"Anywhere But Church"

When Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed the Senior Class of 1838

        in the tiny second floor chapel at Harvard Divinity School,

                he knew that what he had to say would shock his audience,

                        so he shrewdly began by talking about the weather.

It was the middle of summer,

        and the chapel was crowded and stuffy.

"In this refulgent summer," he opened,

        "it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life."

He continued with a joyful tribute to the mystery and glory of nature

        and of human nature,    

                the beauty outside and the virtue within,

                        in what has become an historic statement

                                of our Unitarian Universalist faith.

 

The Divinity School Address offered a fresh new sensibility

        to the religious liberals of the time.

Emerson told his audience – the graduating class of young new ministers,

        about to step into pulpits all over the country –

                that they should search within themselves

                        for the intuitive, original and authentic response to life,

                                and reject the demand to conform to anyone’s expectations.

Emerson had just resigned from the ministry.

Restive and unresolved, 

        he complained about dutiful but boring preachers

                and advised the graduating seniors

                        to be "true preachers" and speak about real life.

Not everyone was pleased with Emerson’s remarks.

But they carried a certain stinging truth.

Unitarianism of the mid-nineteenth century was ready for change.

The churches had become dry and stodgy,

        faithfully carrying out rituals 

                drained of meaning and passion,

                        dwindling in spirit.

Emerson, freshly resigned from his ministry,

        stood just on the outside looking in;

                critical, anticlerical and a little smug,

                        he claimed that there was more religious truth

                                in one snowflake

                                        than in a year's worth of Sunday sermons.

What was spiritual and real 

        could be more easily found 

                outside rather than inside the church.

        

Ever since, we Unitarian Universalists make no apologies

        when we prefer what Emerson called the "temple of nature"

                over our own sanctuaries.

And we all nurture our spiritual lives

        with everything the world outside these walls 

                has to offer.

Here in California the world outside 

        has provided abundantly for us.

The ocean and the islands,

        the mountains, the canyons and the beaches,

                all provide immersion experiences of nature;

                        as intense as we want them,

                                and we can go get them.

 

And nature is not the only source of spiritual inspiration.

We acknowledge the spiritual growth inherent 

        in raising children,

                in forming intimate relationships,

                        in engaging in citizen activism,

                                in growing gardens,

                                        in making art.

For us, life is a spiritual life.

It happens everywhere we go.

 

This perspective challenges the role of religious institutions,

        just as Emerson once did.

He made a transition from the pulpit to the lecture hall,

        but he held on to his Unitarian affiliation.

He lived long enough to understand

        that his work had transformed his own tradition.

But he never felt obliged to justify the church

        once he was no longer minister of one.

 

And I do.

I agree with Emerson that spirituality is intuitive and natural

        and that we can experience it anywhere,

                and sometimes more easily elsewhere,

                        than we do in church.

Yet I also know that there is something about

        being part of a congregation,

                especially one that has evolved over the generations,

                        that we cannot experience anywhere else.

And I know that experience has a spiritual quality all its own,

        that is generated by human contact

                and community.

And that is why I read with interest a recent book

        titled "God at the Edge: 

                Searching for the Divine in Uncomfortable and Unexpected Places,"

                        by Rabbi Niles Elliot Goldstein.

This uncommonly adventurous and athletic young man

        has taken his spiritual journey from Alaska to Central Asia,

                dogsledding and trekking,

                        chased by bears and the KGB.

He usually does these things alone,

        as he needs the wilderness and the foreign places

                the way some people need home and familiar streets.

 

Goldstein’s love of nature echoes Emerson's,

        and he quotes Emerson more than once in his book:

"In the woods, we return to reason and faith.

There I feel that nothing can befall me in life –

        no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes),

                which nature cannot repair.

Standing on the bare ground – 

        my head bathed by the blithe air 

                and uplifted into infinite space –

                        all mean egotism vanishes...

In the wilderness, 

        I find something more dear … than in streets or villages."

 

For Niles Elliot Goldstein,

        the wilderness is anyplace on the edge:

                including a night in jail

                        and a year in Los Angeles without his girlfriend.

What he hasn't tolerated very well in life

        is the world of contemporary Judaism.

Chafing from the conventional demands of his short-lived job 

        as an assistant Rabbi in suburban New York, 

                Goldstein next met his need for adventure 

                        as a chaplain to undercover cops,

                                thankful for work that did not require him 

                                        to wear a necktie.

 

"Mainstream religion is in trouble and in transition,"

        Goldstein writes, 

                in a passage that is strikingly evocative of Emerson.

"Many Americans, especially younger ones,

        are turning away from the churches and synagogues

                of their parents and grandparents.

In the new millennium 

        they find little meaning in ancient liturgies

                and little power in unfamiliar rituals.

