Author: Doug Slagle

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

To listen to the message, download it here.  To read along, please see below.

 

Last Sunday during our communal prayer time, one of you offered up a thought and prayer for those who experience depression during the holidays.  As most of us know, feelings of stress, anxiety, low self-esteem and regret are often strong at this time of year.  We convince ourselves that we have to find the perfect gift for loved ones, that our homes must be decorated just right, that meals should be planned with care and that we should be filled with the joy and excitement of the season.  All around us people seem happy – celebrating the season and the end of a year filled with blessings.  Often, such perceived happiness contrasts with our own sense that life is not perfect, joyful or successful.

And it is interesting that the film “It’s A Wonderful Life” is a holiday classic because it is actually a dark, depressing and often sad film.  It begins with hope and promise – and it does end on an upbeat note – but the body of the movie echoes many of our despondent feelings at this time of year.  Indeed, the film is set during the 1930’s depression period and seems to confirm all of the worst aspects of American life – that it is a hard, dog-eat-dog struggle just to survive.  One film critic at the time of the movie’s release noted that Frank Capra, as the film’s director, showed us how the American dream can too often be an American nightmare.  Capra admitted in an interview, however, that his primary purpose in making the film was to counter the rising trend of Atheism in America.  For him, there was and is a loving God who is active in our lives and whose ultimate design is for our well-being and happiness.

After a life of dashed hopes and deferred dreams, George Bailey discovers that the bank he oversees is missing $8000.00, on the very day a bank auditor is to arrive.   Bitter at how his life has turned out and seeing no way out of his current troubles, George proceeds to a bridge and almost jumps off it as a way to commit suicide.  He’s rescued, however, by his guardian angel Clarence who ironically jumps off the bridge first.  George forgets his own suicidal intentions and rescues Clarence – thereby at least temporarily saving himself.  Even so, he soon thereafter mutters to Clarence that he wishes he had never been born – his life being one of unrealized hopes, empty promises, endless drudgery and now almost total ruin.

It is fitting that George saves himself by saving someone else.  And that is the story of his life.  Like some of us who try to always be the likable and dutiful Boy or Girl Scout – always doing the right thing – George is the consummate “Do Gooder.”  He dreams of leaving small town Bedford Falls and making his mark in Europe or other exotic places – only to take over the small town family bank when his dad unexpectedly dies.  With money tight, he foregoes college so that his brother Harry can go.  He saves the life of his brother and the reputation of the drunken town pharmacist who nearly poisons a customer.  He and his new wife cancel a long planned honeymoon by using their savings to cover the withdrawal demands of bank customers caught in depression era financial panic.  He settles into a life of a small town banker, making little money, just so that community members can buy homes and start businesses.  He buys an old house that is in constant need of repair.  He and his wife have several children with their own continual needs.  Life for George seems to be one long struggle of doing the right thing while forsaking his own joy.  What seems like the last straw in a life of setbacks, George’s bungling uncle loses an $8000 deposit and George is faced with the end of his bank, financial ruin and possible prison.

As George’s guardian angel, Clarence is ordered by his heavenly superiors to help George see the so-called light.  In this way, Capra reveals his stated purpose for making the film.  Life is indeed difficult and it is a struggle for so many people.  But, as Capra takes pains to show, God allegedly intervenes in our behalf.  God intends for our good, according to Capra, and he actively works to defeat evil and promote general well-being.  Clarence, the guardian angel, takes George on a unique journey to show him what life would be like had George’s wish come true – that he had never been born.  An alternate universe opens up for George – one where his brother is dead because there was no George to save him, and his wife is a lonely, unmarried spinster because there was no George to fall in love with her.  Bedford Falls is unrecognizable because it lacks the homes and businesses George’s bank helped finance.  Indeed, it is no longer Bedford Falls but, instead, “Pottersville” – a sinister place of seedy bars and rampant crime, owned and controlled by the greedy tycoon capitalist Henry Potter.

As Clarence tells George, he is offered a unique gift.  He is given the opportunity to see what life would be like had he never existed.  What George discovers is that the world and life in general would be dramatically different had he not been born.  Clarence says to George, “Strange, isn’t it?  Each man’s life touches so many other lives.  And when he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”  And that is ultimately the message of the movie and of my message today.

Every single one of us are, like George Bailey, agents of change.  We exert strong power over time and space.  Any one of our actions or words alters the course of our lives and, usually, the lives of many others.  As I often say, and as a foundation of my theology, we do not honor and celebrate a supernatural god that controls the universe.  Instead, God is us and it is WE who are uniquely called to help build a better world.  Here at the Gathering we celebrate the god power in each person – the potential for goodness, altruism, compassion and generosity that dwells in EVERY heart.

Humans are not mere puppets manipulated by a great deity from above.    We choose, like George Bailey, the life we lead and the legacy we leave behind.  Our lives have a purpose and a meaning to change the course of history – in good ways or bad.  It is up to us – every one of us – to be the god force that is active, alive and powerful in this world.  God is us.  We are god.

And, surprisingly, it was Jesus who taught this very idea.  As written in the Biblical book of John, he reminded a group of Jews that Scripture itself tells us that we are ALL gods.   During one of his visits to Jerusalem, pious but hypocritical Jews demanded that Jesus offer proof that he was the Messiah.  Instead of answering them, Jesus referred them to an often forgotten Psalm where God tells humanity that they should “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.  Rescue the weak and the needy and deliver them from the hand of the wicked. You are gods; you are all sons and daughters of the Most High.”

Jesus reminded the Jewish doubters of his own acts of compassion and called them to heed these words of the Divine.  They are to be gods.  They are to work in our world to make it better just as he, Jesus, had been doing.  Instead of yearning for a Messiah to save them from an evil filled world, Jesus implicitly told them to get to work!  You’re god!  You’re to be your own messiah!  Stop piously sitting on your hands while praying for a perfect world.  Get out there and BE god by rescuing the poor, the hurting, the outcast, lonely, depressed and marginalized people in life.  Stop dreaming about heaven.  Go out and build it!

And ironically that is just what the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” teaches us.  Instead of telling us that it is God who intervenes in our world to make it better, we are shown that it is George Bailey and people like him who make the real difference.  George is flabbergasted at the darker world he sees would have resulted without him.  Instead of continuing to despair over an unfulfilled life that seemed empty of excitement, George finally understands the wonder and beauty of his own life of impact.  He’s shown the joy he gives his wife and friends, the promise he offers his children, the courage he’s offered his brother, the humility and decency he practices for his community, and the moral purpose of his life-long stand against heartless and rampant greed.  By every life choice, by every small deed, by every gesture, word and thought, George had dropped a pebble into the pond of life – sending out ripples and waves of impact that helped create a richer, kinder and better world.  At the end of the film George understands that far from being a hopeless, meaningless and joyless life, it is instead quite wonderful!

By each of our small acts in behalf of others, history is constantly rewritten and life becomes a wondrous journey of purpose.  We are NOT bystanders or puppets in the drama of life, but living gods and goddesses who impact other lives and, indeed, all eternity by our simple acts of kindness and service.

The film, then, reminds us of many stories about making a difference in our world.  I’m reminded of the old fable about a young boy and an old man who come across a very long beach filled with thousands of starfish, all washed ashore and slowly dying in the heat of the sun.  The old man stooped down and began to pick up starfish, one by one, and tossed them as far as he could back into the ocean.  The young boy, with tears in his eyes, looked up at the old man and said, “But, sir, look around us at all of this death.  Thousands are dying.  What difference can you make?”  The old man smiled, patted the boy on the head and reached down again to pick up a starfish and throw it back into the sea.  “Ah, you see my young friend, I have just made all the difference in the world for that one starfish.”

So too are we reminded of actual persons in history who dropped small pebbles in the pond of life.  In the midst of one of the greatest horrors perpetrated by mankind against fellow humans, when over six million people were systematically slaughtered during the holocaust, only a few people morally stood above the rest.

Outside of the Auschwitz death camp, Oskar Schindler operated a factory producing war goods.  His factory employed Jews relocated from homes across Europe to the horrors of Auschwitz.  But Schindler fought and argued for every Jew in his employ and on his special list of factory workers.  As long as they were one of his employees, they were protected and they would not be killed.

Stories are told of the Auschwitz camp commandant Amon Goeth, who for pleasure used a sniper rifle to shoot and kill young children in the camp yards.  Or, how he would turn loose his two German Shepherd dogs to tear apart – limb by limb – Jews who displeased him.  In one incident, the commandant came across a man in Schindler’s factory who was crying uncontrollably.   He was told the man despaired over the deaths of his wife and children who had just been sent to the gas chamber.  Goeth told the man he would help him then and there join his family in eternity.  He aimed his gun at the man and sadistically ordered him to drop his pants and begin running.  Schindler looked out his office window and saw what was happening.  “Stop!” He shouted.  “You’re hurting the morale of my workers which hurts the cause of the fatherland.”  Goeth ignored Schindler and continued to take aim at the trembling man.  In desperation, Schindler called out to Goeth and promised him a bottle of Schnapps if he would spare the man.  Finally, Goeth complied.  The man survived the war.

Another Schindler Jew was Murray Puntierer who also survived Auschwitz, emigrated to the US and founded a construction company in New Jersey that eventually employed thousands and built hundreds of homes and businesses.  Puntierer named 21 New Jersey streets and even a public plaza after Schindler.  He often reminded others that it was not he to thank for their homes and jobs, but Oskar Schindler for saving his life.

Near the end of the war, over five thousand Jews whom Schindler had saved gathered around to give him a handmade ring with a Hebrew inscription on it: “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.”  One man, five thousand pebbles dropped in the pond of life, and the course of history is changed in countless ways for the better.

I do not believe any of us are so naive or so simple as to believe that life is not harsh and cruel.  Just within our own congregation, people hurt, worry, are lonely, frightened and have major health challenges.  How, for them or for many, many others in our world, can it be a merry Christmas or a happy holiday?  Such words too often seem hollow and trite.

But the message of the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” and of Christmas itself is that any one of us, no matter our age, health or condition, has a meaning and purpose in life.  The Christmas story of a poor young child, born out of wedlock in a backward and insignificant corner of the world, is that one person CAN make a difference in the lives of countless others.  Much like Jesus, one person has the power to speak words of truth and compassion; one person has the power to touch and heal; one person has the power to give and share; one person has the power to uplift and ennoble the weak, outcast and marginalized; one person – in doing any or all of these things – has the power to change the world.

