Author: Doug Slagle

Message 60, “Essential Elements: Earth, the Stuff of Life”, 6-12-11

Service-Program, 06-12-11

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

A man is said to have once asked a wise Rabbi why humanity seems so incapable of seeing the face of God.  “Why can’t humanity reach high enough to see the Divine?” he asked.  The Rabbi replied that it is not in looking to the high places that we find God, it is in stooping over, kneeling and looking down that we find Holiness.

Interestingly, Henry David Thoreau in his famous work Walden, commented that as he looked down on an ant climbing through a patch of dirt, it seemed so small and insignificant.  And yet, he soon realized, it was he and all humanity that is truly small.   “Let us,” he wrote, “spend one day as deliberately as Nature…Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called life.  If the bell rings, why should we run? Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom with rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, ‘This is!’”

For the Rabbi in our story and for Thoreau, absolute Truth or God is found in low and humble places.  It is in the dirt and muck of life.  I daresay if Jesus were to walk the earth today, he likely would not seek God in the great Cathedrals of Europe or the multi-million dollar edifices some religions construct.  He would  not even be found in our small storefront space here in Over-the-Rhine.  If he were not outdoors as we are or on some mountainside, he’d be in a homeless shelter, a run-down clinic in Africa tending to AIDS patients or some broken shack of a church in Haiti where people cling to faith as the only solace they can find.  And with him would be Abraham, Mohammad, Buddha, Krishna, Confucious and other prophets as well.

Genuine spirituality, I believe, does not call attention to itself or even pretend in grandiose fashion to honor the Divine.  Indeed, I believe God is in the manure of our universe – the earthy, dirty, elemental but very real stuff of life.

As we continue our series this month looking to finding Holiness in the essential elements of life – air, earth and water, today we will look down, to where our feet trod.  And this is a perfect place to be for such a message.  What greater church building could we claim then the grass, the trees, the weeds and the dirt of all creation?  If the air we breathe and sense all around us is, as we discussed last week, the pathway to our souls and the very essence of what defines us as individuals, then I propose that the earth – the soil and substance of our universe – is both a metaphor and the reality of what we are as living creatures.  To put it bluntly, we are physically the manure, the dirt and the substance of all existence.  We are it and it is us.  If that is so, what does that say about how we see ourselves as creatures of this planet and what does that say about how we should act and behave in life?

If we look down at the dirt all around us and chemically analyzed it, we would find that soil is largely comprised of two parts – stabilized organic matter and active organic matter.   One part is mature soil, as some would call it, which has been broken down to its basic elemental components and which can be absorbed and used by only the most primitive of organisms like fungi or bacteria.  The other is active organic material which is still in the process of being digested, eaten or broken down by higher forms of life.  The soil at our feet  – and the stuff throughout the universe – is chemically mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, iron and a few other compounds.

If we now turn to look at our hands, and chemically analyze our own bodies, we would find much the same but in slightly different percentages.  Our body mass is 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 10% hydrogen, followed in smaller amounts by nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and other compounds.  The stuff of us is pretty much the same as the stuff of the dirt at our feet.  Indeed, we may well be walking upon the stuff of some far distant ancestors just as our great, great, great grandchildren may well one day walk upon us or use us to fill a pot to grow a flower.

Walt Whitman, a favorite poet of mine and one whom I often reference, wrote in his famous anthology, Leaves of Grass, “A child said ‘What is the grass?’ fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than she….It seems to me, though, the beautiful uncut hair of graves.  Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps…The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it…All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

In his beautiful free verse form of poetry, Whitman evoked not only the essential American ethic of human equality, he wrote of a spirituality of life and existence.  To celebrate nature is to celebrate oneself.  He spoke of the earth as a voluptuous, blossomed, vitreous and limpid lover that simply waits for our embrace and union with it.  As he wrote in explicitly sensual terms for a man of his time, Whitman called his readers to see all of creation as engaged in a dance of lovemaking – seeking, yearning, and lusting for communion and oneness.

And Thoreau, as a Romantic writer himself, wrote in much the same manner.  “The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature — of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter — such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?”

This vision of nature, earth and humanity speaks of a wonderful theology to which we can all find common ground.  Whoever or whatever made this universe, we know it is all made from the same source of materials.  And if this is the case, that I am nothing but an animated conglomeration of ancient dirt, I believe such a notion must speak to me of how I should see myself and my place in the totality of existence.  I am insignificant.  I am but a sprout of grass, a twig, a mote of dust drifting across a vast and void realm of space.  Far be it for me to claim some lofty titles such as Pastor, American, son, partner, father, person of insight.  If I am the stuff of earthy dirt, I am everything and I am nothing.

Several commentators have observed that the common language root of the word ‘humus’ – or dirt – shares that root with the word ‘humility.’  And this idea calls us back to how I began today’s message – to the notion that we must look down and not up to find the Divine One.  We are to adopt an attitude of humus, of dirt, of humility in order to see, feel and be at one with that which is Holy and spiritual.

It is no accident that in his parable of the soils, Jesus made a similar point.  He said, “A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.  Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.  Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.  Whoever has ears, let them hear…the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it.”

I believe the words which Jesus called us to hear and practice are that our hearts must be full of good soil – of rich, dark, organic, earthy stuff.  In that sense, we are to act and live humbly in tune with the ethic of the Divine One – to love, serve and think beyond ourselves.  Such humility does not call us to debase ourselves or live with a false sense of modesty.  It calls us to understand the essential us, warts and all, and our relative role in the grand scheme of existence – which is no more important than the ants that walk across the ground.  Such was the message of Jesus, Whitman and Thoreau.  Humble thyself in the face of God – the earth, the soil, the stuff of life – for indeed you are it!

There is an Alcoholics Anonymous phrase that says, “The challenge is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less often.” Even more to the point, there is a story of a famous violinist who was asked how she could play so brilliantly.  This violinist replied that the task was not difficult at all.  “I have beautiful music to play, a splendid instrument and a splendid bow.  All I have to do is bring them together and get out of the way!”

Is that not the challenge for all of us?  To simply get out of the way of life and simply exist as we are – no more than a conglomeration of dirt?  In this message today, it is not I that speaks to you – oh great and wonderful me!  It is the ideas and thoughts I have collected and spoken to you.  Do not look to me!  Look to the words and concepts for anything of use or value.  Might we all live in the same manner?

Genuine humility calls us to see ourselves as we truly are – and that is, as I have said, simply dirt.  Humility is to think of ourselves as part of a whole where our actions, thoughts and opinions are no more important than those of others.  To cultivate this good humus or soil in us, we must lose the sense of self – we must let go of the ego.  That was the ethic of Jesus and of Buddha.  The rich are not greater than the poor.  The white person no more beautiful than the black, brown or yellow.  The strong no better than the weak.  The gay man and woman no different than the heterosexual.  The self-important manner by which we often think and act is actually quite comical – to strut across the stage of life, puffing out our chests and making this demand or that arrogant opinion when, in fact, we are like the foolish tyrant who will end up on the ash heap of life, the same as everyone else.  You, me, all of us – we are simply manure – as great and as humble as that is.

This spirituality of nature and of earth is not intended to demean humanity.  It is simply to remind us that we are like Walt Whitman observed – leaves of grass sprouting here, withering and dying there, eaten for a time and flowering for another.  For me, I must reject the false theology that claims humanity is the apex of creation, intended as God’s great and final masterpiece.  How can I claim such status when I exist as I am for only a time and then I will exist as something else – a puff of air blowing across the continent, a furrow of soil ready to nourish a field of wheat, or a stream of water cascading down some rocky cliff?  For me, that is the resurrection I know and observe and find by reason – not the one created by some ancient writer to address pre-scientific superstition.  To exist as air, earth or water was my past and that is my splendid destiny.

Dear friends, as we sit here in the midst of the great outdoors, this oasis in a dessert of man-made emptiness, let us not feel we are somehow removed and apart from the creation we see and hear.  When we feel the great power of nature, I believe we sense similar powers inside of ourselves – the eternal forces of creation, birth, life, death and renewal.  We sing the song of ourselves, we celebrate the stuff of life, the air and water and material of the universe.  That which is all around us is Holy just as we are Holy – sacramental elements so beautiful and so wondrous.  We have existed for millions of years and we will drift into an eternal future – changed in form but no less vital.  We are the humble soil of far away galaxies called into human existence just for a time – to live, to laugh, to cry, to love…and most importantly, to serve.

I wish you all much peace and even more joy.

Message 59, “Essential Elements: Air the Breath of Life”, 6-5-11

Service-Program, 06-05-11

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

Walt Whitman, the great American poet, once said, “Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”
And as a long summer now lies ahead, I am drawn again to the great outdoors and to the natural realm.  Like many of you, it is a place I love to spend my time and where I feel closest to the Divine.  Hiking a forest trail, mowing my lawn and smelling the sweet, pungent cut grass or swimming in the warm ocean, I am the most fulfilled.  And in those times and spaces, I find contact with what it is that Whitman often wrote.  We do not simply visit nature as tourists.  We go back to it.  Nature is our womb and our home.  We are a part of the natural order and its elements are a part of us.  I do not seek the stale religion of musty sanctuaries, ancient writings and tired platitudes.  Mine is to seek a spirituality of growth and vitality and joy.  It seeks understanding of the universe around me and also that which is deep within my mind and soul.  If we could worship each and every Sunday in a cathedral of giant trees or a field of wild flowers, I would gladly give up this space.

