Author: Doug Slagle

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

 

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Our reading this morning reflects some of how I came to my current beliefs.  I hope you will indulge me as I relate to you some of my story…

Merriam Webster dictionary defines an epiphany to be a sudden perception of the essential  meaning of something and an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure.  I compare an epiphany to an “aha!” moment – a time when one understands a new truth.  Most people have had at least one major epiphany in their lives.  For better or worse, I’ve had three.  Each of them revealed to me aspects about life and myself that did not fundamentally change who I am – but they significantly updated what I like to call my personal operating system.

Experts tell us that our beliefs largely determine our identity.  We form our foundational beliefs when we are children.  Throughout life we update them to fit new understandings and new situations.  Most belief updates are minor.  Some are big and are what I call epiphanies – they significantly alter what we previously believed.  Our beliefs serve as maps for how we function, how we relate with others and how we think about self-worth.  Hopefully, our beliefs are well chosen and spring from our inner selves – the part of us that I believe is good, loving and open.

My first epiphany came eighteen years ago.  My youngest daughter had been invited to sing with a local church children’s choir.  Naturally, I attended her performances which were a part of Sunday services.  That was a new experience for me since I had grown up unchurched and with little understanding of anything spiritual.  Life was about me, my family and my close friends.  I had not engaged in thinking about issues of meaning, purpose and universal truths.

But the minister at this church spoke of a loving God who wants to forgive us for past wrongdoing and who seeks our love in return.  As this Pastor said, people are born imperfect and prone to be selfish.  They often want only what is good for themselves and thus will mostly disregard the needs of others.  Evil in the world is caused by such selfishness.  The answer he put forward was to believe in God, accept his forgiveness and thereby become a new and better person.

I had been living most of my life up to that time as a closeted gay man.  I was married, had two daughters and wanted to be a supposedly normal, macho guy.   I was not acting on my thoughts and I tried my best to deny them.  Society and my parents had all convinced me that being homosexual was terrible and wrong.  Ultimately, however, my inward thoughts and how I outwardly lived were dissonant.  I accepted the idea that being gay was wrong and so I tried to live as a straight person even though my same sex thoughts did not go away.

And so this Pastor’s words about a loving God who would forgive me and change me were strongly attractive to me.   While thinking that one can be saved from hell through belief in a supernatural god is simplistic – one that reason ought to reject, such is the emotional draw of religion for many otherwise intelligent people around the world.  I had my first epiphany – I chose to believe in God.

I very quickly dove headfirst into this new belief system.  I read all I could about it.  I studied the Bible and Christian theologies, I attended church regularly and joined groups that promoted so-called Godly beliefs and behavior.  I attended Seminary for a while and soon became something of a poster boy for how God supposedly changes people when they believe in him.

After several years of active involvement in church and learning about the Bible and God, I had my second epiphany.   My personal operating system got updated.  If God truly changes a person from thinking selfishly, then it followed for me that one should believe in serving others more than the self – particularly those who hurt, suffer and live on the margins.  I decided to leave my previous career in healthcare administration and become a Pastor.  I was determined to find a purpose for my life.  I was determined to try and live not just for myself and my immediate family, but for others too.

While I fully knew then and know now that people serve others in many ways – that being a Pastor is nothing more special then being a teacher, nurse, attorney, social worker or any other career, I felt a calling to do what I think Pastors should do – encourage, listen, care for and serve people in ways that build belief in something greater than the self.

And so I was hired as an associate Pastor at a large, conservative church on the east side of this city.  I was put in charge of all aspects of Pastoral Care for the congregation – listening to people and their struggles, comforting the sick and dying, visiting folks in hospitals and nursing homes, performing weddings and funerals, and organizing efforts to serve the poor, needy and hurting.  I enjoyed meeting all kinds of people but I especially felt called to befriend and listen to the struggles and needs of people who were a bit different from the majority – those who were slightly odd, who were poor, sick, depressed, out of work, or eccentric.  Some in that church teased me that I was a Pastor to the so called fruits and nuts.  For me, that is what any caring person does.   She or he does not reach out to those who already have money, power, or prestige.  Those people already have their security blankets.  My second epiphany revealed to me that the world can be a cruel one – that people do hurt – and that my purpose is to live in a way that helps make things better.

My third epiphany, and up until now my last one, came as I further evolved and updated my thinking.  I had gradually come to see that God is not real unless there is tangible proof of her existence.  After several years, God had not done as promised.  I had not been changed.  I had not been able to pray away the gay.  While some Christians might say that I was not diligent enough or that I did not truly believe, they are wrong.  I desperately wanted to change.  I desperately wanted to be what I thought was normal.  I desperately did not want to go to hell which is where the Bible says I will go.

I came to see that it was not God that was changing the world.  It was not even his people who changed it.  Generous, caring and selfless people, no matter what they believe – or do not believe – are the ones who help change the world for good.  Gandhi, as one example and someone whom I studied, had not believed in a Jewish, Christian or Muslim God.  And yet he taught more about charity, peace, social justice and goodness than perhaps any other person in history.  His words and his deeds helped transform communities, his nation and the world.  Crucially, I discovered that the wisdom and actions of history’s prophets – ones like the historical Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Joan of Arc, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harvey Milk – they are ones to study and from whom humanity can derive insight.

Where was a theistic god in speaking up for the desperately poor of India?  Where was god in building a peaceful and non-violent world?  Where was god in eradicating disease, poverty, hunger and discrimination?  Just as he was absent in my life to change me from gay to straight, he was also absent in the world to change it for the better.

God is not floating on some ethereal cloud and shaping the world.  Nor is he shaping all who believe in him to be more loving.  Indeed, I quickly saw that many who profess a belief in a theistic god are decidedly unloving, hypocritical and selfish – in a way that no religion promotes.   I further learned of the many flaws and inconsistencies in the Bible.  If God loved humanity, why would he encourage the killing of thousands of men, women and children as he does in parts of the Old Testament?  Where is there evidence of his creative power?  Where is there proof of miracles, virgin births, and resurrection from the dead – except in Bible stories?  Anyone may believe as they wish, and I strongly support that, but if beliefs are proven by actions, then where are the verifiable deeds of a theistic god?  After many years of belief in God and praying for change, I was still gay.  The world was still full of hurting people.  Proof of miracles was nonexistent.

And so I had my third epiphany.  I came out of the closet.  I finally determined there was no possibility to change that small part of me.  I had to live according to my inward truth.  Ironically, it was something that Jesus is quoted as having taught that helped me.  He said, “the truth will set you free.”  And I had yearned to be free for so long.  Finally, I understood that only my inner self and the choices I make about what I believe – only those will make me free.  No god and no religious belief would do it.  I had to carefully choose, from the depths of heart and soul, what is true and thus what to believe.

And if God was not true for me, as someone who had fervently tried to believe, who had dedicated his life to that belief, then God, as he is represented in a literal understanding of Scripture, is not true.  I came out of the closet both as a gay man and as one who had peered behind the curtain of religious belief and found it wanting.

But as with many things in life, my freedom did not come without cost.  After coming out, I was immediately rejected by the church I had served for almost seven years.  I had soothed, cared for, married and buried many of its leaders and members.  And yet I became “persona non grata” to most of them.  I had not changed who I was.  I had simply revealed some small aspect of my inner being.  This almost total rejection by my church family only confirmed the reality that god could not exist.  Where was he in the hour one of his hurting people needed mercy?  Sadly, he was manifested in the judging, hurtful and unkind ones who told me that I was evil.

After a year of feeling angry at anyone who was even slightly religious, I was encouraged to attend a small downtown church that I was told would meet my changed beliefs.  That church was the Gathering where I immediately felt welcomed, honored and accepted.  After two years of membership at the Gathering, I submitted my name as candidate to be the sole Pastor of the congregation – after the founding Pastor announced he was moving.  Since I had not previously served as a preaching Pastor, I was hired on a trial basis for one year.  Five years later, almost to this day, I am still with the Gathering.  It is a congregation I love and respect not for being in any way perfect, which it is not – as I am not.  I love its people for trying their best to be a loving community both to each other and to the outside world.

Fortunately, my evolving beliefs and epiphanies about life and this world happened at a perfect time for my role as Pastor at the Gathering.  We have come to see that God is not an outside Being working for our welfare.  He or she is us – each and every person.  It is people who are to feed the hungry, serve the poor, tend the sick, listen to the broken hearted, advocate for the oppressed and strive for a better world.  It is people who consciously make the choices to be humble, giving, non-judgmental, kind-hearted, and loving.  It is we who encourage and help one another to learn and grow – seeking the inner changes that help us go out into the world to do the work we are meant to do.  We live for a purpose.  It is not so that we can die with the satisfaction that we have made only our own lives better.  It is not to honor a god that is either non-existent or impotent.  It is to leave behind a legacy of service to all humanity and to the universe of all things.

In one brief sentence, my life and my statement of purpose echoes the famous one spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr.  “The arc of my pursuit for personal meaning is a long one, but it bends toward compassion for others…and for myself.”

Even so, my story is nothing more special than any of your life stories.  In many ways, it is smaller – for it took me until mid-life to determine my core beliefs.  Many of you likely arrived at such beliefs at much younger ages.  I applaud you and am humbled when I hear your life stories.

Most of all, I hope my words about how beliefs and actions define who we are will resonate.  Both the Gathering and Northern Hills find themselves at a crossroads – potential change is ahead and that is both scary and exciting.  I have found in my life that when I was afraid to change, when I refused to honor my inner beliefs, I was caught in meaningless self-deception.  The Buddha said that the only constant in life is impermanence – the fact that all things change.  Instead of holding onto the past, instead of refusing to evolve, we must instead embrace the fact that moving forward, that finding new epiphanies, is good.  Whether or not our two congregations decide to merge, we can know that by embracing the possibility of change, we will have already changed.  Neither of our two congregations will again be the same after this undertaking.

The Gathering must confront its own tendencies to complacency and instead fully embrace it’s stated belief in progressive change.  We cannot afford to stand still.  We cannot wait for busloads of people to find us, volunteer with us and share our burdens.  Remaining as we are will only breed a steady decline.  We must go out into the world and be forces of change – not to serve our needs but to better enable our beliefs and our deeds.  Change must likely come to us at some new location, in new ways of telling others what we are all about, in new ways of making a difference.

And, while I do not intimately know about issues within this Northern Hills congregation, I imagine some of them are the same as those that face the Gathering.  I encourage us all to look around this room and see the power and goodness inherent in each person – to see the hunger for meaning, the hope each has in better lives for all people, the desire for purpose and lasting legacy.  It is said that churches must never become dusty museums of old ways and supposedly saintly people.  They must instead be vital and active centers of healing and growth for imperfect people – for their members, their Pastors and those outside their doors.  We will foster no guilt, no shame, no burden born of a sense of obligation.  Instead, as congregations who share many of the same values, we set ourselves the vision to make a difference, to choose our beliefs carefully and speak them with wisdom.  We then pledge to go out and be the hands and feet of change in a world that desperately needs loving communities of servants.  Long live Northern Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and long live the Gathering.