You, me, all of us do not lead hopeless and empty lives.  Indeed, we must BE the living embodiment of hope to others.  We’re the light, we’re the god or goddess, and we’re the source of tolerance, joy, kindness and generosity in the lives of our families, friends and strangers.  We have the god power to inspire others by our example, to serve by our hands, to forgive by our humility, to comfort by our love, and to soothe by our kind words.  From the moment we emerge into this noisy and confusing world and until the time we slip into the light of eternity, we each have a purpose.  Heaven on earth is our vision, working to build it is our task and celebrating the wonders of life is our motto.  This Christmas, this New year and all the days each of us have left, may we live, act and speak as the gods and goddesses we were created to be.  Let us drop our own pebbles into the pond of life and send out ripples of goodness into the far reaches of space and time…

I wish you all much holiday peace, hope and joy.

 

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

 

Watch a film clip here: http://movieclips.com/Z2bMU-its-a-wonderful-life-movie-every-time-a-bell-rings-an-angel-gets-his-wings/

Download below recording to listen to the message.   See below to read it.

The Frank Capra movie “It’s A Wonderful Life”, that we just saw a clip from, has become a classic holiday film because it speaks to a number of ideals about life, hope and generosity – all of which resonate strongly at this time of year.  If we hope to find any meaning from the holidays beyond gifts, shopping and festivities, we’re called to pause and reflect on the deeper values that underpin the “reason for the season.”

One particular value from this holiday film is that family bonds and togetherness are vitally important, especially at this time of year.  Whether we have a happy holiday or not, much of that is determined by the community sharing we experience.  And, like all holiday related values, the need for strong community ties in our lives is universal and extends throughout the year.  Importantly, this depression era film asks us to consider: What constitutes a family and to whom are we to show love, care and concern?

In the Biblical New Testament Book of Matthew, Jesus is told by a group of his followers that his mother and brother were outside and wanted to see and speak with him.  Jesus immediately asked the crowd, “Who is my mother?  Who is my brother?”  He looked around and then he extended his arms inclusively outward and told the crowd, “Behold, my mother, my brother, my sisters!  Whoever does the will of God, he or she is my brother, my sister, my mother.”

If we believe that a historical Jesus did live, and that he taught universal values of what is good, true and right, then we can assume that his teachings were and are the will of God, or whatever higher power you choose to believe.  What he taught his followers about family, therefore, was a radical change from what people of his time thought and, indeed, what we often believe today.  Family is not just about blood ties or bonds of legal marriage.  Family, for Jesus, was the people who cared for him, shared his values of concern for the outcast and the weak, and actively worked as he did to love, serve and give.  Family was also the poor, sick, hungry and homeless.  Jesus redefined what family is – from ties that bind due to blood ancestry to ties that bind because of affinity, common values, shared experiences and simple compassion.

And that is a recurring theme in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  Wives, husbands, partners, children, grandparents and other blood relatives are important.  But, one’s true and lasting family is ALSO comprised of those upon whom we relate to beyond birth and ancestry.

No matter the context of what comprises family for any of us, most psychologists assert that a communal family of some type, or lack of that, is the single most important incubator for who we become in life.  Whatever functional or dysfunctional family unit to which we belonged as children, it is what teaches us (or fails to teach us) essential life coping skills – how to get along, negotiate, cooperate, share, serve and love.   Studies show that families that encourage learning and education produce higher achieving children.  Families that are secure, nurturing and accepting of individual differences produce better adjusted and more self-confident adults.  Family or communal life also determines our overall health – it is the unit that often tends to our needs, encourages preventive medical care, hygiene and exercise.  Families or similar communities are also primarily responsible for fostering positive characteristics of resilience, self-esteem, confidence and mental well-being.  As a social structure, a family type unit is the primary and most important force in the formation and strengthening of our personalities, values and gender identity.  Whatever form they take for any of us, from a kinship based family to a group like the Gathering, it’s clear that a caring and nurturing community is essential for our well being both as children and as adults.  For better or for worse, family life of any type charts our path in life and largely determines who we are.

Such strong family or community ties are celebrated in the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life.”  In a dark, frustrating and often sinister world that was depression era America, George Bailey, as the main character and played by everyman actor Jimmy Stewart, finds that his family and community of friends are the true sources of strength and meaning in his life.

Just as important, George comes to understand his own role in the drama of life – how he is ALSO a force for security and service to his wife, children, brother, parents, friends AND community.  He forsakes a college education so his brother can have one.  He abandons hopes to leave his town when he assumes leadership over the bank his father founded.  He does so in order to save it and its community focused ideals from greedy capitalists.  He oversees his bank’s lending so that community members can buy and afford homes.  He and his wife forego a long planned honeymoon and use the money to cover the savings of bank customers.  He saves his brother from drowning, prevents a young boy from being poisoned and, most importantly, saves Bedford Falls from being taken over by the tycoon capitalist Potter.  George positively impacts the lives of countless people – many of whom gather in his home at the end of the movie to return the favor by rescuing him from financial ruin and possible prison.  His focus was not just on his own personal interests or even on those of his small biological clan.  His concern was for the larger tribe and community of people to which he belonged.

Like Jesus’ teachings, the film helps to redefine the notion of family.  George’s real family are the friends and community members whom he served and who, in return, serve and love him.  Far from being a movie about so-called traditional family values, “It’s A Wonderful Life” encourages us to consider the spirit of the holiday season in the light of Jesus’ teaching about family.  We are to look around us as he did, out in the streets beyond our doors and windows, to find our family.  We find there that family is a gay or lesbian couple, a single mom working to support her children, a single man or woman living alone, a foster family, a cohabitating couple, a lonely person in a nursing home, a sick child, a family huddled in the cold outside of the Freestore waiting for their food basket.   Who, for us, is our mother, our brother, our sister?

For just a moment, indulge me as I brag about my daughter Sara.  I love her no matter what, but Sara exhibits a kind of deep compassion for young children and those on the margins of life that touches and impresses me.  Sara works at a home for mentally challenged women – many of whom are Medicaid wards of the state and have no relatives who visit or care for them.  By most standards, they are all alone in life.

Every year at Christmas, Sara and her co-workers take the women in their care to nearby stores and allow them to pick out and buy a few items of their choice.  The women don’t ask for much and most of what they pick out are small trinkets.  Even so, this outing is anticipated weeks before and the event is a major highlight in the lives of the women residents.  What is even more remarkable is that Sara and her co-workers pay for the items from their own personal funds.  Like all of those who live in Medicaid facilities, the women residents have no money.  And, like most social workers, Sara is not paid a lot for her work but she gives of her time and her resources to create a small Christmas moment for women who would otherwise have none.

And Sara is deeply loved by these women.  They are drawn to her quiet and caring ways.  She frequently must soothe their anxieties and act much like a mother to them even though, by age, they could be Sara’s mom or grandmother.  Recently, one resident woman was to celebrate her birthday by going out to dinner with her sister.  All day long, she asked Sara and other staff members when her sister would arrive and how much longer would she have to wait for her birthday celebration to begin.

Sadly, as often happens with most of these women, the sister never showed up and Sara had to console and comfort a confused and very upset resident.   Sara had to be the one source of love to someone abandoned and mostly alone in the world.  Life for such women and others like her is so very cruel and yet people like Sara soften a harsh world.  For these mentally challenged women at Christmas, and for that one lonely woman on her birthday, Sara was and is family – she was and is mother, sister, brother, father.

This view of family is dramatically different from the traditional values and so called moral majority folks who tell us that a family is only defined by a mother and father living together and raising their biological children.  Indeed, according to the 2010 United States census, such a so-called ideal American family comprises only 28% of all family units in the nation.  Single parent families headed by women grew between 2000 and 2010 by 18%.  Unmarried partner families grew by 41% in the same time period.  Same sex partner families grew by over 50% and almost 30% of all household families in the US are now comprised of just one person.  What is clear is that the definition of family is no longer what some describe as the traditional family of mother, father and children all living together.  Family is where we are loved.  Family is the place where we can show our love.  Family members are the people who rely on us – and whom we rely on – to be there when troubled times happen.

As most of you know, I had surgery on my knee a few weeks ago.  It was a simple procedure but, as my first significant health challenge and surgery, I was very anxious and nervous.  Sara came and waited during my surgery and was there when I woke up.  But it was Keith Murrell who took the day off work, waited with me until the late afternoon procedure, tried to calm and reassure me, filled my prescriptions, drove me home and spent the night to make sure I’d be OK.  On one minor, frightening and potentially lonely day for me, Keith was my brother, father, mother, sister.

And, as much as some believe the changing dynamics of family spells the decline of basic morality and success of American culture, the opposite is actually true.  Children and adults succeed and thrive in all forms of family where nurture, attention and love exist.  It does not matter from whom it is given, love is love.  Indeed, many sociologists assert that views of traditional family and marriage in western cultures originated not by natural evolution but because of value systems taught by Jewish and Christian religions.  Thousands of years of actual experience indicate, however, that families from the beginning of time were far more fluid in terms of composition.  Indeed, Jesus was from one of the most non-traditional and unorthodox of families – conceived out of wedlock with an uncertain father.  Sociologists Maxine Zinn and Stanley Eitzen assert that “there is no golden age of the family gleaming at us in the far back historical past.  Desertion by spouses, illegitimate children, and other conditions that are considered characteristics of modern times existed in the past as well.”

Three other respected sociologists also suggest that promoting so-called traditional families are actually harmful to the economic best interests of children and society.  Their theory holds that as women increasingly delay or reject traditional family in order to advance their education and careers, contemporary family units that many women eventually build are more stable and financially secure.  In other words, the success of women in the marketplace, when they delay marriage and having children, is directly tied to the well-being of families – no matter their composition.  Encouraging women to marry and have children, at the expense of education and a career, is counterproductive.  In today’s world, adoptive, single mom or same sex couples are often MORE capable of sustaining a viable family unit than many traditional families of mom, dad and kids.  We see then that so called traditional families can no longer claim to be better for society or children.  What matters is that children have a family unit of some kind.

Our values therefore tell us that birth and blood ties should not supplant universal values that encompass a concern for the well-being of others.  Indeed, humanity long ago mostly rejected rights and privileges based solely on ancestry.  Nobility, royalty, nepotism and patriarchal systems of power, inheritance and property ownership, determined by ancestry alone, are ancient relics destined for the dustbin of history.  Instead, as I often point out, humanity is evolving with moral imagination toward greater cooperation between people.  As we have seen, this is taking place with regard to the understanding of family but it is, ironically, a value taught two thousand years ago by the man whose birth we celebrate this season.

American culture does not thrive because of so-called traditional marriage, families and their alleged superior values.  George Bailey’s town of Bedford Falls is not a caring community because George and his friends are married with children.  America succeeds because of an expansive and inclusive understanding of family.  It succeeds because a true family is just as Jesus described.   A family member for him and for us is the one who hungers, who is sick, who mourns, who cries in loneliness, is an outcast, suffers in pain or works alongside us to help eliminate such misery.  Family members are the people in our lives related not by blood but by heart.