For our message series this month, I want to explore the three natural elements that give us life, that comprise who we are and allow us to survive.  In these messages ahead, I hope to dig our hands into the dark soil of the earth – that which feeds us and is the essence of our physical beings.  From the earth we came and to the earth we will one day return.  I want to fill our lungs with pure air, deep and cleansing and mysterious.  Air is all around us and yet unseen – alive with power and spiritual force.  And, I want to bathe in liquid water that purifies, soothes and embraces.  As Jesus said, we were born through water and, in it, we find renewal.  Today, and in the following two Sundays, let us celebrate summer meditations on the essential elements of life………..air, earth and water.

For each of us, we were not counted as a living person until we took our first breath.  I well remember those of my two daughters – what a privilege it is to ear that first plaintive wail – “I’m alive!” that comes from a newborn as he or she breathes for the first time.  And, we will not cease to be counted as a living person until our lungs inhale one final time. Air is the breath of life.  Without food we can live four to six weeks.  Without water, we can survive 3 to 5 days.  Without air, we will live only 3 to 4 minutes.  But I don’t want to ponder our biological need for this element.  I seek to understand its mysterious realm – the power of wind, spirit and breath that is holy.  Indeed, the Bible story of creation says that after humanity was physically created, God poured his breath – his air – into humankind.  For many of us, air seems to come from some Divine but unknowable source.  We understand its physical properties and atomic structures, but we too frequently ignore its spiritual presence and purpose in our lives – in the fragrance of a flower, the rush of a breeze, the sound of a bell chime, the mysteries it allows us to discover through deep breathing.  Lacking scientific understanding of air and wind, the Bible writers called it ruach, which in Hebrew is often translated as spirit.  The air is spirit.  It is unseen, unknown, ephemeral.  And yet it is felt and its power observed.  As much as we might reduce air to a movement of molecules, I want to elevate it to its proper and spiritual place in our lives.

I believe the single greatest motivating factor in any of our lives is to find the purpose for our life.  And, as I have said many times, our true purpose is not to simply exist for ourselves but to live so that we leave behind ripples in an ocean of time – small waves we generate that expand outward and impact creation for countless years into the future.   In order to purposefully serve, however, we must understand the meaning of our individual lives.  This comes, I believe, from understanding our souls – the very essence of who we are.  When we employ only rational thought and reasoned thinking to understand our personal meaning, we engage in a form of callous agnosticism.  We ignore or even reject the mysterious reality of our souls – something by reason or science we are unable to identify.

For Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, the soul is a form of spirit or air.  It is not tangible or a thing we can easily point to like something solid.  Is is simply there.  As the Jewish and Christian God poured into humankind a soul with the puff of first breath, Hindu and Buddhist spirituality finds the soul accessible only through our breathing.  It floats on the air we inhale and exhale.  Only in finding that soul of ours can we truly feel, experience and enjoy nature, other people and the essential elements of life.  Air then becomes not just a physical vehicle for sustaining life, it is life – it is our soul and the souls of those all around us.  When we focus on the air and on our breathing, we touch our inner heart which cries and laughs, feels joy and pain and is the REAL us.

This mystery soul within us defines the person we are.  And it is in that self-definition that we are then able to understand the great purpose we have in life.  What does my soul tell me about myself?  Doug is contemplative, sensitive, aware and sensual.  This is not my personality which is influenced by outside forces.  My soul is the essential me as I was originally created.  As I continually seek greater understanding of my soul, I can then embark on the purpose of my life – to serve others according to the unique qualities of my soul.

Even as I find my inner self, I am still left with mystery and unknown spiritual forces at work in my life.  My soul will guide me to places I have no idea where.  Jesus said “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit or Ruach.”  For those who know their true soul, it is possible to understand our past but we cannot know our future.  We drift much like the wind, as unsettling as that is for many of us.  Indeed, asking me just two short years ago if I would stand here now as Pastor, I would have laughed.  And yet, I know my soul brought me here and is allowing me to partially fulfill my life purpose of service.  My soul, acting as the air all around me, guided me to the Gathering and will lead me to destinations of which I can only dream.

When asked what gives a person full awakening and enlightenment, the Buddha is reported to have said, “Be mindful of your breathing.”  All the keys to existence and meaning are found in our breathing and in the air.  Indeed, it is said by Hindus and Buddhists that the breath is the pathway to the soul.  Meditative breathing opens up our inner hearts and inner minds.  As much as it is a channel to our souls, breath is also the soul itself.  Such a concept is certainly not provable as much as it is intuitive and knowable by experience.  When I sit with mountains all around me and deeply breathe in the crisp, cool air, I begin to know things.  As each of us might attest, walking through a rain damp forest with the earth and pine filling our nostrils, or swimming across a lake as we stroke by stroke pull lungfuls of fresh air, these are times of clarity and vision and spiritual awakening.  We are in touch with our very souls.  And the same holds true in meditation or focused breathing.  Breathing adds to our soul experiences and eliminates the toxins within us.  Beyond expelling carbon dioxide from our bodies, deep breathing cleanses us of worry, doubt, fear and pain.  And it energizes life within us.  It enlarges and clarifies our who we are.

Such meditative or mindful breathing involves finding a quiet place to sit and relax.  Buddhists encourage deep breaths inhaled through the nose and then a short pause before slowly exhaling.  Pulling from a relaxed stomach or diaphragm, we might envision air entering and exiting through our navels.  With our eyes closed and our minds focused on our breathing, our minds move away from the concerns, dreams and issues of life.  We drift like the wind, as Jesus said, to a new understanding of who we are.  Air is allowed to fill every part of our body – not just our lungs.  And we exhale in the same manner – breathing out from every part of ourselves.

Hindus encourage the same breathing practice but with a different technique.  In the Hindu manner, we assume a meditative pose, sitting and relaxed, eyes closed or focused on an object straight ahead of us, and then breathe deeply through a slightly open mouth.  Inhale deeply, pause and then exhale in a way that produces a slight “ha” sound.  This ocean breathing as it is called, because it mimics ocean sounds, is called practical spirituality for the Hindu.  Instead of emphasizing philosophical thinking or performing dutiful good deeds, this breathing practice opens up such worlds  to us with little mental or physical activity.  Ocean breathing is practical because we find answers to the questions we ponder.  Ocean breathing leads us to actions we should take – instead of acting blindly.  More importantly, this breathing – this taking in of air – engages the calm center in us and allows to fully feel, sense and experience the world around us.

After learning of this technique, I sat in my garden last week and tried ocean breathing.  Thoughts played regularly across my mind but I returned my focus to my breaths and, in doing so, I did sense all that I rarely heard or felt before – the soft rustle of wind in the trees, a far off coo of a morning dove, the murmur of water in my pond, the salt sweet scent of ocean air, the enfolding heat of the sun, even sensing the drifting of clouds across a blue sky.  I cannot say I found great and profound truths – perhaps with more practice I will.  But this was religion and church and spirituality for me – as it always is when I allow myself to escape from the man-made world I usually inhabit.  And in the air and in my breathing, I could reach inside of myself and then open back up to a more real world.  Indeed, Buddhists say this is like the opening of a lotus flower – through our breathing of fresh air, our minds and souls bloom.

While earlier I spoke of our individual purposes in life, we must also think of the purpose for our little congregation.  Why do we exist and what purpose do we serve here?  That is a question I often ponder each time I determine a monthly message series theme.  What will we accomplish by hearing and thinking about a topic?  I certainly do not want to act as an expert guide.  I speak on many issues of which I am not an expert.  But I hope to point us in a direction of reflection and discussion that will improve our thinking, our actions and our lives.  In doing so, I hope that also improves our interactions with the wider world – how we care for, treat and serve other people and other creatures.

As we think about the qualities of air that adds spiritual energy to our lives, I hope we can each reflect on its mystical, mysterious and unknown aspects.  Air is essential to physical life but it is just as essential to spiritual life.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the famous English nineteenth century poet, once said, “He lives most life who breathes most air.”  At first blush, the saying seems obvious – the longer we live, the more air we breathe.  But I believe that is not what Browning intended in her statement.  Air is a puff of enlightenment, a wind that fills our sails of self, a breeze that awakens and defines our souls.  In the air is God.  She and He wafts across its transparent vapors to inhabit us.  Air is our soul, our being, our life.  In pondering these thoughts, I conclude with a poem by Henry Van Dyke, an American theologian and poet of the early 1900’s.  “God of the Open Air” speaks to the spirituality of which I have spoken…

Thou who hast made thy dwelling fair
With flowers beneath, above with starry lights,
And set thine altars everywhere,–
On mountain heights,
In woodlands dim with many a dream,
In valleys bright with springs,
And on the curving capes of every stream:
Thou who hast taken to thyself the wings
Of morning, to abide
Upon the secret places of the sea,
And on far islands, where the tide
Visits the beauty of untrodden shores,
Waiting for worshippers to come to thee
In thy great out-of-doors!
To thee I turn, to thee I make my prayer,
God of the open air.  Angel of Air,
Holy messenger of the Earthly Mother,
Enter deep within me,
As the swallow plummets from the sky,
That I may know the secrets of the wind
And the music of the stars.

