Author: Doug Slagle

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(c) Ann McCracken, The Gathering at Northern Hills, A Unitarian Universalist Community, All Rights Reserved

Listen to the message or read it:

(c) Doug Slagle, The Gathering at Northern Hills, A Unitarian Universalist Community, All Rights Reserved

I’m going to recite a few pairs of words with opposite meaning for which I’d like you to think of and then shout out, if you wish, the one word that represents a middle ground or middle meaning between the two contrasting words.  Pick just one word and not a phrase or sentence.  OK?  Here goes:  Name a word between black and white (grey).  Large and small (medium, middle).  Fast and slow (moderate).  Good and bad (okay).  Happy and sad (pensive).  Clean and dirty (smudged).  Calm and anxious (normal).

Did you notice that finding a middle ground word got more difficult with each pair I recited?  Did you also notice that most of the middle ground words might be characterized as boring?  They don’t describe anything that is exciting.  Indeed, few of us speak middle ground words very often because the English language has few of them, because middle meaning words ARE bland and because we tend to think in extremes.  For instance, if I do not eat anything until this evening, I’m likely to tell myself and others that “I’m starving.”  But that clearly will not literally be the case.  I also tend to think of myself as neither shy or outgoing.  But because there is no word for what exists in between, I struggle with describing my personality and, if forced, I will say I’m “reserved.”   But even that word does not describe the “in-betweeness” of who I am.  I’m neither an introvert or an extrovert.  I’m a mix of both.  I’m grey in that regard, but our cultural thinking and our language tells me I must choose one of the opposing labels.

Our choice to use dichotomous, black or white language leads many people, experts say, to think in extremes.  In today’s world, people are described as either good or bad, liberal or conservative, moral or immoral, religious or atheist, happy or sad.  In truth, however, few of us perfectly fit any one of those extremes.

And that is the problem with dichotomous language and dichotomous thinking.  When we adopt an extreme way of thought, that everything is either good or bad, right or wrong, holy or unholy, we close our minds to the complexities of life.  We believe in absolutes and not in nuance.  We become rigid, uncompromising and lacking in empathy for those who are opposite from what we are.  And, as history tells us, that can lead to hatreds, prejudices, and violence.

As we begin a new year, it seems as if our nation and our world are becoming increasingly polarized.  Indeed, as I noted, feeling and thinking in the middle on many issues is not exciting and rarely initiates passion.  In politics, religion, and everyday life situations, the extremes seem to be the only choice.  But, as I often say, paraphrasing Gandhi, we can’t change the world unless we first become the change we wish to see.

While many religious people claim to have absolute knowledge supporting their beliefs, the reality is such that all spiritual beliefs exist within a so-called grey zone between fact and myth.  A religious person might say to me, “Prove that God does NOT exist!”  I can’t do that in a way that uses verifiable evidence.  It is impossible to prove a negative.  But I can just as easily ask this person, “Prove that God DOES exist!”  Once again, the task is impossible using evidenced based facts.  One can only employ beliefs and interpretations to talk about whether or not God exists.

Even the Bible admits as much.  The New Testament book of Hebrews says that, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  In other words, faith – not fact – comprises all the things we cannot see, touch, hear or empirically prove.  But they are often things we nevertheless yearn for and desire.  We can’t see and touch a universal power of love, or God if that is your belief, but we may hope that such a power exists.   And it is in hope that faith resides – not in certainty.  Within hope lies much of our spirituality – the hope that prays for peace, the hope that sees the dignity of every person, and the hope that love will one day conquer hate.  In this regard, faith as an expression of hope is a beautiful sentiment to hold but it is something that can never be proven.

That perfectly states the grey zone of spirituality that Unitarian Universalism embraces.  While we explore all that might be true in the universe, we have no evidence to show us that any specific religious belief is the right one.  We humbly admit that we have no answers, only questions, and so we open ourselves to consider the merits of all faiths and all spiritual prophets – knowing that each one has worthy things to teach us.

Our critics tell us, however, that we believe in nothing, that we are boring, lack passion and are much like the color grey.  I assert, however, that we do believe in exciting values such as human tolerance, humility, cooperation, and spiritually adventurous thinking.  We offer the challenge to explore a grey zone richness of many beliefs and many historic prophets: the selflessness of Buddha, the devotion of Muhammad, the love of Jesus, the faith of Abraham, or the peace of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

What we as Unitarians spiritually stand against is absolutism and fundamentalism.  While any religion might argue their faith demands loyalty to its beliefs, almost all religions nevertheless embody grey thinking.  Christianity and Judaism are full of grey area teachings that are practiced with reasoned interpretation.  Indeed, Christianity itself is a grey zone belief with its claim to be a monotheistic, one God religion.  The Bible describes Jesus as God praying to God the Father, and being anointed by God the spirit.  Did Jesus therefore pray to himself?  Was he anointed by himself?  Can God be one while also being three?  Christians use a grey zone argument – “yes, God is one, BUT(!)…..god is also three.”   This seeming paradox was the reason why Unitarians split from Christianity.  The Trinity is a grey zone concept that contradicts for us, Jews, Muslims and many others the principle that there is only one force, power or god in the universe.

Furthermore, the Bible says that adultery is wrong but it also describes several men who marry multiple wives.  Is that a grey zone solution to adultery – to marry any person with whom you are intimate?  The Bible praises Abraham, the father of Judaism, for having sex with his servant Hagar since his wife Sarah could not conceive a child.  Was Abraham an adulterer?  It can be argued he was.  Jesus lovingly forgave the woman caught in adultery even though the men standing in judgement against her were rightly applying Jewish law – the penalty for adultery was stoning to death.  Which is right – Jesus or verses in the Bible saying adultery deserves stoning?

The Ten Commandments demand that believers honor the sabbath as a day of rest and no work.  But Jesus disobeyed that commandment when he harvested grain to feed his hungry followers.  As he said, laws were made to help people, not enslave them.  The ethic of mercy must predominate.  Jews today still debate what constitutes work on the sabbath.  Cooking is seen as work but what about simply turning on the oven to heat an already cooked meal?  Is that work?  Many Orthodox Jews heatedly debate the issue.

The Bible says we are not to kill others but it is also full of commands from God to ancient Jews to kill unbelievers.  Christians often support wars against our enemies even though Jesus said we are to love our enemies.  Many Christians support capital punishment but oppose abortion.  They use grey zone arguments in both instances to favor killing in order to prevent greater killing.

The Koran supports grey zone morality by telling Muslims that mercy and justice must supersede all acts of piety like prayer – even though five prayers a day is one of the primary pillars or commandments of Islam.

What we find in most religions are countless grey zone stories and examples.  It is nearly impossible to follow any religious teaching to the letter of what it says.  One must use grey zone reason and interpretation to move beyond literal meaning and find the underlying motivation of the teaching.  That’s why Jesus condemned hypocrites – those who follow the letter of a teaching but not the core value.  If you give money to charity, he taught, do it quietly or anonymously and not with a desire to have your name and wealth advertised.  If that is your motivation, then you have not really given anything.  You’ve simply paid for your ego to be boosted.

This idea of moving beyond polarized and extreme thinking must hold true in all parts of our lives.  I love how this congregation voted for a new name that is perhaps a mouthful and likely not as exciting or fresh as a totally new name.  But I believe we voted in a way that saw the grey zone of the issue – what is best for our unity and what is best for honoring our past while moving into the future.  Some may say we compromised by combining two former names.  I believe we instead cooperated and united.  And that impulse to unite instead of divide is the true benefit of grey zone thinking.

Ultimately, I advocate not compromise – but collaboration.  There are three ways to find a solution to any disagreement.   One side can dominate and thus win the debate.  Or, both sides can compromise, give up some of their demands and reach a conclusion where neither side wins.  Some might say both sides lose.  Or, the third way, which I promote, is to cooperate by coming together to listen, gently discuss, find common ground and reach a decision that includes the desires of both sides.  That is a win-win outcome.  By working together to find the core value each side supports, anger and animosity are eliminated.   Goodwill and love are achieved.

As an example, I offer collaboration as a solution to the debate over abortion.  Each side of this polarized issue asserts that its way is the most moral.  But what is the underlying value for each side?  I believe it is a shared value that there be no unwanted children.  Might both sides figure out cooperative strategies to promote that ideal – to provide free reproductive education, to provide free contraception, to provide young families with free childcare, etc, etc?  In other words, lets stop screaming at each other across an emotional and polarized divide we will never bridge and instead discover that all of us care about children and insuring that all are wanted.  Let’s do all we can to promote what is, I believe, a grey zone ideal.

This way of approaching a problem, to collaborate and find common ground between two polar opposites, is one we can follow in all parts of our lives – in our marriages and partnerships, with our children, at our workplaces, and here at GNH.  I particularly love that in the seven months since a joint Board of Trustees began overseeing work here, it has held only one vote in all of its meetings – and that was a mere formality since every Trustee had already agreed on that issue.  Our Board has operated by consensus.  It talks out problems, listens to concerns of each Trustee and then finds a solution that all accept.  This may seem like a simple thing but it is actually quite beautiful.  I encourage us to continue building within our spiritual community a cooperative and unifying vision we seek for the world.

The Buddha said, “Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.”  Let us continue in the new year to apply his teaching and boldly use reason and not polarized emotion to guide our thinking.  Let us work to eliminate dichotomous descriptions, when possible, from how we label others: Muslims are not evil, Christians are not hypocritical, Unitarians are not unholy, conservatives are not heartless, liberals are not spendthrift.   People are all so much more than extreme descriptions.  We are each complex, diverse, and nuanced.  Let us listen to one another, let us disagree but never be disagreeable, let us seek common ground, let us cooperate so that everybody wins.  May I, may we, willingly embrace living our lives within a grey zone of humility, gentleness and empathy for all.

I wish you much 2016 peace and joy!

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

The Gathering is at an historic crossroad – obviously!  What we as a congregation decide next week – whether to approve or deny a merger – will define our future.  I have no illusions that no matter what happens next Sunday, our spiritual home has been and will be changed.

I took a look this past week at theories on why almost every person resists change.  While I cannot peer into all of your hearts and minds, I’ve tried to discern, as a result of my reading, some of the questions we might have  about the potential change we face.  I’ve condensed them into three areas of concern.

First, I believe many of us are uncertain about our future.  We have no clear idea what the experience will be like in a new and merged church.  Further, we have no experience working with Northern Hills members and thus we have no bonds of trust with them – and that is not to say we distrust them.  Ultimately, I summarize this first concern many of us have in one sentence: Our concerns about an uncertain future might outweigh our concerns about remaining the same.

Second, many of us are concerned about the loss of our culture, our way of doing things, and our history.  We sense the end of an era that many of us have worked so hard and given so much to achieve.  We are loyal to all that the Gathering embodies and it is difficult for any of us to forsake that.  Ultimately, we have concerns about a loss of the Gathering ethos, spirit and identity.

Third, we have a natural and healthy skepticism about any change.  We are an intelligent group of people who do not jump on any passing opportunity for the mere fun or emotional pull of it.

To address the first concern, I deeply understand it.  None of us are able to predict the future even though we often spend so much time worrying about it.  Keith and I occasionally experience bouts of insomnia and the primary cause is that at night, alone in bed, our minds too often focus on worries about the future and possible negative outcomes to issues we face.

This fear speaks to a primary spiritual goal for any person – how do we find peace of mind and of soul such that we are able to lead happy and fulfilled lives?  Fear of the unknown and of change comes from our ultimate fear of death.  And, for us, a merge may seem much like a death.  If we vote next Sunday for a merge, some of us believe we will be voting for the death of the Gathering.

A mitigating factor for this worry about the unknown is to have trust in those who will implement change.  Hopefully, you have some trust in me and you know my style of ministry.  That might reassure you that at least there will be a level of continuity in how a new church will be Pastored.

