Question and response sermon

Story for all ages — The Quail and the Bird Called P’eng

Many years ago in ancient China, the Emperor T’ang was speaking with a wise man named Ch’i.

Ch’i was telling the Emperor about the wonders of far off and distant places. Ch’i said:

“If you go far, far to the north, beyond the middle kingdom of China, beyond the lands where our laughing black-haired people live, you will come to the lands where the snow lies on the ground for nine months a year, and where the people speak a barbaric language and eat strange foods.

“And if you travel even farther to the north, you will come to a land where the snow and ice never melts, not even in the summer. In that land, night never comes in the summer time, but in the winter, the sun never appears and the night lasts for months at a time.

“And if you go still farther to the north, beyond the barren land of ice and snow, you will come to a vast, dark sea. This sea is called the Lake of Heaven. Many marvelous things live in the Lake of Heaven. They say there is a fish called K’un. The fish K’un is thousands of miles wide, and who knows how many miles long.”

“A fish that is thousands of miles long?” said the Emperor. “How amazing!”

“It is even more amazing than it seems at first,” said Ch’i. “For this giant fish can change shape and become a bird called P’eng. This bird is enormous. When it spreads its wings, it is as if clouds cover the sky. Its back is like a huge mountain. When it flaps its wings, typhoons spread out across the vast face of the Lake of Heaven for thousands of miles. The wind from P’eng’s wings lasts for six months. P’eng rises up off the surface of the water, sweeping up into the blue sky. The giant bird wonders, ‘Is blue the real color of the sky, or is the sky blue because it goes on forever?’ And when P’eng looks down, all it sees is blue sky below, with the wind piled beneath him.”

***

A little gray dove and a little insect, a cicada, sat on the tree and listened to Ch’i tell the Emperor about the bird P’eng. They looked at each other and laughed quietly. The cicada said quietly to the dove, “If we’re lucky, sometimes we can fly up to the top of that tall tree over there. But lots of times, we don’t even make it that high up.”

“Yes,” said the little dove. “If we can’t even make it to the top of the tree, how on earth can that bird P’eng fly that high up in the sky? No one can fly that high.”

***

Ch’i continued to describe the giant bird P’eng to the Emperor. “Flapping its wings, the bird wheels in flight,” said Ch’i, “and it turns south, flying across the thousands of miles of the vastness of the Lake of Heaven, across the oceans of the Middle Kingdom, heading many thousands of miles towards the great Darkness of the South.”

***

A quail sat quietly in a bush beside the Emperor and Ch’i. “The bird P’eng can fly all those thousands of miles from the Lake of Heaven in the north across the Middle Kingdom, and into the vast ocean in the south?” said the quail to himself. “Well, I burst up out of the bushes into flight, fly a dozen yards, I set back down into the bushes again. That’s the best kind of flying. Who cares if some big bird flies ninety thousand miles?”

***

The Emperor listened to Ch’i, and said, “Do up and down ever have an end? Do the four directions ever come to an end?”

“Up and down never come to an end,” said Ch’i. “The four directions never come to an end.

“That is the difference between a small understanding and a great understanding,” Ch’i continued. “If you have a small understanding, you might think the top of that tree is as high up as you can go. If you have a small understanding, you might think that flying to that bush over there is as far as you can go in that direction. But even beyond the point where up and down and the four directions are without end, there is no end.”

***

But the quail did not hear, for she had flown a dozen yards away in the bushes. The cicada did not hear because it was trying to fly to the top of a tree. And the little dove did not hear because he had tucked his head under his wing and fallen asleep.

Readings

I have one reading, on the importance of asking questions, but first I’ll start with a few words about what a “Question and Response Sermon” might be.

In our religious tradition, what holds us together is not a creed, but a covenant, a set of promises that we make to one another. In other words, our religious tradition emphasizes relationship, not belief.

This state of affairs is confusing to some people — How, they ask, can you have a religion if you don’t believe in anything? Well, we think it’s better to concentrate on the promises that hold us together, rather than some abstract beliefs. More to the point, of course we do believe in things — life and love and the power of truth. But I’d also say we believe in the power of questions. And when the glue that holds us together is relationships, we are freed to ask difficult and interesting questions; and the responses to those questions often lead us to engage in further questioning together.

My sermons are usually written in response to something someone in this congregation has said to me. But in a question-and-response sermon, the relationship is a little more direct. You ask the questions, and I respond to them right here and now; I won’t say I answer your questions, I respond to them. And then I file all these questions away, and they’ll influence my sermons for the next year — even if I don’t get to respond to all your questions this morning, you can bet I’ll refer to them over the next twelve months as I plan out and write sermons.