Message 58, “Life Lessons from Women in the Bible”, 5-22-11

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

One day in the Garden of Eden, woman called out to God and complained of her boredom.  “I love the beautiful garden, the flowers, trees and animals but there is nobody to talk to except for a funny snake.  I don’t know what to do with myself.”  “Well Eve,” said God, “I have a solution for you!  I will create man for you as a companion.  He won’t be as smart as you but he’ll be bigger and a bit stronger so he can help you here in the garden.  He’ll talk to you, but not as much as you might want and he will revel in silly things like kicking a ball and fighting.  He will also need your advice on lots of things but, overall, he will be a friend and a companion.”  “OK,” said Eve.  “Man sounds pretty good.  What is the catch, though, God?”  “Well,” said God, “man will be arrogant and self-admiring so you will have to let him think that I created him first.  Just remember, it’s our secret…………..woman to woman!”

It is sad to say, but such a story is wishful thinking.  As the real Bible story goes, man was created first, then Eve.  And, depending on which account you follow, either that in the first chapter of Genesis or that of the second, woman was created out of the side of Adam – supposedly to symbolize how the female is to be a helper and so-called side-kick to man.

But that issue speaks to a larger point about the Bible and other faith Scriptures as well.  They are open to multiple interpretations none of which, I believe, should be considered definitive or absolute.  As with all works of literature and history, we have to use our own reason and applied knowledge to find meaning and truth in the Bible.

For centuries, the interpretation of Eve and other women in the Bible has been unflattering.  And that was mostly done by men.  Indeed, it is Eve who has long been considered the one responsible for the entry of sin into our world.  The Bible story regarding the Fall goes as follows, “Now the snake was the most clever of all the wild animals that God had made. One day the snake said to the woman, “Did God really say that you must not eat fruit from any tree in the garden?”  The woman answered the snake, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. But God told us, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. You must not even touch it, or you will die.’ ” But the snake said to the woman, “You will not die. God knows that if you eat the fruit from that tree, you will learn about good and evil and you will be like God! The woman saw that the tree was beautiful, that its fruit was good to eat, and that it would make her wise. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of the fruit to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.  Then, it was as if their eyes were opened. They realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made something to cover themselves.”

The story, which I believe is myth, was partially borrowed from other ancient cultures by Jews writing around 500 BCE to explain where humanity came from.  It is a straightforward and relatively simple story.  Eve, acting as any reasonable person, wanted to acquire wisdom for herself and she offered the same to Adam.  She was a free thinker who determined that the serpent’s words had resonance – I have a God-given brain capable of knowing good and evil.  Adam, however, simply accepted and ate the apple.  No conniving and no female seduction is evident in the Scripture words.  “Here, try this.”  OK!  In many respects, Adam comes off looking a bit dumb – he does not question Eve or the apple given to him.  He simply takes and eats.

But thousands of theologians have looked at the same story and interpreted something sinister in Eve’s actions.  She was the weak one who was capable of being tempted and tricked.  Further, according to such theology, she then seduced Adam with her female allure to get him to eat.  Why else would intelligent man eat the apple without question or protest.  In other words, Eve – as the symbolic ancestor of all future women – was easily tricked and tempted.  Satan did not dare go after man – he was too smart and obedient!!  But then Eve used her female skills – in all of her nakedness – to get Adam to also eat.  Eve is not much better than Satan – in this view – she is a temptress!  Look at these famous images of the fall – both created by men but reflective of longstanding views of the Fall…

The first, by Albrect Durer, shows Eve with a slight smile as she seductively takes the apple from the serpent and offers it to Adam.  He, though, is so smitten and overwhelmed with her wily charms that he does not even care about the apple – he is interested in one thing only as he suggestively reaches out toward Eve.  While the image also implies a sexual nature to all forms of temptation, it is Eve who is almost in collusion with Satan in tricking Adam into eating the apple – all through sex and seduction.

The second image suggests the same – and this is a much more famous painting by Michelangelo from the Sistine Chapel.  Again, looking to the left of the image, Eve takes the apple, but look at her highly suggestive position in regards to Adam.  The implied message from the painting, as I interpret it, is that Eve seduced and tricked Adam into sin.  It is all her fault.  It is all the fault of women.  We must be wary of their false, manipulative and evil ways according to such theology.  Men must learn from this in order to control women in their weakness and propensity to be tempted and then a tempter.  I know this is only my interpretation of these images but century’s old theology holds Eve primarily responsible for the fall of humanity.  This, I believe, led directly to religious and cultural control of women.

My point today, however, is not to beat the same drum that I did last week – that patriarchy is something that must be overcome.  My hope today is to point out the misleading theology and interpretations that call it sin to use reason, intelligence and rational thought to discern good and evil.  Indeed, as much as the Bible tells us that it is wrong to think of ourselves as like God or as little gods – as we just read from Scripture – I believe the exact opposite.  That is what the creative forces of the universe – or God – achieved in humanity….a species capable of using highly advanced brains and intelligence to discern, on our own, good from evil.  If that is to be like God, so be it.

Even if Eve tempted Adam – which I do not interpret the story to say – she was using evolutionary or God-given reasoning powers to think and act as her own free agent.  It is not sin to think.  It is sin, in my humble opinion, NOT to think and to blindly accept as fact that which we are told.  For many, that is the difference between religion and spirituality.  The former is human created based on human interpretation of ancient writings.  The latter is mysterious, unknown and transcendent stuff which beckons us to think, question and explore.

From Eve, we learn a lot.  She was not the mere handmaiden to Adam.  If she is to be credited with the fall of humanity, then we must at least give her due acknowledgement for the wit and ability it took to question God’s command – and to establish a morality that resonates today – free thinking and rationality.  We think therefore we are, to paraphrase the famous philosopher Descartes.  Indeed, Eve thought on her own, she proved her own existence as a person and she offers us such a life lesson.

One other female character from the Bible, whom I want to examine today, is Jezebel.  We all know the name but few know her Biblical story.  As a princess from Phoenicia, a coastal nation, she married the king of Northern Israel, Ahab, as a political move to unite an inland nation with one that had access to the sea.  Israel was a divided Kingdom around 600 to 500 BCE with the North having drifted, according to the Bible, toward apostasy and paganism.  Jezebel is blamed as a primary instigator of that.  The Bible story tells us that Jezebel induced King Ahab to convert from Judaism to the worship of Baal – a god of wine and fertility.  According to legend and the Bible, Baal worship involved the liberal drinking of wine and lots of sex – all done at Temples dedicated to him.  (Now that must have been one interesting church service!)  Eventually Elijah, the famous prophet who foreshadowed Jesus’ resurrection by ascending straight to heaven without dying, came to denounce King Ahab, Jezebel and the worship of Baal.  According to the Biblical story found in the book of Kings, a climactic scene resulted when Elijah confronts 450 prophets of Baal in a duel to see who could end a drought brought on by God.  With lots of shouting, singing and marching, the Baal prophets proved impotent thus indicating the fallacy of Baal.  Elijah and God bring back rain and thus prove Yahweh’s omnipotence.  King Ahab is killed, he is replaced by a successor named Jehu who then proceeds to kill Jezebel.  In a scene from which she earned her dark reputation, Jezebel – who is old at this point – takes time to apply makeup and mascara and to don her finest dresses when she learns Jehu is on his way to her.  Theologians describe her as a wanton woman inclined to seduction and disloyalty because they say she wanted to lure the new king with her charm.  Scripture says nothing of the sort.  Instead, her actions point to a woman determined to die in her own way, as a Queen and with her dignity intact.  She was thrown out a window and her body consumed by dogs.  But she did, indeed, die as a stately Queen in all of her finery.

This theological interpretation of Jezebel comes directly from that of Eve and other women in the Bible – as connivers and deceivers of good and decent men.  It was Jezebel who introduced belief in a pagan god and it was her who wantonly used sexual attractiveness to lure her unsuspecting husband and later King Jehu.  This interpretation of her – and strong women like her – remains even today.  Watch a more contemporary interpretation of a Jezebel-like woman and note the words used in the captions… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgVm0Z6lleY (click on preceding link to watch video)

What we hopefully learn from Jezebel is that being strong, intelligent and disobedient to prevailing cultural or religious thought is actually a good thing.  While perhaps I went too far last week in describing an all dominant patriarchal culture – it is a telling commentary on our culture when a popular movie of the last century suggested independent woman like Bette Davis’ character should be whipped.  While the film was made in 1938, such a view of women has lasted thousands of years and still exists today in many areas of our world.  Sadly, our world is not free from patriarchy.

We are all encouraged, I hope, to question rigid religious dogma and to explore other paths to Divine truth.  Whether that Truth be supernatural or, instead, a scientific explanation, it is an unknown source of which any of us are only dimly aware.  Eve and Jezebel were willing to stand up to religious certainty and, while we may all chuckle at Jezebel’s worship of a fertility god, we can also marvel and worship, like her, at the creative or fertile forces still at work in the universe.

The ideal female character from the Bible, besides the virginal Mary, is often said to be Ruth – described in a Biblical book bearing her name.  The story is of a young woman from Moab who marries the son of a wealthy landowner from Israel who had moved to Moab to escape that nation’s drought.  When this landowner and his sons die, leaving Ruth and her sister – along with her mother-in-law Naomi – as widows, they must make a decision whether to return to Israel or remain in Moab.  Ruth’s sister chooses the latter but Ruth, with heartfelt loyalty, pledges her fidelity to Jewish Naomi by saying, “Where you go, I will go; your people shall be my people and your God my God.”