 

 

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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Ancient Israel was said to be a specially favored nation because it sought to follow a god that cares for and loves people. For a time, this belief was put into practice as Jews built a society of equality and freedom. As time passed, however, many Jews, like all people, turned to the dark side of their souls and began to favor wealth, luxury and ease all at the expense of fellow Jews. The Old Testament prophet Isaiah spoke strongly to his fellow Jews about that attitude, “This is the kind of religious practice I want from you, let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.”
A prophet at that time was a person who speaks the wisdom of God. In many ways, contemporary prophets like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. also spoke what they perceived to be the heart of universal goodness. Jesus is perhaps the model prophet and his teaching was focused primarily on living true to the universal ideals of compassion, justice and serving others. As he famously said, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me…whatever you did not do for one of the least of your brothers and sisters, you did not do for me.” Jesus clearly equates great sin with a lack of concern for the marginalized.
History’s great prophets have therefore challenged people to act according to what is universally considered good – to think less of the self, to be humble, gentle and, above all, others focused. For most prophets, the primary sin at work in our world is human pride and selfishness. Sins of greed and indifference toward the poor, sick and oppressed are major concerns of prophets and they were emphatically condemned by them. Common to prophetic thinking is a desire to liberate those who suffer and who are treated poorly by power elites. Great prophets have throughout history sought to change greed prone human society into one liberated by a god force of universal ethics.
As I have sought this month – and as I hope you have also pondered – there are multiple ways to consider what constitutes theology. Under traditional religious thinking, theology is concerned with a philosophy of god as a supernatural, other-worldly being. But just as secular philosophies have evolved over the ages, so too have ideas about god. Theology need no longer only imply a study of God as a grey bearded puppet master determining our lives and our after-life destiny. This month I’ve looked at Pantheism as an alternate theology. Last week, I also looked at Civic theology as a non-religious understanding of American political and Presidential speech about god. In both of those cases, god is not a literal being but rather a an abstract concept and an embodiment of social justice ideals. For today, I assert that another theology about god is a both an abstract concept that is also a liberating one. A little ‘g’ god is found not only in the universe of things. God is found in the hopes, dreams and suffering of the poor and marginalized. God is found in work to liberate humanity both of greed, AND of poverty. God, in this sense, is a force for social change.
We know that many people around the world are not granted equal access to basic resources or to the universal freedoms of opportunity, life and happiness. The dark side of the human soul leads many to take more than their fair share, to be arrogant, haughty and indifferent. The dark side of the human soul leads some to demean and restrain others so that their lives can operate based on one’s selfish terms – for one’s personal benefit and according to one’s personal beliefs. If that means others are denied their innate human rights, so be it.
That leads me to my third “different theology” in this September message series – a different theology that speaks of a liberating God. This theology is a modern one begun in the 1950’s in Latin America by Catholic Priests who saw the stark disparity between the extremely rich and the terribly poor. But these Priests also knew the teachings of Jesus and other prophets who said the heart of the Divine is with those who suffer. Such a theology is often derided by orthodox Christians as being heresy. It is derided by many politicians and elites as socialist and more like Marxism than religion. These are false accusations born more of fear than of truth. The clear reality of liberation theology is that it clearly reflects the teachings of both Old Testament prophets and of Jesus who acted as social and spiritual change agents. Indeed, liberation theology, I assert, is more closely aligned to the teachings of Jesus than any other theology I have studied. Jesus was born poor. He lived as a working class poor man. He hung out with everyday people and made a special effort to befriend outcasts. He was a radical who dared to challenge arrogant and hypocritical religious and political elites. The heart of God, he implicitly taught over and over again, is focused not on money, wealth or power. It is to insure all people, especially those who hurt, have the basic rights and needs of life.
This liberating god is one that dramatically re-defines and reinterprets traditional theologies about God. This is a little ‘g’ god of justice totally different from a supernatural god of most Christian or Jewish churches and synagogues. A liberating god is solely concerned about injustice in the world created by human sin. This god favors the poor and imparts its special, I repeat special, grace on them and on others who are oppressed. According to one of the foremost of liberation theologians, John Sobrino – who is also a Jesuit Priest, “The poor are accepted as constituting the primary recipients of the gospel and, therefore, as having an inherent capacity of understanding it better than anyone else.”
While orthodox Christians widely dislike this theology because it threatens their own selfish perception of God’s grace, it is a fundamentally true understanding about how and why the poor are attracted to a god force of hope. Only by finding oneself without any hope and without any opportunity does one turn to a god of mercy and justice. This is a god of brokenness much like a crucified Jesus. Only those who are poor in spirit, broken and without the comforts and necessities of life can truly humble themselves before a force greater than themselves. This is the liberating god celebrated by African-American slaves, of poor farmers in Latin America who flock to charismatic churches, and of contemporary Hispanics, immigrants and blacks who, lacking the comforting cocoon of privilege, turn to a type of religion that tells them they are worthy and deserving of justice.
This liberating god is therefore not one for the after-life but rather one for the here and now – consistent with the declaration by Jesus that the kingdom of god is at hand. This kingdom is one concerned with present day matters of mercy and universal human rights. God is concerned with right now and right here. He or she is not sitting and waiting in some other-worldly place.
Even more important, a liberating god force is not concerned with doctrine, dogma or beliefs. It is focused solely on deeds and practice. Echoing the words found in the Biblical book of James, it is a theology that emphasizes works of service and compassion. James tells us that any belief without corresponding good deeds is an empty belief. How many theologies, religions and churches today are essentially empty? As written in the book of James, faith without works is dead. A liberating god, while not being a supernatural being, is nevertheless one totally focused on good works. Show me your good works, James wrote, and I will show you true godliness. This is a theology put into practice versus a theology that merely talks. To use latin derived words, it is orthopraxy versus orthodoxy, right practice versus right belief. A liberating god force is the expression of love as it is worked out by doing good instead of by piously preaching about it.
According to Duke University Divinity School professor Frederick Herzog, liberation theology is far removed from the ivory tower of academia, philosophy and the study of Scripture. As he says, “it carves out the truth in toil and sweat in the midst of conflict.” That conflict, he says, comes as the poor and marginalized confront sin that is found in this world – the sins of greed, power, and arrogance. The oppressed, Herzog claims, are liberated and saved as they understand their lot in life is not to simply endure suffering until an after-life of heaven. It is to seek and demand right now the rights taken from them.
Those who already have the comforts of life are also liberated and symbolically saved when they have their own epiphany – that to be good and righteous in this life, to be a person who acts according to a liberating god force, one must serve, share and care for others. This is not a simple noblesse oblige paternalism by those who have. It is not handing out a few crumbs to the have nots. It is a fundamental shift in outlook and practice. One’s theology and philosophy about god and life is no longer seen through a prism of individualism – what is in it for me in this life and how will I be rewarded in the afterlife. Instead, we live for a higher purpose to help realize a type of heaven on earth for everyone.
Liberation theology is therefore difficult to believe and practice. It asks each person to awaken to what defines god, goodness and love. It asks for sacrifice, for unconditional love, for humility in those with status and money. We cannot say we are loving people if we ignore racism, sexism or homophobia in our world. We cannot say we are loving people if we see poverty around us and do nothing to address it. We cannot say we are loving people if we see others denied the basics of life and do nothing to provide them. A liberating god force both manifests love and demands it, through tangible deeds of service and advocacy for the poor and outcasts.
For many of us who lament how fundamentalist religions have hijacked notions of god, I nevertheless still find a sense of god in our everyday world. In the streets and byways of this city I see god in the faces and actions of people who seemingly have no hope – but yet who do. It’s found in the persistence of working single moms raising their children, the entrepreneurial spirit in men who wash windows for a few dollars, the tired but still alive hope in homeless young people seeking to craft a better life, the lines of hungry waiting for a bag of groceries at the Freestore. I felt god firsthand almost every Tuesday last year when I and others tutored at Rothenberg just up the street from here. Bright eyed kids living in one of the most economically challenged communities in our nation would rush to greet us. DaVosha, the little girl I tutored, would usually run to me and wrap her arms around my legs in a big hug.
I could contrast her hope and child-like enthusiasm with that of my own girls when they were growing up – only my girls placed their hope in family, their nice shiny school, their safe neighborhood, their comfortable lives of relative privilege. DaVosha likely does not share those hopes in things. She has a hope in something more intangible. Hers is a hope not in me as her tutor or in any other who serves her – it’s a trust in the power of love, in a god force that somehow leads people to serve and give back. It’s nothing special about me or others. We are nothing. It’s something special in the liberating god force at work – one that loves and gives hope to the hopeless. One that animates every human heart to do something meaningful. Above all, it is a force of love, a god force, that can and does loose the bonds of injustice to set the captives free…

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering.  All Rights Reserved.

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The following are quotes from American Presidents. While not a test, I encourage you to think who might have uttered them. I also encourage your thought on why such statements are the currency of Presidential and American political speech.
According to one President, “The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought are still at issue around the globe – the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” (Who said this?) John F. Kennedy said these words in his Inaugural Address.
Another President said, “It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors.” (Who said this?) George Washington said that.
Finally, one President prayed this prayer in a speech, “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. We know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.” (Who said this?) Franklin D. Roosevelt so prayed on June 7, 1944 – the day after the D-Day Normandy landings in Europe.
Such quotes capture over two-hundred years of American Presidential words about God. As much as many people see the marriage of government and religion as contrary to the American ideal of separation of church and state, words invoking the power and protection of God are a part of our national history, vocabulary, and identity. Every US President has publicly called upon God in some form. They have seemingly wrapped God in an American flag and employed God as an implicit benefactor of our nation. Indeed, most of our Presidents have acted as a national Pastor – one who utters our collective prayers, soothes us with assurances of God’s concern in times of distress and embodies all that we supposedly believe. And yet no President has called our nation a theocracy. All have claimed to lead a secular Republic. All at least voiced tolerance for anyone, no matter their faith.
Are Presidential supplications to God mere words intended to pacify the most religious among us? Are they insincere? Are they the stuff of political posturing? Or is there, in many of the thousands of Presidential statements that name God, a different theology that is non-religious – a theology that refers not to a Biblical God but to a concept of god and, most importantly, to eternally human values?
A further question results when we investigate what many Presidents believed to be God – or at least to what they referred to when they named God. For instance, there are many statements by the founders of our nation which invoke the name of God. But most of the founders were Deists who believed in a creative god force of nature that is discerned by reason and observation. This Deist god is not supernatural and performs no miracles or other mythical types of actions. A Deist god allows the universe to function according to physical laws of nature.
Many Pastors and religious leaders have called Deism a false belief and assert that it is, in reality, Atheism. Of the seven men considered the most significant founders of our nation – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Jay, Hamilton, and Madison – only John Jay is said to have been an orthodox Christian. All others spoke of god in Deist terms and almost never referred to Christ or belief in the kind of salvation said to be offered by him. These men rarely attended church, often refused to take communion and avoided religious leaders. Thomas Jefferson was strongly opposed in his bid to become President by many Pastors because he was an avowed Deist. Jefferson did not believe in miracles described in the Bible, he rejected the idea of the Trinity, and he said the virgin birth is a hocus-pocus myth. He re-wrote large portions of the Bible by deleting verses that alluded to anything supernatural or miraculous. But, as President and almost until the day he died, he often wrote of God and the Providence of God. That kind of paradox – to speak of God but not exhibit much religiosity is true of many Presidents.
Despite this paradox, many contemporary Christians mistakenly use the words of Washington, Jefferson and others to state that America was founded on explicitly Christian beliefs despite the fact that the constitution never uses the words God, Bible, Christian, Christ, Creator or Divine. Christians claim the same with almost all other Presidents as a way to insist that America is a Christian nation – even though almost no President has ever uttered in his seemingly religious statements the words “Christ” or “Christian.” And yet, intonations about God by Presidents sit uneasy in our minds. Where is the wall that allegedly divides church from state? Where is the acknowledgement that many Americans have not and do not believe in a personal, supernatural god?
I assert, however, that while some Presidents opportunistically have used the name of god in order to cloak themselves in the mantle of a Christian God, especially in years since Jimmy Carter freely discussed his Born Again Christianity, most Presidents have spoken a much different form of theology – a Civic theology or Civil Religion of universal ideals. God, in this sense, is not the god of the Bible. In American civil religion, god is an embodiment of justice, mercy and equality. God is the natural force behind universal human rights, the force that proclaims the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. God, according to this non-religious civic theology, is the intangible impulse behind American ideals embodied in our secular national scriptures – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address.
And that speaks to my purpose in this September message series of “Seeking a Different Theology”. When considering religion, we have too often divided into opposing sides. We understand god through either a prism of belief or of unbelief. Our theology is either Atheist or religiously theistic. Instead, my September message series intends to ask the question: is there a different way, a way found someplace in the grey and ill-defined middle, a way to find some small turf of common ground on which both Atheist and theist can unite? Might we, as seekers after truth, find some balance between a belief in the power of science and reason, and the mysterious forces at work in the universe that deal with meaning, transcendence, and universal values?
I maintain that American Civil Religion does just that. As such, can we as spiritually open minded people get past the seemingly offensive religious words used by most Presidents and find, instead, a broader and truly universal celebration of human rights? I turn to Abraham Lincoln as perhaps the best expositor of a national non-religious religion. He has been called the father of American Civil Religion – one based not on traditional theological belief in an all powerful God but, instead, in a reverence for national virtues like equality, freedom and justice. Lincoln, as reported by both his wife and his best friend William Herndon, was deeply spiritual but not a religious Christian. As President, he eloquently equated god with the values we hold dear as Americans. In his mind, god and the ethic of freedom were one and the same.
Lincoln’s use of God’s name in his speeches were far from being evangelical or even nationalistic. He never claimed that God had chosen America as his or her exceptional example of a moral nation. Rather, Lincoln claimed that our values, and most importantly our protection of freedom, are ones derived from a universal power that he generically called God. America is worth saving and honoring because it aspires to follow nature’s god that grants us the universal rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. America was created to insure such rights for its citizens and it is therefore a nation worth protecting because of its adherence to those eternal ethics. America is not good because it was specially anointed by a Christian God. America is good because of its stated values.
In his Gettysburg Address, considered by many historians as the single greatest American speech and one that epitomizes American civil theology, Lincoln famously began, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Two short paragraphs later, Lincoln concluded, “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
It is important to note that two written versions of Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863 do not contain the words “under god”. Eyewitness accounts also do not claim he spoke those words. At a later date, however, Lincoln signed and dated a copy which does contain that phrase and it is that version which has become the official one. Nevertheless, with or without the naming of God, the speech borrowed heavily from the cadence and phrasing of the Bible. His famous words “four score and seven years ago” echo those found in the Psalms: “three score and ten years ago.” The words “brought forth” are those used in the Gospel of Luke to describe Mary’s birth of Jesus. And his final words “shall not perish” are the same as those reported in Luke to have been spoken by Jesus at his crucifixion.
According to Robert Bellah, who wrote a landmark article on American civil religion in 1968, the Gettysburg Address is a perfect example of our national non-religious religion. Lincoln described an America conceived not by god or God’s intentions, but rather by a purely human intention to promote universal ideals which by themselves were godly. America began because of a proposition that humans are born both free and equal. The actions of the founding fathers, the efforts of Americans since 1776, the sacrifice of Union soldiers on the fields of Gettysburg – all these were done, according to Lincoln, so that those propositions of freedom and equality would not end. Americans therefore bow in reverence not to a Supreme Being but rather to supreme ideas. That is our civil religion.
Lincoln beautifully framed the American story around a subtle analogy with the birth, life and death of Jesus. That symbolism and use of Jesus themes further defines both his beliefs and those of an American civic theology. Americans, Lincoln believed, are united not by a religion that worships Christ. We are united by a civic religion focused on the concept of a god of ideas – on a set of values similar to those of Jesus, ones we hold as self-evident, eternal and even mystical. That is an American religion of universal principles, Lincoln implicitly asserted, of Washington, Jefferson and all other great activists in American history. I assert that is the civic religion of other Presidential reformers like Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, Obama and, indeed, of all Americans who believe in freedom, equality and social justice.
It is interesting to further note that Lincoln’s other famous Gettysburg phrase was borrowed from a well-known Unitarian minister of the time, Theodore Parker, who said in a sermon that upholding the ideals of liberty and equality demanded a democratic government “of all the people, by all the people, for all the people – a government after the principles of eternal justice…” The sermon likely caught Lincoln’s attention because it so well described his personal faith in a god found in the universe as a whole, a god force that embodies eternally sacred values. Lincoln was nothing if not a great politician – in the Gettysburg Address he turned pious, evangelical and often hypocritical religiosity on its head – he used its phrases and its cadences to speak of an inclusive civic theology that united instead of divided.
In that regard, modern Christian fundamentalists and my own experience with some of them have nevertheless caused me to cynically discount anything that sounds traditionally religious. When I hear a politician invoke the name of God, I’m often turned off. Just a few weeks ago, President Obama asked that God both bless a murdered journalist and America itself. They were soothing words designed to comfort our shocked sensibilities. I cannot know what motivated Obama or any other President to utter those words – “may God bless America.” But I find in my cynicism a jaded thinking that is angry not at the words but at their often exploitative use.
By offering today a different theology, much like I offered last week in the Pantheism of Albert Einstein, I call both myself and you to a less cynical perspective on American intonations of god. Much like what Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln believed about god, I subscribe to a divine force of goodness and beauty that operates and animates the world. Universal values and ethics that were true ten thousand years ago, are true today and will be true ten thousand years from now – these are foundational American beliefs that are not unique to us but rather ones we aspire to uphold.
As such, we do not need to flinch with disapproval every time we hear the name of God invoked to bless America or, indeed, to bless any of us. Nor do I believe we should discredit the words of many past Presidents and our nation’s founders who spoke the name of God. I believe they mostly referred not to a Christian or any other religiously specific god. Nor did many of them refer to a god who favored America. Rather, I believe our American theology seeks to honor, like we do, the eternal god force of goodness – the god force that blesses any government founded on liberty and equality, the god force that compels a government to protect persons denied such rights, the god force that asks of nations that they insure the basics of happiness for their citizens. That’s a civic non-religious religion I am proud to proclaim and one I try to follow.

