"Holistic Unitarian Universalism"

READING:

“My particular version of the Unitarian Universalist way of religion exhorts us to live reasonably, intuitively, and compassionately during our one precious span of days and nights. Amplifying a phrase from the religious activist, Daniel Berrigan, ‘O God, send us mystics with hands.’ I would characterize Unitarian Universalist as free thinking mystics with hands.” (Tom Owen-Towle, Freethinkng Mystics With Hands, p.1)

SERRMON:

I begin by acknowledging my appreciation for the work of my friend and colleague, Rev. Tom Owen-Towle. The Reading for today is from Tom’s book, Free Thinking Mystics with Hands.” Tom Chose as title of the book a line from Daniel Berrigan, “O God send us mystics with hands.”

I confess that I have been thinking about what I call holistic Unitarian Universalism for some time. I have been either interim or substitute minister in 10 congregations. In each of those congregations I have observed some people who combine what educators call cognitive, affective and behavioral--head, heart and hands. In each of those congregations I have also observed some Unitarian Universalists who seem to latch onto one of the three with little if any regard for the other two.

Part of the failure of a holistic approach has to do with our UU concern for individual freedom. We respect and encourage freedom under our first principle, a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” However, freedom can easily become license. One of my favorite authors is Wallace Stegner. He has a great
line: “Trying to be human in an atmosphere of absolutely free choice is like trying to sharpen an ax on a cake of soap.” So, with an appropriate appreciation for Tom
Owen-Towle, and with the background of experience in UU Congregations small, medium and large size, I appeal today for a holistic approach to our free faith.

I begin with an appreciation for how our UU movement acknowledges and encourages free thinking. We are a thoughtful religion; a religion to be sure, but qualified by good thinking. The 4th UU principle encourages “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” In a culture which is too often mindless, I celebrate our encouragement to truth and meaning.

Someone recommended a book, Breakfast with Buddha which I recommend to you. In one section the author Roland Merullo tells about spending time watching television, as well as another section dealing with many radio talk shows.

His comments are an indictment of what appears to be a thoughtless, mindless culture:

“…Maybe there are, in fact, people so eager to see themselves on a television screen—the modern altar—that they will parade their own miseries in front of other people. …All this for the benefit of millions of other …Americans who have no greater purpose…than to sit and watch. And all of that for the ultimate benefit of the shareholders of the companies that make furniture polish, or diapers, or laundry soap, or pills to make you sleep better or have more energy or less anxiety, and who pay to keep the whole tawdry ball rolling. …” (Roland Merullo, Breakfast with Buddha, pl.136)

His concern is that these tawdry unrealistic reality shows are, in fact, a sad commentary on American culture. So in the midst of our culture, I salute people and congregations and religious movements who encourage thought.

We UUs can and should be justly proud that we encourage thought. In each of the 10 UU Congregations which I have served, I have been stimulated by people who gather for book study groups, or discussion groups, to engage with one another in responsible thinking. When I was here a few years ago, I enjoyed thinking with people in a couple of book study groups. We had lively, thoughtful discussions.

However, we might also want to be aware of some dangers of that emphasis on thinking. G. K. Chesterton put it succinctly, “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it down on something solid.” Just as I am encouraged by our UU emphasis on thinking, I am discouraged by what appears too often to be a kind of “taste test” of thought. Our “free and responsible search for truth” can easily become a kind of mindless wandering.

Another danger of free thinking is that sometimes we become locked into what may have become thoughtful positions which have degenerated into certitude. In his book, The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand describes the dangers of certitude:

“ …Certitude leads to violence…idealogues, dogmatists and bullies, people who think that their rightness justified them in imposing their rightness on anyone who does not happen to subscribe to their particular ideology, dogma or turf….” (Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club, p.162)

Somehow we need a reasonable balance in our reasoning. We do not want to be so open-minded that we are shallow, nor so close-minded that our thinking becomes dogmatic certitude. I mention, too briefly, one other danger of an over-emphasis on reason. It is the danger of thought becoming nothing more than belief rather than lifestyle.

Here’s what I mean, using the term “salvation.” Some people relate salvation only to belief; this is particularly true of evangelical Christians. However, they are hard-pressed to find that emphasis on belief in Scripture. The only time Jesus talked about salvation had to do not with belief, but with lifestyle. So far as we know, Jesus never talked about what is considered orthodox belief. But that’s grist for another sermon mill.