When they do return to Israel, Naomi and Ruth meet a distant relative of Naomi’s deceased husband.  According to ancient Jewish levirate law, a man was to always marry the widow of a relative in order to keep the deceased’s lineage alive.  Naomi declares herself too old to marry again but encourages Ruth to insinuate herself into Boaz’s life – the unsuspecting relative – so that he will marry her and thus preserve Naomi’s family line.  In a very sensual scene, Ruth joins Boaz on a wheat threshing floor and then lies down at his feet while he naps.  This, according to the custom, indicated betrothal and a willingness to obey and be a wife.  Boaz accepts Ruth as his wife, he buys the land of his deceased relative and the two eventually produce a male heir – who would be father to the legendary King David.  In reading the New Testament book of Matthew, we see that author, writing many hundreds of years later, added Ruth as an ancestor of Jesus – the only woman so named.  The humble, loyal, obedient foreign woman became a great-great-great-great, etc. grandmother to Jesus – the man the Bible says is the Son of God.

Theological interpretations of this story focus on Ruth’s ideal female virtues with an implicit contrast to Eve, Jezebel, Baathsheba, Mary Magdalene and other so called bad women of the Bible.  God will be faithful to those who are faithful, and women, especially, are called to be obedient.  They must check their inclinations to question prevailing religious orthodoxy and male authority with pure faith – in God and in the supposed goodness of men.

While I do not question women who choose to be wives and mothers, I hope as I said two weeks ago on Mother’s Day that such decisions are freely made and motivated by sincere desires.  Cultural coercion or mere compliance with prevailing thinking does not advance any of us.  Indeed, we all encourage that here at the Gathering.  Last week, it seems my message was either totally loved or completely disagreed with.  I don’t ever want to speak to an amen corner here.   Differing thoughts and viewpoints challenge our thinking – especially my own.

While time constraints will prevent us from having a talk back time today, I deeply value it and I want a free and respectful exchange of thoughts and ideas here.  We welcome dissent and voices of gentle and respectful disagreement.  In the process, we all learn.  While we can and should arrive at our own opinions, differences in religion, politics, love, life and general habits are wonderful – they make the world interesting and they help us grow.  Ruth, in her willing conformity to the religion and ways of her adopted family was not evil.  Her actions speak, however, of a woman inclined to not question or buck the prevailing trend.  Perhaps we should see her character as sincere in her willingness to accept a foreign God – but, if so, then we must also accept as sincere Jezebel’s decision to NOT accept such a God.  As I often say and as is a prevailing motto here at the Gathering, nobody and no religion has access to absolute Truth.  We may believe our ways are correct and that is good.  But we must be open to other truths and other paths to absolute Truth – whether that be God, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Confucius or a physics principle like Thermodynamics.  Let us explore with minds and hearts wide open.  Let us learn to embrace Eve for her brave defiance and willing questions.  Let us celebrate the strong and purposeful Jezebels of the world who chart their own course in life – adding to diversity and greater understanding for us all.

Let us always be people who value questions far more than absolute certainty.  Let us use the miraculous brains we have to explore and think about large questions like existence and meaning.  To paraphrase another verse from the Bible, faith without reason is shallow and a form of blind idolatry. The Bible characters of Eve, Jezebel and even Ruth point us to such a standard.

I wish you all peace and joy…..

Message 57, “Life Lessons from Women in History”, 5-15-11

© Doug Slagle, Pastor Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

Last week, after my message on motherhood, women and gender roles, and considering my message topics this month would focus on women and what we can learn from them, I was anxious to discuss these issues with my two daughters Amy and Sara.  It fascinated me when these two young women – who enjoy the fruits of female equality – adamantly stated that if women truly led the world and its many governments and corporations, it would be a much better place.  No war, reduced poverty, less materialism, and more compassion would all result.  They are feminists who also enjoy being wooed and admired by understanding boyfriends.  Nevertheless, for them, the ills of our world are directly attributable to men.  I could not and did not argue with them.  In many respects, they are right.

Kofi Anan, the former UN Secretary General, once said “For countless generations women have served as peace educators both in their families and in their societies.  They have been instrumental in building bridges rather than walls.” One critic remarked, in response, that if women have acted as natural peacemakers and bridge builders, why have they not used their influence to abolish war?  There is a naysayer in every crowd.

Human society, my friends, is currently competitive, aggressive, and driven.  We are encouraged to achieve, acquire, and compete.  War and conflict are seen as inevitable events.  We are often self-focused, individualistic, violent in speech and conduct, and driven to succeed to acquire material things to live a supposedly better life.  Our global culture lives according to a male ethos.

And, to put it bluntly, women have not been permitted to express their voice – their more natural inclinations to value community, compassion and peace.  Despite the fact that women now comprise over half of the world’s population, they perform two-thirds of its labor.  Women earn one-tenth of global income and own one-hundredth of world property.  Is it any wonder why, in a world dominated by men, women have been unable to end war?

The Bible tells us that, for Jesus, there exist neither male nor female.  People are simply people – not defined by gender, race, nationality, sexuality or religion.  Gloria Steinem, in a contemporary update of that Bible passage, said, “We are talking about building a society in which there will be no specific gender roles other than those chosen or those earned.   We are really talking about humanism.”

But that is a world yet to be built – a culture of humanity where the best qualities of women and men work together.  That culture will embrace peaceful competition, communal interest over selfish interest, and creative innovation through collaboration and cooperation.

I believe such a world is at the threshold of existence.  As women are finding their voice, men are increasingly listening.  In a book entitled Women and Economics, it is asserted that we are on the cusp of profound social and cultural evolutionary change in terms of gender influence.  No longer will male oriented impulses like aggression and competition dominate. A new era of gender neutral qualities will be at hand.  This author, Charlotte Gilman, believes that the competing gender impulses of men have held back greater growth in world economies – including our own.  Males, with their individualistic and competitive natures have indeed helped produce economic growth throughout the world.  But such growth has had its costs.  Warfare, environmental destruction, religious competition and unrestrained nationalism have reached a point where social and economic progress is hurt rather than advanced.  Male attitudes, operating alone, are increasingly recognized as no longer sustainable.  Men are increasingly recognizing that building community, working for social justice, caring for the environment and finding ways to reconcile differences are key to human survival.  Ultimately, they are heeding life lessons women have long advocated.  This, according to Gilman, is revolutionary in scope.  We are no longer talking about gender equality but an entirely new way of understanding and thinking – combining the best qualities of all people.

Without resorting to hard and fast gender stereotypes, men build things through their assertive, competitive and acquisitive natures.  Women, on the other hand, often seek to conserve resources and look out for communal interests – since biologically they must give birth and then feed the first expression of communal life – that of mother and child.   Human society is evolving to a point where gender differences are no longer competitive – with one gender assuming a dominant role.   As Jesus and Steinem noted in the quotes I cited earlier, there will be neither male interests nor female interests but, instead, one common interest.

I believe, as I said last week, that we must avoid biological determinism regarding our behavior.  Yet, science and observation has shown that men are generally by nature inclined to be aggressive, independent, non-verbal, and unemotional.  In studies of infants, girls recognize faces more easily and they tend to acquire verbal skills at an earlier age.  Boy infants tend to be more physically active, spatially aware, easily distracted and visually stimulated.  The cues and impulses which follow us through life are apparent in the crib long before culture has had its influence.

Writing in the contemporary magazine, “The Network Journal” which speaks to the interests of those in the professional world, James Libert identifies from his studies several distinct female characteristics – most of which are not surprising.  Female workers are more collaborative, nurturing, communicative and community centered.  They typically have more emotional connections with co-workers and they tend to display more social and emotional skills like sharing, putting others first and empathy.  The end result, he says, is that women often foster a better work environment that enables economic success.  Men, he says, must “woman up” in the workplace and in life to avoid the pitfalls of their own aggression and competitive natures.  Importantly, he cautions men not to give up their better qualities of confidence, drive and assertiveness.  The goal is to combine – not give up – the best of male qualities with those of women.

Despite all of these facts about gender roles, we are not captives of biology.  Women can become physically capable – the fastest and strongest women are far beyond the abilities of the average male.  And men can acquire social and verbal skills that make them more empathetic and sensitive.  In other words, biology has its influence but it is not absolute.  We can learn and change our behaviors.

If we look to important women in history, we will find examples of the female voice – one that has often cried out in the wilderness for peace and social welfare.  Women have natural instincts that can instruct us – and I do not say this to be patronizing.  I was and am fascinated by what many women in my life have to say about how to act – my daughters, my friends, my mother, my sister, many of you.  I do not demean men for their often macho attitudes as much as I believe the male species yearns to understand and feel the emotional connection many women feel for others, the altruistic concern and love for family and total stranger, the ability to talk and listen one’s way through a problem, the distaste for physical combat.  Men do not wish to relinquish their masculinity as much as they want permission to incorporate gentleness, nurture and empathy into their demeanor.    Too often men are like actors on a stage – they are expected to behave according to a role defined for them by our culture.  But they know it is an act and they know they wear a mask.  The exclusively macho persona is a role many men would like to give up.