In the upcoming holiday celebrations, may we remember who is our true mother, father, sibling and child.  We need not forget or abandon those we love by kinship.  But such people are only parts of our real and much, much larger family.  This Hanukkah, this Christmas, in the spirit of the season, may we love, cherish and serve, AND SERVE! members of our one human family.  Include someone who is not a blood relative, partner or spouse in your holidays and help fulfill the goal of making it a wonderful life for all…

I wish you each a happy Hanukkah and much peace and joy.

Guest Speaker Reverend Karen Behm 

Download Rev. Behm’s message by clicking below:

Message 113, “Thankfulness in Action: Giving Back or Paying Forward??”, 11-18-12

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

Click here to listen to the message.  You can read along below.

Most of us know the real story of the first Thanksgiving.  After surviving a starvation winter when over half of Plymouth colony died and, after reaping the benefits of a summer harvest due mostly to Native-American help and instruction in new world farming techniques, Miles Standish called for a three day feast of Thanksgiving.  He invited a few Native-Americans and their families to join the Pilgrims.  Not knowing how large Wampanoag families were, over 90 Native-Americans showed up for the meal.

But the pilgrims had a pitiful amount of food available for such a large crowd.  The Wampanoag Indians returned to their villages and came back with what was the majority of food for that first Thanksgiving.  What is notable about the Native American gift of time, resources and food to the European invaders is that the Wampanoag – like all Indians – did not consider what they offered to be a gift.  Indeed, they had no need to give or share with 50 pitiful intruders whom they could easily have defeated in any battle or simply have allowed to starve to death.  Their charity, as we might perceive it, was not charity at all in their view.  It was extending portions of their lives, wisdom and harvest to other humans – NOT as gifts or as charity but as simply sharing what was not theirs to begin with.

This idea of sharing is common to all Native-American cultures.  All of life – the earth, the sun, water, plants, animals and humans – are a part of what they call the “Sacred Hoop”.  The universe and all life within it is interconnected in a great cycle of giving and receiving, birth and death.  Native-American culture did not think in terms of amassing wealth and resources.  Everything they reaped was, to them, a loan from the Great Spirit – theirs to use, share and then pass along to others in the Sacred Hoop of life.  The well-being of the community as a whole was far more important than any individual success or wealth.  In this regard, sharing their food with the Pilgrims was simply a part of coexisting within the web of life and was done for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

As we conclude our Thankfulness in Action November series, I’ve purposefully titled today’s message of “Giving Back” with question marks.   While an attitude of thankfulness encourages us to give away portions of our blessings in gratitude for what we have received, a holistic spirituality of wealth rejects the motivating premise of giving back.  Indeed, western thinking falsely leads us to believe that giving is essentially a transactional response.  We give back in return for what we have been given – even if it is because of our gratitude.  Ultimately, this is a false way to think about sharing and giving.

If we reorient our thinking, we find that a spiritual understanding of wealth sees sharing as a natural act – something done to strengthen our communities and thus our own lives.  More important than giving back because we are grateful or because we have compassionate hearts, we share because we are part of a greater whole.  We are a part of one human family that is spiritually and practically called to support and insure the success of the whole.  The health and well-being of all people are vital to our own individual well-being.  We are not islands unto ourselves – achieving and succeeding by ourselves.  We each thrive because others have mutually shared, worked and created the conditions so that ALL can thrive.  And we too are called to give, share and work with the same motivation.  This is a mind-shift for many of us – to think not in terms of giving as charity or as pay-back for our blessings, but as a means to preserve and strengthen the communities to which we belong.

That is the ethic not only of Native-Americans but also of many Africans as we discussed a few weeks ago.  The African philosophy of ubuntu elevates the community over the individual.  People are not unique and beautiful all alone but because they are a part of something greater than themselves.  In this sense, the well being of the groups to which we belong should be our primary focus.  If the community succeeds, then ironically the individual does too.  Ubuntu and Native-American thinking do not diminish the importance of individuals but rather sees people in their proper context – members of the human family which is great and wonderful precisely because of its many diverse members.

In writing to the terribly divided churches in ancient Corinth, Paul wrote in one of his letters to them, which is in the New Testament, that an ideal Christian community should see itself as similar to a human body.  A body is made up of many parts that may seem to operate on their own but which, in reality, are vitally connected to the other parts and thus operate as a systemic whole.  He wrote, “But God has put the body together…so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

Paul’s analogy was a warning to the Corinthian people to stop treating various members – those who were poor or who lacked certain spiritual abilities like speaking in tongues – as less than others.  All are equal before god and all are essential for the well-being of the community.

The implication of Paul’s words for us today is to see one another not as separate individuals but as vitally connected to each other.  And that has a profound impact on how we approach our sharing.  It is not giving.  It is extending what belongs not to me or to you but to all people and all life.

Jews understand giving in much the same way.  Giving is not a voluntary act.  It is compulsory if one is to even think of oneself as a genuine person of faith.  Giving is not a form of compassion but an act of justice.  All money and all resources come from God.  Giving is simply a way of extending to others not what is ours but what is God’s.  God’s intention was that all justly share in life’s gifts.

This religious view of giving was secularly expressed by economists Kenneth Boulding and Michael Moody who, in 1981, coined the term “serial reciprocity” to describe their vision of an economy and social structure which gives and shares material resources as a way of paying forward.  Individuals extend resources to third party strangers in a future focused effort to advance humanity in general.  In their view, resources have come to us from people in our past, we use and borrow the resources for a time, and then instead of hoarding wealth, we pay it forward so that others can also use and borrow for a time.  What we share and do for others is passing along what was passed to us.

Serial reciprocity is fundamentally part of what I have spoken about before in terms of universal moral imagination.  It sees cooperation and unity as a persistent trend in human evolution.  It contrasts against competition, survival of the fittest and rampant individualism.  Humans increasingly realize that competition is a zero sum game.  Competition for limited resources creates a world where nobody wins.  Life is one hard slog to get ahead and beat out the next person.  Increasingly, however, humanity recognizes that cooperation helps insure that there are no losers in life.

Importantly, an economy based on serial reciprocity and paying forward is not socialist but has been called, instead, “moral capitalism.”  It is a form of economic thinking made famous by Henry Ford who, in 1914, paid his workers the unheard of salary of $5.00 a day.  Ford understood that if he and his company were to succeed, there had to be enough people who could afford to buy his cars.   If he paid his employees high enough wages, not only would they be better off, they would buy his cars and he would also reap greater benefits.

Fundamentally, Ford was not giving away high wages as a form of compassion.  He was a clear eyed capitalist who understood that the well being of himself, his customers and his shareholders was intrinsically tied to the success of his workers.  Higher wages for others was a way for Ford to practice serial reciprocity.

This ethos is today practiced by the Whole Foods company which famously pays its entry level employees significantly higher wages – $15.00 an hour – nearly double the minimum wage.  While this earns a full-time employee $30,000.00 a year in wages, Whole Foods combines its pay with medical insurance benefits and stock options.  A typical entry level worker at Whole Foods thus earns over $50,000.00 a year in wages, benefits and stock options.

The mindset of Whole Foods is that each of the stakeholders in its business must share equally in its resources if it is to succeed as a company.  Shareholders, employees and customers must be equal at the table.  If shareholders prosper at the expense of employees, the company will have less motivated workers and, in the long term, fewer customers to buy its goods.  Ultimately, over the long haul, shareholders will also lose.

What Henry Ford and now Whole Foods understood is that paying forward for the betterment of all is not a socialist concept of redistributing wealth.   It is both a wise economic strategy and a spiritual practice to help the human family.  All must do well in order for ALL to do well.  Wise capitalists pay forward as a way to assure the success of the capitalist system itself.  It is, ironically, a very conservative ideal.

As I said earlier, this economic understanding of sharing wealth turns on its head many of our beliefs and long held ideas about charity.   No longer do I give based on what I have been given or will be given.  No longer do I feel, with an implicit sense of superiority, that I bestow what is mine on others out of some sense of charity or kindness.  I share because I believe in the well-being of everyone, because I don’t really own anything and because I’m a part of a greater whole.  I help insure my own survival by making sure the community in which I am a member survives and thrives.

What I ask us to consider, myself included, is that we see the time and money we share here at the Gathering, with family and with others….in a new light.  What we share with others are not gifts.  What we share here and with other organizations and individuals are investments in humanity.  At the Gathering, we pay forward not to benefit me, one another or even the church – but all people.

When a Gathering member volunteers to help one of our outreach partners, all of humanity benefits.  When a member makes new friends and builds new relationships with other members, he or she feels better about life – and all of humanity is better off.  When a member is encouraged and strengthened by the support and love of others, all of humanity is better off.  When any of us are challenged by Sunday messages to be more open, true and whole, that extends outward to others in our lives.  All humanity is better off.  And, ultimately, we are each individually also better off.

Let us share with the church and with others as fully as we possibly can, not just because of gratitude or a sense of charity.  Let us pay forward to the Gathering and to others because that’s who we are as people.  We share for the sake of our world.  We share so that people who hurt and struggle might find a place of comfort and relief – like the Gathering.  We pay forward so that people who feel different or unaccepted can find a place to fully express who they are.  We share so that all people can love whom they wish without shame or guilt.  We share so that homeless kids might be helped – hopefully breaking a cycle of poverty in their lives and thus benefitting all society.  We share so that all of us and ultimately all in our community can spiritually grow  – finding ways to be more forgiving, humble, generous, content, joyful, aware, strong, gentle, devoted, courageous and hopeful people – to name just a few of the message topics we’ve considered over the past year.  In paying forward for each of these things, we are not helping something as small as the Gathering or any individual person.  We help improve the world.

And this faith community is a perfect place to engage in the work we are called to do.  Ultimately, we share here to express our deeply held beliefs that people matter and that it is up to each of us – rich and poor alike – to do our part to help build a vision of heaven where none are hungry, where all are celebrated equally, where each can live joyfully and in peace.  The Gathering not only stands for those ideals, it actively works to practice them.  Let us not give back but, instead, pay forward to a better and happier future for all humanity.

I wish all of us a joyous, blessed and generous Thanksgiving holiday.

Message 112, “Thankfulness in Action: Loving Yourself”, 11-11-12

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

Click here to listen to the message.  To read along, see below.

 

How many of us have ever told ourselves: “I am bad”, “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not attractive, smart, skilled, rich”, “I should have done ….(you fill in the blank)”, “I’ve made too many mistakes in life”, OR “I have no future that is good”?  On a much deeper level, how many of us have ever believed we don’t deserve to be happy or loved?  In answering those lies we tell ourselves, what’s been our response?  How many of us have retreated inward – feeling unloved and thus never reaching out and never finding true love or friendship?  How many of us have become self-mutilators – people who act out all of the inner shame they feel through substance abuse or other unhealthy actions and addictions?  How many of us have become overly judgmental of others while telling ourselves that we have it all together?  How many of us have become arrogant and false as a way to cover up our own feelings of inadequacy?