Now for the reading on the importance of questions. This is from one of Mark Twain’s speeches, given at a 1909 banquet honoring one of his friends, Mr. H. H. Rogers. I should tell you that at the time of this speech, a half crown would have been worth about sixty cents. Mark Twain said:

“[Others have said] Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is. It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know lots of private things in his life which people don’t know, and I know how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to ask questions. He did not like to appear ignorant…. On board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. He did not like to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn’t know; but rather than be ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in bed he could not sleep. He wondered if he could afford that outlay in case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: ‘A king’s crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000.’ He could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.”

Thus ends Mark Twain’s thoughts on the importance of asking questions.

*****

From the First Unitarian newsletter — The “Question and Response Sermon”

On June 4, I gave a “question and response sermon.” Everyone who was in church that Sunday had a chance to write a question on a piece of paper, and during the sermon time, I responded to as many of the questions as we had time for. But I only had time to respond to less than half the questions. The questions were so thoughtful and interesting that I thought I’d give written responses to the rest of them in the newsletter…. –Dan Harper

*****

Question: Is the Unitarian Universalist denomination changing so that more Unitarian Universalists believe in God and are seeking spiritual fulfillment?

My response: According to a recent survey by the Commission on Appraisal of the Unitarian Universalist Association, “there has been a shift in Unitarian Universalism away from a humanist center to a more eclectic mix of philosophies or theologies.” Does that mean that more Unitarian Universalists believe in God? Well, it all depends on what you mean when you say “God.” If you mean a traditional conception of God, then I don’t believe that any more Unitarian Universalists believe in God now as compared to twenty years ago; if you mean “God” in the broadest possible sense as something transcending humanity, then yes I think more Unitarian Universalists believe in God now.

However, I would not connect a belief in God and the search for spiritual fulfillment. I know plenty of atheists and humanists who seek spiritual fulfillment without any need for belief in God.

Question: Do Unitarian Universalists have any belief in an afterlife? i.e., heaven? reincarnation? Is it left up to us to decide what we believe?

My response: Yes, many Unitarian Universalists do believe in an afterlife, and a smaller number believe in reincarnation. Many Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in an afterlife. And there are a fair number of Unitarian Universalists like me who just don’t worry about the whole issue one way or another. Generally speaking, the question of an afterlife is less important to us than the question of how we can bring about justice and peace in the present world.

Yes, it is left up to each individual to decide what he or she believes on this point. Yet there are limits to what you can believe about an afterlife, and still feel comfortable within Unitarian Universalism. I don’t know any Unitarian Universalists who believe in the idea of eternal punishment, probably because our Universalist tradition was founded around the notion that since God is love, God would not condemn anyone to an eternity of suffering.

Question: Connection between the local, national, and international Unitarian Universalist church organizations.

My response: Our local church is our ultimate religious authority. We have the power to make all significant decisions regarding our religious life together. However, we are in a covenanted relationship with a thousand other Unitarian Universalist congregations across the United States, meaning that our congregations promise to provide mutual support and guidance to each other. Each year, representatives from local congregations gather in late June at General Assembly to set policy for the national organization (I’ll be the voting representative for our church at General Assembly this year, although we could have had two other delegates as well).

Internationally, Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalist churches in various countries around the world are loosely organized through the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists (www.icuu.net/). The various national organizations are all organized quite differently: Unitarians in Hungary and Romania have bishops; Universalists in the Philippines are organized as one big congregation with outposts scattered here and there; Unitarian Universalists in South America are just beginning to get organized.

Question: Spark of life — divine or chemical reaction?

My response: Both, in my opinion. But we could have a long discussion about what we mean by “divine” in this context. I mean it in the sense that it is something that is not quite comprehensible to us (and I’d argue on the basis of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem that there’s a good chance that the “spark of life” must always remain an unexplained axiom from within the context of our consciousness).

Question: If Unitarian Universalism accepts all, regardless of beliefs, then why call it a religion at all? Similarly, Unitarian Universalism stresses acceptance of all people and beliefs, but to what extent? Critical thinking has its role in living a productive life, i.e. making good choices. If we don’t accept all beliefs/lifestyles, does this make us less “evolved”?

My response: First of all, I don’t believe we accept all, regardless of belief. For example, I would find it difficult to accept someone who believes it is good to exploit other human beings; I would find it difficult to believe in the necessity of live animal sacrifices; and I would find it difficult to accept someone who believes in a vengeful God who gives us permission to hurt other human beings. I’m sure you could come up with your own examples.