Great women from history have already taught us much about how to live life in a manner that expresses Jesus’ Golden Rule – to treat others as we wish to be treated.  When we consider historic peace movements, it is remarkable that they have been significantly led by women.  I do not believe this is coincidence.  Women, in general, are peacemakers.  And this is not the kind of peace that is negotiated after a war in which one side loses and one wins.  Too often that is a temporary and vindictive peace that leads to another war.

Women like Julia Ward Howe who issued the Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870 – which we read earlier as our responsive reading – were peace advocates who asked for an end to all wars.  Since most women were mothers, this was an issue of great concern to them.  Their sons were continually being slaughtered.  For many women who feel that innate emotion and connection from giving birth, any taking of life is hideous.

While I admittedly generalize here, men simply plant the seed in reproduction.  There is little investment.  Women, on the other hand, must incubate, sustain, nurture and feed the offspring – usually over several years.  The investment of time, emotion, blood, sweat and tears is so much greater.  If men might understand and empathize with this perspective, the wanton killing of human life will be seen as costly and horribly tragic.  For many men, war is full of honor and glory in that ultimate form of competition – life against life.  For many women, there is no honor in the death of a son or daughter in whom so much time and love has been invested.  Whether or not they are mothers, women know and feel this emotion.

And that is why I believe so many women have been and are peacemakers.  Women like Bertha von Suttner have been leaders of peace movements.  She pushed for the creation of the Nobel Peace Prize and is universally recognized as its creator.  Eventually winning the Prize herself at the dawn of the twentieth century, she was President of the International Peace Society and wrote the influential disarmament book Lay Down Your Arms.  She saw, with increasing horror, the race to acquire more and more weapons of death by patriarchal world powers like Germany, under Kaiser Wilhelm, and England, under King George.  Such male dominant cultures competed with each other to colonize vast areas of the world.   This empire building and competition led directly to World War One.

Von Suttner, however, envisioned a different way.  She was a follower of Charles Darwin who also taught social evolution – that all species move toward a communal and cooperative ethic as the attitude most likely to produce long-term survival.  She advocated dialogue, disarmament and reconciliation between nations as pathways to prevent war.

Women have been the leaders of peace movements in their own nations – like Betty Greene of Britain and Mairead Corrigan of Northern Ireland, both of whom reached across the sectarian and religious divide of that conflict to work for reconciliation.  Or Ang San Suu Kyi of Myanmar who advocates for an end to dictatorship and military oppression in that nation……..or Jodi Williams of the US who spoke against the manufacture and use of landmines by our own nation or ……….Wangari Maathi of Kenya who works for environmentalism and sustainability as necessary for ending resource competition that threatens world peace.  My own grandmother Jean Slagle, a lifelong Republican, was a local peace advocate who was called before Congress in the early 1950’s to testify in favor of ending the Draft.  For her and for many other mothers and women all over the world, war is a personal and spiritual affront.

Women have also acted as primary advocates of social justice movements over the last two hundred years.  Once again, women reveal qualities in themselves which often do not come naturally to men – like mercy, sharing, compassion and empathy.  I do not believe it is mere coincidence that women have frequently been at the vanguard of social movements like slavery abolition, immigrant and worker rights, civil rights and equality for gays and lesbians.  Like the desire to preserve and conserve life through peaceful discussion, many women share a concern for the marginalized of society – since historically they too have lived at the margins.  Women like Harriet Beecher Stowe comprised the bulk of the abolitionist movement against slavery.  Others, like Sojourner Truth and Rosa Parks helped advance the civil rights cause.  At the turn of the century, women like Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day and Jane Addams advocated for the rights of workers, immigrants, women and children.

Jane Addams would herself win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.  As the founder of the world famous Hull House in Chicago, Addams was instrumental in developing juvenile court law, enacting child labor laws, establishing the eight hour work day, insuring work place safety and getting worker’s compensation funds established.  Above all, in Hull House she created one of the first social welfare centers in our nation.  It still exists today.

Other women like Addams have worked over the past century to end poverty, to promote equality, and to love the least of God’s creation.  Women like Mother Theresa, Emily Greene of the US, Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala and Shirin Ebadi of Iran have all won the Nobel Peace Prize for their social work advancing the rights of the poor, workers, women, children and native groups.  It is also notable that it was a woman who created the most well-known, popular and effective social program in our nation’s history.  Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a President’s cabinet, was the guiding force behind the creation of Social Security.  As Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt, her concern was for the working poor – those who try to realize the American dream through hard work but are often beaten down by low wages, unsafe working conditions and lack of healthcare.    Raised a Republican, her outlook was best stated when she said, “Poverty is preventable, destructive, wasteful and demoralizing. In the midst of our national plenty, it is morally unacceptable in a Christian and democratic society.”

I do not believe these women or others like them were radicals who encouraged the end of capitalism.  Far from it.  They sought to protect capitalism by insuring that its worst manifestations are held in check – thus allowing its best attributes like freedom and innovation to flourish.  Most of all, women like those I cite heed the example of Mother Theresa who once said – in one of my oft repeated quotes – when she bathed and fed a dying person in the slums of Calcutta…………….she gazed into the face of God.  Forgive me for stereotyping, but again I do not believe it is a coincidence that it took a woman to remind us all to be our better angels.

And that brings me full circle to the point which I hope we might all ponder.  It is neither accurate nor helpful to rigidly stereotype men or women into certain behaviors.  Indeed, the best qualities of the respective genders are useful in each of us.  Society needs the more common male impulses to build, create, and compete.  But the male attitude has often become destructively aggressive, greedy and dominating.   It has led away from ethics like understanding, cooperation, and reconciliation.  The common female impulses to protect and conserve community are needed to balance such negative forces but they too can become sins of indecision and inaction if allowed to dominate.

Moral imagination by men and women takes us ever closer to the ideal of a more just world.  In reaching that goal, it is not enough for women to simply be equal with men – such that they too can participate in wars, nationalism and destruction of the environment.  Women must continue to speak their unique truth as ones inclined toward peace and compassion.  As a man, I cannot identify with what it means to be a woman.  But I can listen.  I can learn.  I can adopt and practice her ways while not denying the best attributes of my masculinity.  Indeed, I do not favor a matriarchy – a world dominated by women. Common spirituality points us to one human family – not male, not female, but sharing and practicing the best of both.

Message 56, “Life Lessons from Women: An End to the Madonna”, 5-8-11

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

Service-Program, 05-08-11

Jackie Kennedy once said, “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.” And I hate to say this, with my own mom present, but she might echo Mrs. Kennedy and then also repeat the words of another famous American mother – Lillian Carter, mother of our former President, who once noted, “Sometimes when I look at my children, I say to myself, ‘Lillian, you should have remained a virgin!”

But seriously, my mother did a great job in raising her three kids.  Like many women of the 1950’s and 1960’s, motherhood was for her a defining role – a job to which much of society expected her and many other women to follow.  Married just before Christmas 1958, and thereafter honeymooning in Las Vegas, my mom was quickly surprised with an unexpected memento of her wedding trip.  What happened in Las Vegas did NOT stay in Las Vegas for her and my dad………. as almost exactly nine months to the day following their honeymoon, I was born.

And a sister and brother followed me a few years later.  My mom spent her young adult years as a housewife and mother.  She managed a home, was diplomat and advisor for my dad’s growing career as a surgeon and she was a mom to three suburban kids – guiding us through our formative years, getting us each through college in the requisite four years and then watching – and sometimes advising from the sidelines – as we embarked on lives that have not produced any Pulitzer or Nobel prizes but are nevertheless free of any major scandals or post office most wanted posters.  We are adults in our own rights with children of our own and jobs that influence, to some degree, the lives of others.  The many words of advice over the years, the sacrifices, the heart aches, and the work by my mom – and by moms the world over – are like pebbles dropped one by one into a still lake.  They create small ripples that fan out to reach distant shores and distant times.

My mom too often comments that she has not achieved much in life.  What has she done, she asks, that saved a life, managed a business or influenced others for the better?  While the answer to her question is obvious, she has helped change the world, her words highlight a problem I have with our culture and how it views motherhood, parenting and women in general.  Instead of embracing a religious ethic upon which our culture believes it is based – that all people are equal – I believe we demean women by foisting upon them the cruel choice of whether to be a mother and deny herself – or pursue independence and a career and deny being what our culture too often says is an ideal woman – a mom.  While men are not defined by whether or not they are a father, women too often are judged by whether or not they have been a mother.  Cruelly, in today’s world, women are then judged from the other side of that issue – what has a housewife and mother really done in life?

We idealize women who are like the Madonna figure – the one who is mother of god or Mary, not the one who sings and wears pointy cone bras.  In our evolving culture pushing for equality, however, we also expect women to now be like that other famous Mary in the Bible – Mary Magdalene who was a close friend and follower of Jesus.  Unattached, unmarried and childless, that Mary was an independent woman living as her own free agent.  While later patriarchal church fathers would elevate the Madonna or virgin Mary and denigrate Mary Magdalene as a prostitute – even though there is no evidence to say so – we as a culture the world over are still coming to terms with this issue.  It affects both men and women.  And our celebrations of Mother’s Day – along with that of Father’s Day – are symptoms, I believe, of our dysfunctional and schizophrenic gender standards.