Perhaps the greatest failure some of us have is NOT that we don’t always extend love and compassion to others, but that ultimately we don’t extend such feelings to ourselves. As I often note in my messages, the single best rule to guide our actions in life is the so-called Golden Rule.  Nearly every world religion believes in a version of it.  We are to love others as we love ourselves.  We are to treat others as we treat ourselves.  The implicit assumption in that concept, famously stated by Jesus, is that humans are selfish and love themselves too much.  While this might be true in how many people ACT, it is often NOT true in how many people FEEL.  They do not genuinely and authentically love themselves.  They are not deeply thankful for who they are, what they offer the world and the value they provide to those around them.

If we take someone’s negative feelings about themselves to their logical conclusion, we realize it is impossible for people who do not really love themselves to fully and authentically love others.  If we believe in the Golden Rule, then we will likely treat others as good or as bad as we treat ourselves.  How can we love someone else, how can we honestly show compassion, how can we be authentic, whole and complete people if we do not have a core respect for who we are as individuals?  If we do not deeply know love for the self, we will not know it and be able to honestly show it to someone else.  The single greatest goal in life, therefore, ought to be a complete and honest feeling of self-respect.

To continue our November series on “Thankfulness in Action”, I hope each of us will ponder in the weeks ahead what it means to be truly thankful for oneself.  In a faith community that believes in selflessness, and as a part of a congregation that believes our greater purpose in life is to serve others, it is almost a contradiction to talk about loving oneself.  It’s easy for us to assume the role of givers and of martyrs – those who are constantly helping and giving to others.  Being thankful for all that we have in life is, indeed, shown by our willingness to give back.

But, fundamental to having an attitude of gratitude, is to be appropriately thankful for who we are – the amalgamation of abilities and flaws in us.  Indeed, can we really be thankful people if we are not thankful for ourselves – for the unique, amazing and wonderful gift that we are to our families, friends and the world at large?  Our prayers at our upcoming Thanksgiving meals must include a thought or prayer of gratitude for the innate beauty, goodness and accomplishment of ourselves as individuals.

Oscar Wilde once said that, “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.”  And Walt Whitman famously wrote in his Leaves of Grass anthology of poems that, “I celebrate myself.  I sing myself.”  It’s interesting to note that these two gay men of the nineteenth century, a time when same-sex love was unmentionable and considered a grave sin worthy of imprisonment, these two men believed it imperative that they accept and love themselves.  Such self-respect on their part likely enabled their ability to confront the forces of intolerance set against them.  Self-love empowered them to live true to their inner selves, to find pride in who they were and to celebrate such feelings in their poetry and writing.

But their journey to such personal revelations was likely not easy or simple.  Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, noted that, “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”  If we rigorously and honestly examine who we are as a person, we embark on a journey into unknown and frightening areas of the self.  We reveal past hurts inflicted upon us by parents or other loved ones.  We remember our past mistakes.  We discover our innermost fears and doubts about life and ourselves.  We see our inherent flaws and even hypocrisies.  That is truly scary stuff to confront.

But a part of that journey will also be a discovery of our uniqueness, our intrinsic beauty of soul and spirit, our love for others, our skills, our accomplishments, and our reason and purpose in life.  If we believe in some higher creative power, whatever form that might be – god, goddess, evolution, the universe, the power of love – then we should understand that we exist and were created for a reason.  We are not random beings who simply live to suck up air, water and food.  We each serve a purpose.  We were each created from millennia of past ancestors to be the one distinctive person that we are – an artist, a writer, a teacher, a lover, a caregiver, a mother, father, son, daughter, friend, encourager, giver, activist – whatever it is that is uniquely us and our passion.  Our distinctive purpose in life is our manifest gift to the world.  It is our legacy to leave behind.  We are each wondrously good and it is our right and, indeed, our duty to find and live true to our purpose.

Such positive abilities and qualities about ourselves define who we are.  Personally, I am a thinker, an introspective person, one who feels the pain of others, one who has abilities to write and express myself in meaningful ways, one who listens and deeply wants to connect with and affirm other people.  That’s me.  Those are some of my unique gifts to the world and to eternity.  And, I must confess, those are extremely difficult words for me to say to you and to myself.  Many of my flaws and my shortcomings derive from my inability to feel such good things about myself.  I heard at an early age all of the ways that I did not measure up – as a male, as a person, as someone of value.  I internalized those messages and they became a negative voice that took control of my thinking.  Since I could not find love inside myself, I looked for it from other people.  Since then, I’ve discovered that is an impossible goal without self-respect.  I cannot feel the love of another unless I feel it for myself.  And, I cannot fully love another unless I intuitively know what self-love is and what it feels like.  I can feel variations of love and I can sense the care and concern of others but, how can I expect someone else to truly care for me if I cannot do so myself?

What we find in too many of our relationships is that we expect the other to fill the void or lack of self-respect we feel.  Instead, our purpose in any relationship is to express to the other the love we ALREADY feel and have inside our hearts and souls.  That is the unconditional love we have for ourselves – a form of respect, joy, happiness and celebration for who we are no matter what.  If we have it, we will have it to give away.

This is the self-love that knows our flaws and knows our inadequacies but transcends them.  No longer do we hear the voices of shame and blame – “I’m no good, I’m a failure, I don’t measure up, I’m inadequate, I should be like someone who is better than me, etc, etc.”  Instead, we hear a voice of praise – “I am strong, I am good, I am worthy of love, I am capable, I have gifts and abilities to offer the world, I am defined by all that is decent within me, nobody has the right or the knowledge to define who I am.”

This attitude of gratitude for the self, this way of being thankful for the self is ironically not arrogant or selfish.  Indeed, arrogance, attitudes of superiority and judgmental thoughts toward others are false masks for our own sense of inadequacy.  We project power, perfection, superficial beauty and assumed intelligence in order to hide our lack of self-respect.  We feel we must say the right things, have the best possessions, dress the right way, have the most friends, live in the most beautiful homes, etc, etc – all as ways to cover up for how we believe we fall short.  If we have genuine love for the self, the kind that is unconditional, we know who we are, we accept that as good and we have no need to try and be anything but who we deeply are.  We already feel our innate goodness and know our abilities.  We have no need to wear a mask of false love, arrogant attitudes or judgmental thoughts.  As Jesus said, we know the truth of ourselves and that has set us free.  Vanity and arrogance are loud cries for others to love us.  Humility and inner peace are gentle voices of genuine self-respect.

In order to encourage thankfulness for ourselves, we must work to banish the negative forces that are working against us.  Christians call Satan the father of all lies and indeed that is true.  Whether or not we believe in a literal devil, the fact remains that there is good and evil at work within us – that which works to pull us down and that which elevates and inspires us.  The father of lies tells our inner souls that there is no hope, that we should give in to our fears, that we are not loved, that we are weak, no good and our past mistakes define who and what we are.  For many of us, this father of lies began talking to us when we were young and impressionable, not having fully formed our sense of self.  We then travel through life trying to shut out that voice – dulling it with unhealthy habits, attitudes, fears, food, drugs or alcohol.  We might also become doormats, believing ourselves unworthy of love.  We might, on the other hand, judge others or we might live with deep shame and an inability to forgive ourselves and others.   As the Buddha once noted, we fall out of balance in our thinking about the self – we either love ourselves too much or we love ourselves too little.  We have failed to see the good and the weak in us and then live in contentment and appreciation of both.  As Gandhi once said, we must acknowledge that both our successes and our failures are blessings to us.  Each comprises who we are.

Ultimately, however, we know that it is the good that must define our lives – how we give, how we love and how we serve.  Do we listen to the father of lies or do we fly with our better angels?  Firmly and consistently, we must tell the father of lies to literally shut up.  When we hear his voice, when his seductive words of defeat, shame and guilt echo in our minds, we must tell him to literally “f-off!”

My friends, self-hate is a downward spiral in so many ways.  While many of you have mostly learned and internalized an authentic form of self-acceptance and respect, others of you – including me – have not.   I’m growing and learning in this respect and I feel I’m getting better.  Spirituality and an exploration of all that is good in us and in our universe is a huge help to me.

This space, for me and for many of you, is a place of healing – a hospital for our souls – where we mutually support and celebrate one another.  It’s also one place where we can live out our greater reason for existence – to serve and love others.  That is the reason why we support, attend, serve and cherish this idea we call the Gathering and why our financial gifts to the church are so essential and so important.

What I have come to realize is that by not finding an authentic form of inner peace, by not feeling a deep respect for who and what I am, by listening to the father of lies, I am saying “no” to life.  I am saying to myself, “Die!”  I have no worth.  I am a hindrance to the betterment of this world – something which none of us want to have as our legacy.  What we need to find in our hearts and our in spirits is the call to “Live.  Live.  Live!”  When we see all that we have in us, when we perceive all of the contributions we offer the world, when we see our strength, our decency, our many abilities………we see our greatness.  Absent any one of us, the world is a diminished place.  But when we find a way, this Thanksgiving and all of the Thanksgivings of our futures, to give thanks for ourselves and our lives, we can then go out, spread our wings and fulfill our purpose to help build heaven on earth for all humanity.

I wish you all the inner peace and joy that comes from loving yourself.

Message 111, “Thankfulness in Action: Affirming Others”, 10-28-12

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

 

Click here to listen to message and see below to read along.

Some of you might have heard of the African psychology or way of life called ubuntu.   It is a traditional way of thinking that comes from the African Zulu language and culture.  Ubuntu became globally popular in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa and promoted it as a new way of thinking and a way to bring differing cultures and people together.  As a distinctly African form of life psychology, ubuntu is a totally different way of thinking from the western ideal of celebrating the individual.  Indeed, ubuntu specifically says that in order to be human, we cannot be islands unto ourselves.

Our value, our humanity and our very meaning come not from our unique identity but instead from the part we play within the whole of humanity.  I am human NOT because of something in me, but because of me in something greater than myself.  I am human because YOU are human.  I have value because you have value and together, WE have value as parts of a collective whole.  Using the analogy of a multi-colored tapestry, each individual thread – or human as the analogy goes – is not celebrated alone.  The weaving of many colorful and unique threads into a wondrous tapestry is what is celebrated.  I am nothing by myself.  I am something because I am a part of the wide and awesome human family.

An essential component to ubuntu psychology is the idea that as a part of a collective whole, we do not tear each other down.  Instead, we affirm, celebrate and praise the other.  We are thankful for the life and actions of each other precisely because they impact our own well-being.  By affirming others, I not only praise someone else, I implicitly praise myself, since we are a part of an integrated whole.  If I lift you up, I lift up myself.  As I said, the ubuntu ethos turns western psychology on its head.  No longer do I live in a survival of the fittest world where I must compete and struggle in order to thrive.  Rugged individualism is essentially a dirty word in ubuntu and, thus, it is a hard pill for many Americans to swallow.  No longer are the lives and accomplishments of others a threat to me personally.  I want others to succeed because that will, in turn, help me.  It becomes a part of my very nature to affirm and praise others because, in a large way, I will affirm and praise people with whom I am intimately connected as a fellow traveler in this adventure called life.

Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, “A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”

As we move into the month of November and begin to think of Thanksgiving and the holidays, I hope our goal as individuals and as a faith community will be to focus on the larger meaning of the season – gratitude, generosity and finding a sense of peace.  For the sake of our November message series, we will look at how to put thankfulness into action.  How can we not only speak the appropriate words of thanks, but how do we show them, practice them and make praise a part of our lives all year long?  We’ll also look at how we find an honest appreciation for ourselves and then, how we can value the larger community.  What we’ll discuss and do over the coming month might seem insignificant, but I hope that just by doing what we talk about in these messages, we’ll better integrate thankfulness into our daily lives.

It is said that to affirm another person is to say “thank you” to them.  When we offer sincere praise for another, we tell them we value who they are, what they do and how they live.  It is a way of expressing gratitude for the diverse beauty he or she offers the world.  To affirm a person is to show them love.  Albert Schweitzer said that affirming others is a spiritual act because it touches the soul of another – it lets him or her not only know they are appreciated but also deeply feel in their spirit that someone else loves and cares for them.  Indeed, one contemporary commentator on spiritual life, Robert Fury, says that words of affirmation to another are like rainwater to the soul.  Affirming words, to use his analogy, soothe, comfort and nourish a person’s spirit.  How many of us have been deeply touched when someone else has taken the time to tell us we are worthy?  The Biblical book of Proverbs elaborates by saying, “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, they are sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”

A problem for many of us is that not only do we not hear very many words of affirmation, we often fail to offer them to others.  Busy lives, discomfort and a skewed understanding of appreciation all hinder our ability to praise others.  Too often, we feel uncomfortable telling someone we admire them for what they do and have done.  We also tend to believe that someone must earn our appreciation or that the other, especially a partner or loved one, should be the first in affirming us.  In other words, our thinking about giving praise is much like some of us give material gifts – we do so in return for a gift received or in anticipation of a gift in return.  If we think about those motivations, we realize that giving praise in such a manner is not real and it does not come from the heart.  Genuine affirmation for a partner, spouse, child, friend or stranger does not come with strings attached.  Its spontaneous and originates in one’s own inner spirit.  The part of us that perceives good in the world sees such goodness in another person and then prompts us to show or tell him or her those feelings.

Much like we discussed last week in touching our spirits and finding our compassionate selves, being willing to regularly affirm others means we must work to silence our judgmental minds.  Why is it that we can be so negative with others – especially with people who are closest to us?  We judge others in their faults and mistakes.  We are often only too eager to tell the other what we negatively think of them.  We need not become mindless doormats, but that is usually not the issue.  We have to silence our minds that want to judge and blame.

The opposite of that approach is to listen to our hearts and see the beauty in the other person and then offer thanks for that.  What we find is that while we can perversely think negativity will somehow hurt or correct the other, judgment and harshly critical words only diminish ourselves.  Yes, we may have made our point, but what kind of legacy is that?  What have we done to elevate the other and thus heal our world?

While gentle suggestions and loving advice to others on ways to improve and grow is good, study after study indicates that affirmation is usually a more effective strategy.  I am lucky to have had some of you tell me when a Sunday message could be improved or that my style of speaking is too cerebral and thus I should focus more on my heart.  I appreciate gentle advice and I try and learn from it.  But, I’m also blessed to hear sincere words of praise for a message that touched someone.  If the person is specific and honest in their praise, my instinct is to continue doing what I did well.  The person has encouraged me in a positive way in what I did, and my future focus will be on working even harder at that specific approach.  And the same is true for any person.

If we affirm that which is good in a person – looking past the warts and figurative blemishes in him or her – we enlarge that person’s heart and mind.  Praise stimulates further action in the same direction.  One will be even more generous if he or she is praised for their generosity.  One will be more inclined to forgive if one is praised for one act of forgiveness.  Positive words of affirmation encourage people in their greatness.  Indeed, if we want a partner or lover, for instance, to be more loving and attentive to our needs, do we tear them down by pointing out how many times and how many ways they fall short?  Or, do we build them up and praise him or her for the ways in which they have blessed us and loved us?  Which do we think will stimulate growth and change in the other?  What approach would work for us with our own flaws?  It might be an old cliche but it has stood the test of time – as St. Francis de Sales once said, “A spoonful of honey is better than a barrel full of vinegar.”

Interestingly, that approach was applied by the apostle Paul when he wrote to a friend named Philemon – which is also the title of a very short New Testament book.  Paul wrote his friend in behalf of another friend named Onesimus – one whom he had recently met and who was an escaped slave.  Philemon was the owner of Onesimus.  Paul did not condemn slavery as an institution but he did implore Philemon to show love for a fellow Christian and grant equality and freedom to this one slave.  He did so by lavishly praising all that is good in Philemon.  “I always thank my God for you because I hear about your love for all of his people”, Paul wrote.  “Your love for God’s people has given me great joy and encouragement.”

Instead of berating Philemon for owning a fellow Christian as a slave, Paul praised him for the love he shows all Christians.  Whether or not Paul was employing a subtle form of persuasion, he implicitly knew that affirming words would work more effectively.  While historians are not absolutely sure, there are reputable indications Onesimus was freed.

Because so many of us, gays and lesbians in particular, have low levels of self-esteem, we can often seek affirmation in all the wrong places or in all the wrong ways.  We can seek it in substance abuse, in casual sex, in tearing other people down, in food, in being a work-a-holic, in filling our lives with material things, etc, etc.  Instead, what we know to be true is to seek affirmation in places and from people that build us up in authentic and meaningful ways.  Perhaps we need to avoid people who persist in being too negative toward us or others.  Perhaps we need to hang around people who affirm what is good in us and who call us to our greatness.

That is one fundamental purpose for healthy faith communities – they elevate, build up, encourage and support their members as well as the wider community.  I genuinely believe that is a hallmark of the Gathering and of this community of people.  Every member and every visitor is celebrated for who they are – no matter what.  Church politics and infighting are non-existent here – that alone makes this place very rare and very special.  Our focus is on doing good – for one another and for the world.  Egos are largely held in check.  Each of us, I believe, deeply wants to improve as a person in order to help others.  That’s why we’re here.  That’s why so many give and serve in sacrificial ways.  The Gathering is merely an organizational manifestation of the gratitude, compassion, service and innate decency of its members.

And that brings us full circle back to the value of affirmation and the psychology of ubuntu.  If we believe that we exist as a part of a greater whole, and its well-being is intrinsically tied to our own, the affirmation of others is a way to improve our own lives and that of others.  Living a positive life that is oriented toward building a better earth means that we want others to succeed.  From the President, no matter who that will be, to other nations, to our next door neighbors, to people who may have hurt us, to those in this room, we hope they are successful in life and in doing work that improves the world.  Thankfulness and affirmation are key to that thinking.  When anyone is encouraged and enabled to do well in life, we all do well.  When Philemon was praised for his love of others so that he might be encouraged to free one of his slaves, all of society was better off.

Ubuntu thus elevates the whole and not the part.  Ubuntu seeks harmony and peace – how much better to achieve that than through praise?  Ubuntu seeks restoration and reconciliation over punishment and retribution.  How much better to achieve that than to find the good in each person – to see the criminal, for instance, in his or her humanity and elevate that which is good and positive.  Ubuntu psychology is a way of thinking where each person instinctively sees the good in others, while forgiving the bad.  We see strength in another even when they are weak.  We see love, even when there is hate.  We see and encourage generosity even when there is selfishness.   As Peter Raboroko of the African National Congress says, “By appreciating the greatness in others, a person reflects the greatness in him or herself.”

Imagine how you feel when, despite your flaws, you are loved anyway.  Think about the impact an affirming person has had on your life when they touched your heart, saw your innate beauty, and then told you so.  For me, I have such gratitude for those kind people in my life – people like my daughters who praise me even though I’m not a perfect dad, to my mom who sings my praises to all her friends and is genuinely happy when I succeed, to lovers in my life like Keith who have told me I am strong even though I am often so very weak.  How might we see those in our life who have disappointed us – to see beyond their all too human flaws and give thanks for that which is good – their love, their gentleness, their decency, their efforts to be better?  We need not cynically and falsely tell them our praise in order to improve them.  Instead, we must let go of our judgmental minds and really see, really see, all of their good.  Whatever and whomever created them, we must see them as the creator sees them – a work of art, a wonder to behold, a gift to the human race, a life worthy of praise and thanksgiving!

My friends, life is too full of pain and suffering without us making it worse through negativity and critical words.  Who among us has not fallen short in life?  Who among us has not spoken with anger and hate?  Who among us has not been indifferent, unforgiving, harsh or dishonest?  We are each imperfect souls but, despite that, we are also full of love, empathy and generosity.  Let us see that good in each other.  Let us see that we are a part of all humanity struggling against a harsh world to build a form of heaven.  Let us be thankful for each other, for all people, and let us affirm them and live in a way that beckons each person to fly with angels and reach for their better selves.                                 I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

Message 110, Touching the Spirit, Compassion, 10-21-12

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

 

To listen to the message, click here.  To read along, see below.

 

 

After visiting Calcutta, India in the 1940’s, Mother Teresa says she felt an inner call to create and found her famous order of nuns – the Sisters of Charity – to minister to the poorest of the poor.  On that trip she witnessed horrors of unspeakable poverty – thousands of people living with little hope in filth and squalor.  Even worse, she saw how so many of the poor and sick suffered and died not only in their extreme poverty but also alone, unloved, unwanted and afraid.

From her deep sense of compassion, from that inner call of her spirit, Mother Teresa dedicated her life to showing love and compassion to the poor and sick.  In 1952, she founded one of the first homes for the dying in the world.  While she was not immune from legitimate criticism for not providing professional medical care to patients and for allowing them to feel pain as a way to experience the sufferings of Jesus, Teresa and her fellow sisters nevertheless loved the unloved, touched the untouchables and gave dignity to the abandoned and unwanted.  From all accounts, she exuded a form of compassion that could only come from an inner core – from her spirit.  She acted as an angel of mercy in the depths of many hells.

Much like Mother Teresa, it is said in the Bible that when Jesus saw a large crowd of people who had been rapturously following him late into the night, he was moved with compassion for them.   He directed his disciples to feed and serve them.  As we also know, Jesus was moved by compassion for many people – for a woman with a bleeding disorder, for a blind man shunned by society for allegedly being a sinner, and for a group of lepers who were also scorned for their disease.  The Bible specifically mentions that Jesus was MOVED in his compassion.  Something deep within him stirred.  He not only felt great compassion and sorrow for those who suffered, he then tangibly rendered assistance to them.