So we don’t accept all beliefs, but I don’t believe this makes us any more or less “evolved.” I’m not sure I would apply the concept of evolution to religious beliefs. When someone starts claiming that their religion is more evolved than another religion, that can lead to things like religious persecution and religious wars.

Probably the most important thing to remember in this context is that we Unitarian Universalists are not organized around beliefs. We are organized around our covenant with one another. A covenant is a set of promises that we make to each other. These promises set forth our ideal of what it means to live in human community. One of our fundamental assumptions is that no one person can figure out how to live a good and moral and productive life alone. That only happens within the context of a community.

Question: What is CUUPS?

My response: CUUPS is an affiliate organization of our church, and it stands for Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. Learn more from their Web site at www.cuups.org. If you want to know about our affiliated CUUPS chapter, talk with Niko Tarini, who is a member of First Unitarian and a member of the CUUPS chapter.

There are also nation-wide groups for Unitarian Universalists who identify with the following spiritual paths: humanism, Christianity, Universalism, Judaism, and Buddhism. If you have an interest in any of these other groups, let me know, and I’ll get you contact information.

Question: Do fish know they’re in water?

My response: In the book One Hand Clapping: Zen Stories for All Ages, Rafe Martin recounts the following Zen Story:

“Once upon a time a baby fish asked an older, larger fish about the sea.

” ‘What is the sea,’ he asked. ‘I keep hearing about it, but I don’t know what it is.’

” ‘Why the sea is all around you, little one,’ said the grown-up fish.

” ‘If that’s so, why can’t I se it?’ asked the young fish.

” ‘Because it is everywhere. It surrounds you. It’s inside and outside you. You were born in the sea and you will die in the sea. What’s more, you yourself are the life of the sea…. It’s just because it’s so close to you that it’s very hard to see.'”

Question: Could you do a pagan ritual at one of your services?

My response: I do not feel I personally am qualified to lead a pagan ritual — I know how to lead Unitarian Universalist worship, but I just don’t enough to be able to worship in any other religious tradition. However, I will pass this suggestion on to the Religious Services Committee, and see if they would like to find someone to take this on.

You should also know that our CUUPS chapter has regular pagan rituals — see the church calendar for dates.

Question: Could you speak on grief and using our spirituality to help us through our loss?

My response: This is a big topic, and I will plan to do at least one sermon next year on this topic. I also try to address the topic of grief each year on the Sunday just before Memorial Day.

But here’s a brief response: Yes, I feel that religion and spirituality can help us in times of grief and loss. For me, the difference between religion and spirituality is that religion always takes place in community, whereas spirituality tends to be more personal and private. Religious communities can help us deal with grief by offering a supportive community of caring people. Personal spirituality can help in a different way. Whatever personal spiritual practice you follow — meditation, prayer, etc. — can calm and heal you from the inside.

Of course, you can always make an appointment with me to come into the office and talk about issues around grief and loss.

Question: Do you believe in life after death? Please don’t say we live on in people’s minds. True, but not true enough for me.

My response: I have to say this is not something I think about much one way or another. I find that I am so focused on bringing about a heaven on earth here and now, that I don’t have any much energy left over to worry about what happens after death. I suspect that this won’t be a satisfactory answer for many of you, but I’m being as honest as I can.

Going beyond my personal beliefs, the question of life after death is a very big question indeed. I’ll try to work this question into a number of sermons in the coming year.

Question: What is your belief in karmic retribution?

My response: In my own life, I have not found karmic retribution to hold true. Sometimes bad things happen for no apparent reason. Perhaps if I could see a bigger picture somehow, I would see that that karmic retribution does hold true. And I certainly have the greatest respect for those world religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, that set forth doctrines of karma. It’s just that I haven’t found it to be true in my own life.

Question:What is the relationship between Unitarian Universalism and the Baha’i faith?

My response: It is a relationship of mutual respect, and I think there’s a mutual recognition that each is a liberal religion. However, there are substantial differences. The Baha’i faith does claim to have ultimate answers in a way that Unitarian Universalism does not, and the Baha’i faith came out of Islam whereas we have come out of Christianity.

Question: How can we use religion as a means to inclusion and unity among people, instead of using faith to divide us?

My response: Good question. I wish I had an answer to this problem. Instead of an answer, I have a possible response.