It is an unwritten rule in Christian churches and among Pastors that of all the Sundays in a year, there are three in particular which demand special attention.  A Pastor had better offer a meaningful and heartwarming service on Christmas, Easter and…………..Mother’s day.  In many churches, sadly, it is women who are the heavy lifters in terms of volunteer work.  And, it is often women who make sure their families attend church.  So, according to this unwritten code among Pastors, if you make women happy on Mother’s Day, you have bought a lot of goodwill.

Before last year’s Mother’s Day and for the past few weeks I bought into this rule.  I stressed and worried and thought about what I would do to acknowledge and celebrate this day – and that is especially difficult here at the Gathering.  I may well not satisfy everyone with my message today.  While some see Mother’s Day as a part of their religious and family tradition, others prefer to ignore it due to personal distaste or bad memories of distant mothers.  By its very nature, the day celebrates a notion of womanhood that many believe is outdated and irrelevant – the perfect woman who raises perfect children, runs a perfect home, cooks the perfect meal, and is the all-loving mother and spouse.  And such an image comes directly from religion and, in Christianity, from the Madonna ideal.

For many women, they must choose to be either a Madonna or a Mary Magdalene – a nurturing and docile female who gives birth and raises a family or an independent, unattached and therefore uncontrollable woman of the world.

And so, to be blunt, I don’t want to worry about Mother’s Day or Father’s Day again here at the Gathering.  I don’t believe these days have spiritual relevance in terms of causing us to grow as people.  That does not mean I devalue the worth of any parent or that the issue of parenting will never again be discussed here.  What I propose is a new and more complex understanding of what it means to be a mother and how we can celebrate women no matter their personal choices in life.  Can a woman be nurturing, caring and fulfilled by being a mother?  Absolutely.  Should a woman be admired and honored who is not a mother?  Yes, she should.  And we should celebrate these choices if they are truly free-will choices based on a profound cultural shift in our attitudes and expectations towards both men and women.

Just last week I was at the beach in Florida when two men sat near me with an African-American toddler – he was probably only 2 or 3 years of age.  What struck me was that the boy was most likely adopted and was now being raised by two men both of whom proceeded to alternately play with and care for him.  It was a wonderful scene to watch.  Who was the mother and who was the father in this family?  While one could say there are two dads – that just defines the gender of the boy’s parents.  His maternal needs were met as the two men fed him, wiped sand off his face and worried for him as he got too close to the ocean waves.  And his paternal needs were met when he was chased through the surf and lifted up and playfully wrestled into the water.  What specific gender roles have anything to do with raising this boy?  Is that family celebrating mother’s day today?  I doubt it.   But perhaps they should.  This boy clearly seemed to be as much mothered as he was fathered.  Most importantly, he was parented with love by two men who did not care about gender roles and who were more this boy’s parents than his biological ones.  Having a gender specific mother or father is likely totally irrelevant to this boy who has found two people who deeply want him as a child.

And that is the kind of revolution I believe we need in our culture.  I hope one day that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day will be abandoned – perhaps in favor of a simple Parent’s Day or none at all since we can and should honor parents each and every day of the year.

In a book entitled Maternal Thinking by Sarah Ruddick, the author states that women today still struggle with the idea of being mothers.  Our prevailing and still male centric culture says to them that in order to be a proper woman, they must marry, give birth and then serve as a mother.  Mothers, she writes, sublimate their thinking.  “Maternal thought,” writes Ruddick, “embodies inauthenticity by taking on the values of the dominant culture, abandoning one’s personal values in exchange for those of the families to which they belong and of the men with whom they are allied.”

Feminists and others often encourage women to reject such cultural standards and instead seek the kind of economic and social power normally ascribed to men.  Seek an education.  Pursue a career. Be strong and independent.   Motherhood will diminish such ways of self-actualization.  Young women, like my daughters, are encouraged to go to school, learn a skill, establish a career and put off being a mother until such things are accomplished.  Indeed, the subtle message is that being a mother is not as important as gaining the other skills.  Being a mother is subtly equated – like it was for my own mom – with doing nothing.

In the name of advancing women, which feminism has wonderfully helped achieve, we as a culture have also ironically strengthened the favored economic and social power that results from a career outside the home.  This, in turn, has helped to diminish ethics such as nurture, reconciliation, and cooperation – attributes necessary to effective parenting.  Aggression, power, competition and wealth are, in turn, elevated.  To be a successful woman, many argue, one must achieve in the out of home workplace.

For those women who attempt work outside the home AND be a mother, their career advancement and pay is often held back.  Adding further complication, their feelings about being a good mother are warped and filled with guilt because they spend so much time at work.  This woman tries to have it all but too often finds, not by any fault of her own, that she achieves nothing – scorned by tradition because she is not a full-time stay at home mom and scorned in a still male focused working world as not equal to those who forego parenting altogether.

For the woman who by circumstance or choice decides not to be a mother, she is barraged by cultural standards that sometimes question and even pity her motives and her life.  She is confronted by days like today and, while celebrated as a strong and capable woman who accumulates, on her own, economic and social power, she too finds herself unequal with men and with other women who are mothers.

Finally, men are victims too.  As is so often the case for those who perpetuate inequality, men suffer from the results of their own actions.  They are trapped in a role as worker and achiever that implicitly forbids them from being a major player in child rearing.  Men who devote themselves to full time parenting are considered less than men.  They cannot be caring, nurturing, introspective or thoughtful.  While science has shown that many gender characteristics are hard wired into us for the sake of our survival as a species, we should not be locked into biological determinism.  Men have been, still are and can be excellent full time parents who meet the needs of children.

We need, I believe, to re-imagine the gender structures and roles in our culture so that ALL parents gain more social and economic power.  As a culture, we can encourage men to be equally concerned about how they will manage career and parenting.  They must be encouraged to take months or even years off to raise children, to work shorter hours because of child rearing demands and to see work and parenting conflicts from the same perspective as women.  Employers will need to adjust their thinking to support and encourage flexible working schedules for dads and moms.   If both parents share equally in the task and roles of parenting – like the two men I saw where neither one is confined to a role of mother or father – then power will be more equally distributed.  I want to encourage my daughters to partner with men who are willing to fully share the parenting role.  They will be freed of the cruel role choice women must often make in their lives – Madonna or Magdalene.  They can make the decision based on other factors free of guilt or shame.  They will gain some of the power women have so long lacked.  And their husbands will also make career sacrifices because that is what parents do.  They, as men, will be freed by our culture to be intimately involved in child rearing.  Being a stay at home parent will lose its stigma as a dead-end or do nothing task.  Even more important, our society will learn to value parenting skills in general thus granting more status and power to single parents and same sex couples.  What we need are women who are not trapped by the Madonna or Mary Magdalene roles in life.  We should celebrate free choices in life for each person and honor those decisions.

Parenting is a blessing with unique and special rewards and challenges.  It has immense value.  But it is not a role which should define any person or any gender.  It is no better and no worse than any other role in life which adds to the fabric of social good.  For me, if we at the Gathering are to be the change we want in our world, then we should no longer celebrate, at church, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.  They are relics of a past that sadly enslaved us in roles that were pushed upon us.  We can do better.

I want to honor on this day free thinkers and free people who work for a better world.  Many mothers are and have been active participants in that endeavor.  It is said that the role of a full time parent is the equivalent of three full time air traffic controllers.  But, as one commentator put it, parental pay is often measured as among the highest in the world – that of the unconditional love many children offer. Even so, one cannot take that pay to the bank.

Parenting skills, therefore, must transcend those who serve in that role.  What we need are people in general who embody and practice such skills – like empathy, nurture, listening and gentleness.  I have a female friend who is not a mother but she nevertheless uses those qualities of parenting in her work, in her friendships and in life.  Ed, my partner, often sadly reflects that he is not a parent.  And yet anyone who sees how he effortlessly interacts with youth and knows how he has fought for the rights of kids as a teacher and child advocate attorney, they will see the heart of someone who has truly influenced children for the better.  I want to honor anybody who is willing to sacrifice pieces of themselves and pour them into the lives of others.  Whether or not we have reproduced, raised a child or not – these are irrelevant questions.  Have we embraced the choices we make in life and then given of ourselves to family, friends, colleagues and strangers in order to build them up and help them grow?  Have we dropped our own pebbles into a placid lake – knowing the ringlets of ripples we create will reach ever outward – into years well beyond our time – touching other lives with our influence, wisdom and love?  To that task, let us set ourselves.

I wish you all a very, very happy………. Sunday.

Message 55, “Redemption Tales: Living as Easter People”, 4-24-11

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

Woody Allen, the famous comedian and filmmaker, once said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work and my reputation.  I want to achieve immortality by simply not dying!” And his plaintive hope, I think, is why many people celebrate the Easter holiday.  We are told that Jesus died on the cross, was buried for three days and then came back to life – he was resurrected – in order to prove the power of God to defeat the ultimate obstacle we all face in life……its end.  Many Christians assert that while the Cross is a great symbol of their faith, without the empty tomb, their religion would be irrelevant.  The promise of an eternal afterlife would be false.