Added to that mix, however, is the unknown factor of Northern Hills members and how they will interact with us in managing the new church.  Will they be fair, will they be cooperative, will they be open to more informality, will they be caring and friendly?

Fear of the unknown is natural to the human species.  As we know, the only thing certain about life is that it is uncertain.  So, in order to find peace, we must come to terms with changes we face everyday.  To echo the famous serenity prayer, we ask for the peace of mind to accept the things we cannot control, the courage to change the things we can, and most importantly, the WISDOM to know the difference.

Change for the Gathering, like all things in life, is inevitable.  Even if  we hope to stay the same, that is not possible.  Staying the same is simply choosing to change in a way that is less sudden.

By choosing to stay the same, we will change.  We see forces around us in Over-the-Rhine that will force us to change – high rents and a changing neighborhood.  We can see a change in the core group of our membership.  The average age of our congregation is getting older and that brings with it issues and changes in personal lives that affect us as a whole.

In order to apply the serenity prayer, we must find the peace to accept the forces we cannot control – like committed members who pass away, move to another city or, in some cases, choose stop attending here.  But, as the prayer goes, we must have the courage to change the things we can control – like growing the size of our congregation.  A merge with another like minded church is simply one way for us to change for the better.  It is not the only way to address this problem nor is it an act of desperation.  Instead, it is a wise and prudent option – an opportunity for us to change that was not sought by us but which has enough merit that we would have been foolish not to consider it.

Fear of the unknown is also fed, as I said earlier, by our healthy lack of trust in how Northern Hills members will work with us.  They have been nothing but friendly and welcoming but, we have only nine months of experience with them.  They have only nine months of experience with us and so their level of trust toward us is also limited.  Nevertheless, I hope most of us have had some level of experience in dealing with at least one Northern Hills member.  I believe most of those experiences have been positive.

Folks at Northern Hills are much like us – a small group of people who are loyal to their church, what it stands for and how it encourages them to act according to their spiritual beliefs – as people who are kind, considerate, passionate, and compassionate.

In this regard, I ask you to trust me in my belief that we can trust them.  I ask for your trust based on my five and a half years as your Pastor and who I am as a person.  I also ask you to trust my many experiences with them.  Because of the nature of my work, I am the one Gathering person who has interacted with almost every Northern Hills member.  I’ve worked closely with their leaders and volunteers.  I know most of their names.  I’ve counseled a few, worked with many, and socialized with many.  Surprisingly or not, I find their congregation is similar to our own.  They have a committed core of members who do a lot, they have their peacemakers, their few cranky people, their slightly eccentric personalities.  Overall, they are kind-hearted people who are not perfect but, like us, want to love fellow members and love outsiders.

If I did not believe this, if I thought Northern Hills members, as a whole. had attitudes of control, arrogance, anger and unfriendliness, I would NOT endorse a merger.  I’ve seen congregations like that.  I do not want to work for people who do not sincerely try to apply spiritual values and ethics in their behavior.  They have been gracious and kind to me as I’ve seen them be to each of you.  And we have acted toward them in the same manner.   They want to work as equals with us in forming and governing a new church.

I want to also address a second concern many of us have about the loss of ourselves, our culture, our history and identity.  What we have at the Gathering is something of a paradise.  We are a mostly gentle and caring community.  There are no factions and very little gossip or behind the scenes backbiting.  Engaging in congregation intrigue is not who we are as a beloved community.  We have few committees.  Members are free to dig in and do the work that is needed to keep us running.  Overall, you are a group that has treated its two Pastors with respect and kindness.  I will also add, as humbly as I can, the Gathering has been fortunate to have had two good ministers who were liked by most.  As Northern Hills can attest, that is not always the case.

So, I understand Ginny Patterson’s lament about sadness in her heart at the loss of our culture.  The culture at Northern Hills is different.  While their people, as I said, are very similar to us in demeanor and spirituality, they run their church based on their own history and traditions.  It is natural to fear that their culture will swallow ours up.

This last week, Jennelle Murray and Jack Brennan both worked to make sure Northern Hills had access to an in depth history of the Gathering’s founding – one that Jack wrote for our ten year anniversary.  Many at Northern Hills were eager to understand that history so they can better understand us.

My point is this: it took Jennelle and Jack to proactively work to make sure a piece of our culture was understood by them.  That leads me back to the serenity prayer.  We must have the courage to change the things we can control.  We will have the ability to affect and change the culture in a new congregation – if each person is willing to gently speak up, volunteer, and help manage it.  The success of a merger with NHF will depend on two questions: do we simply allow our Gathering identity to be swallowed up, or will we have the courage and the willingness to make sure we are, instead, equally blended?

To insure the continuity of our culture, it will take the work of every sincere and good hearted Gathering member – to serve in outreach, to serve as leaders, to serve on Sundays, to be actively involved.  If we do these things, I am confident a Gathering spirit, ethos, kindness and informality will be infused within a new culture.  If the Gathering has meant anything to you, if your work and your contributions have meant anything, then I hope you will boldly embrace this opportunity to change us in a way that insures continuity of all that the Gathering has been and still is.

An overriding principle is at work here.  The Gathering and Northern Hills have a chance to be the kind of change we say we want to see in the world.  Peoples all over the world express hate, anger, jealousy and violence – verbal and physical – toward one another – mostly based on perceived differences.  But we, two congregations with different cultures and practices, can now live out what it is that we say we believe.  We can be proud of our traditions and hold on to them, while honoring and welcoming those of others.  We can be cooperative, understanding, listening, loving, humble, gentle and compromising – all the ways of living that we hold dear.

That is what our Gathering defining artwork portrays – many prophets all dancing together in celebration of universal truths – that people are good, that we all seek inner peace and happiness, that the one abiding way to live – one that all religions agree on – is the Golden Rule to love all others at least as much as we love ourselves.

Unitarians and the people of Northern Hills believe the same.  People of all religions and spiritual backgrounds are welcome to come and explore their PERSONAL journey of faith, or no faith.  Sunday services, instead of celebrating and speaking about one narrow religion, celebrate a universal spirituality of reason and love that ALL people, whether they be Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist or Hindu, can accept and practice.  While we as individuals may believe in one particular faith or no faith, we as a community have always lived out, whether we knew it or not, Unitarian Universalist ideals.  Who among us disagrees with the following from UU 7 Principles:

“We believe in a direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces that create and uphold life.  We believe in the words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.  Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision.” 

Third, and finally, I come to the point about having a healthy skepticism for anything new.  We are all intelligent and educated people.  We do not operate on emotion.  We deeply think about many things.  And a merger requires no less of us.

A merger with Northern Hills has been wisely examined by most of us.  Most of us have attended there many times.  We’ve had social events with them.  Some of us have actively worked with them on events, Sunday services or outreach.  We have the opportunity to work as partners with a congregation that appreciates us, wants to unite with us and is willing to join us as equals.

As Gatherers, we are not timid creatures who choose the status quo.  From its first moments as a congregation, when Steve and others bravely defied centuries of religious tradition, the Gathering embraced change.  Implicitly, the Gathering rejected old forms of faith and moved toward a spirituality of compassion and love for all people – no matter who they are.  The Gathering essentially proclaimed, “If there is a God, she is one of love.  If there is one universal Truth, it is one that demands constant questioning and not blind obedience to a single belief system.”

Our spirituality is one that sings and dances to the gentleness and love of Jesus, the passion of Muhammad, the tradition of Abraham, the unity of Krishna, the selflessness of Buddha, the mysterious force of goodness that permeates our universe.  We will not die if we merge.  We will, instead, insure that our Gathering spirituality and identity goes forward.

 

To conclude, let us pray:

To the God or no God, each of our own understanding, Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  We pray that our collective wisdom, and our mutual love for one another, be expressed next Sunday, May 17th, 2015.

 

 

To download and listen to audio of the two-part message, please click here.  To read the messages, please see below.

 

Part I of the two part message: By Tom Lottman

As I look out today on the two congregations of Northern Hills UU Fellowship and The Gathering, I see folks who I know well and for a long time, and folks I barely know at all.  However, having had the opportunity to watch both congregations interact with their members and with each other, I am confident that each congregation is truly a beloved community.  The term, beloved community was first coined early in the 20^th century by the Philosopher/Theologian Josiah Royce, but was most popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a community of good will, a community infused with compassion for all.

I am very grateful to have the opportunity to “tag team” with Rev. Doug in preparing and presenting today’s message.  It was a gift to spend time with Doug talking about these issues and, as an aside, it underscored my personal profound sense of hope and optimism for the extraordinary spiritual community that can emerge from the merger of our two congregations, our two beloved communities.  Ours is a two-fold message today: first, a look at how compassion emerges within each of us and within our beloved communities, and secondly, Rev. Doug will speak to why compassionate outreach is so important for a church community.

As a couple of you know, I have a contract to write a book on what developmental science has to say about the emergence of character strengths in young children.  So I have done a lot of research and thinking about how empathy and compassion develop not just in children, but in adults as well.  And I want to condense this work into two essential ideas: 1) What in beloved communities fosters compassion?; and 2) As a result, what happens inside us that draws us to compassionate caring and social justice?

For me, beloved communities, infused with compassion, develop when the group meets four essential needs of its members: the needs for belonging, becoming, believing and “beloving”.   And for each of these core needs, its fulfillment engages our heads, our hearts, and our hands.  It changes how we think, how we feel and how we act.

Let’s take belonging.  Families and church communities are good at this.  I suspect that if we each rated our congregations for how well they meet belonging, we’d probably score a ten.  It’s clear that a sense of belonging is one of the great benefits we gain from our membership at NHF or The Gathering.  The feeling of connection to others, acceptance by others, and genuinely being valued by others meets a fundamental human need that transcends almost all others.  Take a moment and look around you.  Truly bring your awareness to the connections you have with so many of the people in these seats.  It may not be a deep relationship with each person, but perhaps at least a sense of the familiar, a sense of Yeah, this person is a fixture here, they belong here.  Undoubtedly we have belonging in abundance in our congregations.  However, there’s a reason why belonging isn’t enough to generate and sustain compassion.  Belonging feels good, feels comfortable, but it can become too comfortable.  You see, belonging implies not only rules for inclusion but also rules for exclusion.  Not only for “who belongs here” but also for “who doesn’t belong here.”  We can be seduced into wrapping ourselves in the warm blanket of belonging and be content to forgo the need to change, the need to grow.  We get comfortably “stuck” in where we are and with who we are.  While belonging begets caring, by itself it does not sustain caring.

A true beloved community creates not only the enduring comfort of “belonging to” something, but also the periodic discomfort of “be longing” for something. It challenges us to grow.  The “longing for” something is at the cusp of belonging and becoming.  Whether it’s a family or church, a beloved community nurtures our drive to become, to be more than who we were, to connect to a broader world from that which we’ve come.  The other day when I was leaving for work, Ann looked at me and motioned to me to come over.  She reached to brush away what she thought was a crumb on my sweater that turned out to be a hole.  It didn’t help that some extra pounds around my middle stretched the sweater and exaggerated the hole. I said that I really didn’t mind the hole and that I liked the sweater even though it no longer fit right.  Without saying a word, she gave me that look that said, “Sometimes a sweater like everything we try to hold on to wears out or we outgrow it.  It’s time to consider getting a new sweater.”  So too, there are ideas that wear out or that we outgrow and we need the people who love us to encourage us to try on new ideas and beliefs.  So let this beloved community support you in examining old ideas for holes, for seeing if old beliefs still fit.

Like the secure attachment of a toddler to a parent gives the child the courage to explore and broaden her world, so to, the attachment to a beloved community gives us the confidence to broaden our view of what it means to be human, to make us curious to discover and celebrate the diversity of people with whom we share a neighborhood, a country, a world.  Compassion begets more compassion.