Carole Fontaine, a professor at Andover Newton Theological School and a Unitarian Universalist, has proposed that we Unitarian Universalists are well-placed to further human rights work in the world. As it stand right now, there are two main camps of human rights workers: there are those who support human rights on the basis of religious belief, and there are those who support human rights on the basis of natural law that has nothing to do with religion. At present, these two groups don’t work much together because of their differing attitudes towards religion. Yet if they combined their efforts, it seems obvious that there would be much more progress made towards human rights. Carole Fontaine proposes that Unitarian Universalists already know how to facilitate dialogue between atheists and theists (after all, we do it all the time in our local churches). So we could make a major contribution to human rights work by helping these two different groups talk to one another, and learn how to work with one another.

This might serve as a model for how Unitarian Universalists could promote inclusion and unity among people, by facilitating inter-religious dialogue, and dialogue between religious and non-religious groups.

Question: Is there any guilt involved with Unitarian Universalist beliefs (other than not coming to church)?

My response: Since beliefs are not particularly important to us, I don’t see how there can be any guilt involved with our beliefs. Unitarian Universalist guilt comes about when we violate the terms of our covenants with one another. Covenants are the promises we make to one another about how we promise to be in relationship, and how we promise to maintain our religious community. That’s why there’s Unitarian Universalist guilt when you don’t come to church — the guilt arise, not because you’ve violated some belief, but because in a very small way you have broken the covenant you have made with this religious community.

I should add that when you miss church because of health problems or family obligations, there’s no violation of the covenant and therefore no guilt. In fact, if you miss church because of health problems or family obligations, and no one from church calls you to find out where you’ve been, then it’s the church community who has broken (in a small way) the covenant with you. The obvious conclusion is that if you don’t see someone at church for a few weeks, you should call them and make sure they’re OK.

Question: Prayer — why? I can’t visualize that there is any one hearing or any reason to think that the words go anywhere.

My response: I probably represent a minority viewpoint within Unitarian Universalism — I have no personal prayer life, and prayer has never worked for me personally. I’ve tried it, but it doesn’t do anything for me. However, I have seen that public prayer is an effective way to give voice to concerns of a community, so I am happy to do public prayer.

Many Unitarian Universalists do pray. People for whom I have the highest respect tell me that they believe there is a God who listens to their prayers. Other Unitarian Universalists think of prayer in a wider, more metaphorical sense — for example, I know Unitarian Universalists who think of social justice work as a kind of prayer. I think a big part of this depends on how you define the word “prayer.”

For more on this topic, check out the pamphlet “Unitarian Universalist Views on Prayer,” which you’ll find in a rack by the bulletin board in the Parish House.

Remembering at Memorial Day

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading this morning is a poem by the English poet Seigfried Sassoon, who fought in the trenches in the First World War. The poem is titled, “Suicide in the Trenches”:

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of run,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again….

The second reading was a poem by Elizabeth Bishop titled “One Art.” Unfortunately, copyright laws do not permit us to reproduce complete poems that are still protected under copyright.

SERMON — “Remembering”

Religions are pretty good at remembering. You might say that the central act of religion is to keep memories alive. In the Western tradition, Christianity has, for the past two thousand years, managed to keep the memory of a certain rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus; and for perhaps three thousand years Judaism has managed to keep alive the memory of the exodus from Egypt, when Moses led his people out of bondage and into the Promised Land. In Persia, the Parsees or Zoroastrians have kept alive the memory of the prophet Zarathustra for three thousand years. In India and the Far East, Buddhists have kept alive the memory of Siddhartha Gotama for some twenty-five hundred years. So religions are adept at keeping ancient memories alive.

Religions are also good at helping us keep more recent memories alive. I don’t mean just remembering our own narrow religious tradition, or the ways we remember the tiny little histories of our local congregations. I’m thinking more of the ways in which our religious communities help us to remember our own lives; to remember what is past and done but still lives on in our hearts.

We keep alive the memories of people whom we loved, whom we still love, but who are now dead; or who have otherwise passed out of our lives. I will say from my own experience that such memories are rarely without pain: it is only human to feel pain when you remember someone who has died. Our religious communities can give us a way to deal with that pain, perhaps even to make sense out of that pain. Most obviously, when someone dies, you hold a memorial service for that person. I know when my mother died several years ago, her memorial service helped me to deal with the pain and the grief. Not that such a religious service lessens the pain and the grief, but we human beings seem to welcome such ritual actions. Belonging to a religious community doesn’t necessarily lessen the pain and the grief either. But there is something about being part of a group of people who are willing to talk about death and pain and loss, especially where some or most of the people in that group have gone through their own pain and grief and loss. Being part of such a group helps you make sense out of death; not because the tenets of that religious community can adequately explain death; but because you are with a group of people who are willing to face death together.