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

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Many of you may have heard of a recent church trend with the formation of Atheist congregations that meet weekly, sing communal songs, listen to messages and engage in serving their local communities – much like many other religiously based assemblies of Christians, Jews or Muslims. As oxymoronic as this trend seems to many people, it likely reflects some envy on the part of many Atheists who want all the positives of church experience, but without religious faith. They have implicitly recognized the advantages of attending and joining a church community.
Even so, I posit a more nuanced explanation for the rise of Atheist churches. Many Atheists have become dissatisfied with an outright rejection of theism. They want something more than a negative belief. They seek something positive, uplifting and perhaps even transcendent. Whether or not some Atheists admit it, they seek mystery, inspiration, and awe. For many people who do not believe in a personal, all powerful and all knowing God, including myself, belief in the power of science to explain all things is unsatisfying. Science offers an incomplete understanding of the mysteries we ponder – why are we here, what purpose we serve, what created the original stuff from which all else is derived?
In that sense, I’m a seeker far more than I am a “rejecter”. As with many things in life, I’ve come to a conclusion that anything founded on negativity is not so good. I’d rather focus on what is positive and so, instead of speaking against something, I find what it is I can be in favor. I don’t reject god as much as I seek a positive god concept within the confines of a natural universe. A god force is out there in some form and within some structure. (I use the word, little ‘g’ ‘god’, very carefully here.). For me, god is a function of the observable, natural world even if humans do not fully understand all aspects of a universal force that might loosely be called god. God, as a function of nature, is a great mystery, a force of wonder, a function of exquisite complexity discovered in physics, astronomy, biology and chemistry. To believe in this type of a natural god is, by definition, the opposite of Atheism. I assert a positive belief in a force that is theistic in terms of it being a type of god. As such, I’m a non-religious theist.
This belief of mine is certainly nothing new. Most say a form of this natural theism originated in the seventeenth century with the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza who was described at the time as being “god-intoxicated” since he saw god in all things. Spinoza advocated what has come to be called pantheism – a combination of the greek word roots ‘pan’, meaning ‘all’, and ‘theos’, meaning god. Spinoza saw a universe of remarkable complexity that nevertheless worked as an integrated whole. God, for him, is not some outside anthropomorphic being manipulating all creation like a great puppet master. God is pervasive, immanent and all-encompassing. God is everywhere and in everything – in a tree, a stone, a star, a child’s face. While some state that pantheism is merely a reverence of nature itself, that the universe and god are one and the same, others reject that simplistic definition. Many people both past and present believe there is a force that is common to all things – a god force that fundamentally explains everything.
As a classical and religious pantheist, Spinoza asserted that god is an actual force that exists in its own right. God is not a being but rather a truth that is a fundamental characteristic of all nature. Science can as yet explain aspects of this force but it cannot fully quantify it. Such is the force that spawned the first cellular life, that designed the human brain, that pushes the boundaries of the universe ever outward feeding on an energy we do not understand and cannot explain.
And that leads me to an investigation of Albert Einstein and his much discussed spiritual beliefs. While many, including Richard Dawkins who is a contemporary Atheist, say Einstein was in reality also an Atheist, Einstein himself would have none of that. As he said, “There are people who say there is no God, but what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views. What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos.”
Einstein later clarified his beliefs by writing, “The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional ‘opium of the people’—cannot hear the music of the spheres.” He adds, “The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man.”
Despite his disdain for angry and arrogant Atheists, Einstein was certainly not a believer in a supernatural god. For him, science and religion are seemingly incompatible but yet they share a common inquiry – to understand what animates the universe. He said at one point that science without religion is lame and that religion without science is blind. Indeed, he also said that, “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.”
What Einstein attempted throughout his life was to give voice to the complex, often paradoxical thoughts he had about theism, god and religion. How can one be a religious nonbeliever? In his vastly superior mind, this was not paradox. As he observed the universe and as he discovered physical laws that describe how things work, he could not prevent himself from still being awestruck. His mind could understand how things work but not why they work. Why does the law of gravity work the way it does? Instead of gravity using the mass of a larger object to attract things, why not repel them? What force initiated relativity and how light, time and space function? For what reason is the universe expanding infinitely? Indeed, if we can even wrap our minds around the idea of an infinite universe, why is it that way? Does it have no beginning? But yet Einstein and science can trace an alleged beginning to the universe at the so-called Big Bang. But what caused the Big Bang? These unanswerable questions of why things work as they do, made the laws of physics and the organization of the universe all the more profound and beautiful to Einstein. Such unknowns were the essence of his spirituality and his confessed humility before the almighty cosmos.
In this regard, Einstein once told David Ben-Gurion, when asked whether he believed in God or not, that despite his great theory on the equilibrium between energy and mass, there must be something behind energy. In other words, something must have given rise to the original energy of the Big Bang. Implicitly, Einstein was saying to Ben-Gurion that, yes, he did believe in a type of god force in the universe that is behind all basic laws of physics and nature, a god force that would explain WHY those laws exist in the format that they do.
Einstein gave voice to his form of religion and belief when he said, “A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.”
What I propose for a Gathering theology, if you will, is a religious non-religion much like what Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein proposed. Our minds and our human reason give us great power to understand many things about the natural world. But our minds can take us only so far. They take us to an observation window through which we see a natural world that is supremely captivating, intricate and far bigger than anything we can comprehend. But a mind as powerful and advanced as Einstein’s was still left totally humbled.
For anyone to categorically deny the existence of some great god force – even if that force is an entirely natural force – that presumptive assertion is exactly what many of us find so distasteful about most religions and some non-religions. They are fundamentally exclusivist and arrogant. They presume to have all the answers to everything. Such people are both the fundamentalist religious, and, forgive me to many of you, the Atheist. I propose, as I do in many things, a middle way.
Atheism asserts that there is no great unknowable force that operates our universe – that there is no god force at work, no mystery, no powerful unknown. Atheism implicitly tells us that ultimately science and the human brain will be able to define and mathematically explain all things – not just the how of things – but the why of things. Science, they say, will be able to tell us what began the Big Bang and where that original bang of energy and mass came from. For me, that presumption manifests the height of arrogance. Who are we as humans to presume that we have the unique gifts to explain all things, to find ultimate Truth? Even Einstein is said to have stated that, given the choice, he’d prefer the company of religious believers over dogmatic Atheists since at least they are in awe of something.
Like Einstein, we at the Gathering similarly reject dogmatic arrogance. It is a stated premise of who we are that we begin from a foundation of humility towards all matters of faith, practice and attitude. I myself strive for a demeanor of humility even as I often fail. In my mind, to be humble in thought, in wants, in speech, and in deeds is the greatest of attitudes. We at the Gathering embrace a diversity of ideas, ways of life, politics and philosophies that offer a range of options. Ultimately, we believe not in answers but in questions and in an ongoing exploration of what is good and true. We are seekers in the truest sense of that word. We seek understanding into how our minds work, how our emotions work, how best to live, how best to serve, how best to act toward one another. We cannot say what animates the cosmos even as our experience and reason tell us there is no grey bearded puppet master. All that we rely upon are our own limited powers of reason and observation – or that of great minds like Einstein who are capable of doing such investigations for us. And those great minds, those scientists, they tell us many things but they cannot tell us everything. And Einstein knew that. He had the humility to know what he did not know and could never know. As humans, we are thus left with mystery and wonder. We are left in awe. We are left seeing a small ‘g’ god in the design and workings of all things.
That is why I propose a form of religious pantheism – a worship of the universe, of nature, of physical laws and of the intrinsic divinity in them. In everything we observe, there is some hidden truth beyond the how of its existence. The more humans discover about the universe, the more they find what they do not understand. We exist in a universe of complexity wrapped around complexity hidden within mystery – such that humans may never come face to face with ultimate Truth. But even if we cannot know what that Truth is, we can know it is there.
Science cannot fully explain the music of the spheres – the sublime melody of quarks, protons, atoms, dark energy, planets, and stars all singing the same magnificent tune. But what IS the master composer of that music, and why did it compose as it it did? It is within that mystery – the limitations of science – that we find the god force of nature. And at the altar of tree, star and mind, at the altar of the universe, Atheists and religious believers can unite. We are filled with deep, deep awe at natural beauty and complexity. As humbled humans, we can then find reconciliation between Atheism AND theistic religion. God is paradox. God is dead, and god is alive. God is nowhere, and god is everywhere.
I wish you all much peace and joy…