When we see someone who is sick, dying, in fear, hurting or suffering, we also often feel a sense of compassion.  That sense hopefully comes from our inner souls, from the part of us that we cannot fully explain or understand.  Our spirits have been touched and we feel great empathy and sorrow not as a result of thought or reason but because of something unknown, mysterious and universally good within us.

Indeed, that is the central point of our October message series – to understand and learn from ways in which our spirits are touched.  Whether or not we believe in a supernatural god force, most of us nevertheless acknowledge that there are forces acting in the universe that are beyond rational or scientific explanation.  Such forces might be called divine as they are so powerful, so large, and so mysterious as to humble us in our flawed and limited humanity.

As we discussed last Sunday, our spirits are touched by perceptions of good and bad.  In ways that our minds cannot fully process, we are stirred to courageous acts if our spirits are allowed to override our minds that can lead us to timidity and a “go along with the crowd” form of fear.  Every day and all around, we witness great acts of courage that defy normal behavior – acts that are motivated by an inner reservoir of universal values.

Today, we’ll ponder ways in which our spirits are touched by feelings of compassion.  To experience genuine compassion, our spirits must defy our brains which are too prone to judgment, rationalization and intolerance.  How many times do we fail to act with compassion because our minds have shut down our compassionate spirits – telling us that someone deserves their suffering, helped cause it or is somehow not worthy of our care?

While our brains are glorious instruments of evolution and creation, they can dominate our thinking and thus our actions.  But, as we clearly know, our thinking is NOT infallible.  Our minds are prone to irrational cognition influenced by experience, prejudice, fear, doubt and even indifference.

Instead, our call in this message series is to heed our spirits, to know them and allow them to act in balance with our minds.  Our spirits are capable of knowing without knowledge and seeing without sight.  Feelings of compassion derive from this mystery place.  We are moved in ways we do not understand and, when balanced with what our minds tell us, we can act compassionately in ways that are not overly sentimental but, instead, genuinely empathetic.

Charlie Chaplin once noted that, “We think too much and feel too little.  More than machinery, we need humanity.  More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.”  And, perfectly articulating how our spirits should inform our minds and thus our actions, Dean Koontz, the famous contemporary novelist, notes, “Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it.  But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.”

What we discover is that humans were wonderfully created as compassionate beings.  That spirit essence of us feels the pains of this world.  Compassion is what defines us as human and gives us the unique spark that provides lasting meaning and purpose to our lives.  It is a gift that enables us to fully live in the midst of a suffering world.  Because of it, we help build heaven on Earth.

The Jewish and Christian Old Testament defines god as “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”  The ancient Hebrew word for compassion is “rahm” which comes from their word “rachamim” which means “womb of god.”  Such a womb is the very center of our existence – the inner place in us from which all good things come.  Compassion, for Jews and for us, begins inside – from our spirit center.

And, as a religion originating from the same source as Judaism and Christianity, Islam perceives Allah or god in the same way.  At the beginning of every chapter in the Quran, are the words “In the name of Allah, who is compassionate and merciful.”   Such is the most spoken verse in Islam and it is repeated at every prayer.  The god force is known to almost all world religions as one of love.  And so it is with humans.  We each have that god-force in us.  It is our spirit and its very essence is genuine compassion.

In order to show care and love to others, however, almost all great prophets and thinkers assert that we must first feel compassion for ourselves.  Irrational parts of our minds must shut down and our spirits allowed to love the self.  Buddhism is strong on this point.  Only by being gentle with the self can we thereby enable our spirits to blossom outward to express compassion for others.  Matthew Fox, the mystic Episcopal priest, asserts that we cannot be compassionate to others unless we first know how to be compassionate to ourselves.

This gets to the essence of touching our compassionate spirits.  Our rational minds must not be allowed to prevail in determining our emotions, thinking and actions.  Thoughts of shame and guilt can dominate our self-talk and thus silence any sense of love for the self.  Our irrational minds can tell us that we are not worthy of love, we are not deserving of compassion, or that we have fallen short in life due to our mistakes.  By engaging in such destructive self-talk, we can feel less compassion toward ourselves and thus unable to act with compassion to others.  The homeless person we encounter does not deserve our attention, we can tell ourselves, since he or she might be a drunk or lazy.  The AIDS victim engaged in destructive behavior and deserves his or her illness.  The addict or person in poverty suffers as a result of poor decisions, etc.  We must stop the blame game and listen to what our inner spirit knows is good and right.

If we tap into our inner spirit, however, and allow it to expand throughout our hearts and minds, we will see ourselves as we were created to be – beautiful, wondrous and unique beings capable of great love, courage and wonder.  Indeed, our essential selves were created to be compassionate as I related earlier.  In us is the supernatural force that yearns to love and be loved.  We must allow that spirit in us to flower; we must touch our spirit in a way that truly feels how beautiful we REALLY are.

Christian mystic and writer Sue Monk Kidd says that when we find our “Authentic I” – the genuine self that honestly perceives our inner beauty despite the warts, we will be well on our way to unleashing a truly compassionate spirit.   We must employ our emotional intelligence to sense all the ways we are unique, the good and the bad qualities that define us.  We must be gentle with ourselves and not negatively judge who we are.  All of our imperfections do not define us.  Our beauty and our compassion define us.  If we honestly accept that, then we can move toward healing and away from feeling guilt or shame for our flaws.

That enables us to move from the “Authentic I” to seeing the world as a “Collective We”.  I am a beautiful person and so are you – so is everyone else.  My pains are worthy of your compassion no matter my flaws, and so are yours.  Your suffering is my suffering.  We do not judge ourselves or others as undeserving of love.  This was how Mother Teresa saw the poorest of the poor.  She said that when she looked into their faces, she saw not a ravaged, filthy or sinful person but the image of Jesus. She saw their innate beauty and their inner souls of goodness.  She lived out the idea of believing in the “Collective We”.

While true compassion begins within our inner spirits, we should guard ourselves from “spirit-less” or false compassion.

Caring actions can masquerade as compassion when in reality they derive from arrogance, insecurity or a desire to be liked.  We can do caring acts to win another’s favor, to assert ourselves as somehow superior or to make ourselves feel worthy.  This form of caring does not originate in the spirit.  It is of the irrational mind that seeks recognition for the self.  It lacks true empathy for the hurting.

Caring thoughts can also masquerade as compassion when in reality they are dispassionate and disconnected.  Care is offered in a way that is simply going through the motions.  If we do not feel in the core of our souls the pain of the other, we are not really compassionate.

“Spirit-less” compassion is also identified by speaking caring words but failing to actually act with care.  Too often people express compassion without acting to show it.  It is one thing to talk about love, it is quite another to practice it.  Words must be backed up by deeds.  Every time Jesus was moved by his compassionate spirit, he acted, he healed, he challenged, he gave, he fed, and he touched.  Those who piously speak of feeling sorrow for others but do nothing to help, they have not touched their spirits.

Finally, our compassionate spirits are not totally untied from our minds.  Real compassion is not mere sentimentality that is devoid of intuition and thought.  We know, for instance, it is not compassionate to offer money to a needy alcoholic who will likely use it to feed his or her addiction.  We know tough love is still love because it encourages a person to find their strength and not their weakness.  Jesus showed his compassion to the woman caught in adultery not by judging her but by embracing her, loving her and calling her to a life of respect for herself and her body.   Indeed, a frequent form of his compassion was to encourage others to find their “Authentic I” – to rigorously examine their hearts and pursue things and actions that make them feel whole, joyous, caring and meaningful.  Booze, drugs, hate and greed diminish the inner spirit – masking the inner beauty that is really inside a person.  Come alive – Jesus called to so-called sinners.  Come, give, serve, love and find a purpose in life that matters to others, he implored.  Love yourself as a way to then go out and love others.

Recently, a professor at a nursing school added a tenth question to one of his exams.  It asked students to write the first name of the woman who cleans their classroom – someone they saw every day.  Many students complained and asked if the question really counted.  It did and it made the difference between an A or a B, or even worse.  Nobody could answer it and yet, within a few days, everyone knew the woman’s name.  The professor told his students that they should always be aware of and empathetic towards others – especially in a profession like nursing.  As William Wordsworth, the great English poet, once noted “The best portion of a good person’s life (is) his or her little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”  

What we learn about ourselves is that as much as we might think we are compassionate, too often it does not originate from our spirit centers.  It is too ego driven, calculating, overly sentimental or dispassionate.  When our inner soul weeps or is deeply touched by the suffering of another, we will know it.  But then we must allow that feeling to flower and not be silenced.  Too often, our minds talk too much and we do not hear our spirit.  If we listen with the heart, however, we’ll hear the cry of another.  We can then act in a way that is truly compassionate – to help, to encourage, to support, or to show tough love – never to judge or demean.

Some of us hold back our compassionate selves – guarded by self interest, busy lives, fear or judgmental attitudes.  As a faith community, not all of us are doing the work of compassion that defines who we really are.  Yes, we all have busy lives and we are often compassionate in our personal lives, but our purpose individually and our purpose as a church is to show compassion to each other and to the world.  Only when we touch our inner spirits can we live and act authentically – loving ourselves and others in ways that are meaningful and make a difference.  Only when each member of this church or any church acts in such a way will we be true to our spiritual calling and reason for existence.

When we are each on our deathbeds, might we measure our success in life by knowing we impacted at least one other life with real compassion?  Might we each genuinely examine our hearts in the meantime to find the source of our compassionate actions – to find that place that intuitively knows mercy is always greater than indifference?  That forgiveness is greater than anger?  That love covers a multitude of imperfections in how we live and act?

As we were born to be compassionate people in all the ways that I have discussed today, let it be said for each of us that we lived true to that fact.  We will not have been truly human unless it can be said we touched our spirits and found our compassionate selves.

 

I wish us all peace and joy…

 

 

Message 109, Touching the Spirit, Courage, 10-14-12

(This message contains some disturbing information which might be upsetting to children and young teens.)

Click here to listen to message or read below:

 

Najibullah Quirashi is now a famous man whose life is nevertheless threatened.  An Afghan journalist who was seriously injured and then exiled after the American military invasion in 2001, Quirashi returned to his native country two years ago to investigate an ancient Afghan practice called bacha bazi.  Banned by the Taliban but now popular among rich and powerful men, bacha bazi is a practice where poor boys as young as 9 are bought in order to dance, entertain and be sexually exploited by men at exclusive parties.