One result of all this is that the buildings which house religious communities can wind up holding lots of memories. This church building in which we sit this morning has seen four memorial services in the past year, and hundreds of others in the 168 years during which it has stood here. These walls hold so many memories. In fact, these walls quite literally hold memories: the Tiffany mosaic behind me was given in 1911 as a memorial to Judge and Mrs. Oliver Prescott, by their three children, Oliver Prescott, Jr., Mrs. Frederick Stetson and Miss Mary R. Prescott. On the back wall of this room is a memorial, where families have put up plaques with the names of members and friends of this church who have died. We are literally and metaphorically the repository of memories; the memories of the generations.

I cannot help but add that one of the best reasons for supporting this church is to keep it as a repository for such memories. Obviously, a church building is far more than a repository of memories; it is first and foremost a home for a living community. But the members of that living community have their memories, and there is almost nowhere else in our society where we have a physical space where we can remember; the only other place I can think of would be cemeteries, but cemeteries lack the vitality that churches get from also housing a living community. In churches memories can remain as living memories; churches look backwards in memory, but also forwards to the next generations; and of course churches remain above concerned with the present.

I’ll say something else about this church. Here in this place, we make an effort to come face-to-face with the truth, even if that truth is less than comfortable. When it comes to memories, we remember, yes; but we don’t feel we have to sugar-coat our memories. Thus when we look back at our Christian heritage, we remember what is good about that heritage; but we also try to look unflinchingly on what it less than good about that heritage; we are willing to acknowledge that our Christian heritage has some unsavory episodes in its long history. This same attitude guides us when we look back at the past of our own church: we remember what is good about our church’s past, but we acknowledge that both good and bad things have happened here. And if you choose to do so, this church will support you if you choose to apply this same attitude when you look back at your own past: because we know that no human being is wholly good, we know that it’s acceptable to remember both the good and the bad things about the dead. In our faith tradition, we try to remain open to the whole truth of the world around us.

By remaining open in this way to the whole of truth, by accepting the wholeness of our memories, we are performing something of a counter-cultural act. One of the things I’ve noticed is that the society around us sometimes tries to mold the past into a more comfortable image. I see this tendency in people’s personal lives; when, for example, people blame a personal weakness on their parents instead of taking personal responsibility for their own actions. Or when, for example, rather than apologizing and saying “I’m sorry,” we see people hiding behind lawyers and law suits. We see this tendency at a national level as well; when, for example, any critical statement about United States foreign policy in Iraq and the Middle East is said to be unpatriotic and even treasonous. And we see this in our own religious institutions; when, for example, people refuse to acknowledge past problems and misdeeds in religious institutions, preferring instead to remain silent or to deny that anything bad ever happens in a church.

Our society seems to encourage an attitude of refusing to accept responsiblity for oneself; and I see this in part as a failure of memory. When I carefully search my own memory of my own actions, I find many examples of times when I was less than a good person; and I find that the society around me offers me too many ways to excuse myself. When I look back at the history of my beloved Unitarian Universalist religion, I find instances of racially segregated churches, instances of sexism, instances of misconduct on the part of ministers, and — my personal pet peeve — instances of bias on the basis of socio-economic status. And when I look back at the history of my country, a country in which I have pride, a country which I love, I find less-than-savory episodes: I could start with killing native Americans, work my way up through the slavery of Africans, and so on up to the present day. All these things represent in part a failure of memory: if you forget that 95% of the Indians in New England died within 20 years of the arrival of European settlers, you can forget about any possible problem.

I don’t mean to imply that we each have to take all the burdens of the world on our shoulders; nor do I mean to imply that any one person has to bear the full burden of responsibility for, let us say, slavery. Nor am I saying that I want you to go out and remember only the worst things about yourself, or to remember only the worst things about someone you love who is now dead. But what I am saying is that we need to remember as honestly as we possibly can.

The first reading this morning gives an example of what I mean. The poet Siegfried Sassoon served with the English military in the trench warfare in the First World War, and he writes of a young soldier who, while initially carefree, gets worn down by the trench warfare and commits suicide. Sassoon writes: “He put a bullet through his brain. / No one spoke of him again.” That, my friends, is a failure of memory.

Which brings us to our second reading, the poem by Elizabeth Bishop, which says:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, faster:
places, names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

None of these will bring disaster. And what Elizabeth Bishop is telling us is quite simple: you can’t cling tightly to everything. Indeed, in this life of ours, we had better master the art of losing, for there is much to lose, as Elizabeth Bishop says at the end of the poem:

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Say it!) like disaster.