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Two months ago, three sixteen year old Israeli teenage boys were kidnapped as they hitchhiked back to their homes, they were tied up, beaten, killed and then buried under a pile of rocks. A few days later, a few Jewish extremist vigilantes responded to that murder by kidnapping a fifteen year old Arab boy as he waited for friends. He was horribly beaten and then burned alive. Hamas fighters, acting in response to that outrage, began launching explosive rockets toward Israeli settlements and cities. Several homes and a few Israelis were killed. Hamas fighters snuck through underground tunnels leading to Israeli towns with the hopes to perpetrate a mass killing of unarmed Jewish civilians. The Israeli army responded by invading the Gaza Strip where Hamas rockets were launched and where the tunnels began. Because Hamas fighters hide themselves within schools, shopping centers, mosques and apartment buildings, Israeli tanks and fighter jets destroyed not only the rockets and tunnels but also killed hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians. After multiple deaths on both sides of the conflict, the worn out combatants pulled back and began a series of cease fires. Even so, Israelis and Palestinians still stare at each other across the Gaza border with visceral hatred. Each side still harbors the desire to destroy the other. This cycle of violence may have stopped for a time, but there is little doubt it will begin anew at some future time.
I have no desire to plumb the complexities of who might be to blame or who caused the original affront. I hope you will not allow your thinking to do that either. Instead, I hope to focus our thoughts on the horrible violence that happened and specifically how that violence relates to us. I hope to focus on the hate involved and the need for a lasting peace between people everywhere.
As we turn our gaze at a world that is now so violent in so many places – in the Ukraine, in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Somalia, Nigeria and elsewhere, I pray we re-focus that gaze inward, to do what I have talked about in my August message series. How can WE, as individuals, be the change we want to see? How do we turn a macro vision of warfare on our planet into a micro vision of it – how violence infects our own interactions with others. Indeed, I call out the hypocrisy in me and in others that too easily condemns the violence I see around the world but also too easily acts with angry speech or actions toward someone in my life whom I perceive has hurt me. The hate and anger that can rise up in me is no different than the hate and anger that animates Israelis and Palestinians. How can I be a peacemaking change agent in my own life and thus, as Gandhi encouraged, a change agent for peace around the world?
The key, for Gandhi, is to create spiritual reconciliation. Peace between two persons or two groups of people means that they co-exist and have a relationship that is respectful and absent verbal or physical violence. To resolve issues between two parties is different from reconciling and re-establishing relationship. Resolution requires a complex and difficult intellectual examination of facts – most of which are interpreted differently by the opposing sides. Trying to negotiate a resolution between two sides in any dispute is almost impossible when passions of rage and hate predominate.
People can have their differences while still enjoying a peaceful relationship. Between any people in conflict, the critical goal is to get them to respectfully relate with one another in such a way that the hard work of resolving differences can take place. Ultimately, establishing a peaceful relationship requires each side to recognize the basic dignity of the other and to love the other as a fellow human.
And if that seems like a pie-in-the-sky utopian dream, that any person or any nation will be able to forever banish angry or violent thoughts towards others, it is. And Gandhi agreed. But as much as he acknowledged the human propensity to hate and to violently attack others has existed for millennia, he also perceived that a spiritual ethic and sensitivity exists within every person. Almost any of the world’s problems, or the problems any of us face, have spiritual roots. And that is why his statement that we must be the change that we want to see is more than a nice slogan. It is literally true. Racism, poverty, crime, violence, envy, hatred, war, terrorism – they all originate in the hearts of individuals. We cannot change these problem unless we first change the cause – which is found inside us.
As the central premise for my message today, individuals must rigorously examine themselves and willingly hold themselves accountable for violent speech and actions in any format and toward any person. Following on that premise, it does us no good to talk about what others should do. Beginning with me, beginning with each of us, we need to examine our own thoughts, words and actions that are violent and are not peaceful.
In my message two weeks about changing the world by serving others, I noted that Gandhi believed each person is born spiritually blind. Only by exploring one’s inner heart can one self-realize and find spiritual sight.
Each person has the same spiritual impulse to love and be loved. This inner truth force is the same no matter one’s sex, ethnicity or national origin. As humans, we hunger for connection with others. We delight in affection and love that is showered on us. All humans can be enabled by this force to unconditionally love, give and care for others. We all have seen this in action – in ourselves and in others. I saw it firsthand in how some acted last week in honoring Worley Rodehaver. There was no benefit to people giving and loving in his memory. They simply did it – springing from their inner truth force. Too often, however, we blind ourselves to its reality. Anger and hate can cloud our spiritual vision. We don’t purposefully endeavor to see as our hearts want us to see. The problem with any conflict we face is how do we enable and put into action our inner truth?
For Gandhi, the crucial step in becoming a peacemaker, in re-establishing a relationship with one who has hurt us or with whom we are in conflict, is to tap into our truth force by forgiving. And forgiving involves a three step process. First, he believed we should acknowledge and remember the pain we have suffered or the reason why we are in conflict. Forgiveness does not involve forgetting.
Then comes the difficult part. Even though we remember a hurt, the second step is to make a conscious decision to refuse to act or speak toward a perceived opponent in ANY way that is violent, hateful, demeaning, mean spirited or vengeful.
Third and last in the process of forgiving another is to build empathy for the offender by working to understand his or her reasons, thoughts and motivations. We should literally place ourselves in his or her shoes and try to think as they think, to perceive a situation as they perceive it.
In sum, three steps to forgive and let go of anger at an offender or opponent. Accept the memory of a hurt. Refuse to react with violence. Build empathy.
As with so many endeavors in our lives, forgiving is a spiritual process. Gandhi called this effort satyagraha, the pursuit of the inner truth force of which I just spoke. When we forgive another, we act out our truth force of love. We were blind but suddenly we see in a divine way, in an unconditionally loving way, in a universally and eternally good way.
And that is what people must do in order to begin the process of being a peacemaker. But for Gandhi, becoming a peacemaker does not necessarily create peace. We might forgive and be a peacemaker only to have an offender still hurt us. As anyone who knows about the Civil Rights marches of the 1960’s, African-Americans were acting as peacemakers. They had both renounced hateful speech and violent actions and implicitly forgiven white oppressors. And yet they were met by hate and violence – police dogs, water cannons, arrest and racist words.
Change came when the oppressors and onlookers saw the satyagraha truth force of the African-American protestors. They saw their implicit love, their implicit forgiveness, their purposeful renunciation of violence and, most importantly, their willingness to endure suffering for the sake of peace. Such suffering approaches martyr like proportions – a suffering that accepts pain for the greater cause of establishing peace. Few offenders or onlookers will long persist with violence in the face of suffering and forgiveness on the part of a victim. The battle will be won, the moral high ground achieved. Non-violence ultimately prevails.
Contrasted with the recent history I recounted earlier of tit-for-tat murders of Israeli and Palestinian youth, is a story about the death of a 12 year-old Palestinian boy, Ahmed Khatib, in 2008. On the day of Eid, the Muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan, young Ahmed put on his holiday clothes and went out to play with friends. His friends soon told him of an Israeli Army patrol that was inside his Jenin refugee camp located in the West Bank. As a Palestinian boy, he often joined other boys by throwing rocks at Israeli troops – their way of fighting back. Ahmed’s friends and parents acknowledge he carried a wooden toy gun with him that day. He had gone out, like many boys all over the world, to play with a toy – much the same as boys in the US might do playing cops and robbers. He soon, however, joined other boys by hurling rocks at an Israeli armored troop carrier. He was still clutching his toy, wooden gun. Tragically, whether by mistake or on purpose, a shot rang out from the armored carrier and hit Ahmed in the leg. He screamed in pain but then another shot rang out striking him in the head. He was rushed to a local hospital which soon received permission for his transport to an Israeli hospital in Haifa. When his mother finally reached his bedside, he was still alive but cold and unmoving. His clothes were covered with blood and gore. No surgery was undertaken as his injuries were so severe – a large portion of his brain had been blown away. He lingered on life support for two days.
During that time, Ahmed’s parents were overcome with grief. They struggled with the decision of what to do – keep him on life support or not. They finally decided to allow him to die by removing his breathing tube. While in the hospital, Ahmed’s mother Abla saw suffering all around. Many young Jewish children were fighting severe illnesses – one girl dying of a heart defect, a boy dying with liver failure. After his death, she knew what needed to be done. She donated his body and his organs to be used to save others. Within hours, Ahmed’s heart, kidneys, lungs and liver were transplanted into six Israeli children.
Abla, his mother, was angry that the Israeli soldiers had shot Ahmed for any reason. He was a young boy throwing stones against an Army traveling in an armored vehicle. Even if his toy gun might possibly have been perceived as real, it could not threaten the fully protected soldiers. Even more, she asked, why did the soldiers not stop after shooting him in the leg? Why did they have to shoot him in the head? Nevertheless, she said of her decision to donate Ahmed’s organs, “We saw a lot of painful scenes in the hospital. I have seen children in deep need of organs, in deep pain. It doesn’t matter who they are. I didn’t want other children to suffer regardless of who they are. Maybe by this, just one Israeli soldier will decide not to shoot a child. Violence against violence is worthless. This is a message from us to them. A message of peace.”
Her act stunned Israel. A few years before, the relatives of a Jewish victim of a terrorist bombing had donated her organs – many of which saved Palestinian patients. But Ahmed’s organ donation was the first by an Arab for a Jew. Ehud Ohmert, the Prime Minister of Israel, personally called Ahmed’s parents and invited them to his office. He said their act was remarkable and had profoundly affected all of Israel. The stereotype of Palestinians being violent haters had been shattered. The Orthodox Jewish father of a girl who received Ahmed’s heart was reduced to sobbing with gratitude when he met Abla. Her loss of a son had been his gain of a daughter saved – a Palestinian heart beating inside a Jewish girl.
With one gesture, Ahmed’s parents had become the change they wanted to see. They had acknowledged their hurt. They had refused to react with violent speech or actions. They had forgiven despite their deep suffering. They had reached inside themselves to tap the force of love for others. They had become peacemakers. Why could not both Israelis and Palestinians have acted in the same way over this past month? By not doing so, both, both, are to blame.
But once again, I use this example to turn us back toward ourselves. With any of our big or small conflicts, we too can be peacemakers with those around us. We too can purposefully choose to renounce the use of angry, hateful or violent words – against family members, friends, enemies or political opponents. We too can choose not to seek vengeance, in any form, against another. No gossip. No name calling. No bullying. No bitterness. No envy. No hate. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in echoing the ideals of Gandhi, hate does not end hate. Only love can do that.
It is time for each one of us to decide here and now that we will begin to be the change for peace we want to see in the world. Peace can only be built one heart at a time. Let it begin with us. We must tap into our own inner truth force that deeply wants to love and be loved. May we speak to and about others with gentleness and civility. May we treat our opponents and enemies with respect. May our politics be gentle and civil. May we find the ability to understand and. May we choose to heal our spiritual blindness and begin to really see.
I wish you much peace and joy…

For our talk back time, I’m interested in your thoughts on non-violence in particular and the concept as used by Gandhi and MLK as as a type of force or weapon. It’s been a paradox that non-violent protest combined with stoic suffering is a type of force. We see this play out in Ferguson, MO where the majority are protesting peacefully – most with arms upraised and chanting “Don’t shoot”. The images of that are searing. Saturday morning, many of these non-violent protesters even blocked access by violent looters to a beauty supply store. But other young looters voiced their outrage by smashing windows and looting a liquor store. Some say their is a generational divide with young people expressing their anger and frustration violently saying that is the only way to get the attention of whites and power elites. I want to hold comments to the issue of violence and non-violence if possible – but is violence ever warranted? How do people keep from appearing weak and impotent in the face of violence against them – like white police shooting unarmed black youth?

