"A Faith for the Ages"

The most recent in a never-ending wave

        of unflattering characterizations of Baby Boomers

                appeared just a week or so ago in the newspaper.

Apparently the editors of the AARP magazine Modern Maturity,

        have decided that Baby Boomers will never subscribe

                to a publication titled with such a forthright description 

                        of our aging condition.

 

And we won't read something originally created for our parents. 

So we get a new magazine aimed directly at us,

        with a pleasantly ageless name, My Generation –

                and with an equally pleasant association

                        to the great rock 'n roll anthem by The Who.

Who said, we won't get fooled again?

 

We Baby Boomers,

        can't seem to escape these cynical interpretations

                of our motivations and character.

At best, we are live-for-today free spirits,

        unable to save for our retirement,

                let alone acknowledge that it's coming.

Despite our record numbers

        and our generational lock step 

                through every one of the passages of life,

                        we see ourselves as individualists.

We tend to distrust institutions 

        and the demands they make of us.

Religious organizations have had to create marketing strategies

        to reach us,

                though we have not rewarded their efforts

                        with our loyalty.

And by the time we Baby Boomers were raising the next generation,

        we had little faith to pass on to them,

                except perhaps our enthusiasm for experimentation

                        and novelty.

 

Along came Generation X, 

        with their own set of institutions to distrust – 

                especially the ones we created.

Looking, in their own way, 

        for what was authentic and lasting,

                they rejected the "anything goes" mentality

                        and open sensibility of their parents.

One Gen X religious writer, Nathan Humphries,

        says, "Xers' skin crawls when they meet boomers

                who water down the gospel …

                        that's the boomer idea of hospitality.

But that's not hospitality.

It says that people are ashamed of what they are."

 

Another Gen Xer, interviewed in Christian Century magazine,

        says she "didn't set foot in a church until she was 22.

Raised by 'aging hippies,'

        she saw just about every spiritual tradition but the church

                by the time she was in high school.

'My parents hung out with a Jewish [spiritual guide],

        got real serious into meditation,

                practiced Tai Chi,

went to a sweatlodge,

        had a Hindu guru for a while," she says.

"When [she] headed East to college,

        she wanted nothing to do with her parents' 'spiritual merry-go-round.'

'Their way just doesn't make any sense to me,'"

        she says.

"'The minute something seems tough or loses its thrill,

        they just switch.'"

Eventually she joined the church of her grandparents.

 

How could that young woman possibly understand

        that the freedom her parents sought

                came as a reaction to her grandparents'

unquestioning acceptance

                        of their faith and its conventions?

"We know that children often flee

        what their parents embraced,

                or embrace what their parents fled,"

                        observed the editors of Christian Century magazine.

"In the religious realm,

        we know that people who grow up in tightly knit,

                homogeneous religious communities are often the ones

                        who are most open to new formulations of faith..."

And so the generations vacillate,

        between tradition and self-expression,

                commitment and freedom.

 

I've been part of the Unitarian Universalist community all my life,

        long enough to make my own generalizations 

                about our generational differences.

Parents of Baby Boomers,

        influenced by World War II,

the death of God,

        and the potential of science,

                came into Unitarian Universalism 

                        in search of a religious humanism

                                that would be compatible with their experience and respectful of their intellect. 

The faith they attempted to hand down to their children the Boomers

        was a bracing, cerebral, activist sensibility.

Values and ideals prevailed,

        but spirituality was left largely untouched.

 

I remember well how little 

        this faith offered my adolescent Boomer self.

I couldn't wait to get my hands on yoga manuals

        and spent one spring observing Lent.

(I gave up my radio.)

When I discovered William James' classic text 

        "The Varieties of Religious Experience,"

                I realized that my yearnings were simply 

                        for the spiritual aspect of life,

                                an aspect my church experience had not addressed.

 

Though I remained within the Unitarian Universalist community,

        I also remember well how long it was 

                before personal experience and spirituality were accepted

                        and eventually celebrated among ourselves.

I credit the feminist movement, 

        and its Baby Boomer advocates,

                for bringing about that much needed transformation. 

I recognize, however, that even today 

        not everyone is comfortable with it.

Perhaps we Boomers tried to cover too broad a range,

        in our hunger for religious experience.

What works for us is largely incomprehensible

        to those who came before

                as well as those who come after.