The art of remembering is an art of holding on; and it has to be coupled with the art of losing, or the art of letting go. We need them both. We need to be able to hold on to memories; but at times in our lives, we need to be able to let go again.

There is a difference between the failure of memory, of which I spoke a moment ago, and the art of letting go. The failure of memory in the way I’m talking about it is really a refusal to remember things correctly; it’s an attempt to create a past that never was.

The trick is to learn how to balance the art of remembering, of holding on; over against the art of losing, or of letting go. You can watch this happen inside yourself when someone you love dies. Elizabeth Bishop tells us that even when you lose someone you love, “the art of losing’s not to hard to master”; for when someone you love dies, you may feel at first as if you can’t possibly let go, and yet somehow you do, for you don’t really have a choice. And when you love is dying, or has just died, it surely does feel like disaster. And then you have to be careful to find the right balance: by not succumbing to that sense of disaster on the one hand, and by continuing to remember on the other hand.

I started out by saying that religions are pretty good at remembering, and I said that perhaps the central act of religion is keeping memory alive. A religious community gives each person in that community a context in which to hold memories; and a healthy religious community gives each person in that community assistance in letting go of memories when the time is right. To say this is merely to affirm a great human truth. When we human beings lose some person, or even some thing like an ideal or a place, when we lose that which we care for deeply, we are struck with grief. Yet we manage to move on, we manage to keep on living; and that means that some measure of grief has to slip away. Being part of a religious community is a way to help that very human process move forward in its course; because a religious community has seen this process happen over and over again, always with starkly individual differences, but always in the same grand human pattern.

And a religious community can help us keep that balance between holding on and letting go. The reason we want to keep that balance is so that we can move forward in our lives — so that we can move forward together in our communal life as a church, as a community, and a country. We don’t want to get stuck. When someone you love dies, it’s easy to get stuck in grieving; and while perhaps we never stop grieving, we must also find a way to live out our lives, to live out what was best in the life of whomever it was who died. I’d say that’s the truest expression of grief.

So, too we must keep the balance between remembering, and letting go; so that we might move forward in our communal life, in our political life. On Memorial Day, we remember all those who died in military service of our great country; we remember them, and we recall the ideals they fought and died for. And by remembering, we can commit ourselves to work for the highest of those ideals — some of the old ideals may no longer apply in today’s world, and those we can let go of — but we remember the highest ideals.

In the Unitarian Universalist church of my childhood, I learned early on what those highest ideals were, and I learned them as religious ideals. Those ideals were, and are:– the ideal of humankind learning to live together as one interconnected, interdependent community;– the ideal of each and every human being having a voice in how he or she is governed;– the ideal of a world where a person’s essential humanity means more than their race or creed or national origin.

Our religion exists in part to keep those highest ideals of humanity alive. Our liberal faith has long upheld the ideal of democratic process, and the ideal that all persons are important and of worth, and most importantly the ideal that each and every human being is worthy of respect, and of love. We have not always lived up to our ideals, both in our own religious community, and in our lives in the wider world. But we hold on to those ideals, and we remain open to new and deeper understandings of those ideals. And on this Memorial Day, we commit ourselves once again to a world where all persons shall be known as our brothers and sisters.

May it be so.

Eco-moms

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

Bidding farewell to graduating high school seniors

Emma Mitchell, Director of Religious Education: 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 most 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.

Dan Harper, parish minister: First, I’d like to ask anyone who, like Emma and me, spent part or all of their growing-up years in a Unitarian, Universalist, or Unitarian Universalist church, to join us up here at the pulpit. [About a dozen people, or a third of the congregation, joined us 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.

Alyzza Callahan will be ending her time in high school and moving on to new things. Alyzza, would you please join us up here in the pulpit?

Welcome Alyzza! 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 was a poem by Adrienne Rich, titled “Mother-Right.” (Unfortunately, copyright laws do not permit us to reproduce complete poems that are still protected under copyright.)

The second reading this morning is from the Hebrew scriptures, the book of Proverbs, chapter 4, verses 1-9:

1 Listen, children, to a father’s instruction,
and be attentive, that you may gain insight;
2 for I give you good precepts:
do not forsake my teaching.
3 When I was a son with my father,
tender, and my mother’s favorite,
4 he taught me, and said to me,
“Let your heart hold fast my words;
keep my commandments, and live.
5 Get wisdom; get insight: do not forget, nor turn away
from the words of my mouth.
6 Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
love her, and she will guard you.
7 The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
and whatever else you get, get insight.
8 Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
she will honor you if you embrace her.
9 She will place on your head a fair garland;
she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.

