith, but welcomed here. Some of you in this room have experienced this because your skin was the wrong color; or because English is your second language; or because you aren’t a United States citizen; or because you happen to be attracted to people of the same sex; or because of learning disabilities, or health problems, or economic status, or even because you’re just too doggone tall or short or fat or skinny.

Edwin Markham was a Universalist, and his poem tells us how radical love can deal with this experience of being shut out. “Love and I had the wit to win,” says Markham, “We drew a circle that took them in.” That is the essence of radical love:– when someone tries to draw a circle to shut you out, Love can draw a circle that takes them in. This is another way of saying:– love your neighbor as yourself, and everyone is your neighbor.

The idea of ecojustice grows out of this fundamental theological principle. Everyone is your neighbor. People like me are my neighbors; but then Love and I widen the circle more. All human beings are our neighbors, even when they don’t look like us or talk like us; but then Love and I widen the circle more. As the circle widens, we come to discover that all sentient beings are our neighbors; my soul is connected with all souls. At the most basic level, loving all your neighbor means you don’t want to kill them unless absolutely have to. So obviously we don’t kill our immediate family, people who look like us and talk like us. And as the circle widens, we realize that we must extend the same morality to all sentient beings, to all living beings.

Let us trace these widening circles from the perspective of our own congregation here. Our bylaws expressly state that we welcome all persons. At the beginning of each worship service, we affirm that we welcome all persons: “we value our differences of age, gender, race, national origin, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, and theology” — and we mean what we say. We have a number of people in this congregation who are not U.S. citizens, and other for whom English is not their first language — that’s not a big deal for us. Even though many of us are white, we have a significant number of people who do not identify as white — and we do pretty well with that (though we could do better). We have people of all different income levels, from quite well-off, to people with very little income. Love and we have the wit to win; we draw our circle to take in all these people from our local community.

And we draw a still wider circle. You have probably noticed that we display the United Nations flag in our sanctuary. The first United Nations flag was given to our congregation many years ago by Louise Sawyer’s sister, and it has been here ever since, as a reminder that we pledge allegiance to all the peoples of the world. Not just the people in our community, not just the people our country, but all human beings everywhere.

And we can draw a still wider circle, as we in this congregation are beginning to do. I have said that we value all sentient beings; and indeed, as a religious principle, we value all life. So it is that we are finding ways to widen the circle still farther, to widen the compass of our moral and ethical circle still farther.

While environmental activism seems to widen our circle still farther, I sometimes feel that environmental activism can cause us to jump right from our immediate family, to non-human life, while skipping the rest of the human species. And while I’m reluctant to say it, too often environmental activism as I’ve experienced it has done precisely that — it values other species sometimes more than fellow human beings. From a religious point of view, I find this troubling.

From a religious point of view, I have come to value the perspective of ecojustice. Ecojustice links economic and ecological problems — the prefix “eco” means both “economic” and “ecological,” where economic justice often has more to do with other human beings, and ecological justice often has more to do with non-human beings. By tying together economic justice and ecological justice, the term “ecojustice” reminds us that we don’t get to choose between ecology and economy, because religiously speaking both are matters of extending justice to beings who don’t happen to look like us.

Let me give you an example of how this works for me, personally. Personally, I’m very committed to cutting carbon emissions and stopping global climate change. Yes, I want to save the polar bears who will die if the Arctic ice cap melts. But I also want to cut carbon emissions to save hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis who live in low-lying river deltas and who will be displaced by rising sea levels; I also want to save hundreds of thousands of people in Central Africa who are being displaced due to desertification caused by global climate change. And quite frankly, I want to save my own soul, because I know global climate change has been caused by my American lifestyle and I’m sick of feeling guilty.

Ecojustice allows me to understand how global climate change is a justice issue. The horrors of Darfur came about because people were displaced by desertification in Central Africa, and desertification is caused by global climate change. Global climate change is a racial justice issue: at this point, non-white people are far more affected by global climate change than affluent white people in North America and Europe. Global climate change is an economic issue: global climate change is already disrupting economies, especially in low-lying areas like Bangladesh and New Orleans. These are ecological problems, they are human problems, they are my problems.

As Unitarian Universalists, our theological principle of radical love — love for all humanity, love for all sentient beings — allows us to extend the circle of our love as far as possible. Thus, as a religious tradition we are uniquely placed to deal with a problem like global climate change, or any ecojustice issue, because our theology allows us to understand how love can be extended to the widest possible circle. And here at First Unitarian, I feel we already live out this theology more than do other Unitarian Universalist congregations. We really do welcome people of differing ages, genders, races, national origins, economic classes, sexual orientations, physical abilities, and theologies — we aim to live out a just society in our own congregation.

We work to live out a just society here in our own congregation, and we already have members who are committed to both ecological and economic justice. We have the appropriate theological principles. Even if you’ve never heard the term “ecojustice” before this morning, we already know how to do ecojustice. It’s a unique religious contribution we make to the local community and to the wider world.