On Easter Sunday of all days, I do not want to argue the merits of such claims – whether or not Jesus’ empty tomb was a historical reality or not.  Nor will I discuss whether or not there is a Heaven that awaits us.  Indeed, we will all one day learn the answer to that question.  What I assert, is that such discussions are themselves irrelevant to Easter or any other day.  Easter is ultimately about life and it does us no good to think about tombs or death.  We each have before us many, many days ahead to consider the here and now, this world and our very lives.  What will we make of today?  How will we learn, grow and change in order to create a better future for ourselves and the world around us?   How can we live as an Easter people?

In the song we just sang, are the words:… in our time there is infinity and in our lives, there is eternity.  As incongruous as those words are, however, lies what I believe is the Easter message and what Jesus himself taught.  In his first words on the public scene, Jesus declared that the kingdom of God is here!  The possibilities of justice, peace, gentleness, humility, generosity, tolerance and equality – the very ethics of the Divine One – are available right now, right here, in each of us.  In our time right now is the infinite possibility to create heaven on earth.

And that is how Jesus lived his life – to defeat the powers of death and destruction that practiced racism, hatred, violence, intolerance, hypocrisy and greed.  As a person, Jesus reached out to the marginalized members of society – to women, to children, to the homeless, the poor, the sick, the depressed, the lame, the lepers and those considered on the fringe.  He taught ethics of compassion, of gentleness, of kind words, of patience, of generosity and of peace.  His call to his followers and to us was to help him usher in the kingdom of God now – to resurrect and change ourselves for the better so that we can then, in turn, bring about a more just and peaceful world.

In my mind, there are two Easters we could potentially celebrate today.  One is the Easter of dogmatic certainty and absolute belief.  We may, in this instance, believe in the man-made Easter of religion which asserts that this day celebrates the historical reality of Jesus’ literal resurrection from the dead.  On this day nearly two-thousand years ago, we can assert that he became the Christ – the One in whom we must believe, in order to obtain immortality.

Or, there is a second Easter which I believe reflects that which the man Jesus actually taught.  This is the Easter of change, of growth, and of re-birth.  This is the Easter that asserts change and resurrection are what life is all about.  Are we willing to alter the way we think, act, or speak for the better?  Are we willing to be more kind, generous, humble and compassionate?  Can we dig into our souls and open up the dark and cobweb filled tombs of our minds and our hearts – to new life and a new outlook?  Abraham Lincoln once said that he did not think much of a person who was not wiser today than he or she was yesterday.  Leo Tolstoy, the Russian author, said on the subject, “Everyone thinks of changing the world but no one thinks of changing himself or herself.”

To be an Easter person involves, I believe, a willingness to constantly grow for the better.  How might I learn to be more tolerant of others?  How might I understand how I hold onto subtle but very real forms of racism, sexism, or homophobia?  How can I change the way I act and speak in order to be more gentle and loving toward family, friends and strangers?  How can I embrace life itself to find simple joys and pleasures – to alter the way I think so that I am not depressed, negative or frustrated?  I want to become an Easter person – not perfect by any means – but one who is evolving and who is open to personal resurrection.

I once heard a story about a woman named Mable who lived in a nursing home.  She was bent over and confined to a wheelchair   Due to a debilitating stroke, she could not speak, she was partially paralyzed and one side of her mouth hung open such that she constantly drooled.  One day a therapist decided to see if Mable was aware of the world around her and could understand what others said to her.  The therapist patiently explained to Mable how she could point with one finger to letters on an alphabet board and thus spell out words in order to communicate.  And then the therapist asked her how she was feeling.  Very slowly, Mable pointed to a long series of letters on the board which finally spelled out, “I am alive.  There are people who care about me.  My children visit me often.  Life is beautiful!”

Who among us does not hope to evolve to the point where we truly live out the Easter ethic of joy and happiness with life itself?

As I have said in here before, Jesus called us to live by one very simple rule – to speak, act and treat our neighbors – our fellow human beings – as we too wish to be treated.  And if that is an ethic upon which all morality rests – since a variation of the Golden Rule is found in nearly all of the world religions – than it is incumbent upon us to find ways to live that out.  We must walk our talk.  And to do so, we must constantly and closely examine our inner selves to find ways to improve.

Marianne Williamson, a well-known spiritual commentator, wrote in one of her books, “Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.” For me, this is another lesson and the meaning of Easter.  It is not to celebrate the notion that death has been conquered and that we will live forever.  I believe Easter is about the present lives and a celebration of our work to resurrect ourselves, our families, our communities and our world.  We seek to redeem them, as I have discussed the past two weeks, in order to turn something bad into something good.  Let my anger be turned to gentleness.  Let my greed be turned to generosity.  Let my compassion help build a more just world.

Before I conclude my message this morning, please stand together, as you are able, to sing with me a traditional Easter hymn, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”  In doing so, I hope we will consider the words as personally relevant to us right now – how will the ethics and teachings of Jesus and of the Golden Rule be risen today in our hearts and minds?  Let us sing together…

My dear and beloved friends, Easter as a holiday is about hope for an unknown future.  It is about embracing life now and the potential within us to be ever-resurrected.  In the bulb there is a flower waiting to burst forth.  In the tomb of our souls, there is a new and even more beautiful person waiting to be born – to love in new ways, to give even more generously, to act and speak with even greater compassion.  In order to redeem this holiday – to resurrect it into something greater than its mere focus on a defeat of death – let us resolve to make it about an end to what is dead inside of us.  Might I challenge each one of us – and I am at the head of that line – to resurrect one part of us in the hours, days and weeks ahead?  Can we take one important area of our lives and see it from an opposite perspective?  If we are liberal in our politics, might we consider our world from a conservative’s viewpoint.  And if we are conservative, can we do likewise?  If we are a person of strong faith, can we think as an Atheist, for just a while?  And as an Atheist, can we consider the beliefs of those who honor the Bible, the Torah or the Quran?  If we have angry thoughts towards someone else, can we think loving thoughts of that person?  If we are depressed, might we seek positive and joyous ways of thinking?  If we believe in a certain way of life, lifestyle, or we eat certain foods, can we undertake a serious effort to see life and how we act from the opposite point of view?  Will we, right now, promise to ourselves to be open to resurrection in how we think, act, talk and believe?  I do not ask for change simply to prove we can.  I encourage change for the sake of empathy towards others, for understanding of different thoughts and opinions and for personal growth.  If I seriously undertake such an effort, will I become a strong conservative, a vegan or a perfectly loving individual?  Perhaps not.  But perhaps I might.  What I seek for myself and for all of us on this Easter is to embrace the power of its meaning.  Let us be open to change.  Let us accept the challenge of growth and learning.  May we – each day of our lives – seek personal resurrection.  And may we do so not merely to be better people but so that we can go out and impact our world for the better.  More love, more justice, more kindness, more humility. More resurrection of our hearts and minds.  In doing these things, we will truly be an Easter people!

Message 54, “Redemption Tales: Passover and How We Honor Our Past”, 4-17-11

Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

Service-Program, 04-17-11

In a hushed South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing in 1996, a Black mother tearfully spoke of her son.  She recounted her son’s birth, his success in school and his growing bitterness, as he grew into a teenager, of the apartheid regime.  She feared for him because of his seething anger.  One night her front door was knocked down, white security police rushed inside and took away her son.  A few days later she was summoned to claim her son’s body.  She recounted finding him so bruised, bloodied and riddled with 19 bullets that she could barely recognize him.  Her memories overwhelmed her and most on the panel and those in the audience wept quietly.  “I do not know if I can forgive,” she said.  “I must know who did this to my son.  When I see the face of the one who killed him, and he tells me why, then perhaps I can forgive.”

A week later, an ex security police officer, appearing before the Commission, read from a prepared text, “We blindfolded them and took them to a stone quarry outside the town. We hung Subject Number 1 upside down from a tree branch and lit a fire under him. When his hair burned he screamed a lot, then told us everything. The others also confessed. After that, we shot them. Our report said they had resisted arrest.”   The families of the victims were sitting only a few feet away.  They finally heard what had happened to their sons and brothers.  The truth had been told.

I hesitate opening a spring holiday message with such a disturbing story.  What I hope it reveals, however, is the power of telling, understanding and ultimately redeeming the past.  The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, working from 1996 to 1998 has been criticized for its emphasis on truth finding, confession, amnesty and reconciliation as opposed to punishment and determining guilt.  But it has also been highly praised because, unlike the Nuremburg Trials at the end of World War Two, this commission did not seek retribution as much as restoration and reconciliation.  Echoing the words of Jesus, it lived out the idea that the truth will set one free.  In South Africa, both victims and victimizers were, in their own ways, liberated from the shackles of their past.  In return for confession and truth telling of their past crimes, perpetrators were granted amnesty from criminal conviction.  What had been a horrible episode in human history became something greater than mere evil.  It was transformed and redeemed precisely because it was brought into the light and not buried as something shameful and unworthy of discussion.

I believe that we cannot learn from our past if we do not seek its reality and find a way to memorialize it so that it will not be forgotten.  The South African Commission produced a five volume report that detailed all that it had learned – much of it confessed and previously unknown – so that the reality of apartheid can never be denied and will be studied far into the future.  Robert Penn Warren, a noted American poet, once said that “The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.” And Ken Burns, the famous documentary film maker, added, “History really isn’t about the past and settling old scores.  It is about defining the present and who we are.”