Let’s take a look at believing.  I don’t mean belief in a religious sense, but I do mean it in a sense of the profound.  A beloved community asks us to truly appreciate the mystery and also the good inherent in humanity.  A book club engages the head.  A social club engages the heart.  And a work team engages the hand.  A beloved spiritual community engages the head, the heart and hands around issues of ultimate concern.  What does it mean to be human?  What does it mean to lead a full life?  What does it mean to help others lead a full life?  A beloved spiritual community asks us to confront our beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world in general.  What do we think, feel, say and do when we reflect on the natural disaster in Nepal and the man-made tragedy in Baltimore?  Willingness to deeply consider our beliefs about what it means to be human paves the way to compassion.

And finally “Be-loving” begins at home.  You’ve probably heard about those contests where you win the chance to race up and down supermarket aisles for three minutes to put as much as you can grab into your shopping cart.  Well, this message is kind of like zooming up and down the aisles of compassion with the hope that you will grab something you want along the way.  And if I can suggest just one “in the cart” message today it is that authentic compassion for others requires true compassion for myself.  So what does it mean to have self-compassion?  The starting point of Buddhist teaching is that suffering is inevitable, or as the more simplified non-Buddhist bumper sticker proclaims, “Excrement Happens”.  Perhaps you have seen that TV commercial by an insurance company that have people first list the good things that happened to them last year on blue cards and the bad thing on yellow cards.  Then they asked them to post what they think would happen in the future.   The past was an even mixture of good and bad while the future expectations were predominately good. So, even the TV commercial confirms the truism of the bumper sticker.

The core teaching of the Buddha, confirmed by modern science is that it is not the suffering or lack of suffering that makes us sad or happy, but rather what we tell ourselves about our inevitable suffering.  If we confront our suffering with self-blame or with deep resentment, if that is the king of conversation we have with ourselves about our suffering, anxiety and depression follows.  If on the other hand, we are gentle with ourselves, if we truly accept all parts of us; the good, the bad and the ugly, we can move past our suffering to greater grow and greater love.

Dr. Kristin Neff is one of the leading thinkers about self-compassion.  She suggests that self-compassion consists of three components: Self-kindness: being gentle and understanding with yourself when you experience suffering; Common humanity: realizing that you’re not alone in your struggles.  When we are struggling we feel isolated.  We think we’re the only ones that screwed up, or have been rejected.  The key message of self-compassion is the realization that these very struggles are a shared experience of what it means to be human; Mindfulness: Observing life as it is without being judgmental of or discounting our feelings and experiences.

So when we come together in this shared place, when we come together as a beloved community, let’s come with an intention to let go, let in, let be.  Let’s let go of our old worn out or “holey” ideas, let in a desire to know and appreciate the perspectives of others, and let be every aspect of ourselves, accepting ourselves in our shared struggles.  That’s the way to compassion.  The Dalai Lama simply said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion; if you want to be happy, practice compassion.”  Now Doug will talk about the importance of compassion and the practice of social justice work in a church community.

 

Part II of the two part message, by Rev. Doug Slagle, (c) All Rights Reserved

 

I love what Tom just shared with us.  I hope you might read or listen to his message again online – especially how it applies to each of us as individuals.

I want to focus my part of the message on us as one body – why compassion is so essential for our collective whole – as either Northern Hills, the Gathering, or, hopefully, as a newly merged church.

 

Myra Oliver is a young Cincinnati woman who found herself homeless and living on the streets at the age of seventeen – kicked out of her home by her mom.  Two years later, she was still living on the streets – but she had recently given birth to a baby girl.  Somehow, Myra was able to keep her child and still be homeless.  She came to the attention of Lighthouse Youth Services who then began a months long process to win Myra’s trust so they could get her off the streets.

Lighthouse found no homeless shelter able to house a mother and infant together but, fortunately, case workers did find temporary foster care for the baby.  This was so Myra could enter the Lighthouse Sheakley Center – a homeless shelter for young adults.  The Gathering has supported Sheakley over the past five years by buying, preparing and serving lunches to its young adults, by assembling thousands of personal hygiene kits for them, and by supporting self-sufficiency classes that get homeless youth into homes and jobs.

Myra applied herself at Sheakley by working within its many programs – twice a day self-sufficiency classes, job training, resume writing and parenting courses.  After a time spent at Sheakley, Myra was transitioned into an apartment last September where she was reunited with her daughter.  She found child care for her baby and a job.  She now is successfully raising her daughter, working and applying to community college.

Myra’s is just one story among many from the Sheakley homeless shelter.   From a heroin addicted, homeless prostitute who was able to conquer addiction, graduate from college and work as a social worker, to an African-American young man who recently passed the Cincinnati Police exam and entered their training academy – many homeless young adults have been helped by the Lighthouse Sheakley Center and by the Gathering.

The Gathering has also supported, with money and hands on work, Faces without Places, an organization that provides assistance to elementary age homeless children.  They run a free camp for a hundred homeless kids every summer in addition to year-round help in the form of tutoring, uniforms, school supplies, winter coats and food.  One mom of six young children recently related the impact Faces has had on her family.  She had dropped out of school after the eighth grade but now, even though her family lives in a shelter, her children are receiving the kind of educational support she never had.  Those who have helped her family, she says, have saved seven lives.

Six years ago, after I started as Pastor at the Gathering, the church began an intensive effort to move beyond the four walls of its building to directly serve needs in our the community.  The Gathering, like Northern Hills, provides financial assistance to many organizations but the bulk of the Gathering’s assistance to others comes with hands on work by our members to feed, clothe, educate, support, nurture and assist homeless youth.

But the Gathering is doing no more than what is expected of it – or any church.  As Tom related four key areas in the development of a beloved community, compassionate hands on service to others is a vital function.  Indeed, it is a defining function.  From a spiritual perspective, our purpose as individuals is to seek the kind of knowledge and experience that take us beyond ego and self-interest – and into a spiritual realm.  And the same is true of churches.

This divine realm is a metaphorical place, a state of mind and being that we reach as we fulfill our purpose for existence – to serve others at least as much as we serve ourselves.  While some might look to the heavens for a theological God to serve humanity, I believe we must look instead here on earth.  It is we, as people, who have the opportunity to act as little ‘g’ gods and goddesses to build a version of heaven on earth – to heal the brokenhearted, bind up the wounded, feed the hungry and strengthen the weak.

And the existential purpose of churches is to help us achieve these things.  Only in community are we, as individuals, exponentially enabled to learn and grow in our abilities to serve, be change agents, and to act as little ‘g’ gods and goddesses.  Churches are essentially places of empowerment.  They equip us to be human gods to our families, to our fellow members and, most importantly, to those with whom we have nothing in common.  In doing so, we move into a spiritual realm beyond mind and body – an interconnected sacred space of unconditional love, understanding and compassion.  Churches and spiritual organizations are some of the few institutions that make this happen.  They train us in how to humbly love ourselves so that we can then in turn selflessly love and serve others.   And it is such selflessness that fundamentally defines who we are and the kind of life legacy we will leave behind.

The many lives the Gathering has touched in its outreach, the many lives Northern Hills has touched, they are symbolically like the pebbles we drop here in a bowl of water.  Each life we help to change for the better is a sacred life – a life that then touches other lives for good.  One life, one pebble, dropped into the pond of creation sends out ripples of influence far into the future.  From a former addict and sex worker, to a homeless young man soon to be a police officer, to the children of a mom who never went to high school, to thousands of hungry children across our community, we impact people and generations we will never know.  In doing so, we touch eternity, we touch the divine, we touch the face of God.

As the Unitarian hero Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, “The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have life make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”  In this regard, Emerson makes Tom’s and my point.  An abundant life is not one of happiness as it might superficially be defined – one of indulging sensory pleasures.  An abundant life is, instead, a fulfilled life.  A life of meaning.  A life of peace that is at one with the wider universe precisely because it has been integrated into it.  And that integration comes only from serving ALL life – not just one’s own.

We, as a beloved community, must take Emerson’s words to heart.  Our community comprises many individuals but it is one body – one force of love and compassion.  As we focus that love inward to strengthen our own spirits, it must be reflected back out into our neighborhoods to nourish and strengthen them.  That’s why we are here.  That’s why we attend on Sundays, volunteer, give and now contemplate a merger.  It’s not for me, it’s not for you.  We do all of this for our ONE HUMAN FAMILY.

A beloved community is never judgmental.  It never imposes expectations or guilt on its members for not serving.  Instead, it inspires members.  It encourages them by word and example.  A beloved community is a transformed place of greater happiness, kindness, productivity and interconnection.  This kind of church does not seek bigger buildings, thousands of members or millions of dollars.  In every aspect of its being, it looks beyond its walls, it humbly serves a broken world, it quietly but persistently loves the unloved, the outcast, the broken, the helpless.  As for me, as for Tom, as for all of us, we will be a community that grows in belonging, becoming, believing and, most importantly, in “beloving”.

 

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, All Rights Reserved

 

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I have shared with you in the past the challenge I often experience when I consider my current work schedule.  I have a few friends in Florida regularly ask me why I continue my current practice of returning to Cincinnati to work, when I could stay in Florida, find employment there for equal take home pay, and supposedly be happier.  I should choose, they tell me, to pursue happiness in a place that offers many of the things I enjoy in life.

These friends of mine, however, cannot understand the response I give them – that I don’t currently want to change the structure of my life.  While stress from work, the challenges of a back and forth schedule and the costs associated with working here are not easy, I find significant fulfillment and satisfaction in what I do as a minister.  Being happy, for me, goes beyond my physical well-being.  I want to feel that my life serves a greater purpose than just my own happiness.

I relate this anecdote not to solicit your sympathy, but in order to offer an illustration that sets up my message on the pursuit of happiness.  I’ve focused this month in my three messages on the relationship between suffering and happiness – and most importantly, in how they help define our life purpose and legacy.  What is it that truly makes us happy?  How do our reasoning minds, or our emotions, figure in our happiness?  Reason tells me I would be happier living and working in a place that gives me enjoyment.  But my feelings of compassion for others, gratitude for all I’ve been given and a personal desire for meaning lead – these lead me to a different conclusion.  They call me to serve others at least as much as I do myself.

Rational people, however, do not allow emotion and heart impulses to govern their actions.  Reason seems to tell us that personal happiness ought to be our primary purpose in life.  If stress, extra expenses and cold weather cause me distress, I should reasonably eliminate them and choose another way to live.  But such a choice would ignore my feelings on the matter.  I want to help change the world for the better.  I want to connect with and relate to other people.   These are things that make me feel useful, purposeful and, as a result, happy.

Ayn Rand, and her book Atlas Shrugged, however, support my head analysis of how I should live – that I should pursue my happiness above all else.  The book has achieved new fame in recent years – mostly among thoughtful and philosophical conservatives.  Indeed, Rand’s  book and her philosophy are more popular now than they were in 1957 when the book was first published.  While the book is fictional, its intent is to present a very clear message.

It details a future where America is the only non-dictatorial nation.   Governments around the world have all asserted that the collective good is greater than individual good – that people morally owe one another their service, instead of immorally serving themselves.  All nations in Rand’s fictitious world, with the exception of America, have adopted Marxist governments and economies.

Atlas Shrugged depicts an America that is nevertheless sliding toward Communism.  One day, in Rand’s story, America finds itself in crisis – all of the innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors and business owners have vanished.  Those who make America run and prosper are gone.  And America becomes a bleak, dark and joyless place – much like the rest of the world.

Woven within her story about two corporate leaders who become lovers and then discover the reason for the disappearance of all the nation’s innovators, is Rand’s philosophy on the purpose of life.  She even has one of the characters deliver a 70 page long discourse on her philosophy of “Objectivism”.   According to this theory, we should use objective reason as the means to decide how to act in life.  Our thinking minds, Rand said, tell us that personal happiness must be our goal.  To obtain happiness, each person is not only responsible for their own happiness but the pursuit of happiness should be our primary goal.  In other words, selfishness is good and self-sacrifice is bad or, as Rand emphasized, it is a philosophy of personal loss and eventual decline.