In a landmark documentary entitled “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan” – shown on PBS’s Frontline last April and available to watch on their website, Quirashi reveals a dark and sinister world of sexual slavery that is quietly endorsed in Afghan culture.  Many of its practitioners are wealthy businessmen, police officers and government officials who talk openly of the prestige in owning boys – often with the acceptance and approval of their wives.  Boys are taught to dance in women’s clothing and sing love songs to men.  They are regularly raped and traded for their sexual services.  One boy of 14 hauntingly confides to Quirashi that his life is ruined knowing that as a sex slave, he will wear out his usefulness once he fully matures, but then be a social outcast because of his past.

Afghan laws officially ban bacha bazi and it is illegal to own another person or to engage in sex with a child.  But the practice is all too common as is the indifference toward the severe harm done to the boys.  One abuser exhibits his scorn – “they are boys,” he says.  “They will forget.”  Those boys who run away or defy the orders of their owners are usually murdered – nameless casualties in a nation where killing is all too common.  “If you don’t please them, they beat you and people get killed.” one young boy says in the film.

While bacha bazi is a disturbing look at the underbelly of Afghan culture, (and, it must be noted, child abuse is sadly common in many others nations including the US) it is the filmmaker’s courage in revealing the abuse that is also startling.  Quirashi courageously acts in the face of prevailing indifference and even acceptance of the practice.  After interviewing several high level police officers who piously claim the practice is strictly illegal and those who practice it will be arrested and punished, Quirashi covertly films the very same officers and government officials at one bacha bazi party.  Men, women, local officials and the police all implicitly accept this practice.  There is no cultural outrage against it and many impoverished parents accept it as a way to earn money.  Indeed, Quirashi says he is in fear for his safety and one Afghan UNICEF official who also investigated the practice, believes he might be killed for speaking out.

Despite prevailing cultural indifference, these men had the courage to confront the practice.  Indeed, they have tapped into a spiritual core within themselves that instinctively knows that child slavery and rape is a universal evil.  Instead of looking away as the majority of Afghan society does, they speak out and thus face great individual peril for their bravery.  As Steve Jobs once said, people of spiritual courage are not trapped by dogma, which is the result of someone else’s thinking.  Spiritually courageous people, he said, refuse to let the noise of other opinions drown out their own inner voice.  They have the courage to follow their heart and intuition.

What leads a person to be spiritually courageous?  How do we confront our own fears or indifference and take a stand against a moral evil – even when we could jeopardize our personal safety or well-being?

To see, feel and act in ways that are beyond our normal abilities, we must touch our inner spirits.  Our inner core of values, beliefs and sense of justice must be touched in a way that is beyond rational or normal thinking.  Our spiritual selves must feel a sense of moral outrage and then, courageously, guide our actions in ways contrary to a normal desire to be safe, secure and go along with the crowd.

In a psychological experiment designed to measure spiritual courage, persons were asked to identify and name certain geometric shapes.  When asked alone and individually, most responded correctly.  When placed in a group of people who were told in advance to give incorrect answers, these same individuals followed the lead of the group and also answered incorrectly – even though they knew the correct answer.  The power of group-think influenced their responses.  Humans are a tribal people.  We hesitate to buck the trend and exhibit the courage to stand out by defying what we know to be wrong.

Of interesting note, when scientists scanned the brains of the individuals after they were placed in a group setting, the part of the brain that registers fear lit up strongly .  It seems fear guided their refusal to defy group answers.  Even when these people knew they were right, they instead went along with a crowd that was very, very wrong.

Indeed, history is full of examples of immoral or incorrect group think.  German indifference to and look the other way attitude toward the holocaust, while it was being carried out, is a prime example.  Crowd reactions to lynchings in this country were much the same – too many feared to stand up against that moral wrong.  And today, we know that bullying in schools is allowed to thrive primarily because the vast majority of students – the bystanders – fear confronting the bully lest they too become the object of abuse.  Each person in all of these groups had a spirit self capable of sensing right and wrong.  And yet, for most of those people, a failure to touch their inner spirit prevented them from acting.

Fortunately, a very few people do allow their inner spirits to be touched.  They refuse to allow fear to override their heart and soul.  People like Corrie Ten Boom, a dutch Christian woman, were spiritually courageous enough to hide Jews and protect them during the holocaust.  As we know, she and others were later arrested and many were killed for their bravery.  Some Americans did speak out against lynchings and some courageous teens now confront a culture of bullying and its destructive influence.  Heroes of courage act in spiritually amazing ways.  They defy majority opinion and indifference.  They choose to ignore the normal instincts of fear.  They touch their inner spirits.

What we learn from the nature of human behavior in going along with a group majority is that it indeed takes supernatural courage to confront wrong or immoral behavior that is popularly or implicitly sanctioned.  As we discussed last week when considering how feelings of wonder and awe touch our inner spirits, the same spiritual force guides human courage.  Such force is the part of ourselves that feels, senses and knows without thinking.  It is a mysterious but powerful inner force that defies scientific or biological explanation.  It perceives things that are beyond rational thought.  It knows wonder and awe.  It knows eternal and universal standards of right and wrong.  It informs our human meaning, emotional intelligence and purpose in life.  No Scripture, no cultural practice, no amount of mental analysis or group led opinion can supplant what the human spirit senses and perceives.

Indeed, when we witness people who act with great courage, we are often seeing the supernatural at work.  We are witnessing people guided by an other-worldy spiritual force.  It is the spirit implanted in every human heart that intuitively knows intolerance is never good, human dignity is an essential right, hate is an eternal wrong and compassion is a wondrous virtue.  The rational brain might agree or disagree with such statements, but it is one’s spirit that deeply feels them to be true.

This a form of inner wisdom that knows without thinking the eternal truths of peace, compassion and generosity.  Many feminist writers believe this spirit center is the female side of humans – that which is able to perceive, emote, feel, empathize and nurture.  When touched or ignited, our minds are then stimulated not by fear or by reason but by this mystery force that compels action in behalf of what is right and good.  The proverbial male side of ourselves, however, that which is prone to analysis, aggressive action and domination, has come to prevail in too many cultures.  Too many humans, myself included, can lose touch with their spirit – the so called feminine in us.  We are out of balance.  We are too reason focused.  Humans often fail, as we noted last week, to experience wonder and awe before the great forces of the universe and nature.  Tired dogma and reason control our thinking and our actions instead of balancing them with amazement, emotion and mute reverence of nature, the universe and timeless truths.

Humans also fail, as we note today, to feel and act from the inner spirit which senses authentic morality.   Such a failure encourages group think and inhibits spiritual courage.  What we ironically learn is that the so-called masculine within us, that which we believe to be the courageous side of the self, is in reality the cowardly side.    It is easy, as Steve Jobs noted, to react with the mind and go along with majority opinion – to choose violence over dialogue, to feel powerful and strong by dominating others, to bully, to hate, to swarm with the mob and feel superior to those who are different, gay, challenged, physically weak or of another race or religion.

Instead, there is great strength in what appears to be weak – the side of the self that feels, perceives, empathizes and cares.  Najibullah Quirashi deeply sensed the moral wrong of bacha bazi and he strongly and courageously acted against it.  The strutting Afghan warlords, corrupt officials and businessmen who think themselves strong and powerful because then can own, dominate and sexually control young boys are the truly weak and cowardly.  So too with the bully, the homophobe, the intolerant race baiter and, sadly, those who stand by the side too controlled by fear to touch their spirits and act accordingly.

Experts assert that in order to touch our spirits and thus be empowered to act with spiritual courage, we must first recognize the fears that are within us.  If we do so, we take the first step in touching our spirits and finding needed courage.

Just this past Wednesday, after I had already finished the first draft of this message, I was driving home at about 9 pm.  I witnessed a woman violently thrown into the street by a male assailant.  She screamed and looked up at me as I passed.  I stopped my car but was very anxious about my own safety.  The man came and hovered over the woman.  I rolled down my window and called out, asking the woman if she needed help.  She said yes but the man told me to “f-off”.  I turned around and then stopped my car in the middle of the street next to the woman.  The man came up to the passenger window and yelled at me to get lost.  I pulled ahead thirty feet or so, stopped and called 911.  I stayed there while the man continued to menace and yell at the woman who strangely did not flee.  They knew I was there.  The police arrived within five minutes and it turned out to be a domestic fight.

What struck me was that I was very afraid throughout this incident.  Every instinct in me told me to just drive away and then call the police.  I did nothing even remotely heroic and yet I do feel my presence may have protected the woman.   Strangely, as I thought about it after I got home, I realized that I somehow sensed during the incident that I could not leave that woman alone and drive away.  Thankfully, I didn’t.

As I have mentioned in here before, I am a conflict avoider.  I fail too often in not tapping into that inner core of me which mysteriously knows goodness, compassion and decency and can give me confidence in what I should do.  Were I to always rely on that core in me, I might be better able to muster the courage to confront myself or others when my spirit perceives something wrong.  By recognizing my fear, and admitting how it holds me back, I have taken a first step.

The next step in mustering spiritual courage is to undertake a personal spiritual inventory.  What are our core beliefs and values?  What provokes our spiritual sense of moral evil and what part of us weeps with joy at moral good?  What parts in us need growth and refinement?  Understanding our spirit, we can know it, trust it and rely upon it when are fearful or too analytical.

Finally, we should acknowledge and celebrate each instance when we exhibit spiritual courage, no matter how minor or small.  With each success, we can know that we have stood on the side of good.  The Dalai Lama once said that true religion is simple.   It has no need of great temples or complicated and elaborate theology.  Our hearts, he said, are our temples and our theology is kindness.

Truth, love and goodness is within each and every person.  We are each born with such innate moral spirits.  It is that spirit that animates the soul, ignites the heart and stirs us to greatness.  As many of you related last Sunday, when our spirits have been touched, we can stand on a windswept shore and thrill at the wonder and beauty of the sea, the stars and all creation.  When we investigate the miracle of our bodies or the wonder of birth and growth in children, we are in awe.  When we witness other creatures alive, active and stirring up the miracles of their own reproduction and daily life, we can be reduced to tears.  Our spirits allow us to feel great wonder.

But so too do our spirits challenge us to be courageous and forthright.  If we allow our spirits to guide many of our thoughts and actions, we are empowered to act courageously.  We defy our fears and our rational minds and in our weakness, we become very, very strong.

How much courage does it take for each of us to come here, to buck the prevailing winds of orthodox religion, narrow minded thinking and dogmatic interpretations of scriptures?  How much courage does it take to continuously explore and ask questions instead of asserting absolute knowledge and faith?  How much courage does it take to meet here in a diverse neighborhood with poverty, crime, and addictions all around?  How much courage does it take to stand for the timeless ethics of Jesus – to advocate for and embrace those on the margins of life, the poor, the mentally challenged, the weak, the sick, the hungry, the homeless, the imprisoned, the transgendered, the lesbian, the gay, the aged and the powerless?   This place, this gathering of souls, is indeed a small place but it is a miraculous assembly.  In our smallness and out of our weakness, may we find our strength.  May each of us gaze into the great realms of the universe and then into the deep recesses of our souls, and touch our inner spirits.  As we do, we will see visions of tremendous beauty and good.  We will have sensed true morality.  We will be emboldened to courageously battle forces of hate and injustice…and in the process, touch the face of the divine and of all eternity.