Just now, I salute and encourage reason in our UU movement, with the qualifying concerns I have raised. As I move on to the second element in a holistic faith, namely heart, or affect, I remember a wonderful statement from the late Forrest Church:

“…A sound reason knows its limitations. It suggests that beyond the rational lies a transrational realm. We enter it in our dreams; we enter it in moments of worship. We enter it in singing, when the tunes are good, even if the words are not. We enter it in lovemaking and dancing and stargazing. We break through to a transrational realm beyond knowing or naming.” (Forest Church, A Chosen Faith pp.162-163)

Just as reason or thought is celebrated in the 4th UU Principle, so our principles also celebrate the mystical or “heart” part of a holistic faith. The third UU principle says it: “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.”

I think we UUs have sometimes shied away from our hearts, neglecting the affective because we fear emotionalism. Some of us came from religious backgrounds which were long on emotion and short on thought. We’ve seen the dangers of heart without head, and we want no part of that. Right on. However we need to remember the difference between emotion and emotionalism.

One significant aspect of heart, of affective religion is Awe. You may remember Lilly Tomlin’s marvelous, “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” One of the characters is “Trudy the Baglady” who says:

“…On the way to the play we stopped to look at the stars. And as usual I felt in awe. And then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have to be in awe about something. Then I became even more awestruck at the thought that I was, in some small way, a part of that which I was in awe about. And this feeling went on and on. My space chums got a word for it: ‘awe infinitum.’"

If “Trudy the Baglady” is not your cup of tea, perhaps this from Immanuel Kant: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.” The Critique of Practical Reason, p.161-162)

One of the realities I’ve run into from several, maybe even many, Unitarian Universalist “thinkers” is that old saw, “Well, what is spirituality?” The short answer is spirituality is anything that is not “practical.” Spirituality is not getting a driver’s license, nor going to the grocery, nor washing clothes, although any one of those could have a “spiritual component.” Spirituality is more like awe, like love, those feelings, thoughts, impressions, subtle realties which cannot be proven empirically but which are part of human life.

In a UU Congregation I once served, there was a physicist who insisted one day, after the sermon, that he did not believe anything that could not be proved or measured. I knew he had been married to his wife for over 60 years, so I said, “Does that include your love for Irene?” I could almost see his mind working, and he responded, “Oh, I had not thought about that.”

I think one of the issues related to the affective or heart part of holistic Unitarian Universalism is our tendency to want to grab spirituality like we grab a beaker in the laboratory, or like we grab a cake we’ve just baked. Retired UU Minister, Bill Houff in his great book, Infinity In Your Hand,” says, “In our spiritual quest we need more than anything else to be gentle and patient. There is a Zen-like aspect to spiritual growth. We mustn’t push too hard.” (p.124)

A secular writer, not a UU Minister, Christine Bird, writing about her time in Iran, has some thoughts about spiritual introspection as she compares people in Iran with people in the United States:

“…Iranians are just as rabid consumers as we are—and some were before the Revolution, or still are in the privacy of their own houses. And in the privacy of our own homes, or in the dead of night, we Americans think about the larger issues, too. But this spiritual questing isn’t a valued part of our culture; it’s pushed out of sight, as something almost shameful, as we forge our way up the more tangible professional, consumer, and self-gratification ladders, denying introspection, denying darkness, denying death….” Christiane Bird, Neither East nor West: One Woman’s Journey through the Islamic Republic of Iran, p.384)

Forrest Church writes that religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and knowing we will die. While I’m touting books, I encourage you to read his personal testimony about dying, found in his book, Love and Death. The point just now is that holistic Unitarian Universalism will not be content with head alone, but will combine head and heart, cognitive and affective. “Well, why? Why should we combine head and heart?” That’s a good question, thank you for asking. I believe we do so in order to influence our hands.

I am talking about social action or social justice. I regret to say that in almost all of the UU congregations I have served, Social Action has been usually the concern of only a minority of people.

More often than not our UU congregations in general take the position that anyone who wants to do social action or work for social justice is free to do so, but we cannot seem to bring ourselves as corporate entities, as congregations, to be bothered.

One of the reasons is that we do not want to “rock the boat.” In one of his essays, the late Tony Judt says it best, “… (Nobody) likes to disturb the easy peace of received opinion.” (“The Problem of Evil in Postwar Europe,” The New York Review of Books, February 14, 2009, p.33) We are properly conscious that there are people of a variety of political and social opinions in most of our congregations. One of the men, now dead, in the UU Congregation in Laguna Beach was asked to give a credo statement. He began by saying, “I am a Republican. Is that okay?”