Ayn Rand would tell me that I am a fool to labor here as a minister, to inconvenience myself in that regard, to give up what I could otherwise enjoy.  Logically, I should pursue happiness by remaining in Florida.  I would be happier and thus do more for the world if I did not give up personal pleasure.

My discussion of Ayn Rand might seem as if I want to engage in a political discussion.  I do not.  I want to instead encourage spiritual reflection on what it means to pursue happiness and the kinds of things that actually provide it.  Many current conservatives see Ayn Rand as a wise prophet.  She was someone willing to condemn governments and prevailing “do good” philosophies as illogical.  Human evolution and experience show us that we are organisms intrinsically designed to seek our individual well-being and survival – to eat, reproduce and avoid pain.  As rational creatures, we instinctively follow a Darwinian, or survival of the fittest, approach to life – the well-being of individuals and of our communities depends on the personal effort not just to survive but to thrive.  Only those who are able to thrive, and pass down their genes, will find happiness and, in the long run, evolve, populate the earth, and make for a better world.

In Rand’s philosophy of “Objectivism”, people are altruistic solely because of their emotions – which she asserted are not reason based.  Emotions such as love, empathy, or compassion lead us to make illogical decisions about how to act.  She saw altruism as a sacrifice of the self.  It is a morality of death, she said, since it leads to our decline by giving away pieces of ourselves.  People and societies get ahead only by meeting their needs.  As she said, “If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.”

Furthermore, emotions such as compassion and altruism lead us to feel guilty when we do act in self-interest.  Such guilt is destructive.  If we look at life without subjective emotion, she believed, we will see that self-interest is objectively for our own good and is the means by which society as a whole succeeds.   This is the push / pull, in other words, between our hearts and our minds – but it is only our minds that tell us the truth.  We should ignore our “do good” emotions.

In her view, most human behavior is already self-oriented and even though we do not admit it.  Parents do not support their children and pay for their educations based on altruism or love.  The root motivation for their actions is based on self-interest, which is to reproduce by making copies of themselves.  Mother Teresa, for instance, did not serve others for sacrificial reasons.  She was motivated by self-interest to make herself look good in a world that values altruism.  A doctor does not treat patients solely to do good.  He or she does so to make money and even get rich.  I do not minister primarily to help people.  I do so for my paycheck.  Money, as she said, is society’s barometer of virtue.   An industrialist serves far more people than did Mother Teresa by not pretending to be altruistic.  He or she seeks money by exchanging valuable labor or creativity for even greater value.  Exchanging value for nothing, is not a primary motivator for anyone.   We should not pretend otherwise.

The problem with Rand’s philosophy lies in her analysis of what makes people truly happy.  For Rand, we are happy when we receive external reward.  And seeking such external reward is what motivates behavior.  All of our actions are done in order to receive a reward in recognition, money or material benefit.  What we find, however, is that obtaining external rewards is not the means to long term happiness.  It is a highly primitive way to be happy – one found in the most basic of organisms.

Neurological research shows that externally derived pleasures like food or sex stimulate a release of the hormone dopamine that briefly lights up pleasure centers in our brains.  What neurologists, philosophers and even casual observers of human behavior have discovered is that too much external reward, and resulting high levels of dopamine, these ironically lead to less happiness and even suffering.  If we allow external reward to motivate us, if we believe only that will make us happy, we will find ourselves on an endless treadmill seeking greater and greater reward.  But as with an addict, such pleasure soon loses its power – we need more and more of it achieve the same high.  If we ever stop desiring external stimuli, we will not be happy.

Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher, wrote that happiness is derived from simplicity and limiting selfish desires.  We should pursue happiness inwardly by seeking a peace of mind similar to what the Buddha encouraged.  Desire is the root cause of suffering and only by reducing selfish, external motivations can we truly be happy.  We must avoid what Epicurus described as the “pain – pleasure – pain” cycle.  We desire external pleasure when we are in pain.  But we find that external rewards only lead to more pain – we become anxious about protecting our reward, we worry about getting more of it, the urge to seek more and more external pleasure gets stronger, and that leads to even greater disappointment because we eventually can’t satisfy such desires.   This is the paradox of the pursuit of happiness.  If we pursue it, we won’t get it.

Once again, modern research and neurology support this idea.  Another hormone released by our bodies is oxytocin.  But it is released not because of external stimuli that we crave – like food and sex, but by inner feelings of inspiration, love, and compassion.  For instance, when we cry at the hurt we seen someone experience, our bodies are flooded with oxytocin.   Instead of igniting pleasures centers in our brains like dopamine, oxytocin regulates the vagus nerve which controls our heartbeat and breathing.  Oxytocin slows down our heart rates and calms our breathing.  Feelings of peace, contentment and happiness then take over.

Victor Frankl, the holocaust survivor and author of the book Man’s Search for Meaning, supported this idea from his experiences in the Nazi death camps.  “Happiness,” he wrote, “cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”   In the depths of hell on earth, that of four different Nazi concentration camps, Frankl discovered that the persons most likely to survive were those who found peace of mind not from selfishly obtaining pleasures like more food, but rather from giving to others.  Frankl wrote that meaning and joy is found in sacrifice for another.  As he wrote, “The more one forgets himself–by giving himself to a cause to serve another person – the more human he is.”

Frankl focused during particularly hard times in Auschwitz on his wife and the love he had for her – even though he had no idea if she was alive or dead.  At one especially difficult time he wrote, “I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious ‘Yes!’ in answer to my question of ultimate purpose.  Once again I communed with my beloved wife.  More and more I felt that she was present; that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there.  Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.”

In poignant fashion, Victor Frankl understood what brings true happiness far better than Ayn Rand.  It is only in forgetting the self, in letting go of the pursuit of happiness, in focusing on loving and serving others, that one ironically finds the self and all of its potential to be happy.

My recent time caring for my mom deeply affected me.  I’m still struggling to understand her suffering and my feelings about it.  I found myself last Sunday expounding on the life affirming purpose we can find in suffering, and yet I was reduced to tears when I specifically remembered my mom.  Confronted face to face with it, suffering is real and, yes Ginny, it does suck.  But I did not care for mom out of duty or sacrifice.  I did so in love for her and my dad.

Like any of you, I yearn to find myself, my life and my purpose in compassion and charity.  Ministry is not just a profession for me.  Yes, it earns me a paycheck but that only meets my basic needs.  Instead, ministry deeply fulfills me because I know, in very small ways, I make a difference.  Ministry is how I find happiness precisely because, in my work, I’m not pursuing it.  And the same is true for any of you as educators, social workers, homemakers, managers, whatever is your life calling.  We seek not extrinsic pleasure from what we do in life.   We seek intrinsic meaning at making a small piece of the world better.  We pursue not happiness but, instead, awe and wonder with nature, gratitude for all we have been given, humility in thought and demeanor.  We want to be life affirming and never destructive or hateful.  We aspire to feelings of unity with all humanity – to express love openly, to sing with joy at simple pleasures, to embrace life as an adventure to love and give.   Without such emotions, with only our cold, objective and unfeeling minds to guide us, life would be a brutish, dog eat dog existence.  In such an existence, some will find a multitude of sensory delights from the pursuit of external happiness – lavish food, exotic travel, material luxuries.  These can be modestly satisfying in limited doses.  But as for me, as for us, we are driven by a nobler inner call to kindness, generosity and love.  The key to finding happiness is to die to self in order to love and serve others.  And it is in the death of self interest, that we’ll find our true reward.

 

 

 

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

Perhaps you have seen or read Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” – an abstract and metaphorical piece that is described as a tragicomedy.  Very little happens in the two act play but it is rich with symbolism representing Beckett’s views on life, death, religion and suffering.

Beckett was from Dublin, Ireland, raised as a Catholic and was someone who witnessed the horrific results of two world wars.  Beckett described seeing thousands of war veterans return to Dublin after World War One – men who were severely maimed, blinded or insane from the brutality of trench warfare.  As a result, Beckett became an avowed Atheist.  The problem of evil and suffering in the world, called “theodicy”, convinced him that an all-powerful and loving God cannot exist.  Such a God, if he or she exists, would surely put an end to the pointlessness of evil and the distress humans experience as a result.

It is in this context that he wrote “Waiting for Godot” in 1953 – a work that many have described as one of the more important literary works of the twentieth century.

Briefly, the play revolves around two men – Estragon and Vladimir –  who spend their days waiting for a friend, Godot, who they believe will alleviate their boredom and misery.   They only know they are to wait by a leafless tree – and so they find one and there they stay – all while passing time re-living the facts that Estragon had been beaten the night before, that he is desperately hungry, that they have been waiting for Godot for many days, that the events of each day seem to repeat over and over, that their commitment to meet Godot may well be pointless and that they can escape their futile promise by committing suicide.

In both Acts, the two men are encountered by two other characters – Pozzo and Lucky – who walk by the tree each day.  Pozzo is, at first, an arrogant, mean-spirited slave owner who is comical in his pomposity.  Lucky is his hapless slave whom Pozzo intends to sell.  Lucky appears in Act One as a pitiful and maligned man with a noose around his neck from which he is led by Pozzo.  After carelessly consuming a meal of chicken and wine in front of the starving Estragon and Vladimir, Pozzo refuses to offer any help to them.  He instead commands Lucky to teach them the meaning of life.  Lucky does so with, at first, a rational but theological speech about trusting in a divine being.  His discourse, however, soon becomes rambling and completely ridiculous.

Act Two begins the next morning.  Estragon and Vladimir have again waited all night – even though they had intended to go home.  Such is the pattern of their behavior – the hopelessness of their situation prevents them from doing anything except wait.  The two men engage in absurd conversation – often trying to remember the events of the day before.  They struggle to understand what is real and what is imagination.  Even as they confirm that they had, indeed, waited for Godot yesterday, they remain unconvinced about what is true and if time has even passed.

Once again, they encounter Pozzo and Lucky.  Only this day, it is Pozzo who is dejected and clearly suffering.  He cannot remember who he is, what he is doing or where he is going.  Lucky still has the noose around his neck but it is he who now leads Pozzo – a man who, despite his distress, is remarkably no longer arrogant but humbled, considerate and sometimes insightful.  He utters one of the plays more famous lines: humans, he says, “give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”

The play ends with Estragon contemplating what will happen the next day – predicting it will be nearly identical to all others.  It is at this point that they discuss committing suicide but fail to reach a decision – putting it off until tomorrow.  Once again, they do not depart, they stand by the stark tree, and simply wait – as the curtain falls.

As I reflected this past week on my own understanding of suffering and how that relates to my mom’s situation, this play and Beckett’s commentary on the nature of life, suffering, and religion came to mind.  The play addresses themes of hopelessness, human misery and the existence of God.  Why do we exist if our time is spent waiting to die and thus meet a supposed God?  Estragon and Vladimir wait by a symbolic Cross, but they don’t understand why.  Life for them revolves around waiting for a unseen friend –  Godot, who is an obvious symbol for God –  but who never appears.  Is he a friend since he never shows up?  Is he even real?  What is to be understood by the stoic suffering of the two men, or the reversal in fortunes of Pozzo and Lucky?   When one does well, the other suffers.   Good fortune and suffering exist symbiotically, Beckett suggests.  Happiness cannot exist without its alternative of suffering.  The play tells us that misery offers a kind of purification, as we see in the character of Pozzo.  Only when he is brought low, when he suffers, is he decent, wise and humble.

As I elaborated in my message last week about my mom and her slow decline, human suffering is inevitable.  None of us will be spared from hurt or death.  In relating such truth to the Resurrection story, life appears to be a long series of Good Fridays – punctuated by a few, brief Easters of hope and joy.  Indeed, life in this perspective lacks any purpose and is even cruel in its random infliction of pain.