SERMON — “Eco-Moms”

At their best, religious scriptures make us feel uncomfortable; make us realize that we’re not yet the best people we could be; make us long to grow a better world from the compost of our present reality.

And the religious scriptures of the world have their limits. The religious scriptures I know have a tendency to ignore women: the writings of Confucius mention women maybe once; Buddhist scriptures are either abstractly remote, or focus in on a man’s world; the Bhagavad Gita of the Hindus tell men’s stories. The Hebrew and Christian scriptures are somewhat better: the Hebrew Bible has some powerful women characters in it, and a couple of books are even devoted to telling women’s stories; in the Christian scriptures, women have important roles to play, now and then. But: if we want to talk in newspaper terminology, women get far fewer column inches than men in all religious scriptures; which is hardly balanced reporting; worse yet, there’s a clear bias in the reporting in that women’s viewpoints and concerns are slighted.

Well, this is an old story by now. Even though a few conservative religious groups continue to insist that the world’s religious scriptures offer a perfectly balanced view of women, the rest of us know better. And over the past few decades, some of our best poets have created poems that rival religious scriptures for beauty, truth, and a capacity to make us feel uncomfortable.

The first reading this morning was by one of those poets, Adrienne Rich. Her poem “Mother-Right” challenges us to think about who mothers are, and what women are; and who men are, and what they are; and who and what children might be.

In the poem, a woman is running through a field; she has a child with her. In her long, slim hand, she holds the smaller, starlike, hand of a child. Her hair is “cut short for faster travel”; the child’s hair is in long curls that graze his shoulders. Together, they through the field.

Somewhere on the horizon a man stands, his feet planted on the ground. He is walking the boundaries (the boundaries of what, is not quite clear) and he is measuring. He is motivated by the belief that parts of the earth are his.

So the man is making boundaries, and the woman is running, running through the air, running through the field, running under the clouds and sky. How can there be boundaries to anything? Well, the man believes the things belong to him: the grass; the water; the air. But the woman is running over and through and under; her eyes are sharpened; she is making for the open.

She is making for the open.

Perhaps herein lies the woman’s wisdom: she is making for the open, making for the openness beyond boundaries. She is drawing her son along with her, and the boy is singing.

In the second reading this morning, from the Hebrew scriptures, Wisdom is personified as a person, as a woman. And “the beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight.” Or as it is more felicitously rendered in the sonorous words of the King James translation: “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace….” This old religious text, this old collection of folk-wisdom and proverbs, was written down to pass on wisdom to young men; but hidden in these old proverbs is challenging advice to men and to women: don’t just trust in men’s wisdom, trust in the wisdom of women, too. Wisdom, who is a woman, shall give to thine head an ornament of grace, like the child’s curls grazing his shoulders.

This all, of course, is the mythical poetical religious thinking that we Unitarian Universalists love so well. It’s a little mysterious, and it’s pretty hard to pin down in prose, or in a sermon. Maybe you just can’t measure it and put firm boundaries on it; you have to sort of run through it, looking for an opening. But we can tell there’s wisdom there; we might even be able to get a little closer to the meaning of that wisdom if we keep on going. And my experience with religion would indicate that we’ll know we’re getting closer to the truth, to the openness, when we start to feel a little uncomfortable. So let’s see what we can do to get a little uncomfortable.

One of the things that makes me uncomfortable is the image of the man on the horizon walking boundaries and measuring things. I love really good boundaries. I love to measure things. That’s just the kind of guy I am. What makes me uncomfortable is the thought that all that measuring and boundary-making might lead me to believe that the grass and the waters and the earth and even the air might be considered mine; or if not mine, someone else’s.

Whereas I know perfectly well that fields and earth and wind and air really can’t belong to anyone. Yes, yes, I know that in our society we carefully measure off the land, and you can buy a plot of land with a house on it, and call it yours; and pay taxes on it, and pay for the repairs to the house, and then when you move away or die the house and land gets sold to someone else who owns it. Or like me you can rent a home or apartment from someone else. We all know this perfectly well: if you have enough money, you can own land.

Poet Adrienne Rich gently challenges this notion of ours. She has that lovely cynical little line in her poem: “He believes in what is his.” Silly man: he may believe it is his, but there’s that woman and her son running through it like there are no boundaries. Because, you know, there really aren’t any boundaries except the ones we make up.