 

Message 108, Touching the Spirit: Wonder and Awe, 10-7-12

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

To listen to the message, click or download here.   To see images that related to parts of the message, listen and read along.  Text is below.

 

Twenty-two years ago, at the far edge of our solar system, the Voyager Two spacecraft took a picture of the earth.   At about 4 billion miles away, it was the most distant vantage point ever for an image of our planet.  Since that date, cameras on the craft are not sensitive enough to take more pictures of the earth.  Today, the Voyager is over 11 billion miles into its endless journey begun in 1977.  It  currently sails through the heliosphere which is the transition zone between our solar system and interstellar space.

What is remarkable about that one picture is that the earth is just a barely visible smudge of light in a field of total darkness.  And yet, we experience earth as much more.  This place, this womb of our existence, our history and our future, is all that we have and yet it is so frightfully small.

Our source of light, sustenance and life, the sun, is itself merely a cipher among the other billions of stars.   In the totality of the universe, our earth, our sun and our solar system are totally inconspicuous, miniscule and insignificant.  They are nothing.   The earth itself is but a speck, a dust mote, a grain of sand floating in an infinite vacuum.

While earth is relatively close to our sister planets, our distance from other worlds and other stars is so very, very great.  The light we perceive from stars we see at night – most of it originated before the dinosaurs existed and, in some instances, before life itself began.  The speed of light is nearly 700 million miles per hour and yet it has taken eons of time for the light from most stars to reach us.  To travel to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, it will take the Voyager another 70,000 years, or 4.5 light years, to reach.     To travel to the nearest galaxy of stars, Andromeda, it will take the Voyager 38 trillion calendar years or 2.5 million light years to reach.    In the face of such immense distances, the Voyager has merely begun its journey as it travels at a relative snail’s pace – only 200,000 miles per hour.

As much as it is easy to get lost in the facts about the size of the universe, when we comprehend its vastness, we can only be humbled.     We can only gape in awe at the wonder of something so huge and so diverse in its various parts.    For our mortal minds, the size and dimensions of our universe might as well be infinite.  It is so big, so vast, so limitless and so complex that it approaches the realm of the divine.  Indeed, the universe itself might well be the god force many of us worship and hold in awe.  We are so small within its vast size and yet we too are a part of its great wholeness.

And that, precisely, is the beginning of spirituality – to sense something bigger and greater than ourselves.  To come face to face with a power, force or object immeasurably large and confront the reality of that, is to experience a sense of helplessness, smallness but most importantly wonder and awe.  The human response is to observe such powers with mute reverence, sometimes accompanied by fear.  Our inner spirits have been touched in a profound way.  No longer are we fully rational beings when so confronted.  We are in the presence of something beyond what we normally experience.  In our minds and in our souls, we have touched the face of god and of eternity.

Sadly, world religions and their many followers have lost a sense of wonder and awe.  As religions focus more on rules of behavior and doctrines of belief, humans have moved away from awestruck reverence for nature and the universe itself.  Even further, many religions have reduced explanations for the universe and everything within it to one irreducible cause – god.  In the face of great complexity and infinite possibility, many people have arrived at that one explanation, one truth, one ultimate force to explain everything.

But the reality of the universe, its size and its power ought to lead us to a different conclusion and thus to transcendent moments – times when we are removed from rational or fact based thinking.  Our spirits ought to be touched and deeply moved.    We are shaken by the mystery and unimaginable size and power of such a force.  The universe and nature cannot be simply attributed to a theistic being.  That is a profound realization and ought to bring us to our knees in awe at what we behold and what we do not understand.

Over the next few Sundays, I want to explore ways in which our spirits are touched, ways in which our we are moved not by our minds but by our hearts and by our souls.  And first and foremost in recapturing a spiritual sensitivity that is removed from mere thought, is to find again a sense of wonder and awe – our subject for today.

Imagine how the ancients must of have looked out into the cosmos.  In a world without electricity, nights would have been inky black.  The ancients would have perceived a realm of frightening wonder – millions of stars in the sky, the dust cloud of the Milky Way clearly discernable and a sky so black and so three dimensional, one would have felt a sense of vertigo – lost in an abyss of starry darkness. 

Their response was to stare in wonder, to revere and worship the forces that guided the sun, stars, planets and seasons of earth.  Nature and the universe were fantastic realms that were worthy of their awe.  Lacking the tools and knowledge to scientifically understand the cosmos, they relied on their spiritual selves – the part of the human soul that is touched by beauty, fear and amazement.   Nature became sacred to the ancients.     The pyramids, stonehenge and mythological gods and goddesses were ways for humanity to express their wonder and thus worship the great forces swirling all around.  Religion and creation myths are direct outcomes of such wonder and awe.  Sadly, religion has evolved to burden people with doctrine and rules, replacing the sense of amazement with ritual and blind faith.  Indeed, such thinking is arrogant and eliminates any possibility to be in awe of god, the universe or nature.

For us, science might explain how these great forces operate and how the universe was created.   But the delicate beauty of nature, the size of the cosmos, and the supernatural realms of human emotion, love and courage are all wonders to behold.  In order to be spiritual people, we must refuse to allow our minds to take control of our spirits.  We must remain in touch with and, in awe of, the great wonders of nature and the universe.

Albert Einstein, a man certainly not known for his religion, was nevertheless a deeply spiritual man.  He once said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and all science.  They to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, are as good as dead: their eyes are closed.”

According to the Oxford English dictionary, the word awe derives from an ancient norse word meaning fear and dread toward a divine force or being.  As english evolved, “awe” also came to mean having reverential respect for a thing or power.  Indeed, most philosophers on the subject of wonder and awe believe such feelings derive from a primordial core within us – that emotional center which perceives amazement and fear.  Something instinctual within us is provoked by powers of greatness which theoretically threaten our very existence.  We are in awe of the power, complexity and size of the universe compared with our smallness and insignificance.   We are in awe of natural forces like tidal waves, earthquakes, lightning and storms

  because they are beyond our control and can overwhelm us in their destructive potential.  We stand in awe at the forces of creation which bring life into the world – natural phenomenon like conception, birth and evolution.  Without them, we would not exist.  And, we are in awe of forces like human love, compassion and courage – forces which overwhelm even our own rational thinking and exert nearly supernatural strength, for good and bad, in us and through us.

Abraham Maslow, the great psychologist, wrote that human awe involves two distinct responses.   The first is to sense something as vast and greater than the self.  The second is to sense disorientation and an inability to mentally assimilate things or forces of immense size and power.  These feelings of greatness and disorientation are triggered by several things, Maslow wrote.  Forces of power, beauty, threat or ability often overwhelm our minds and sense of self.  Our response is wonder, awe and often fear.  Such sensations are not thought based but, as I noted earlier, core or spirit based.

And such responses are importantly different from sensing something is merely noteworthy or beautiful.  Indeed, admiration of something is not to be confused with being in awe.  To stand in wonder of something is to note its innate power to control us and ultimately destroy us.   Such is a transformative emotion which can also include feelings of great emotion like courage, love or compassion.  As we all know, such innate powers can indeed bring us to our knees in submission to their force.

In the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita, the hero Arjuna must fight a cosmic battle of good against evil.  He loses courage before the fight but the god Krishna gives him the desired third eye so that he can see as the divine sees – the totality of all truth, all existence and the great realms of the universe.  Arjuna then experiences what can only be called a psychotic episode of seeing things beyond human comprehension – sights similar to what science sometimes offers us – views of worlds and stars eons away, microscopic visions of creation, life and conception, visions of natural forces and their cause.  Arjuna declares, “Things never before seen, I have seen.  Ecstatic is my joy and yet fear and trembling perturb my mind.”  Such is an apt description of experiencing wonder and awe.  It is spiritually transformative.  It is an escape from this world and our experiential reality.  Like the ancients, we gaze into the eye of eternity – into the depths of immense power – and we are lost in sheer terror and amazement.

The  Jewish and Christian scriptures also describe awe and wonder experiences.  The disciples are in awe and in fear of Jesus’ ability to command a great storm to be still.  The women who discover Jesus’ empty tomb are described as being filled with fear and trembling.  Those who worshipped the deceased Jesus were amazed as they were seemingly supernaturally filled with the Holy Spirit – a force enabling them to live according the ethics of their hero.  One of the characters from Genesis, Jacob, was in awe of his vision of creatures ascending and descending a ladder reaching into the heavens.  He was seeing the powers of birth and death all at once and he determined to consecrate the place as holy ground.  When Jesus taught that “unless you people see signs and wonders…you will not believe”, he was echoing a spiritual truth.  To find our meaning and our place in the great realm of creation, we must humble ourselves, our minds and our beliefs.  While we might literally see signs and wonders, we must understand them with the third eye.  We must perceive the mysterious greatness of things and forces.  We must lose our own sense of superiority, arrogance and confidence in science, religion and knowledge.  We must believe in the fantastic wonder of the universe in which we live and its many powers that can overwhelm us.

In our nothingness, we find that we are, instead, something.  We too are a part of the fabric of existence – beautiful creatures that are awesomely made, creatures capable of great deeds and great perceptions.   To ponder how our brains work, ones comprised of millions of separate neurons capable of thought, emotion, memory and intuition, we are in awe.   When we consider the wonder of how we came to be, products of eons of ancestry, of the miraculous union of egg and sperm, of awesome complexity and function, how can we not be inspired?  As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “I stand in awe of my body.”

We need not fall into the trap of seeking easy answers or explanations for our existence.  We exist simply because the universe also exists and we are a part of its vast, complex and diverse realm – at one with the stars, galaxies, atoms, cells and billions of other life forms.  Nothing exists apart from the other and each has its place, its function and its meaning within the vast totality of all that is.  From space dust we have come and to space dust we will return – one day, perhaps billions of years from now, to drift like the Voyager spacecraft past wonders and beautiful creations we can only dream.

Let us yearn to find the wonder and awe to which we were created to have.  Let us seek the kind of naked spirituality that is free from knowledge, arrogance, and dogmatic religious belief.  May we stand in some great field, alone and at night, peering into the mysteries of life at our feet – as earth, insects and the grass all exist in a world unto themselves.  May we then consider the wonder of us – our hands, our minds, our amazing physical selves and then, might we stare into the inky dark and swim with misty stars swirling above and around us?  To touch our spirits, to sense with fear and humble respect the glory of all existence, may we find the wonder and awe in our souls and, only then, touch the face of the divine.

 

 

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