Services often seem formal and cold

Sermons put them to sleep.

Sometimes the whole institution of organized religion,

        with its outwardly arcane array 

                of practices, observances, and beliefs, 

                        seems like something from another planet.

But in postmodern America, 

        in a culture of unprecedented freedom and multiple options,

                God is no longer consigned to our classical houses of worship.

Most people today feel little discomfort 

        about exploring their spiritual identities

                outside of traditional venues and,

                        in a growing number of cases,

                                even outside of traditional faiths."

 

But Goldstein is committed to Judaism.

Looking for a way to make it relevant and immediate,

        he becomes the Rabbi of a cyber-synagogue,

                where users log on and discuss their faith in a chat room.

There are advantages to virtual religion.

"We never have to look for extra chairs to accommodate overflow crowds,"

        he points out.

The internet is another edgy place where God appears

        in fresh and updated forms,

                but Goldstein does not linger there long either.

 

Having had enough of the loneliness 

        that comes with wilderness of all kinds,        

                and having realized that his search 

                        favored "raw experience over human interactions,

                                [and] dramatic epiphanies over subtle moments of insight,"

                                        Goldstein decides to come away from the edge

                                                and find the center.

He realizes that the warmth of human contact,

        and the day to day experience of sharing the search with others,        

                offer a fulfillment he has not found out there –

                        rather, only after he has come inside.

He comes back to the synagogue,

        but this time it is one he has created himself.

In his latest adventure, 

        as Rabbi of a new congregation in Greenwich Village,

                he sees new possibilities in his own religious institution.

"I am beginning to see the sparks of divinity

        in the eyes of children

                and not only through the stars in the night sky," he writes.

"I am becoming humanized."

Humanized, perhaps, but not domesticated.

Goldstein rightly recognizes that human community

        is itself a frontier for him,

                so used to being out on the edge,

                        alienated and alone.

He is ready to learn the spiritual values of daily life,

        of relationships,

                of  the ordinary struggles of raising a family

                        or holding a job.

Something tells me he will.

 

What brings us all in from the outside

        is the same need for human contact,

                for relationship,

                        and for affirmation that life is an experience

                                we share,

                                        and we are not alone.

What coming inside this sanctuary gives us

        is one slant on our spiritual life:

                the slant that shows us how community

                        helps us grow and builds our faith.

It’s not better in here than out there,

        or the other way around –

                as long as this is a place

                        that widens experience, not narrows it,

                                and broadens our minds, not shrivels them.

 

Rabbi Goldstein says that human community is a frontier.

That is as true for us

        as it is for him.

As welcoming, warm and safe as we strive for our church to be,

we cannot predict what will come of our being together

        or what challenges we will face

                because we are part of it.

 

In the Arnold Lobel fable I told earlier,

        the crocodile becomes attached to the orderly, neat wallpaper

                in his bedroom.

The tidy rows of flowers delight him.

But when his wife coaxes him out of his room

        and into the garden,

                the real flowers – in their natural state,

                        not in tidy rows,

                                make him anxious and insecure.

He can’t wait to get back to the fake flowers on the wallpaper.

What that fable tells us

        is what Emerson and Goldstein each discovered,

                in their own way and time:

                        it is real life, with its spontaneity and challenge,

                                that brings about spiritual growth.

Any experience, if it becomes formal and routinized,

        if it ceases to provoke a response,

                if it elicits only safe and predictable feelings,

                        falls short of what we need to grow.

The experience we seek in church

        is the immediacy and intimacy of human community,

                structured just enough to be meaningful,

                        open enough for revelation.

 

Earlier in the service,

        I quoted Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams,

                who said, 

"Church is where we get to practice what it means to be human."

This is why we come here.

We may learn more about God

        when we gaze up at the night sky in the middle of the desert;

                but here is where we learn more about ourselves.

We may find spiritual exhilaration in the wilderness,

        aesthetic inspiration in the concert hall, 

                and transcendent pleasure in creature comforts,

                        but here we reflect on what it means to be human.

 

What does it take to be authentic and honest?

What is a good life: what does it look like?

How can we cope with our struggles and travails

        and celebrate our joys and accomplishments?

Where can we go to know 

        and be known for who we really are?

We can go anywhere and lead a spiritual life.

But here we can step into a community,

        with its own history and character,

                its story and its faith,

                        and learn, in more ways than we can imagine,

                                that we are not alone.

We can do that nowhere else but here, 

        among others,

                who greet us when we arrive

                        and miss us when we are gone.

And our lives fall into place – this place,

        where we practice what it means to be human.

Sources:
The Divinity School Address, by Ralph Waldo Emerson (published in any good Emerson anthology)
God at the Edge: Searching for the Divine in Uncomfortable and Unexpected Places, by Niles Elliot Goldstein (New York:Bell Tower, 1998)