Spiritually, the problem of suffering and evil has been explored for thousands of years.   I suggest suffering and death are the primary motivations for religion – how to make sense of them and find solace from them.  If suffering is inevitable, how should we respond to it?  As a stoic?  As one who perversely seeks it as a way to perhaps find God?  As someone who is angry about it and thus with life?   Should one try to escape suffering through substance abuse or suicide?  Is suffering an excuse to hurt others in order to mask one’s own pain?

Christianity embraces suffering as necessary.  Only by suffering as a result of sin can we understand we have no hope except in God and his Savior son Jesus Christ.  Only they can save us.  Believers suffer now so that they can later go to heaven.

Jews and Muslims see suffering as a way to prompt humans to rely on God or Allah.  Only by following his many rules can one be worthy of an eternal and happy afterlife.

Buddhists and Hindus see suffering as a pathway to greater enlightenment.  By ending the cause of suffering – which they believe is due to selfish desires – does a person advance to higher and higher levels of contentment and peace.

But which path is true?  Or are they all, in some way, true?  Or, as many Atheists assert, is no path true?  Richard Dawkins offered an Atheist’s perspective on suffering when he wrote in his book River Out of Eden, A Darwinian View of Life, “In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good.”

Dawkins echoes the views of Beckett.  He tells us that the universe is random and amoral.  Suffering is a part of existence.  It lacks any purpose.  It just IS.  One issue with this line of thinking is that it can lead us to resignation and hopelessness – much like what Beckett portrays in “Waiting for Godot.”  If we can find no greater purpose to why we or others suffer, then life itself has no meaning.  Even more, if there is no justice in why people suffer, there is no reason to try and alleviate it.  Much like what the character Pozzo says, Atheists seem to tell us that we are born, we live for a while with a few moments of happiness, and then we suffer and die.  In the totality of the universe, humans serve no greater purpose than does an ant we haphazardly squash.

As tragic as it seems, that appears to be my mom’s lot in life right now – to simply exist until Alzheimer’s kills her.  But is that really the case?  Is my mom’s life now worthless and hopeless?  As I said last Sunday, I refuse to accept that proposition.

I see a higher spiritual meaning behind suffering.  While suffering may exist as a consequence of natural phenomenon or human propensity to act selfishly, I assert that the important thing to consider about it is how we respond to it – when we or others hurt.  As I said earlier, religious responses to suffering offer a bit of wisdom.  Even Beckett, in his Atheism, sees suffering as a path to wisdom and humility.

A part of my theology, which I often repeat, is that God is not an outside force that controls our destiny.  Nor is there a place, beyond space and time, that we can call heaven or hell.  God exists, but only in metaphysical sense – in us, in nature, in the universe of things.  It’s we who have the ability and the power to affect our lives and those of others.  We help to shape the world in ways that make it a form of heaven or hell.

But if our existence is by random luck, if we are simply an amalgamation of atoms and selfish genes, as Richard Dawkins says, that does not mean we, as gods of our own destiny, cannot add purpose and meaning to our existence.  In other words, we are masters of our own eternal destiny – which as I said last Sunday is defined by the legacy we create of courage, endurance, and goodness toward others.

Rabbi Alan Lurie, a contemporary writer on theology and philosophy, writes that while suffering is real, we choose how it will affect us.  How we choose to respond to suffering determines whether we are ennobled or debased.  Do we choose the path of wisdom, strength, compassion and humility – or that of self-pity, egotism, anger, and envy?

Indeed, it is a paradoxical truth that if suffering did not exist, we would suffer even more.  In this view, suffering has a strange utility.  Lurie relates the story of a mediocre golfer who one day cries out to God to allow him to always hit a hole in one.   A voice answers him, “Your wish is granted!”  Fame and fortune soon follow for this golfer.  No matter how he swings a club, he hits a hole in one.  But he quickly finds this boring and shallow.  And just as quickly, his fame and fortune end.  People are no longer interested in someone who is perfect. The golfer then shakes his fist at the sky and angrily says, “God, why did you grant me my foolish wish?”  To which a voice replies, “Who said I was God?”

The point Lurie makes with his story is that perfection is not so great and may even be evil.  Mediocrity, strangely, is not such a bad thing.  If we have no room to improve, what is the point of life?  Where is the challenge and the adventure?  In the same way, can heaven be heaven without some suffering?  As Beckett suggests, without pain, can we truly understand what it means to be happy?

It might be said, as some commented to me last Sunday, that I’ve done a good job finding a silver lining to my mom’s Alzheimer’s disease.  Perhaps that is so.  But, I try to see it differently.  Her disease is horrific to me only if I choose to see it that way.  I certainly was blessed and enriched by my three weeks caring for her.  And she, too, is finding delights in life much like a child – no longer is she constrained by adult filters of arrogance or indifference.  The world is new and fresh all the time –  since she often forgets what she has seen.   As I said last week, this a resurrection for her – something outwardly sad but inwardly, spiritually, something beautiful.

This is the case with any suffering.  We can choose whether or not it is tragic or, in some paradoxical way, good.  I do not intend to say that pain is not difficult – or that people should seek it.  But if we accept the fact that it is unavoidable, if we accept our lives are finite, then we have the choice, as Rabbi Lurie says, in how we respond.

Suffering offers us the choice to ennoble ourselves – to find dignity and value in what we experience, to learn from distress, to grow for the better in how we live.  Far too many people, including me, cry out when they suffer, “Why me?” But a logical response to that plea is, “Why not you, or why not me?”  “Who am I that is so special as not to suffer?”  And ironically the question might also be, “Who am I that I cannot be blessed by suffering?”

Pain and hurt diminish us in ways that strip us of our cockiness that we are immune from hurting.  Such humility can lead us to charity, empathy, kindness and service to others when we perceive their pain.  But we must choose to make those our responses.  We must purposefully choose not to allow suffering to cause attitudes of self-pity or bitterness.  Indeed, we might even see that those who are comfortably well-off are ironically worse off.  They have false comfort in health, wealth or success but they lack the spiritual wisdom and peace derived from suffering.

As we so often realize in life, it is only when we fall, it is only when we are deprived, it is only when we are at our weakest, that we appreciate the good in life – that of love, kindness, love and charity.

Once again, my intent is not to diminish the brutal hurt we see around us.  But if suffering has any value and meaning, it is in how we address it and work to alleviate it in others.   Evil and suffering are facts of life.  But their very existence make joy and peace possible.   Heaven is right here, right now, in this imperfect world.  And it is we, as true gods and goddesses, who can choose to persevere with courage, love and dignity for all.

To further make my point, with much love, I wish you all much pain and distress….

 

 

 

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, All Rights Reserved

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

As many of you know, I spent most of the past three weeks taking care of my 81 year old mom.  She is in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s, a cruel disease that inexorably strips vital and intelligent adults of their personality, dignity and memory.  I had not seen my mom in about six months and she has declined during that time.  When I first arrived in California to pick her up, she did not know me.  She gets terribly confused and often does not know where she is or who is with her.  She’s lost weight, she is hunched over, she’s frail, she shuffles when she walks.  In caring for her, I daily picked out her clothes, brushed her hair, made her meals, guided her in what she can and cannot not do, and led her by the hand to cross streets and walk the beach – which we did each day for about fifty yards – until she got tired!

It was difficult for me to see her like this.  She was once an interesting woman with intelligence and ideas to share.  She was not a flashy person but she was always perfectly put together – her hair done just right, her clothing neat, pressed and well matched.  The two of us would often talk for hours on all sorts of subjects.  We were always close.  When I came out as a gay man twelve years ago, she quickly accepted me and told me she had often wondered if I might be so.  I was a sensitive, studious and soft spoken boy, after all.  It’s said that moms and their gay sons are often close and that has been true for us.

But as sad as it is to see my mom now, I also see in her not just a shadow of her old self, but also a person struggling to still find meaning, purpose and excitement in life.  Mom is now like an innocent and inquisitive child who delights in and wants to talk about all the things she sees.  I took her to the beach where there was a colony of seals with their new pups.  Mom pushed her way to the front of the crowd, to stand with all of the children, where she and they excitedly pointed and laughed with delight.

As something of a child again, mom has a sweet and caring nature.  In an air conditioned restaurant last summer, my sister complained that she was cold.  Mom, who was wearing a pullover shirt, promptly pulled it off and gave it to my sister.  “Here, dear.  This will keep you warm!”, she said as she sat there in the middle of a busy restaurant – naked above the waist.  My sister and I burst out laughing as we rushed to get her dressed.  Such is mom now – thinking like an innocent child – one without the filters of an adult and one who willingly gives the shirt off her back to help another.

As I said goodnight one evening last week and essentially tucked her into bed, she looked up at me and asked if I would leave a nightlight on for her.  “I get scared in the dark”, she said.  I assured her a light would be left on and that I was just down the hallway if she needed me.  How funny that episode is to me – a deja vu experience – one that happened fifty years ago, only then it was me, a young boy, asking his mom to help him feel safe in the dark.

I hope my personal story was not too long or too boring for you.  We all have stories and I truly welcome hearing any of your own.  As I have reflected about mom, though, I find her life now is a simple and common story of someone dealing with challenge and finding ways to overcome.  Few of us will escape life without confronting difficult challenges that cause change.  How we deal with the inevitable struggles of life will say a lot about who we are as individuals and the kind of legacy we leave behind.

In many ways, stories of people facing and overcoming life difficulties are much like the Easter story.  In that story, Jesus had to face his own life defining challenge, his Good Friday trial and crucifixion, in order to experience a bright and hopeful Easter morning.

The night before his crucifixion, after he had celebrated Passover Seder with his followers, Jesus walked to an olive grove overlooking Jerusalem.  It was there that he found the quiet needed to settle his mind and reflect.  The story has him famously sweating in fear and begging God to spare him the expected trial and execution.  Like any human, Jesus did not want to experience heartache, abandonment and pain.  In this way, the Easter story is one we can all relate to – I can see in it elements similar to my mom’s story.  Throughout her life she implored me to help her commit suicide if she should ever be mentally or physically incapacitated – like Jesus, she wanted to spare herself pain.  But now, at a point which I know she would not have wanted to experience, I find resilience, beauty and gentleness in her that adds a new dimension to her life and to those who interact with her.  Alzheimer’s may be a nasty disease, but it has its own form of dignity.

I cannot now speak to and relate to mom as I used to, but I can relate to her in a far more empathetic way – to hug her, hold her hand, soothe her, seek to understand her, learn from her, ease the darkness that can overwhelm her mind – and then be a figurative nightlight to take away her fears.  In some strange way, her disease is a gift to me and to her – an opportunity for growth and expansion of her spirit – and mine as well.  She’s having her own Resurrection moment, a time in life that has renewed her as a different person  – one that might outwardly seem sad but which is, in truth, pure and beautiful.

For many of us, though, the Easter story found in the Bible is a difficult one to accept and celebrate since it defies rational explanation and offers no verifiable proof of its truth.  Without a literal resurrection of Jesus’ body, most forms of Christianity are meaningless.  Paul even wrote in one of his letters that if the resurrection is not true, his preaching and the beliefs Christians have in eternal life are all in vain.  But that notion is Paul’s interpretation of Jesus and the resurrection.  It ignores an opposing view held by many of his contemporaries at the time – people who were also early Christians.

Easter and the Resurrection, therefore, need not be interpreted as literal history.  Many early Christians, who were called Gnostics, did not believe Jesus’ bodily resurrection was historical fact.  Numerous second and third century documents discovered at Nag Hamadi, Egypt in the 1940’s point to a widespread early belief that Jesus’ body was not restored to life but remained dead and buried.  Gnostics believed it was Jesus’ spirit that was resurrected – a spirit that embodied his teachings, thinking and approach to life.  Their understanding of the Resurrection was a spiritual one – a type of resurrection that I see my mom undergoing, one that any of us can experience as we go through our own life trials.  Humans fear physical death while often ignoring the potential death of their spirits – that will happen if one fails to leave behind a legacy of goodness.