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For anyone who has completely read Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, I applaud you. At over five-hundred pages and filled with difficult language, introspection, philosophy and fictional dialogue between the two sides of Thoreau’s mind, many have said the book is like the Bible – widely respected and referred to, but rarely read in its entirety. It has been called an American classic — one that speaks to many of the qualities that Americans believe they exemplify – self-reliance, love of nature, freedom, spirituality. Over the last forty years it has been embraced by many environmentalists as a prophetic work pointing to the dangers of consumerism and the destruction of nature. Thoreau lived at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and yet he could already see its negative impact on the world and on humanity. Noise, deforestation, urban sprawl, pollution, the extinction of wild animal species – these were all alarm bells he rang in his book that was based on observations he made in 1844. Sadly, as we all know, his warnings have come true. The planet faces an environmental crisis even he did not imagine.
As I continue my August message theme of being the change you want to see, I want to focus my thoughts today on global warming. Whether or not you believe such warming is caused by humans or is simply a natural phenomenon, that is not the point. Almost everyone agrees the planet is warming. The last year that the average global temperature was colder than the 100 year average was in 1985. Every year since, the average temperature has been well above average. Even so, individual weather related events like a single storm or a single cold winter do not prove or disprove global warming. But trends do. And trends do not lie. The earth’s average temperature across the planet, since records first began being kept in 1890, has risen by 1.4 degrees fahrenheit. Such a rise is hugely dramatic – not seen from glacier ice samples since well before humans existed. Average temperatures in the Arctic – in Alaska, Canada and Russian Siberia are at all time highs. Glaciers and ice fields are rapidly melting – only 27 now exist in Glacier National Park in Montana when in 1910 there were 150. The largest glacier found in the tropic latitudes, in Peru’s Andes mountains, has dramatically melted away – losing ice that had taken over 2000 years to form. The Antarctic ice shelf is shrinking and large chunks are regularly breaking off – the largest one ever – larger than Connecticut – broke off this past March and is slowly drifting north, melting as it goes. Sea levels are rising and high tides are now regularly producing floods across the globe. The number and intensity of natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, droughts and severe winters have dramatically increased. Only 15 significant natural disasters occurred in 1900. Over 500 occurred in 2000. Global warming is a fact.
Now, whether you believe that has been caused by humans, another fact is that over 95% of climate scientists from around the world assert that not only is the earth warming at alarming rates, the temperature rise has mostly been caused by human made carbon pollution of the atmosphere. From measurements taken near the time of the Declaration of Independence compared to ones taken today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by nearly 30%. While the earth produces natural carbon dioxide, the burning of fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal is the primary cause of the increase. Other human causes like deforestation and methane gas producing herd animals like cattle account for the rest of the increase.
While few people can know the longterm affects of global warming, scientists have created computer models showing that by the year 2100, the earth’s average temperature will be seven degrees warmer – a shocking increase that will change climate zones all over the earth. The midwest will be much like our current southwest – hot, dry, and arid. The temperate zone where most of the worlds crops are grown will transition father north – Canada and Siberia will be the world’s new bread basket. The US and Australia will lose much of their agriculture. Florida, most of the east coast and Louisiana will be underwater or else much like Holland – land below sea level and livable only after massive investment of money to build dikes and sea walls. Fresh water will be at a premium with many rivers and lakes drying up.
What this might mean for humanity and the earth as we know it, is frightening. Children born today will likely be alive in 2100. Certainly their children and grandchildren will be. What will life be like for them? It is easy for us to say we will be long dead by then – that the most severe effects will not touch us. But our heirs will suffer because of environmental actions we each practice today. Is that a legacy we wish to give them – that we simply did not care? Even worse, that we cared but did nothing or very little to stop it? As with many problems we face in the world, I believe change can only begin with each individual. We must be the change we want to see.
And that brings us back to a discussion of Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden. He asserted with his Transcendentalist philosophy that human change must be a spiritual one. Like Gandhi, Thoreau saw that change for both himself and others has to happen in the inner soul – in how we see ourselves and our place within the larger universe. Transcendentalism argues that one must consciously work to separate the ego from the true self. Our egos are full of supposed needs and wants. Our true self, he believed, can transcend the ego and live according to how nature intended for us to live. As living organisms like any other, Thoreau asserted humans can exist and even happily thrive with the fulfillment of only four basic needs – food, shelter, clothing and fuel – those sufficient to sustain life. All other of our supposed needs are simply desires manifested in our minds by ego.
By suppressing the ego, Thoreau said, we will find connection with nature, with the universe, and with a contentment that allows us to be at peace. Human society has evolved, he believed, to the point that we think we need more than we do – more elaborate clothing, bigger homes, easier transportation, and manufactured entertainment. In today’s world, our supposed needs are even greater. How many people declare that it is a basic need to have a computer? If we choose to live in human society, it is probably a need we must have. But our bodies, our natural selves, our survival – they have no need for it. As any person older than forty knows, we once lived quite happily without personal computers. In Thoreau’s day, people over fifty had once lived quite happily without railroads.
This recognition by Thoreau was the reason why he retreated to Walden pond to live for over two years in a 10 foot by 15 foot one room cabin he built himself. As he wrote in Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach.” Thoreau saw the dangers of industry and civilization and so he sought to prove to himself and to others that anybody could live an extremely simple life and that such is the key not only to transcendental happiness but the key to preserving all of nature, of which humans are an integral part.
He built his his own cabin, made his own crude furniture, grew or collected his own food and found entertainment in the solitude, peace and glory of nature. He found that simple daily tasks of tending his garden and keeping his cabin in decent repair were all the fulfillment he required. As he wrote, “If a person walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he or she is in danger of being regarded as lazy. But if that person spends days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he or she is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”
Long walks in the woods or sitting by Walden pond allowed him to feel like he was like any other creature worshipping the god of nature by immersing within it. No restaurants, no trips to different lands, no industrial made furniture or tools, just him, his handiwork, his simple life reduced to the basic needs.
And that was key to him for his spirituality. Much like Gandhi many years later said that all humans are born spiritually blind, Thoreau believed all people are born spiritually asleep and prone to crave sleep and rest. For him, people must become spiritually awakened by living simply. He compared his awakening to getting up early each day to take long walks in the woods while those who lived in town slept past dawn, cocooned in their comfortable homes. It was during those walks that he came alive to the value of nature, the glory of the earth, and the need for its preservation.
What one finds in reading Walden and studying the Transcendentalism of Thoreau is the belief that inner change is necessary for external change. If we want to save the planet, we must first change our spiritual attitudes about it and, most importantly, about ourselves. Do I really need all that I own, all that I buy? Indeed, I spend a lot of time worrying about my stuff and maintaining it. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I don’t have – newer cars, nicer meals, better clothes, exotic trips. My ego can too often take control of the true me – the me that loves the outdoors, the me that sees fantastic beauty in nature, the me that seeks quiet lakes and trails, the me at peace working in my yard, the more simple me that nature intended I be.
And so to build up the real and natural me, as Thoreau suggested, I must dig deep within myself to identify my ego that wants things I don’t need. Then I must consciously work to separate, as much as possible, the ego from who I am and enable myself to live without as many of my desires as possible. I do not pretend that I or anyone else in today’s world can live much like Thoreau did for over two years – indeed, even he never returned to that lifestyle. But Thoreau’s understanding of our genuine needs in order to live, versus the desires we think we must have, that philosophy ought to give us pause – especially regarding the fact of global warming. Only by simplifying our lives as much as possible, only by reducing our desires can we change attitudes about how we consume and contribute to the destruction of our planet.
That kind of inner change in me would help me buy less, consume less, eat less. My carbon impact on the world would be reduced. I would drive less. I would walk, bike and carpool more. I would be satisfied with what I already have. I’d buy rummage sale items and not shiny new things. Many aspects of my life would change including attitudes about what fulfills and entertains me. Long walks, hiking, gardening, reading and meditating would take up more of my time. I would go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. In everything I do, everything I eat, everything I consume, I would hopefully think of whether or not it was really crucial not only for my survival and happiness but also for the good of nature. In just one example, the New York Times this past week reported that shrimp is now America’s most popular seafood. We annually eat an average of four pounds per person. To meet that demand, farmed shrimp is raised in Asia at great environmental harm. Local, American wild shrimp is better but its seasonal, more expensive and limited. A sustaining ethos, environmentalists argue, is to eat only local shrimp and treat it like a rare and special food – not a mass quantity item. As with all other things we consume, by doing so we would begin to be the change we want to see in saving our planet.
As I said in my message last week, being the change we want to see should NOT be perceived as a sacrifice. The ultimate intent of inner change is about seeking the divine. It’s about connecting with forces far greater than ourselves. In speaking last week about committing to serving the least of our brothers and sisters, I did so not to shame people. In quoting Gandhi, I pointed out how, through service, we can find our beautiful inner divinity that prompts us to love, share and help others.
And that exactly echoes what Thoreau wanted for himself and others. By living a simpler life, by getting back to nature and its wondrous charms, he believed we will find the god we seek. As he wrote in Walden, “Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”
Whatever force it is that created humans and the whole of the universe, that is a power of unknowable wonder. It need not matter whether that force is supernatural or natural – it is a divine force in the sense that it is beautiful, eternal and beyond full comprehension. A snowflake, a quiet pond, a tiny insect, our human brain, distant galaxies with millions of stars – these were all made by the same force and each is a miracle to behold. When we look in awe at nature and, indeed, revere it, we discover we too are divine.
As the earth spins across an inky darkness, seemingly alone in its ability to sustain life, it is imperative that we respect it and all of the creations upon it. Thoreau keenly understood this, writing that a journey into the self allows us to see ourselves, connect with the divine, and thereby find the inspiration to live more simply and protect nature. I pray that each of us take that journey and begin to become the change we want to see.
I wish each of you much peace and joy.

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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Mahatma Gandhi’s encouragement for people to be the change they want to see is a good expression of his life philosophy. Humans mistakenly believe, according to Gandhi, that they have the capacity to control and change the universe in any way they please. But they have a much greater ability, he believed, to remake themselves. All people have flaws, but they also have the power to change them for the better. An important first step, he said, is for individuals to have the willingness to both admit their flaws and then work to correct them.
Gandhi therefore echoed the teachings of Jesus in his famous sermon on the mount discourse. In referring to Jesus and some of the things he is supposed to have taught, I focus not the on the divine, Son of God, Christ figure found in the New Testament, but on the historical man who most scholars believe truly lived. He was a man who so influenced his band of followers that they did not want memory of him to die – and so they created a religion centered on his ideals. For myself, I do not worship him as Savior but instead seek to learn from him as a great human prophet who spoke many universal truths found in all world religions.
In his sermon on the mount, Jesus both taught the merits of humility, gentleness, and peacemaking as he also spoke strongly against hypocrisy. Don’t pray in public as a way to show how pious and holy you are. Do it in private and thus express your true heart feelings. Don’t lavishly and openly give to charities as a way to publicly prove how kind you are. Do it anonymously and with a motivation not to boost your ego but to help others. Finally, he asked his followers to refrain from judging others. Don’t be a hypocrite, he implored, by constantly pointing out the speck of sawdust in someone’s eye when you have a whole log in your own. Employing this funny and memorable analogy to make his point, Jesus asked what Gandhi later taught. Work on changing yourself first instead of trying to change someone else or even the world as a whole. Each person has enough inner work needed to change themselves such that focusing on the flaws of others is both judgmental and hypocritical. Be the change you want to see.
For Gandhi, this meant that the problems of the world begin in the human heart. War, poverty, hate, discrimination, greed, murder, anger – they all have their roots in the hearts and minds of individuals. If each person simply focused on changing their individual flaws, the world as a whole would be changed for the better. In this regard, our desire for social justice starts with our willingness to change our personal attitudes, actions, and ways of thinking. If I decry the reality of violence and war in the world but then angrily speak to a neighbor, co-worker or family member, I have made myself a hypocrite. If I verbally sympathize with the plight of the poor and hungry but do nothing to address it by my own actions to help, I’m a hypocrite. If I envision an end to racism, sexism and homophobia in the world, I must first confront and address subtle attitudes of discrimination inside me. If I want peace in the world, I must have peace in my own heart by how I forgive others. I must be the change I want to see.
And that is the theme for my three August messages. My topic for today focuses on how we can intentionally and realistically resolve to serve the least of our human brothers and sisters – the poor, hungry, homeless, sick and marginalized. All of us would like to see a world where nobody suffers, where all have the basic needs of life provided them, where no child starves for want of food or gets sick and dies for want of decent sanitation. I propose, therefore, that each person channel their social justice hopes into personal change and personal action. I propose we each pledge to freely donate at least one year of work time – over our entire lives – to directly serve the poor.
This year of service pledge is one we can take during an entire lifetime – to literally accumulate hours of hands-on service for the poor and marginalized – equal to 2000 total work hours that comprise a year of labor. Many cultures promote this idea of civic service by the young. Mormons ask their young people to serve for two years of mission to evangelize for the faith. Young Jews from all over the world volunteer to serve on Kibbutzim – communal farms or factories where everyone shares in the work and resources. In our own nation, we have the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and Teach America where young people sign up, for almost no pay, to serve one to two years helping the poor, underprivileged and sick. We also have almost a million men and women volunteer to put themselves in harms way to defend our country. Noting the benefits of serving others, several commentators have encouraged requiring a National year of service by young persons – in the military or in a civic organization like AmeriCorps. The goal in each case is not only to enable a large resource of able bodied volunteers for needed service projects, it is also to mature and enrich the lives of youth – in the time between high school and college. Far better, it is argued, for youth to see the world as it really is than to immediately head off to an insular college campus for study and partying.
But for most of us, as adults, it is one thing to encourage a year of service to the poor by young people – and quite another to accept the challenge for ourselves. Taking a single, entire year off to serve the marginalized is possible for only a few. But, to accumulate over a lifetime a year’s worth of serving hours – 2000 of them – that is a manageable goal for any person. It’s a goal any adult can at least begin to accomplish. It’s a goal worthy of being promoted, encouraged and transformed into a cultural norm – one that every human citizen willingly takes up. It’s a goal I have taken up – one which I began by accumulating hours of hands on service – nearly twenty years ago.
If every person across the globe were purposefully working to accumulate 2000 hours of service for the least of our human brothers and sisters, problems of poverty might be drastically reduced or eliminated. As I like to say, god is not some outside force that does good for the world. God is us. We, the human species, have the power to be the change we want to see.
That power to become a force for change is what motivated Gandhi. His life goal was to self-realize, to come face to face with the divine source of truth. Worldly pursuits for money, power and pleasure did not interest him. They lead only to emptiness and a shallow soul that never quite understands itself – much less universal truths. When we serve others, Gandhi believed, we not only self-realize by gaining wisdom, growth, discipline, humility and maturity, we connect with forces far more profound and life-enriching. To truly find yourself, he said, one must submerge in the task of serving others.
The whole of the universe is inter-connected, Gandhi asserted. When someone steps outside of themselves and purposely works to serve the messy needs of another, one encounters the reality that people all over the world are much the same. In that regard, those who serve the marginalized come to see the oneness of humanity – each one of the billions of people on the planet share the same impulses to find meaning, love and security.
As a lifelong advocate of ahisma – Hindi for non-violence – Gandhi encouraged peacemaking in our speech and our actions. Not only do we avoid harming others by what we might negatively do, we can promote ahisma by what we do for good. Feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, educating the poor, welcoming the immigrant – these are ways to eliminate the violence of suffering in other lives. Serving others is a direct form of non-violence.
And that practice of service or ahisma is what allows us to discover the spiritual truths we all seek. We find peace in our souls and in our hearts when we have been kind to others, when we have directly served their needs. We reach levels of contentment, joy, and, yes, self-realization by having gotten our hands literally and figuratively dirty in service. We suddenly see the world, all of creation and all people as one big, messy, constantly changing, diverse, and yet exquisitely beautiful amalgamation. Indeed, in this way we find a transcendent connection with forces greater than just ourselves – forces of unconditional love, altruism, sacrifice and humility. When we help others realize the basic needs of dignity and wholeness by serving them, we ironically find those things for ourselves.
As Gandhi believed, each person is born symbolically blind. It may take a lifetime to really see and find truth – but an important way of doing so is to humble oneself and serve. By serving we gain symbolic eyesight which is really spiritual insight. By serving others we become in tune with all of the ways humanity suffers. But we also become in tune with their hopes, dreams, joys, prayers and sacrifices. We see the pain but we also see the healing because we become a part of that healing – no longer an island unto our selfish selves but a vital part of a loving, giving, serving, and understanding One Human Family.
When Mother Teresa looked into the face of a diseased and impoverished dying man from the streets of Calcutta and said that she had seen the face of God, she was touching on this truth. When a senior woman member of the Gathering spends hours every week tutoring a young inner city youth and inwardly cries with joy every time the child successfully reads a sentence or learns a math problem, that truth is touched. When people volunteer and travel many miles to build homes, clinics and schools for the poor with their own hands, this truth is touched. When Jesus taught that those who clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, feed the starving, and welcome the stranger – that they will find the realms of heaven, he was speaking to this truth. Heavenly insight and peace are found in loving others. They are found in humbly giving and serving. They are found in being the change we want to see.
My friends, I often say in my Gathering messages that life is not just about meeting our own needs and desires. Ultimately, it is about what we have done for others. This belief of mine holds true for individuals and for churches. Our purpose for existence is not to merely suck up the pleasures of life or to sit in so-called holy huddles with an inward focus. That approach will lead to an impersonal and uninspired culture of which I want no part.
Securing happiness in life is a worthy goal but the ironic truth is that our ultimate, ultimate! contentment and discovery of universal spiritual truths lies in having an outward focus and purpose that reaches beyond ourselves, that truly connects with other people. As individuals, congregations and churches, our task is to be agents of change both for ourselves and for the world. If the Gathering or Northern Hills were to cease to exist tomorrow, we must hope the wider community would notice – that all of our efforts to change things for the better would be no longer and that we would be profoundly missed. The same, it is hoped, will be said about any of us at our passing – that the world was a better place because of us, that we changed other lives for the good, that we gave a year of our lives to offer succor and comfort to the afflicted, that we found the key that unlocks the mystery of our existence : that we touched the face of the divine and found there-on the face of a brother and sister in need.