Perhaps that's why they all make fun of us. 

 

The differences, however, are serious.

When a younger person tries to explain to me 

        what is missing from our faith,

                I hear new yearnings –

                        for God, 

                                for reverence,

                                        for structure,

                                                for tradition,

What one group embraces as openness

        another group critiques as lack of definition.

That tension poses a special challenge for Unitarian Universalists.

 

At a recent orientation for prospective church members,

        one thoughtful young man asked me,

                "How do you know you aren't just being wishy-washy?"

A good question.

That "watered down hospitality" 

        that stretches as far as we can humanly go

                to let everyone in –

                        what I see as the practice of inclusiveness –

                                can also look thin and weak.

We do need to be able to articulate where we stand, 

        and who we are,

                and what will last.

As a worship leader, I puzzle over these questions all the time.

We call our contemplative time "meditation," 

        not "prayer,"

                in an attempt to cover all the bases – 

                        and the biases –

                                represented here any given Sunday morning.

If I speak of God, some flinch;

        others light up.

I fear each choice of words ends up more like a marketing decision

        than an authentic expression of our faith.

But then, expressing the faith

        is not supposed to be easy.

We should think long and hard about what we say.

 

"Perhaps the only thing that can be said for sure,"

        observed the editors of Christian Century,

                "is that the transmitting of faith and values

                        from one generation to another is always complex,

                                full of paradoxes and ironies,

                                        fear and trembling.

It is never automatic.

If it were,

        it wouldn't be faith."

If we didn't have these differences,

        what need would we have

                for authentic expression, one to another?

And if we didn't have these differences,

        how could we tell how much we really have in common?

 

I could be wrong.

Some churches have taken a generational approach

to everything they do,

        providing a different style of worship for each age group.

At one church, the service for the Gen X group

        has loud music, 

                a "club-like feel," they say,

                        and the lights down low.

They meet on Sunday evenings.

The minister says they are "committed to carving out a place in

the church

        where each generation can experiment

                with how it interacts with God.

Each generation knows," she says,

        "that God is not simply going to repeat

                what he did in the generation before,

                        but do something new."

 

As valuable as it may be for people 

        to get together with those their own age,

                this idea that God is what comes through

                        the experience of difference and separateness

                                seems wrong to me.

Each generation may be different and separate

        and need to see itself as unique,

                but what we seek when we seek God

                        is an experience of transcendence,

                                something that goes beyond difference, separateness,

                                        and uniqueness,

                                                and puts us in touch with the eternal.

As the author of Ecclesiastes writes, 

        in reassuring words,

                "A generation goes and a generation comes,

                        but the earth remains forever.

What has been is what will be,

        and what has been done 

                is what will be done.

There is nothing new under the sun."

 

Few religious traditions are more vulnerable

        to the impact of generational differences than our own.

Open enough to be diverse,

        and to change,

                we can lose track of our unity if we're not careful.

And yet that experience of unity within difference

        is probably our highest value.

Most of us are willing to weather the ups and downs,

        the communication gaps,

                and the incompleteness of each generation's approach 

                        for the sake of being together.

We find unity and wholeness in the richness of community,

        not in one point of view over against another.

And we are willing to listen and to grow

        when each generation comes along

                with its yearning and its fresh demand

                        for faith.

 

If belonging to a faith community can teach us anything

        about generational differences,

                it ought to be this:

                        yes, we see great yawning chasms between us,

                                and no, they should not keep us apart.

These differences from one generation to the next

        are as old as the hills

                and likely to last as long as the earth does.

The foundation on which we build our faith

        is the one that reaches across the experience of separateness

                and brings us together,

                        and in that experience we glimpse

                                something of the eternal itself.

And when we are old enough to feel the eternal draw near,

        we want to feel that there is something more to life

                than our individual experience of it.

However characteristically we Baby Boomers approach –

        or deny –

                our old age, 

                        when the time comes we too want to be part 

                                of something greater than "my generation."      

And that is true, not only for my generation,

        but for all the generations,

                who learn each in their own time,

                        that we come and go,

                                but there is something that remains forever.            

We are part of the same larger reality

        that encompasses all ages, all people,

                a larger reality that has many different names

                        but nurtures each of us,

                                and never lets us be alone.

Sources:
This sermon is based on a series of articles in the November 8,2000 issue of Christian Century.