So one reason our hands have not been busy, certainly not as busy as our heads in UU Congregations is that we realize that there are varieties of opinions about a variety of social topics, so we opt for being careful. Another reason is that most of us are content to let, even to encourage, some social action by individuals, so long as nobody “speaks in the name of the congregation.”

While I was Interim Minister in Santa Barbara, our Social Action Committee adopted a strategy developed by Richard Gilbert and the First UU Congregation of Rochester, New York. If not in exact detail, we were generally accurate with that approach. Here’s how it worked:

Each year anyone and everyone in the congregation was invited to suggest some project for social action. Then a straw vote, or poll was taken to select the top two or sometimes three social action concerns. These were then adopted by the Social Action committee as the projects for that year. If someone wanted to do something else, fine; but the Committee led the Congregation in responding to the two or three identified projects.

One year, the congregation provided insights and lobbied the City Council to approve a resolution in favor of marriage equality for gays and lesbians. First we learned, then held a candlelight vigil and procession, concluding by celebrating the union of a gay couple and a lesbian couple. All this was done in the face of the overwhelming support in California for propositions against gay and lesbian equality.

Another year, the Social Action Committee and the UU Congregation worked to provide low-income housing for Santa Barbara. This was an important project which has benefited that entire city and community

My concern just now is that too often our UU congregations take a laissez faire approach to social action. While not spoken aloud, one can almost hear, “You go ahead if you want to, just don’t disturb the rest of us.” I am talking about corporate social action, remembering a great line from Rabbi Abraham Heschel: “In this life of ours the undirected goes astray; the haphazard becomes chaotic, and what is left to chance is abandoned.”

The hands part of a holistic Unitarian Universalism will be influenced by head and heart, and will find ways the corporate body—the congregation—can work for social justice and equity. I am talking about another of our UU Principles: “The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.” The problem with that principle is “world community” can easily become someone else’s responsibility. I would have preferred the principle to remind us that “world community” begins at home in San Diego and Santa Monica.

We can so easily be aware of “world community with peace, liberty and justice” somewhere else, in a kind of resignation: “Oh well, there’s nothing I can do!” mentality. Yes, that’s right. There’s not much, beyond writing to our Senators and Congressmen that we can do about peace and justice in the Middle East. However I’m sure there are opportunities for peace and justice, to say nothing of community in the cities and towns where we live.

I have been away from Santa Monica for five years, so I really do not know some of the issues you are facing here or in Westside Los Angeles. However, there are broader examples. I realized just the other day that I have remained silent in the face of almost overwhelming criticism about President Obama. Various groups, from the radical right to the radical left have “captured” media attention while many of us—I’ll personalize that.—While I have been silent. I have retreated, leaving the field of opinion to the most radical groups. I do not believe I can continue to sit on the sidelines while other groups attempt to write the political agenda for this nation. That is but one example of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all, that is close to home. I would bet if we thought about this for a few moments, each one of us could think of other examples of justice and equity where we could make a difference.

The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with instances when head, heart and hands came together to affect change. Here’s one, and even if the story is not factual history, the meaning, as Joseph Campbell reminds us, is timeless. I will set the scene: The Israelites were in captivity in Egypt. Moses was free. One day, according to the story, Moses was confronted with the conviction that his family and friends will never be free unless he leads them out of slavery. Moses’ head and heart are in the right place, but he hesitates to put his hands to work. Moses has as many excuses as I have. Finally, however, he went to work. He returned to Egypt and helped to free his people.

Now the story gets interesting not just for Moses but for the Israelites. As they were leaving, they found themselves at the edge of a “Reed Sea,” probably the wetlands of an estuary. Pharaoh’s army was closing in behind. With both head and heart they complained to Moses, who in turn, according to the story, complained to God. The response was, “Tell the Israelites to go forward.” There is a rabbinic Midrash which says that the waters only parted when the first Israelite stepped into the sea. Good thinking and heartfelt sensitivity are not enough without action.

The most dangerous thing we can do is dismiss that story as just another piece of unbelievable historic nonsense. I suggest another way. Let’s personalize the story. What Egypt keeps us in slavery? Perhaps it is the Egypt of head without heart and hands. Perhaps it is the Egypt, too frequently found in UU Congregations, of good thinking and heartfelt concern, but without action.

You can bet that the various seas of injustice and inequity and violence will not part until we UUs, perhaps joining forces with others, act as we put our good thinking and good hearts to influence our hands on behalf of justice. May it be so. Amen.