I would like us all to teach our children that sometimes we have to respect man-made boundaries (please note the use of the gender-specific pronoun). But I would also like us to teach our children that there are no boundaries, not really. For there is a great religious truth that all life is a unity. All life is a unity. True, we human beings are different from starfish, and thank God we are different from cockroaches; yet there is a unity which binds us together and makes us one.

Part of the reason we have gotten into the big ecological mess in which we are now thoroughly immersed is because we have been acting like boundaries are real. If I dump my factory’s PCBs into the Acushnet River, I’m dumping them past the boundaries we humans have created; which means of course that the PCBs just magically disappear. Out of sight, out of mind.

We really believe that, you know. And it really is a kind of primitive religious belief. By primitive religious belief I mean that a belief that takes religion far too literally, ignoring religion’s poetical mythical qualities. A primitive religious belief relies on superstition and suspension of reason to believe in it. I also know it’s a primitive religious belief, because when you challenge someone’s primitive beliefs, that person tends to get all cranky and dismissive. As when you tell the people running the factory that you can’t just dump the PCBs into the Acushnet River, those people get all cranky and dismissive, calling you an environmental crank. They suspend reason and rely on superstitious beliefs: no no no, there’s an invisible boundary line there, once we dump the PCBs into the Achusnet River, they can’t hurt us any more.

It’s sort of like when you’re a little kid, and someone says they’re going to give you cooties, and you create this invisible shield so you don’t get cooties. So we create invisible boundaries so we don’t get ecological cooties. Forget the fact that those PCBs are going to get into the fish and the quahogs, and that the terns and the seagulls are going to eat the fish and the quahogs full of PCBs, and so the PCBs will spread around the ecosystem until we find PCBs in human beings, too. Nope. No PCBs in human beings, ’cause we’ve got our invisible shields up. That sounds like a primitive religious superstition to me.

What we need today are moms who run through the mythical, magical, invisible-but-real boundaries, and show children the poetical mythical religious truth that all is one. We need Eco-Moms; that’s with a capital “E” and a capital “M,” superhero-style. Not that Eco-Moms wear the typical superhero costume of tights and cape: I’m thinking more along the lines of something designed by Coco Chanel, classic, simple, and suitable for every occasion. Eco-Moms have a variety of super-abilities: they have X-ray vision which allows them to see through the surface of things to an underlying unity; they can leap tall boundaries with a single bound, carrying a child safely with them; more powerful than anti-environmental rhetoric, they can stand up to silly superstitious beliefs; and they can teach their children to be whole human beings aware of their connection to the earth.

Not that every mom is going to have time to be an Eco-Mom. Lord knows moms have enough to do as it is. Yet perhaps there would be a few moms out there who could be Eco-Moms. The world could also use a few good Eco-Dads, to say nothing of Eco-Grandmas and Eco-Grandpas. Not only that, we need child-free people like my partner and me to teach children the same things. We adults need to teach children a way of Wisdom that leads us to unity and wholeness.

We’re facing an environmental crisis right now; we all know it at some level. We know this crisis is going to affect our children’s lives; we can be pretty sure that it will affect every aspect of our children’s lives. It’s equally obvious that we’re facing lots of other problems, too: war, poverty, violence, the plague of AIDS, population growth; but it feels like the environmental crisis is looming even larger all the time. And we know there’s a religious dimension to our situation: when we human beings are faced with seemingly unmanageable problems, we often try to make sense out of those problems through our religious beliefs.

Our Unitarian Universalist religion doesn’t give us any easy answers or quick fixes: no invisible shields for us; no denial of reality for us. In that sense, we have an uncomfortable religion. But ours is a ultimately a comforting religion, because one of our core beliefs is that we human beings can change the world for the better, if we choose to. I sometimes think we don’t believe that strongly enough. We can change the world, if we would just put our minds to it. When New Bedford harbor gets filled with PCBs, ordinary human beings have the power to get together, and declare the harbor to be a Superfund site, and start cleaning up that harbor. When a rich powerful real estate developer is trying to destroy sixty acres of wetlands and forest in the town of Fairhaven, ordinary human beings have the power to get together and stop that real estate developer. We can change the world.

When global environmental problems feel overwhelming, when you feel like nothing is ever going to change, remember that we can change things. We can change things in order to preserve this good earth for our children, and their children, and so on down to seven times seven generations.

When the going gets tough, leave behind your meek and mild-mannered day-to-day persona, slip into a nearby church, don your Chanel-designed superhero costume, and leap into action. Eco-Moms to the rescue! We all have it in us to be superheros, even if it’s only for a day.