Our lives must mean more than an accumulation of years.  They must mean more than briefly adding to our comfort and pleasure.  A life legacy, a resurrection of the spirit, is found in how we deal with the challenges we face and how we assist others in dealing with their suffering.  What example do we leave behind in how we deal with challenge?  Do we persevere until we overcome, in some way, our struggles?  Do we instead give up and retreat into fear, anger, arrogance or self-pity?  What ripples across the pond of time do we send out into the future to touch other lives and distant shores of creation?  What is the condition of our humility, our gentleness, our kind speech, our efforts to affect, for the better, other lives?  Human bodies are corruptible and finite, but human spirits, defined by our minds, by our compassion, by our courage to endure, these are what live onward past the point of physical death.

Sadly, the Gnostics were quickly labeled as heretics by Paul and others.  Their understanding of Jesus and his spiritual resurrection lost out in the battle of interpretations.  It was Paul’s theology of a risen Jesus that eventually won and was codified in the New Testament.   Pauline theology is what most Christians believe today.  They are entitled to that belief, but my own thoughts and my own studies of what took place two thousand years ago lead me to conclude that Easter morning was not a literal event in history.  It is a valid and inspiring holiday only if we approach it in an honest and rational way.  Easter invites us to find resurrection moments in life that renew our spirits and grant them, not our bodies, life beyond death.

It was a contemporary of Jesus, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who uttered the famous axiom that the only constant in life is change.  The sad fact is that while many of us acknowledge this truth, we have a hard time accepting it.  Even change which we know will be good for us – we avoid.  It’s too difficult to start over.  Staying the same or avoiding challenges are easy for us.  Change makes us feel out of control and we are, too often, creatures who like to be in control.

But reality offers a different truth.  It is when we embrace change and seek ways to overcome its negative impact that we ironically have MORE control over our lives.  The actress Angelina Jolie recently revealed that in addition to voluntarily undergoing double mastectomies because she has a cancer causing gene mutation, she also just underwent a total hysterectomy to prevent uterine and ovarian cancer.  She had watched as her mother slowly suffered and died from cancer.  In her grief and fear over her own fate, Angelina found the empowerment to take control of her destiny and to offer, as a result, a legacy of courage and a model for other women.  As she has written in a recently published diary about her experiences, “I don’t want to tell you how often, every hour, I think about leaving my children without me.  I know now, however, my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer.’  It is possible to take control and tackle head-on any health issue.”

Please forgive me if it seems I trivialize profound challenges and make them seem easy to overcome.  That is not my intent.  I understand the gut wrenching fear and distress that life challenges bring any person – including myself.

What I want to offer today, however, is more than a reinterpretation of the Easter story.  The reality of the resurrection is that change is inevitable but it is often not what we think it will be.  The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne once said, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.”

He spoke to a common human psychology called “affective forecasting.”  We typically believe that good things in life will make us happier over the long term and negative events will make us unhappy.  But our forecasting of the future is so often totally wrong.  Things rarely turn out as bad as we think they will.  Often, change results in something different for us but also something new, fresh, and wonderful.  We find, from of the ashes of despair, a genuine resurrection!  Our willingness to courageously persist in overcoming a challenge is inspirational to others and offers us a form of life after death.

The legacy of Jesus’ life is not as Savior or Son of God – a figure to be displayed on the cross for pity and worship.  His enduring legacy is in his courage to confront elitist religious hypocrisy, to purposefully humble himself by reaching out to scoundrels, thieves, lepers, and prostitutes, to teach a way of life that promotes charity, social justice and empathy.

I hurt for my mom.  I hurt for the challenges I know some of you are experiencing.  We all hurt for the pain we see throughout the world.  But I also know my mom, with all of her confusion and loss of memory, is still a person of grace, compassion and dignity – a person still fighting the good fight to overcome challenges.  Her body and mind are failing, but her spirit is alive and well.  I hope the same will one day be said of me and of you.

We can each embrace difficult change in our lives.  As congregations, we too can reject irrational fear and accept the challenge we face – to insure the longevity and well-being of our two churches.  Life may often seem like a series of Good Fridays, days when we are tired and beaten down.  But today of all days tells us we have the ability to spiritually live on, to impact the world for good, to awaken in ourselves and in others a strength to persevere and a desire for goodness.  We are all Easter people.  We are all endowed with triumphal spirits that yearn to love, give and serve.  Challenges will yet afflict us.  But we can embrace struggle and, in the process, find our true resurrection.

I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

There are times in most of our lives when we experience feelings of wonder and awe.  It is the enormity and power of an object or thought that moves us in ways which transcend intellectual description.  To be in awe is to feel that one is in the presence of vastness – something greater than the self – either an object of immense physical size or a metaphorical force of a great power.

As humans, we often seek to accommodate the uncertainty we feel when we encounter vastness.  We are motivated to make sense of that which is greater than us.   Humans have long used theism and religion to understand powerful forces in the universe.  Something is so vast and so complex, many people believe, that only a god could have created and sustained it.

It is for that reason that other people, like many atheists or humanists, are wary of these feelings of wonder and awe.  Atheists often do not acknowledge a sense of spiritual awe because it implies, for them, a rejection of logic and a reliance on religious superstition.  Even so, people can encounter something awe inspiring without needing to religiously make sense of it.  Much of science, for instance, is motivated by mystery – by an awareness of something unknown and in need of investigation, testing and understanding.  Indeed, feelings of awe are felt by scientists, rational thinkers and the religious.  One group relies on logical inquiry and discovery.  The other relies on myth and supernatural explanations.

Religious awe, therefore, should not and must not invalidate feelings of awe in those of us who are non-religious but nevertheless spiritually inclined.  I assert that it is good and perfectly normal for us to welcome being awe inspired – to be moved and emotion filled when reflecting on or encountering something great or powerful.  That kind of feeling can lead us to positively act in ways that improve our world.   Logic, mystery and awe all work within us in order to motivate how we live and serve.  A thinking brain and an emotion inspired spirit are not incompatible.

A few years ago, I travelled to Sedona, Arizona with my partner Keith who was visiting there for the first time.  We took a long hike on the first day and ventured up a canyon.  As we descended down from the top, an expansive vista opened before us – of red rock formations, deep green pine trees, an azure sky and billowing white clouds.  I looked over at Keith and his eyes were filled with tears.  Alarmed, I asked him what was wrong.  He looked at me as the tears flowed and he simply said, “It is all just so beautiful.”

Having visited Sedona many times before, I had begun to take for granted the natural beauty of the place.  I’d lost my sense of awe and reverence for it.

But I can also clearly remember moments in my life similar to what Keith felt then.  Along with many of you, I’ve been privileged to witness childbirth.  I vividly recall the moment when my daughter Amy came into the world – her little body emerging, blinking and a bit stunned at the lights and the new environment.  It’s an emotional moment for any parent to see but I also remember being filled with wonder at what had just happened – an amazement at the mystical awe of new life, of my minor participation in bringing it about, and the overwhelming love and attachment I felt for my new daughter and her mother.  I stood their with tears in my own eyes – moved in a way that was, as I recall it, a profound spiritual moment.

Albert Einstein believed that there are three impulses which can motivate humans to be spiritual.  The first impulse, based on a primitive understanding of how the universe works, is influenced by fear.  Some humans react with fear toward things they don’t understand and so they invent or believe in supernatural causes – gods and goddesses – to explain them.  The second impulse is motivated by a desire for social morality.  Einstein believed the need for order leads some people to create or believe in a theistic being who rewards or punishes behavior – all in order to control society.  The third impulse that leads other people to spirituality is one he believed is the most mature and which originates in feelings of awe and mystery.  As Einstein said, “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.”

As a member of the Humanist Society of New York, Einstein was clearly not a theist.  The highest purpose for people is to strive for the ethical treatment of fellow humans, he believed.  It is certainly not to worship a theistic God – who he said is nothing but an expression of human weakness just as much as he believed the Bible is an honorable but primitive collection of myths.

What Einstein and many other scientists promote is not a rejection of spiritual feelings and emotions.  Science, logic, reason or rational thought are often the means to experience spiritual wonder.  Our thinking brains lead us to the point where we realize we are small, insignificant, and minor in the totality of an infinite universe.  What moved Keith at the sight of beautiful rock formations, or me at the birth of my daughter was not awe at a supernatural god who forms such things.  Instead, such feelings were motivated in us by an awareness of the natural explanations for the awesome phenomena we witnessed – at the billions of years of wind, rain and time that shaped mountains, or the intricacies of biology, DNA and chemistry that combine to give life.  Such forces, such power, such mystery that often science can’t yet fully explain, these spark in people soul stirring emotions of gratitude and humility.  Those feelings are the stuff of spirituality – the kinds of feelings that invite silence, deep meditation and even worship, if you will, of ideas and truths we struggle to assimilate into our limited brains.

I believe such transcendent moments of awe are essential for us.  Not only does spirituality humble us in a recognition of how small we are, that humility helps eliminate any arrogance or self-centered thinking in us.  We come to understand and see deep within ourselves – within our souls – that life and existence are not about the self.  Yes, we were each beautifully and wonderfully made, but we were made as a minor part of vastly greater things.  Compared to the billions of stars, the powers of gravity, thermodynamics, evolution and human biology, we as individuals are mere motes of dust floating through the cosmos.  Our existence is so insignificant that any feelings we may have of grandiosity or entitlement are comical.

And that, my friends, will lead us to fulfill our human purpose.  We exist to serve not just the self, but others.  We exist to make a positive difference in the universe – no matter how small.  We exist to live and work as a part of the fantastic cosmic whole – to use whatever power and intellect we have to ethically serve all creation.

That is why I believe we assemble each and every Sunday.  It is not just to stimulate our minds or fill our brains with facts and figures.  Nor is it to simply meet in social community.  Churches are not lecture halls or clubs.  For us, our two churches are spiritual change agents – places that stimulate our thinking in order to inspire our souls.  That is one of the beauties of progressive spirituality or Unitarian Universalism.  The mind and spirit compliment one another – working together to initiate change in us so that we can then help one another, nurture our families and serve the needs of a hurting world.

Importantly, our churches initiate change in us is not just through our our intellects.  As I’ve said before, relying on reason and logic alone for spiritual explorations will only produce cold intellectualism.  We must also consciously seek in our Sunday services moments of wonder, awe, introspection, emotion and even worship as we contemplate things greater than ourselves – things like the power of love, the beauty found in nature, the joys of community, the gratitude for all we’ve been given, or the inherent dignity and goodness of every human. Our desire is not to experience emotional moments simply for their feel good value, but to use such awakening experiences to humble us, fill us with appreciation and prompt us to an even greater desire to love and serve.

I know that most of us attend our two churches because we are spiritually inclined people – those who seek thoughtful insight.  What I have found in myself, however, is that too often I ignore or take for granted opportunities to experience moments of awe, joy or peace.  Much like I did in Sedona when I walked amidst towering mountains but did not fully sense their beauty, or when I awake some mornings and barely notice a wonderful sunrise, I too often fail, when I’m in church, to embrace a moment of soul deep introspection.  I focus, instead, on the tasks at hand – to conduct a service, to learn a few facts, to think about what I will do that afternoon.  And I miss the opportunity to awaken my soul and discover not just what I need to learn and know, but which I need to feel.

My default, in many of my Sunday messages and, indeed, in many of my actions, is to think my way through them.  I’ve come to understand, however, that thinking my way through life is not sufficient.  My head and my knowledge lead me only so far.  I must remind myself to also feel my way through life – to be sensitive to and aware of people around me and their hurts or needs, to discern those times to just sit and reflect, to not overlook opportunities to awaken my soul with awe, wonder, gratitude and love.  When I am sensitive – or aware – or awakened, I find from those spirit filled moments a renewed ability to then exercise my mind in meaningful ways.  If I feel a heightened sensitivity to the needs of others, I will likely be prompted to take action of some form to help.  If I am awakened to the gratitude within me for all that I have received, I will be more aware of all that I have yet to give and, hopefully, to then give more.  If I embrace moments of silent meditation, I will be far more calm and far more understanding in how I deal with life.