I wish you all much peace and joy.

For our heart to heart time, or as we at the Gathering call the message talkback time, I’m interested particularly in hearing experiences you have had when serving others gave you greater insight, growth or perspective. How did an act of service change YOU for the better?
For myself, I recall a work team trip I took about fifteen years ago to help build houses for homeless families in Mexico. Most lived in what could only be described as dirty makeshift shacks of cardboard and sticks. I worked on a team that built a nice but small one room home with a foundation, a shingle roof, real windows and doors. During the week the father helped us in the construction. The woman busied herself with chores of laundry, cooking and bringing us cold drinks. Their five year old daughter was left mostly to herself by our worksite. And this young girl spent hours every day amusing herself by playing with an assortment of bottle caps and small rocks that she maneuvered through the dirt pretending they were trucks or people or whatever in her imaginary play. No real toys – just bottle caps and rocks. I was struck not only by her ingenuity but by her overall happiness playing with whatever she could find. Her example reminds me of my perspective on material things and my desire for so-called toys. I used her example with my two daughters and I still do – they like to roll their eyes at me when I repeat it. I’ve been blessed in life with so much and yet that girl with so little showed me a contentment and happiness that often eludes me.
I welcome your comments about my message or on your own experiences with serving people in need….if you would, please use the microphone here to my right for your comments so that all can hear.

(C) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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On March 3rd, 1913 our country was preparing to inaugurate Woodrow Wilson as the 28th President. He won easily over incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft and Bull Moose Party candidate Teddy Roosevelt. Wilson ran on a platform of liberal reform. Democrats took control of Congress in that 1912 election resulting in their control of the government. Wilson and the Democrats soon passed multiple progressive laws.

Even so, Wilson was hardly a great progressive. In many ways he was racist and sexist. He extended laws that prevented equal employment opportunities for African-Americans. He refused to desegregate the Army and Navy. He signed the infamous Alien and Sedition Act which widely discriminated against immigrants. He also turned a deaf ear to the rising support for women’s suffrage. When suffrage advocates were arrested, jailed and later began hunger strikes to protest their treatment, he refused to intervene.
His haughty attitude toward women was on full display on March 3, 1913 – the day before his inauguration. He arrived at the Washington DC train station and was greeted by almost nobody. The tens of thousands who had come to DC for the next day’s inauguration were lined along Pennsylvania Avenue to watch the first ever Women’s Suffrage March – initiated to call the nation’s attention to the fact that women had played no role and had no vote in the Presidential election. Wilson had refused to meet with, speak at or otherwise support the Suffrage march. He declared that Suffrage was an issue to which he had not given much thought.
But hope, for women, was in the air on that March day just over one-hundred years ago. The Women’s Suffrage March on Washington was the first national protest by women. Alice Paul, the leader of the National Women’s Suffrage Association, had decided women should emphasize peaceful acts of protest – marches, picketing, sit-ins and hunger strikes – instead of merely offering mostly ignored opinion columns and polite petitions.
Over 8000 marchers participated in that day’s parade. Delegations from thirty countries and all forty-eight states marched. Near the end of the column of marchers were hundreds of men who supported women’s suffrage. They endured catcalls questioning their manhood and jeers telling them to wear skirts. Sadly, at the very back of the parade column were African-American women placed there by organizers who feared losing the support of Southerners.
The parade leaders, despite that act of injustice, employed striking visual symbols to represent ideals of democracy and human rights. Many women wore all white with colorful scarves. Others dressed up to resemble the Statue of Liberty and Lady Columbia – the symbolic figure of freedom. Bands played the Star-Spangled Banner and other patriotic songs. Floats representing ideals such as liberty, justice, charity and peace were in the parade. At the very front – leading the marchers toward the capital and announced by trumpets sounding a fanfare – was twenty-seven year old attorney and leading Suffrage advocate Inez Millholland. With flowing hair, riding a white horse, wearing a long white cape and carrying a white banner, her appearance was designed to invoke the image and symbolism of Joan of Arc. Like her, Inez was a peaceful woman warrior leading her followers in a righteous cause.
Sadly, as in many cases when non-violence confronts hate, the marchers were attacked. Soon after the march began, thousands of men surged into the street to block the women. Marchers were taunted, groped, beaten and forced to push their way through leering and cursing men. Ambulances rushed to the scene. Over two-hundred women marchers were injured and hospitalized. The police did nothing to stop the violence. Many joined in attacking the women.
Press coverage of the mob riot against marchers was sympathetic. Headlines around the country the next day spoke not of Wilson’s inauguration but of the abuse suffered by Suffrage marchers. Public outcry about male behavior toward the women was strong. Congress soon held hearings about police conduct and, more importantly, about Women’s Suffrage.
The parade and the image of men attacking innocent women asking for the right to vote are seen by many historians and herstorians as THE pivotal event that prompted Congress and others to seriously take up women’s suffrage. Inez Milholland, dressed in a white robe and atop a white horse, was the visual symbol and leader of it all.
She had been recruited by Suffrage leaders to be their leader for a number of reasons. She was strikingly beautiful which countered stereotypes that Suffragettes were not feminine. But Milholland was more than a pretty face. She had been a leader in the Suffrage movement for many years beginning during her time at Vassar college where she organized one of the first ever college Suffrage protests. She later applied to Ivy League Law Schools but was rejected because women were not allowed. She was eventually admitted to NYU school of law and became one of the nation’s first female lawyers. She represented countless progressive causes – the NAACP, the peace movement, children’s rights, union workers, immigrants and prisoners.
Milholland was a highly effective speaker and she became the spokesperson for Women’s Rights – giving hundreds of impassioned speeches across the country. After her fame had risen to new heights, she embarked on a grueling national speaking tour in behalf of universal suffrage. Diagnosed with a form of pernicious anemia and advised by doctors to cancel the tour and rest, she refused. During a speech in Los Angeles in 1916, she collapsed unconscious. She died a few days later at the age of only 30. She had literally become a modern Joan of Arc martyr for women’s rights.
In June of 1919, the House of Representatives and the Senate passed the 19th amendment to the Constitution granting women the right to vote. In 1920, after two-thirds of the states also ratified the amendment, it became law. Inez Milholland was credited at the time as the brave leader who had taken up the banner for women’s rights. Today, she is one of America’s unsung and mostly forgotten heroines.
On her death, the Philadelphia Public Ledger newspaper wrote,
“Beautiful and courageous, Inez Milholland embodied more than any other American woman the ideals of that part of womenkind whose eyes are on the future. She embodied all the things which make the Suffrage Movement something more than a fight to vote. She meant the determination of modern women to live a full free life, unhampered by tradition.”
Our purpose in remembering Inez is to undertake more than a history lesson. It is, instead, to find spiritual inspiration from her life and the example she set. Woodrow Wilson, with all of his liberal, arrogant paternalism, did not cause the passage of women’s suffrage. Nor did an all male Congress. It took everyday women like Inez and countless women like her to effect change.
Most importantly, as the Philadelphia newspaper wrote, Inez Milholland stood for the political, economic, social and personal empowerment of women. She not only demanded that each person, no matter their gender, has dignity and value, she lived in a way that asserted the kind of inner confidence equal to that of men. As a self-actualized woman, she defied the traditions that allowed only men to become lawyers. She later married a dutch businessman but she refused to be confined within the limits of traditional marriage. She had her own life. She insisted, with his consent, on an open marital relationship where she controlled her own sexuality and destiny. She used her beauty and sex appeal to advantage – proving that women were not merely sex objects and mothers, but that, like men, they were intelligent and capable.
Women at that time could be legally raped by their husbands, contraception and abortion were unavailable, domestic violence was not prosecuted, women could not initiate a divorce, they were left penniless if they did divorce and any property they owned or money they made became that of their husbands. Inez refused to live by those standards and, in doing so, fought the battle for gender equality by her own life example.
In the nearly one hundred years since women gained legal equality with men, the fact remains however that women have yet to achieve the parity that Inez advocated. Women today comprise 52% of our population. They now earn more college and graduate degrees then do men. But they still make only 78 cents to every dollar a man does. Out of 535 members in Congress, only 90 are women. Out of 50 governors, 5 are female. Of the Fortune 500 corporation CEO’s, only 22 are women. Females comprise only a third of all practicing doctors and lawyers. Less then 10% of all Silicon Valley technology entrepreneurs are women. In churches across America, 61% of members are women and yet only 12% of all clergy and 23% of lay leaders are women.
In a word, why? Why are these inequalities still present? Sadly, our culture, our religions and our education systems all diminish the self-confidence of young girls and women. At early ages girls are told they should act in certain ways – to not compete, to not speak too loud, to not be aggressive, to not be the word that rhymes with witch. Most boys, on the other hand, are told to be the exact opposite.
Studies show that most women believe they must be nearly perfect before they will have the confidence to take risks in work or career – to seek a promotion, to ask for a raise, to pursue a job that is highly competitive. As a result, many women tend to pull back, self-defeat and hesitate in taking the kinds of risks that men routinely pursue to assert and advance themselves. Men are generally more willing to pursue highly competitive jobs, to speak first in, and verbally dominate meetings, to ask for pay raises and promotions even if they are only marginally competent. As one psychologist puts it, most men have an honest over-confidence in themselves – they truly believe they are great. Many women, on the other hand, have an honest lack of self-confidence in their abilities. They truly believe they are less than competent.
According to neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine of the University of California at San Francisco and author of the book The Female Brain, all women and a few men have an enlarged area of the brain, the anterior cortex, that initiates emotions. Because of this, women experience both good and bad emotions more frequently. They feel greater numbers of self-diminishing emotions like incompetence, depression, worry, doubt and fear. Most men experience these too but not in the same number. Of added benefit for men, they have been conditioned by society and by high levels of testosterone to move past such negative feelings, to feel confident and to assert themselves. Women do the opposite. The female brain with its larger emotion causing cortex causes girls and women to tell themselves they should hold back, they should avoid “leaning in”, they should hesitate taking on many challenges.
The lesson of Inez Milholland is not just that she worked for gender equality. It is that she personified self-empowerment in ways typically only men exhibit. At a time when gender inequality was far worse than today, she was able to find within herself the courage to go beyond the social and legal barriers to success – to pursue an education, to have a career, to speak her mind, to confront injustice and hatred, to conduct a marriage on her own terms, to control her own sex life.
Spiritually, she discovered and then used the power we have all been given by whatever it is we believe to be god. That gift from our creator is to exercise the personal freedom innate to humanity, to find our purpose, to live and serve others in ways that maximize our abilities.
The continued task for any of us, me included, is to let go of self-doubt, to change the destructive inner voice and instead find inner peace and self-confidence. We can realize cognitive change by purposefully banishing negative thoughts of worry, doubt and fear and replace them with positive ones of empowerment. No longer should we allow ourselves to engage in negative self talk – I’m no good, I’m unattractive, not competent, weak, powerless, hopeless. Instead, we can and should remember ways we have achieved, ways we have taken risks and made a difference, ways in which we have successfully empowered ourselves. It may be cliche to say, but we become what we believe we are capable of achieving.
There are likely far more unsung heroines in American history than there are unsung heroic men. Most women are simply not ones to proverbially toot their own horns. And yet women like Inez Milholland show us the way. They provide examples of strength and power used not for the self, but for the greater good. Ultimately, when women are denied equal opportunities, when they are taught to deny their own abilities, the world is diminished. Any person’s self-defeating emotions hold them and humanity back. Our world is then filled with wounded people who hide in the dark, who limp along in life unfulfilled and sad. But it is our task, both collectively and individually, to heal such hurt. For women who lack inner confidence, who too easily listen to the jeers of a racist, sexist and homophobic society, they must act like Inez Milholland, like Joan of Arc. They must change the way they think about themselves. They must ride their white horses, unfurl their banners and boldly go forth with the power to be capable and powerful – to be heroines for justice and for good.
I wish you all much peace and joy…