These are all reasons why I am a part of a church and why I believe Sunday services are useful in our lives.  I come for the community.  I come to have my mind stimulated.  But I also come to be spiritually awakened – to find a moment or two or three to experience the wonder of what I need to feel.

I encourage myself, I encourage all of us, to remind ourselves of the spiritual reasons why we are here.  Whether it be during Michael Tacy’s beautiful music, from a smile received from a friend, a thought from a reading or hymn, perhaps a word from the message, or an inspiration from a time of silent reflection, I encourage us not to take such experiences for granted.  Our souls and our spirits benefit from these moments and our lives, as a result, are enriched.

Sunday services offer us ways to improve ourselves and ways to help one another.  They can inform us about the beliefs of other religions and the social justice needs in our world.  But, more than just knowing about such things, more than being intellectually informed of them, we must also feel and experience them in our souls.  Right now, in this special hour we share every Sunday, may we willingly enter for just a moment or two, the realm of awe, wonder and worship that will sustain and strengthen us to meet our life purpose……….I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

Instead of a usual heart to heart talkback time when you are welcome to comment on the message, I ask us to instead use this time today for reflection and meditation.

For a few minutes, while Michael now plays contemplative music, I ask you to sit in silence, as still as possible.  [Pause]  If you will, please close your eyes and begin this meditation by focusing on your breathing.  Gently inhale and exhale – focus on each breath, allow any other thoughts to simply enter your mind and then drift away.  Use your soft breathing to give you peace.  [Pause]

With this sense of calm that you now have, gently bring your mind to think of a place, an event or a person in your life that fills you with feelings of wonder, gratitude, or love.  Fill your mind now with an image of that place, event or person.  [Pause]

Allow yourself to focus on the beauty, love and goodness of this image your mind now holds.  [Pause]   Focus on the feelings your image gives you.  Recall the feelings it has brought you in the past.  Do not be afraid of powerful emotions – give them the respect they are due.  [Pause]

For the next minute or two, simply go where your spirit takes you.  Go with what you feel and not what you think.  [Pause]   Rest in your emotions, reflect on what they are telling you, meditate on what they mean and how they want you to live and serve.  [Pause]  If you can, find right here, right now, a message that your soul has for you…

 

 

 

 

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

If you would like to download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

Ryan Patrick Halligan was a young man who attended a middle school in Vermont.  Because of complications resulting from his birth, he was physically and intellectually challenged.  His speech, learning abilities and physical coordination were other abled even as he was mainstreamed in local schools.  All was good for him, however, until he reached the fifth grade.  And then the bullying began.

He was bullied for three years – during his middle school years.  It became so bad that at one point he begged his parents to home school him.  While his parents considered this, Ryan came up with another idea – to learn kick boxing so that he could confront his tormenters and perhaps get them to stop.  And that is what he did.  It seemed to work.  Much of the bullying stopped.  One of his primary tormenters even became a supposed friend.

But that was only for a time.  The friend insinuated himself into Ryan’s life such that Ryan shared some thoughts that were meant to be private.  Some of Ryan’s thoughts suggested he had same sex attractions and these were later used against him and told to many others.

Ryan also began an online relationship with a popular girl at his school.  The girl routinely expressed romantic interest in him even as he also shared his thoughts with her – many of which implied he was gay.  It was clear, however, that Ryan believed the girl liked him and he thought of her as his girlfriend.  Ryan was only thirteen, and like many teens, he still did not understand his sexuality.

At the start of the school year, Ryan excitedly met this girl and several of her friends after class.  Instead of confirming her interest in him, however, the girl publicly humiliated Ryan.  She told him she had pretended to like him, that she really thought he was a gay loser and that she wanted nothing to do with him.  Adding even more insult, she posted online many of the internet chat sessions she and Ryan had conducted – ones in which he confessed personal thoughts about his sexuality.  Soon, Ryan’s words went viral in the middle school community.  Bullying of him by his previous tormenter reached a new intensity.  He became depressed.  A few weeks later, he committed suicide by hanging himself.

I mentioned the New York Times columnist David Brooks in my message last week and his thoughts about secularism.  I do so again today with one of his recent columns about ISIS.  He compared their actions with the vitriol directed at him by some folks who comment online.  Such Internet commenters, he writes, often use hate language, insult and intimidation to demean and tear him and others down.  Pretending to do so in the interest of correction and to assert themselves, the hate and bile many put out for the world to read is no different, Brooks writes, then the hate spewed by Islamic terrorists who behead or burn alive innocent victims.

While my own comparison may seem extreme, I compare the type of bullying Ryan Halligan endured to the horrifying online videos posted by ISIS.  Such videos are described as so horrible that I refuse to watch them.   The videos are the same as any form of bullying.  Individuals with deep seated insecurities, anger and resentments use verbal or physical aggression to project an image of power and superiority all in order to intimidate, humiliate and terrorize.

Our culture has reached a point where advice to others and differences of opinion in politics, morality, life or religion are not expressed in a civil and respectful manner.  Instead, people hurl invective, hate and humiliation at those with whom they disagree or who they consider an enemy.  Many politicians do this all the time to their opponents.  Search any online comment forum, and the same will be found written by everyday people.  Watch many college or professional sports games, and the same kind of bullying can be witnessed when some coaches scream at their players.  Few of us can be spared the comparison.  We too can gossip, argue with partners or disagree with others in mean spirited ways.  Assuming the righteousness of our belief, we too can humiliate, tear down and hurt others with the words we use.  As Jesus is said to have taught, everybody agrees with the universal ethic: “Thou shall not kill.”  But equal to the evil of murder, he said, is the anger, resentment and bitterness we can hold in our hearts and verbalize toward another person.  Why has our culture, why have our ways of communicating with others – to our opponents and those we love – reached a level of speech that is often so vicious?

That question is one implicitly asked in one of this year’s Best Picture nominated films “Whiplash”.  While the film, directed and written by a 28 year old relative newcomer, Damian Chazelle, is brilliant in its craft – masterfully using music, acting and cinematography to tell its story, the plot itself is disturbing.  A nineteen year old drummer attends a highly competitive music school in New York City – one that is intended to resemble the preeminent Juliard School of Music.  Andrew is a drummer – a very good one.  He is eventually recruited by one of the school instructors, a man named Fletcher, to join his jazz band.  Fletcher is an intimidating person – one with a shaved head, who dresses in all black clothing that accentuate his muscular physique.  He menacingly stalks the school hallways and he conducts his classes and his band like a boot camp drill sergeant.

At Andrew’s first session with the band, Fletcher builds him up beforehand – telling him to relax, have fun and do his best.  It’s clear, though, that band members fear Fletcher.  All of them look down at the floor in his presence – too afraid to make eye contact.  Once in the studio, Fletcher proceeds to rage at and humiliate one young, overweight player whom he disliked – using vulgarity, put downs and homophobic slurs.  Fletcher then turns to Andrew and asks him to set the beat for one particularly difficult jazz piece.  He repeatedly corrects Andrew, however, demanding he get the tempo just right.  After several unsuccessful tries by Andrew, Fletcher throws a bandstand directly at him – barely missing his head.  He confronts Andrew, leering inches from his face, slaps him, spews f-bombs, the word ‘faggot’, insults of his parents, and other invectives that bring Andrew to tears.  It is clear that Fletcher is a classic bully who used mind games to build Andrew up, so that he could then rip him apart.

The film proceeds with a psychological look at the relationship between Andrew and Fletcher – a teacher whom Andrew clearly dislikes but whose approval he deeply desires.  Fletcher later tells him his tactics of intimidation and humiliation are all in Andrew’s best interest – ones designed to not only make him try harder, but to push him beyond being merely good so that he can become great.  That is something the ambitious Andrew dreams of being.   As Fletcher confides at one point, the two worst words in the English language are, “good job”.

The director wants us to ponder that statement.  Is the path to being not just “good enough”, but great, one that is achieved through verbal violence, put downs, and physical intimidation?  Or is it to condescendingly tell someone “good job” – even if that means the performance was just OK?  Is bullying an effective motivator – much like some people once believed it helped shape boys into men – or as some believe today, as a way to express opinion, give advice or get the world’s attention?  Ultimately, I ask the question that is implied in the title of my message: how do we communicate “truth in love” to another?

One of the things I admire about the Jesus I interpret from the Bible is that he was often not god-like.  The night before his crucifixion, he tearfully prayed to be spared pain.  He was afraid.  He also got bitterly angry at his opponents – calling them a “brood of vipers”.  He later stormed into the Temple where he physically intimidated and confronted the religious hypocrites.  Gandhi, too, was very human.  He was a misogynist who sometimes belittled the abilities of women, he expressed some racist attitudes toward blacks when he lived in South Africa and he could be highly demanding.  Martin Luther King, Jr. got depressed, borrowed without attribution the words and phrases of others for some of his writings and speeches, had multiple affairs and was often not a devout minister.  What these prophets of history were – was human beings – great figures who helped inspire change but who were not perfect.  They too had feet of clay.  Their imperfections, their humanity – combined with their ability to motivate millions are what made them great.

What makes any leader or teacher of others great, therefore, is not just the iconic speeches and words they deliver.  While the ideals of Jesus, Gandhi and King were great, while their words inspired millions, they impacted others not just with those talents.  They did far more.

It’s usually not words that truly speak of love.  It’s actions.  As the Biblical book of James indicates, words are not enough.  If you say you love God but are not doing loving acts of kindness, you are a hypocrite, the book says.  If you profess a spirituality that is sincere, prove it with your works.  Try to speak to others and act in ways that are loving, compassionate, decent and just to your family, your partner, your friends and complete strangers.  That is also a test for any church congregation.  Don’t just talk the talk.  WALK the talk.

And that, interestingly, is the single most often cited way leaders and teachers are encouraged to lead and inspire others.  Words, either in praise or criticism, can be effective in motivating others.  What works even better is to inspire others with ones’ actions.  As Gandhi famously said, WE must BE, we must personally act out, the change we want to see in another person or in the world.

That truth was presented by the Harvard Business Review in an article entitled, “Which Coach is the Most Effective: the Drill Sergeant or the Strong, Silent Type?”  The article revealed results from a study of 1000 business leaders over a period of months and how they improved the performance of their employees.  Half of them corrected, admonished or criticized employees.  They verbally suggested ways to be better.  The other half rarely used correction or criticism to admonish those they managed.  After a year, the work performance of the two sets of employees was measured and compared with that of a year before.  For those employees who had been verbally admonished, 22% significantly improved their performance.  For those who had not been verbally advised, 33% significantly improved.  Their managers had not managed with words but with deeds and actions.  They silently managed by performing many of the tasks they asked of their employees – often showing skill and dedication in meeting them.  They led by example.  They inspired by what they did, and not by what they said.

The Harvard Business Review concludes by asserting that both methods of inspiring others work.   But the non-verbal method clearly works best.  And that points to something they discovered about how and why people are inspired to be better.  People want to be LIKE those whom they admire and perceive to be good and competent.  Indeed, attacking people verbally is often counter-productive.  Persons who employ that method are perceived to themselves be flawed, insecure and petty.  Who wants to emulate them?  Who wants to try and live up to a nasty critic’s standards when that person is so clearly flawed in the vicious way they speak?