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

This message was offered in collaboration with the Northern Hill Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.  The Gathering and Pastor Doug were privileged to participate in this service at the Northern Hills location.

 

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In January 1865, the end of a very long and very bloody Civil War was near. The Union Army under the command of Ulysses Grant was laying siege to Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia. They had the cities surrounded and its residents were living on subsistence rations. A force of forty thousand Confederate soldiers faced a Union Army of nearly one-hundred and fifty thousand. Confederate leaders from Jefferson Davis to Robert E. Lee were openly planning to evacuate the Confederate capital. In the South, defeat was in the air.
The final Union Army offensive began in July of 1864 – almost one-hundred and fifty years ago today. The north had pushed southern forces further and further south – never quite defeating them but finally cornering them into an area around the Confederate Capital. Throughout the pivotal months of siege warfare, General Grant and the Union Army had a key spy deeply imbedded within the Confederate inner sanctum. This person was so close to Jefferson Davis that daily briefings by his generals, war documents and battle orders were all listened to, read, remembered and reported almost verbatim. Such vital intelligence about Confederate plans made their way across enemy lines to the Union command center and the desk of General Grant. It is not an exaggeration to say that the intelligence gathered by this Union spy was invaluable to the capture of Richmond in April 1865 – which very quickly led to the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, the end of the Civil War and the demise of slavery.
But in January of that year, as defeat seemed inevitable, Jefferson Davis realized there had to be a spy in his midst and he was determined to discover who was responsible for the pending Confederate defeat. Spies that worked for either the South or the North faced tremendous danger. Those caught were questioned, beaten, tortured and executed.
In this case, the spy who had personal access to Jefferson Davis lived and worked within the Southern White House. She was a house slave named Mary Elizabeth Bowser who operated under the assumed name of Ellen Bond. She had been personally hired by Varina Davis, First Lady of the Confederacy. While Mary Bowser was highly intelligent and educated – having attended a Quaker school in Philadelphia, her spy alter-ego Ellen Bond was illiterate, dull, dim-witted and completely servile. Mary acted this role extremely well. Her presence as a slave during meetings between Jefferson Davis and his generals, her access to Davis’ work papers and her photographic memory were never revealed until after the war. Even then, Varina Davis denied the spy that did so much damage to the Southern cause had been a supposedly ignorant black woman living in her home. “I had no educated negroes living in my house,” she arrogantly claimed. But she was wrong.
Mary Bowser, knowing she was close to being discovered, fled the Southern White House in the middle of night sometime in January 1865. Before departing, she started a fire which she hoped would burn the house down. The fire was quickly put out but Mary did escape, she crossed Union lines and lived to see the end of the war – an outcome she had greatly helped bring about.
After the war, the Union Army destroyed almost all records of Mary’s spy efforts in order to save her and others from Southern retribution. She was given no reward for her work and bravery. She was completely ignored by Northern leaders and history writers. After the war, she soon vanished into obscurity. We know almost nothing of the rest of her life. It was not until the 20th century that her spy efforts again came to light and it was not until the 1960’s that the Federal government formally acknowledged her vital contributions and inducted her into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame. A drawn likeness of her, which appears on the front of your programs, hangs in the CIA headquarters.
The Civil War is a defining episode in American history. Its outcome determined whether this nation would live true to its founding ideals of July 4, 1776. Across our country are countless monuments and tributes to men who fought in the war and helped save this nation. There are even thousands of monuments for Confederate men who fought against the Union. And, there have been a few efforts to acknowledge the contribution of African-American male soldiers who fought in the war – and of free black men who argued against slavery. But, there are precious few tributes for women – much less for African-American women who also fought against the South. Civil War monuments, statues and history books detail the exploits of men – mostly white men. It is largely assumed that enlightened and brave white men were primarily responsible for winning the freedom of slaves.
According to other such histories, Jim Crow laws and segregation of schools were ended by white judges; Civil Rights laws of the 1960’s were made possible by white Congressmen and a white President; white voters were responsible for electing the first African-American President. Even today, white activists, charities and churches are given outsized credit for the fight against racism. But such histories are incomplete, too one sided and completely ignore the groundswell of social forces that made such landmark events happen.
Sadly, the written record of human activity since the beginning of time is mostly about men. Since it is men who have written much of history, their patriarchal prejudices are quite evident. To use an alternative word for history – “herstory” – is to acknowledge the vital but far too often overlooked contributions of women in the advancement of human rights, dignity and well-being.
As we celebrate this weekend of our nation’s birthday, it is wise to remember that the record of who we are, what we have become and how we got here is not a chronology of deeds by mostly white men. Indeed, the chapter of straight, white male dominance is thankfully giving way to what America has always been – an ever churning mix of native-American, pioneer, immigrant, small farmer, slave, factory worker, woman, latino, son or daughter of almost every ethnic group on earth. America is not the product of top-down actions by leaders and power brokers. It is not defined by the actions of privileged, white men.
Our true history and herstory is a record of bottom-up movements and actions – the kinds of everyday and unsung heroics of millions of people like Mary Bowser. Presidents, business people and Generals all have their due – but they often rode to fame on the backs of so-called common people and common women like Mary Bowser, Inez Milholland and Emma Goldman – three women whom I will focus my messages on during this month of July.
But even my focus will not be on these specific women but on who they represent and the grassroots social forces that truly made America. Such forces like that of opposition to slavery are written in the mundane and simple everyday acts of defiance, protest and rebellion of African-Americans – especially women. The great and mighty Union Army of the North did not win the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln did not free black men and women. The slaves won their own freedom.
In the shadows of Civil War herstory are the unsung words and deeds of countless black heroines – women who died unsung and unknown but who loosed the whirlwind that precipitated the demise of slavery. Such women offered the moral imperative for an end to slavery: women whose children were ripped from their arms to be sold away, women raped by white overseers, women who quietly subverted the southern economy through theft and sabotage, women who escaped and fled north, mothers who painstakingly learned to read and write – all the better to teach their children, women who committed the most painful act of revenge possible – by literally killing their children and thus sacrificing their babies on the altar of human freedom. The fight against slavery was waged by those most injured by it : black women, men and children.
Mary Bowser, an almost unknown American heroine, is the face of such unsung women – those who have lived out stories of prejudice, suffering and heartbreak but who fought back and who, even today, quietly advance the arc of moral herstory.
One of the hallmarks of authentic spirituality is the search for universal truth. We may never fully discover it and it is most certainly not found in the dusty pages of ancient and outdated Scriptures or in the mythologies of some god. It is also not exclusive to the acts and histories of power and wealth. Rather, it is found in our questions, in peering into our souls, in finding and discovering common yearnings for peace, justice, and goodness that transcend time and place. We each seek that elusive spark of spirit that animates each human to love, to forgive, to soothe, to help, to cry, to hunger for a world that is fair and kind to all.
In that regard, we learn from the actions of Mary Bowser that our history and herstory is far more complex. We find in her the shared instinct all humans have to find meaning in our lives not by wealth, power or privilege but by common acts of service and heroism for others. Such acts by us and others may never make it to history books or newspapers but they are just as noteworthy, just as crucial in the long arc of moral history that bends toward justice. Indeed, we find in the actions of Mary Bowser someone who was content with her obscurity even as she risked her life for freedom. In such humility is found true motivations to serve causes greater than ourselves and to be content just in that – without need for attention, or fame. Each person, each of us has the power to make history and most of us will do so in relatively obscure ways. But our service is nonetheless important and historic. In our power is the ability to help end hunger, to combat poverty, to fight racism, sexism and homophobia with words and deeds. We participate in the sweep of historical forces that are defined not by politicians and leaders but by everyday people who choose to help make a difference.
In the fight against slavery, we can also learn of other small acts of rebellion in the first person accounts of former slaves themselves. Interviewed and memorialized during the 1930’s as a last chance way to preserve eyewitness accounts of the slave experience, many former slaves told how they defied, like Mary Bowser, the slave system.
After the Nat Turner slave uprising of 1835, it became illegal throughout much of the South for any slave to be educated. Nevertheless, such laws did not prevent African-Americans from fighting back. Many slaves secretly stole spelling books and hid them in order to learn to read. Some silently listened outside of white schools in order to soak up an education denied them. Others enlisted the clandestine teaching of educated slaves and formed what they called “pit schools” – classrooms hidden in ravines, caves or hollows. Through stories, song, small gatherings, and religious sermons preached by one of their own, slaves taught themselves their own history, their own culture, their own way of defying white domination.
But seeking an education was not some simple way to rebel. It was fraught with danger. As one former slave tells it, the first time one was discovered learning to read or write, he or she – no matter the age – was whipped by cowhide. The second time one was whipped with a cat-o-nine tails – strands of leather whose ends were tied with sharp nails to bite into flesh. The third time one had his or her two forefingers chopped off.
Those slaves who could write forged documents and passes that allowed some to escape. Still others altered purchase receipts, food orders and bookkeeping records in order to subvert and confuse the economic system. Some committed small acts of sabotage against the slave economy.
One former slave humorously told in 1937 of how slaves routinely tricked their white overseers – both to survive and to rebel. In one instance, just before nine hogs were to be butchered and sold at profit for a white plantation owner, they were found lying dead in their pens. The white overseer was shocked. What had happened, he asked. The various slaves grimly told the white man that they believed the hogs had all died of a serious and infectious condition called “mallitis.” This overseer turned pale, ran from the hog pen and told the slaves they should dispose of the dead hogs – which they quickly did by butchering them, smoking the meat and enjoying feasts like they had never had before. It seems, as the former slave recounted, that the “mallitis” disease fell upon each of the hogs after they had been swiftly struck between the eyes by a large wooden….mallet. Such a simple act of rebellion did as much as any white soldier to diminish and defeat slavery.
Other everyday acts of slave rebellion were just as effective but far more heartbreaking. One former slave told of a female slave who was to be seriously whipped for some infraction. As a woman, being whipped across one’s naked body was both humiliating and horrific. This woman declared to all that she would not be whipped. Quietly, the night before her punishment, she slipped out of her cabin, found a nearby tree, swung a rope over one of its branches, and then hung herself.
Another story told to the 1930’s historians was of a woman who had given birth to many children. After each one had reached the age of two or three, the white owner would take the child and sell it. Finally, this woman had enough. She would no longer enrich the white owner at the cost of her children. Having two children still of young age, she gave them each one night a specially prepared bottle. The next morning they were dead.
Slave resistance took many forms but one of the strongest was the refusal to give up hope. Appropriated from whites, Christianity offered slaves a way to express their culture and their dreams in ways that spoke to the real ideals of that religion. Prayer and spiritual songs were ways to secretly rebel against oppression. Slaves identified heavily with the Exodus Bible story of Jews and of Moses who escaped Egyptian slavery. The Promised Land was not just Canada where they could live free – but heaven and the afterlife. In that way, slaveholders could own the body but not the soul, not the spirit. Death was not so much a punishment but a deliverance.
For each of us, the Fourth of July celebrates not just the white founding fathers who charted our independence. It must not be just a holiday when we bow in honor of the history we’ve been taught. It is, instead, to celebrate the truth that countless millions of unsung Americans have dreamed, worked and sacrificed for a better nation – people like Mary Bowser. We celebrate this weekend simple acts of everyday heroism that made and continue to make our country – particularly by those who rarely get credit – women, slaves, immigrants, the poor and dispossessed.
The unsung heroines of America are much like Mary Bowser. They are even today inner-city African-American girls and boys who, like their ancestors, pursue learning against great odds – who out of the depths of poverty unknown to many of us – quietly defy systems that elevate only the rich and powerful. The ideal American heart, the ideal American soul is like most souls across the world. It beats for justice, it hopes for peace, it serves others beyond the self, it exists for a purpose and a reason…to help build a better earth for each and every person. May each of our hearts, I pray, beat in union with that rhythm.

I wish you all much peace and joy.
At the Gathering, one of our traditions is to engage in a time of comment after a message – words from the congregation. We like to say that the message is not over until others have had their say.

And so I welcome your thoughts and comments – particularly on my belief that grassroots social movements and actions by everyday people are what really shaped American history and herstory. For Gathering folks, the practice here is to use the microphones at the side of the sanctuary.

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

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Like many of you, I think that my life is more complicated than I want it to be. And life complications are often my fault. I have either created complications for myself or else I don’t do anything to eliminate those imposed upon me.
One area of my life that I can honestly say is relatively peaceful is my work. I’ve found simplicity in my relationship with all of you – who are, as we believe at the Gathering, my bosses. In preparing this message, I thought about what makes my work feel mostly simple and therefore mostly peaceful. I have my roles and responsibilities but the simplicity of my work life is due, mostly, to the people in this church – to you – to those whom I fortunately found who are the “right” people to be around.
My work is kept simple because I am surrounded by right people who engage me emotionally and intellectually without being demanding. I am surrounded by right people who want to join me in my work – helping when possible, willing to say no when necessary. All of you as right people mostly encourage me in ways that make me want to be better. You offer praise when it is deserved and a gentle word of advice when that too is deserved. I am uplifted when I’m around you – no matter who that person is. I really like you – and I like being around you. You make me happy. You mostly add to my energy levels. You mostly offer me a feeling of being respected and cared for. You are not constantly in my life. I’m physically away for periods of time. But reunions are always good, comfortable and easy. My work life feels simple, uncomplicated and peaceful because of you.
What I describe is what most of us want with all of our relationships – at home, at work, at play. We want peace. We want calm. We don’t want drama.
And while having the right people in our lives is only one aspect to finding a peaceful and more simple life, it is one area that all of us can make happen. For simplicity sake, we need the right people around us – people who are positive, upbeat, loving, encouraging, funny, caring, generous, sharing, open, trusting, humble and loyal. To eliminate at least one complicating element from life, we need the courage to remove people who are not “right” for us – people who are toxic and who, more often than not, tear us down, discourage, gossip, demean, envy, hurt, demand, and are negative about us. Life is too short to put up with such people. Life is too short for them to put up with me if I am such a toxic person. Not only do we need right people surrounding us, we need to be the kind of right person who surrounds others. It works both ways.
In that way, having the right people around is not a selfish need. In reality it is a generous way of living – a way to simplify life so that it can be better used unselfishly in serving, loving, and caring. Indeed, if we seek to have the right people around us but are not ourselves the kind of right person for them to be around, the relationship will not work. Its a symbiotic way of relationship – a mostly equal exchange of energy such that we give in ways that effortlessly comes back to us. Love begets love. Positive people attract positive people. Empathy and generosity inspires the same.
Dan Buettner is a contemporary author who has gathered a wide following. As a National Geographic magazine writer, he seeks out and writes about areas of the world where large numbers of people live to be 100 or older. He calls such areas of the world “Blue Zones.” His TED talk on the subject has been viewed by over 2 million people. He was recently the keynote speaker at President Bill Clinton’s health and aging symposium. In studying one common aspect of Blue Zones around the world – in areas like Denmark, Singapore, Sardinia Italy, Okinawa Japan and, surprisingly, San Luis Obisbo, California, one trait stood out. The majority of people in these Blue Zones self describe as being very happy. The crucial and common key to their happiness, he found, was that the majority of them were surrounded by a small, close and deeply loving group of family and friends – so called right people.
It seems that reducing stress, particularly with our interpersonal relationships, not only simplifies our lives but also produces positive physical benefits. People live longer. Buettner found that in the United States, people who rate themselves as extremely happy in life spend at least seven hours a day socializing within a network of right people – those who support and love them. For Americans, having modest financial security offers a three-fold increase in one’s level of happiness. But having supportive and caring friendships increases one’s life happiness by an even greater amount. And being happy with one’s work and career, his research finds, is determined by whether a person has at least one very close friend in the workplace.
Choosing a job solely because one’s friend will work with you is not a common criteria Americans use. But in Denmark, a place where due to high taxes a garbage collector brings home about the same income as a lawyer, people choose their work not because of salary but by what will make them happy. And many Danes therefore choose jobs where their friends work. It is not surprising, Buettner claims, that Denmark is a Blue Zone – an area where people are not only exceedingly happy but where they also tend to live very long lives – many well beyond 100.
Just this past Wednesday, the New York Times published details of a landmark program taking place in one high school located in the South Side of Chicago – one of the most racially divided and underprivileged communities in the nation. This program draws young black teenage males together into small groups and then strongly reinforces a form of future casting. Each young man determines what he wants to be in life and is then continually urged and supported by his peer group to keep that vision in sight. They are asked to wisely choose how they act in many situations – for instance, whether or not to punch someone or, even worse, pull out a gun in a conflict. Staying in school and studying harder are also reinforced by this type of support group. The idea is to use peers – other African-American teen males – as a way to bolster self-esteem and right decision making through beneficial group support led by male school teachers – to replace street gangs with school support groups. In other words, will these boys have the right people or toxic people around them?
One expert on choosing the right people to be around suggests that we each take an inventory of those already around us. We must ask ourselves: Are we able to be ourselves when we are with a particular person or group of people in our lives? Are we accepted, respected and understood? Is there an equal exchange of energy or are we emotionally and mentally drained by them? Are we listened to by a friend or partner or, is it mostly the other who talks about him or herself? Do those around us celebrate our success? Are they committed to our relationship? Do we feel good about ourselves in their company? Are we happy and positive when around them? Are we inspired and encouraged by them to be better people – do they cast visions for us in ways that capture our strengths? Are they loyal or do they tear us down behind our backs? If we cannot give positive answers for most of these questions, we are not in the company of the right people. We need a change.
Just as important as our inventory of people around us is their inventory of us as individuals. As I alluded to earlier, an inventory by others about us is a likely predictor of whether or not we already have the right people around. We must be a right person in order to have right people in our lives. The two go hand in hand. Show me a person with good, caring and inspiring friends and I will guarantee that person is equally good, caring and inspiring.
Qualities of toxic people, however, vary from person to person. Overall, however, they do not simplify your life. They complicate it. You do not feel better having been around them. You feel worse. Toxic people often have a grandiose air about them – they brag or boast about themselves and often have a high need for being the center of attention. They rarely admit when they are at fault. They put you down, are judgmental and critique aspects of your personhood – your personality, your body, your values or your intellect. They usually blame others for their problems and they refuse to apologize when they are wrong. They are envious and jealous of you and others. They are overly competitive. They are usually depressed and are almost always experiencing some form of self-perceived catastrophe. They talk more than they listen. They do not or cannot understand your needs and your concerns. They regularly remind you of your flaws and past mistakes. They are cool toward you when you succeed or get attention. They are vindictive. They kick you when you are down.
And such qualities are similar when applied to toxic churches and groups of people. There is no accountability for leaders in toxic churches. Members have little say in how things are done. There is no recognition for personal achievement or work. Toxic churches or groups are overly demanding of one’s time and resources. Leaders are authoritarian, intimidating and not approachable. All people are not welcome. Shame and guilt are encouraged instead of positive attitudes and inspirational growth. There is little or no sense of being fulfilled and enlightened.
What we find with toxic people that surround us is that we want to change who we hang out with but are often too afraid to do so. Toxic people and groups are emotionally controlling – saying the fault of discontent lies with us instead of at least partially within themselves. Such control can prevent us from moving on and letting go. We need, instead, courage.
My message last week of learning to let go applies to toxic people and groups. Yes, we should accept them as they are and not try to change them. Only they can do that. But we can let them know how we feel and we can apply the kind of reasonable boundaries that will protect us from hurt. “I love you and respect you as a person but when you judge me, when you demean and criticize me, I will choose to limit my time around you. I will choose to find, instead, people who support and inspire me.”
Setting up appropriate boundaries are not selfish acts. They are ways to protect ourselves in order that, as I said earlier, we are better able to flourish as individuals – to serve, give and love. Without protective boundaries to limit toxic people or groups around us, our lives lack peace. We are stressed by constant demands of our attention and time. We are stressed by put-downs and jealousy. We are stressed by a lack of support and understanding. Ultimately, we are unhappy.
Boundaries limit the access toxic persons have to us. Sadly, we may need to erect such boundaries for people we once considered friends, lovers, spouses, or family members. I do not believe boundaries should be used to punish others or that they should be implemented in a mean spirited manner. Indeed, we should forgive the other if we have been hurt and boundaries help enable forgiveness. We let go of the hurt while wisely protecting ourselves from being hurt again. The relationship can even be maintained on a limited level. But intimacy, close friendship, and deep connection cannot be sustained with toxic people. We can love but let go.
When we talk about building a loving community around us, we mean that we purposefully want to be around the right people. And we purposefully commit to working on being a right person for others to be around. Supportive and loving communities, I believe, ought to be relatively small. How many close friends do we each have the time in which to invest? Experts say we can generally only have between 2 to five close and intimate friends. How deep can our relationships be if we have too many? The same, I believe, holds true for churches. Megachurches offer wonderful programs and services with all of their resources. But, one must belong to a so-called small church within the big church – a small group, book club or serving team and that can then limit one’s sense of belonging to the larger church.
The advantage of a small church of right people is that the entire community can be people we know and who support us. It is small enough to enable that. I love that I can know the names of every member and regular attender here, that I can know a bit about their lives and their families, and that they can know the same of me. I never tire of seeing many of the same faces each Sunday – indeed, that helps build even greater intimacy.
I hope many of you feel as I do. That in here, we are appreciated and respected as a unique individuals. We are listened to. We are encouraged. We are uplifted. We are happy to be here. A toxic church offers none of that. I’ve been in some toxic churches. I know what they look and feel like.
But most of all, the wonderful quality about the Gathering is that right attitudes are expressed to everyone. We may occasionally get on each other’s nerves, but the atmosphere in here, the unspoken ethos in here, is that all are welcome, all are respected, all are listened to, all are cared for, all are important and valued – no matter what. We never claim to be perfect. I am far from it. But we do claim our desire to grow in becoming right people and right individuals who live out the ethos of which I just spoke. What we pray for, what we work towards, is that we will carry with us the right attitudes found in here out into into our other communities – into our homes, our workplaces, our other circles of friends. We want to find and build other right groups of people much like the Gathering. And outside these doors we want to be the same kind of right person that we are in here.

I pray this be so for me, as I pray it be so for you. I wish you all much peace and joy.