I look at Jesus as a great figure in history precisely because his primary method of teaching others was to inspire them by his actions, by his ability to forgive, by his loving acts toward outcasts, women, the sick, the thieves, the sinners, the poor.  While he exhibited a few lapses of anger, his primary method to lead was not to tell others how to be good.  He showed them.  A great leader, a great teacher, a great friend, a great spouse or partner is not someone who only tells another how to act, how to perform, how to be better.  He or she quietly lives that kind of life – he or she constantly strives to themselves improve, to themselves be gentle, humble and kind.  He or she lives out the illustration Jesus used to teach this ethic: don’t point out the small speck in someone else’s eye.  Work on extracting the log in your own eye!  Don’t pride yourself on being so aware of how others act or perform.  Pride yourself on working on how you act and perform.  If you want someone else to be great, try to be great yourself!

Our world is so full of pain that comes from natural causes – ones that humans cannot control.  Why, then, do humans so often add to those hurts with their own hurtful actions?  Why do humans demean, attack and humiliate others – especially people closest to them?  There are myriad reasons why  – to compete, to puff ourselves up, to hide our own inadequacies by focusing on those of others.  Mostly, we give in to our baser instincts – to grovel and fight so that we individually can get ahead and feel better about ourselves.  But is that who we want to be?

With every word spoken in anger, with every hate filled comment we make, with every taunt, every mean spirited criticism, every piece of gossip, every sentence that is spoken without gentleness – we wound another person.  And we wound ourselves in failing the universal test of goodness – to follow the Golden Rule.

I hate that which is in me that harbors malicious thoughts about another.  Instead, I yearn to be my better self – the good self that respects and decently treats political opponents, those who are my enemies, those with whom I disagree, those who have deeply hurt me.  Let me, let all of us inspire others by our example, by the way we live, by our efforts to correct our own imperfections and flaws.  To paraphrase Saint Francis, let us speak the truth in love, and…only when necessary…use words.

I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

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Writing in the New York Times this past Tuesday, David Brooks – who is called a liberal’s favorite conservative – wrote about the difficulties of being a secularist, atheist or humanist in today’s world.  As the ranks of the non-religious grow, from today’s historically high levels of twenty per cent of adults and a third of those under thirty, Brooks asserts that secularists will need to find a positive expression of their beliefs.  If secularism is to thrive, it needs to offer the world a moral code that motivates people to act in ways that positively impacts the culture, he writes.  Since secularists don’t call on centuries of religious theology or Scripture, since they do not rely on hope for an otherworldly eternity to motivate them, they must develop cohesive communities of like minded people.  They must also, Brooks suggests, put forward a consistent moral code that is inspirational enough to rally people to serve causes greater than themselves.

I read this column just as I was sitting down to prepare today’s message. Brooks offers a reasonable point – one that might speak to us.  It is not enough for any person or any group to simply be against something.  In politics, spirituality, morality and life itself, the best way to create change is not to be critical, but instead positive.  Secularists and humanists must not as much be against religion as they should favor a logical and loving alternative that truly inspires people – something which Northern Hills and the Gathering already offer and which must continue.

Over the past five years during February, I have looked at three Oscar nominated movies to find spiritual inspiration.  I’m doing the same this year.  Last week I looked at the film Imitation Game.  Today, I examine the film Selma.  While that movie focuses on a pivotal period during the Civil Rights fight of the 1960’s and how Martin Luther King, Jr. strategically steered passage of the Voting Rights Act, the movie implicitly offers a message that is subtly complimentary to one regarding equal rights.

In its one word title, there is no reference to Dr. King, his greatness or to any of the leaders who strategized with him.    Selma is a place that represents the struggle for equal rights – much like Birmingham, Watts, Ferguson, Seneca Falls or Stonewall also do.  But more than just being a place, Selma represents a community of people inspired not by God or visions of heaven, but the very worldly, here and now concerns of justice and dignity.  Selma can be for us much of what David Brooks writes – a symbol of the positive purposes a diverse but united community of people can offer the world.

The movie is really a collection of how everyday people came together to bring about change.  In it, we watch as Annie Lee Cooper tries to register to vote – but runs up against the wall of Southern systemic barriers to that basic right.  We watch in shock as Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young black deacon in a Marian, Alabama church, is shot to death by a white policeman when he tried to protect his mother from being beaten by white police during a protest.  We see the horror of four young black girls blown up and killed by the local Klan in their Birmingham church – which was used as a meeting place by black protesters.  We learn of the efforts by John Lewis, a Congressman today from Georgia, who led the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Selma.  We learn of the local group who had worked to end segregation, register blacks to vote and confront local racist politicians – years before Dr. King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference came to Selma.  We watch the many whites who joined the Civil Rights protests – ones like Unitarian ministers Clark Olsen and Olof Miller who were savagely beaten for participating in the Selma march, or Detroit housewife and mother of five children, Viola Liuzzo, who joined the Selma march and was shot in the head and killed by four Klansmen.  We see the hundreds of black protesters, young, old, women and men, who are run down by police on horses, beaten and bloodied during the Selma to Montgomery march.

What we see in the film is a community bound together in action despite their different backgrounds and beliefs.  We see people stirred and motivated to act in a positive and non-violent manner.  We see their leaders, including Dr. King, give direction and eloquence to these everyday people – but Dr. King and other leaders did not and could not carry the Civil Rights protest on their own.  Leaders cannot lead unless there are people who are with them, people who are willing to act.

Selma is a movie that ultimately honors a large and diverse group of people – it honors a grassroots social movement, one founded on centuries of oppression felt by everyday people.  We look back on the 1960’s and see the monumental force of Dr. King, but the movie Selma underscores the fact that history is not made by single individuals.  History is a fabric of stories woven together by the deeds and lives of countless everyday people.  It is these people, usually nameless and unknown, who comprise historical movements – be it the American Revolution, the fight against slavery, or the Civil Rights efforts.  It is from the ranks of such broad social movements that individual men and women rise up to be leaders and give inspiration to the multitudes.  Instead of great men and women making history, the reverse is true.  Historical forces that comprise diverse groups of people help make certain men and women great.

And that is the case with Martin Luther King, Jr..  He was the inspiring leader, the brilliant strategist, the voice in the wilderness who beckoned a generation to peacefully correct the wrongs of the past – but he was only one man.   Diverse groups of common people, comprised of Annie Lee Coopers, Jimmie Lee Jacksons, Viola Liuzzos, Clark Olsens and thousands like them – they are the often forgotten ones, the heroes and martyrs of history, of whom the movie Selma celebrates.

In this fiftieth anniversary of the Selma marches, we are rightfully asked to heed what the movie honors.  And, yes, we are also asked to ponder why the events fifty years ago echo the events of just a few months ago – of peaceful black protesters marching against oppression but facing white police aggression.  The protests of Selma and Ferguson are sadly linked across half a century.  One event asks us to remember and honor.  The other calls us to speak out and act.

But for us as members of Northern Hills or the Gathering, the message of the film also extends beyond our call to help reconcile racial wounds.  In many ways, we are like the people of Selma.  There are issues in our churches and our communities that need to be addressed.   How we come together, how we, with all of our different backgrounds and traditions, work together to address the challenges of our time will say much about who we are.

The last time I spoke here I asked us as individuals and as congregations to cooperate in acquiring what I call purpose driven wealth.  That kind of wealth is not comprised of money or things, but of meaning, self-actualization and purpose.  We earn this wealth by acting according to our purpose for living – to be positive agents of change in our families, churches and communities.  I suggested three goals for our two congregations.  First, to increase and improve our congregation care teams – to organize people who are trained and skilled in offering listening ears and empathy to fellow members who are hurting.  Second, I suggested both congregations cooperate and serve together in hands on outreach efforts for the poor, marginalized, hungry and homeless.  Third, I suggested we plan, implement and support ways to build racial justice and reconciliation through our Sunday services, our verbal witness and our hands on work.

I reiterate these suggestions.  I don’t want to forget them.  Interested persons for each of these goals, in both congregations, can contact me or other leaders and initiate plans to meet, discuss and implement positive goals for our futures.  Beyond these specific goals is a much larger one – one that we might learn from the movie Selma.  Our primary cause is to make a difference in the lives of ourselves, our children, our friends, and in our world.  We exist as people and as churches to serve others at least as much as we serve ourselves.  We offer a spirituality that is unique in its radical embrace of any and all people, to love them, to serve them, to be a force of free thinking and human compassion.  But to do this we must come together – moving beyond differences to unite in ways that will better fulfill our purpose.  We do so not for a god, not for a hoped for eternity in some abstract heavenly abode, but to instead help build a heaven on earth, right here, right now – an earthly paradise of peace, equality, decency and equal opportunity.

This worldly heaven, one that Dr. King spoke to and envisioned, requires we heed the example of everyday people celebrated in the film Selma.  As diverse people, the Civil Rights marchers came from different backgrounds and traditions.  But they found a way to unite.  One of the beautiful images of the film Selma is a scene where thousands of people link arms to peacefully confront forces of intolerance blocking their way.  Men, women, black, white, brown, ministers, rabbis, children, senior citizens, liberals, conservatives, northerners, southerners – all in one body – uniting to address the compelling cause of their time.

Like them, we too must come together and link arms for the compelling cause of our time.  We must cooperate.  We must support one another in humility and kindness.  We must sacrifice.  We must serve –  each in our own way.  Leaders and ministers do not make a church, just as Martin Luther King did not constitute the Civil Rights movement.   Everyday people did – and everyday people, acting in common, are the heroes of history and of our two churches.

The causes for our time at the Gathering and Northern Hills may seem small but they are important for our witness as people who defy division and seek spiritual unity that embraces universal ideals.  To that end,  our two congregations have been given a special opportunity – to meet as different but like minded people, to get to know one another, to discuss ways to cooperate, to dream of a combined body that will be greater, stronger and more purpose driven than either congregation left alone.   This opportunity we have, much like that which history gave to the people of Selma, is to move beyond our individual or congregation desires.  I did not join the Gathering just because I liked the Gathering.  I joined because it was a place I could live out my purpose in life to serve others.  That goal is much bigger than me or my personal beliefs.

I’ve heard about a few differences that might separate our congregations – mostly involving a few Sunday service practices.  No two sets of people with proud histories and traditions will ever be the same.  Indeed, our differences represent not stumbling blocks but, instead, wonderful diversity.  The people depicted in the movie Selma prove that point.  Some were activists who worked to change laws.  Some were advocates of confrontation.  Others were persons who saw the symbolic power of non-violence, attacked by forces of hate, as a way to build empathy in hearts and minds.  These groups differed in strategy and tactics.  But they found a way to unite according to their higher purpose – that all people have the right to be heard, respected and represented.

And those are ideals we also share.  We are not Northern Hills members.  We are not Gathering members.  We are not motivated by small differences.  We are members of a universal community of idealists, servants and activists, like the protest marchers of Selma, who envision a better world.  Yes, we each have our own unique histories.  Yes, we have our unique Sunday service practices that are meaningful and good.  Crucially, however, we share the important motivation to promote an alternative spirituality of reason and logic, focused through a prism of service and love.

As the Selma protest marchers neared the end of their fifty mile journey to the Alabama capital of Montgomery, under the malevolent gaze of the Ku Klux Klan, racist police officers, and Governor George Wallace – forces that would divide instead of unite, the marchers sang in unison: “Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on!” 

Those marchers knew too well that far too many change movements in history have fizzled out because their members lost sight of the prize – they focused on negativity, fear, uncertainty and differences instead of positive solutions.   And the ultimate prize for which they labored fell from their grasp.

My friends, we cannot allow the same to happen to us.  The prize we seek is not the glory of our individual congregations.  It is not for our own comfort.  It is for the glory of our common cause.  We must harness that opportunity to build upon our cause, we must heed the calling of our shared beliefs, we must listen to our collective hearts that beat to a unifying and thoughtful spirituality.  I see us as one people who value the traditions of the past, but who also respect and compromise with the traditions of others, all in order to keep our eyes on the prize.  That prize, that glory, will not be a bigger church – with more members and more money.  It will instead be the greater realization of our purpose as people and congregations. We must march boldly forward united in our vision of being positive spiritual change agents.  Together, we too can be Selma.

 

I wish you all much peace and joy.