And so, as we sit here on the eve of Passover which begins for Jewish people tomorrow evening, I hope to think about how we might apply the meaning of that holiday into our own lives.  Ultimately, Passover or Pesach, as it is known in Hebrew, is about redemption and honoring one’s individual and communal past through remembering and re-enacting.  It is about looking at the past as a way to learn, unite, teach and offer hope for the future.  Each of us have memories of our own past – some good and some full of pain.  We also carry legacies from our ancestors and our communities that are known to us only through stories or the history book.  Each of these memories have value, they are important, and they should be re-told.

And that is the essential lesson of the Passover holiday.  Jews around the world celebrate their common heritage.  But the celebration speaks a louder spiritual truth, I believe, of the importance of remembering and honoring the past in order to transform it into useful memories for our present and future.   If we cannot, in some fashion, acknowledge and understand who we are and where we come from – as well as the good and bad in our past – we will remain wayward and undefined souls with no direction.  For Jews the world over, Passover defines who they are as a people, both collectively and individually.

The holiday is also a time for coming together.  In many places, Jews celebrate the holiday in large settings with hundreds of others.  On this one occasion, they set aside their differences to unite in a time of remembrance.  For today, for this one moment in time, let us also put aside our differences and live out the ideals of Passover.  I hope we will meditate on such ideas this morning as we participate in a partial Passover Seder and later join in a community meal of celebration.

The book of Exodus in the Bible says about Passover, “And this day shall be for you for a memorial, and you shall keep it as a feast; throughout your generations you shall keep it a feast forever.”  The holiday’s specific purpose is to remember and celebrate the past as a way to find hope for the future.  As many of you know, the Biblical myth or story of Exodus tells us that thousands of Jews were held as slaves in Egypt until Moses, chosen by God to be the Jewish leader, led them out of their bondage.

And Moses, by all accounts, was a diffident and insecure man.  He was adopted and raised within Pharaoh’s palace only to later discover his true Jewish heritage.  He fled the comforts of Cairo to be a sheep herder and then had a burning bush encounter with God.  He argued with the Divine One about his ability and worthiness to be a leader but he ultimately agreed and returned to confront Pharaoh in a series of events designed to showcase the power of Yahweh over a multitude of Egyptian deities.

The ten plagues visited upon Egypt by God, acting through Moses, were intended to convince both Egyptian and Jew that God is real and that he has the power to control nature.  The Nile is turned to blood, infestations of frogs and locusts are created, cattle die by the thousands, daylight is turned into night, skin infections spread and, finally, first born offspring of humans and livestock are condemned to death.  Once again, the power of the story about Ten Plagues is not in whether it is literal history or not, but in the lessons of the myth.  Humans, in their arrogance, assume they are all powerful.  We learn, instead, that nature and its forces are far more capable.

With the tenth plague that Moses brought upon Egypt, that all first born males should die, Pharaoh was finally convinced and allowed the Jews to flee.  To save their own firstborn males, however, God offered Jews a way out – they could smear their doorposts with the blood of a lamb thus signifying to the angel of death that such households should be spared.  The angel should pass over such homes.

The Jews flee from Cairo but are eventually chased by an angry Pharaoh and his armies.  Moses parts the Red Sea, allowing Jews to literally walk through the water.  Once the Jews are safely across the sea, its waters pour down upon Pharaoh and his armies, drowning and defeating them.  God showed his power, saved his faithful followers and put them on a course to return them to Palestine – the land of milk and honey.

In a commentary on human nature, the Jews began to grumble about their journey across a hot desert, the simple food they were given and their longing for the comforts of Egypt.  In ultimate defiance to God, they defied his rules – the Ten Commandments – and openly worshipped a golden calf statue – a symbol of greed, lust and non-belief.  In his anger, God condemned them to wander in the desert for forty years until all of those currently alive were dead – such that only their children would enter the Promised Land.

For Orthodox Jews, who believe in the literal history of Passover, and for Reformed Jews, who see the story as allegory and myth, the importance of the holiday is its message of redemption and remembrance.  From the pain of slavery came deliverance and redemption into a new land.  And Jews use the holiday to remember many of their past hardships – ancient slavery, their defeat by the Romans, widespread discrimination against them during the Middle Ages, the years of holocaust when six million of their number were killed and recent years of warfare, terrorism and isolation.  From each episode, they also acknowledge the good that resulted.

The holiday celebrated each year culminates in a meal of remembrance and celebration.  The Seder meal begins with each participant raising the first of four cups of wine and repeating the Exodus promise of God – that He will deliver them from their slavery.  For Jews and for us, such is not just a religious promise.  It is, as we discussed last Sunday, a promise that I believe we can all trust – that the collective human spirit works to turn bad into good.  Over the long term, evil does not prevail.  I hope you will join me now, as we re-enact a Passover Seder this morning.  (Pour wine) Let us raise our first cup of wine with a toast to the ideal that in each of us is goodness, that we are to work to create a better world and that the arc of human progress is, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, a long one, but it bends towards justice and goodness.  To that promise, let us raise a toast!

Throughout a Seder meal, the Passover story is told and reinterpreted to bring meaning and value to the present.  After the first cup, participants are reminded of the ancient enslavement and of other past trials.  At this time, matza bread is passed to each person – symbolizing the unleavened bread Jews were forced to make at the first Passover.  They had no time to allow the bread to rise.  It is eaten with a bitter herb, as a symbol of past hardships.  For us, let us too eat matza with a bit of horseradish to memorialize times in our own pasts when we have faced adversity – illness, loss, discrimination, depression, hatred.  We have each dealt with such stings in our lives.  (Pass matza and horseradish) Let us eat the bitter herb in remembrance of that time and in empathy for one another and our past hurts.

And with that, let us also drink the second cup of Passover promise that we are never alone in our pain.   We have families, friends and the people of this congregation who will stand with us in time of trial.  Let us make a toast to that promise as much as we also pledge to be a source of comfort to others.  (Drink second “cup” of wine)

The Passover meal continues with further telling of the story.  At the culmination of the myth, when the angel of death passed over Jewish homes but descended on those of the Egyptians, it is told that wailing and crying was heard throughout the land.  To remember their own tears as well as to empathize with the pain of others, a vegetable, dipped in salt or saltwater, is eaten.   Karpas as it is known in Hebrew, symbolizes tears of sorrow and empathy.  Jews recall the tears of Egyptian parents discovering the death of a child, the tears of all who have been oppressed and the tears of those who mourn the loss of loved ones.   Let us eat a bit of parsley dipped in salt and let this be a symbol of our tears and our love for those from our past we hold dear and for those in our midst who suffer and cry.  They are not forgotten.  They are a part of who we are.  (Eat parsley dipped in salt)

And in this moment, let us also drink a third cup Passover toast to loved ones we remember.  (Drink “third” cup of wine) In doing so, we fulfill the promise that they are eternally redeemed – from sorrow to joy – in our memories of them and the happiness they still bring.  They are not lost to us.

Finally, as the retelling of the Passover story during a Seder meal concludes, participants are reminded of its happy ending.  The ancient Jews were saved, they were delivered out of bondage and they were brought to a land of promise that flowed with milk and honey.  At this point in the meal, more matza is passed around along with charoset – a sweet mixture of apples, nuts and honey – to symbolize celebration and joy.  Jews remember their collective happiness at the founding of the nation of Israel as well as individual joys found in marriages, births, anniversaries and other momentous life events.  Out of pain comes healing.  Out of darkness comes light.  In this symbolic recreation of redemption, Jews and non-Jews embrace the spiritual truth of good in our world – that there is love in the human heart, that life is not uniformly full of hurt, that in community we find support and caring for one another, that collectively humans work for social justice and a better creation.   As they eat the matza and sweet apple mixture and drink the fourth cup of wine – and let us follow suit – Jews proclaim L’chaim! to each other.  L’chaim! We proclaim to one another.  To Life!  To Health!  To Joy!  (Eat the matza and apple mix and drink “fourth” cup)

I believe, my friends, that in order to be content and happy in our lives, we must both understand and redeem our past.  Both collectively and individually, there is great value in learning about and honoring the good and the bad events and people in our histories.  By remembering the past, we come together, we learn from each other, we preserve our history by retelling it, we avoid repeating past mistakes by learning from them, we establish a common identity and we find ways to turn bad into good.  We act as little gods to redeem our world.

Ultimately, as the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission proved – and as the documentarian Ken Burns pointed out – by understanding and remembering our past we learn about ourselves.  What legacies do we carry with us that determine how we act?  What evil lurks in the hearts of all people such that we can learn how to be better?  What memories do each of us have – good and bad – such that they help us understand and celebrate who we are?  Passover is a beautiful holiday not just for its religious meaning but for its wonderfully humanist perspective.  It acknowledges the hurt, pain and evil that exists in our world and in ourselves but it celebrates the hope that such things are not permanent.  Love, family, community, charity, kindness, generosity and hope are so much stronger.

As we sit here this morning and as we will soon share a meal together, we present a wonderful image of tolerance and love.  While we are not perfect, this is not a false image.  With a Passover mindset, many of us are here because we find goodness and redemption here.  We find a place to feel whole, a place to be true to ourselves and a place to imperfectly work out our vision of a better and more just world.  That is why spiritual communities exist – to heal and empower ourselves to be better people – so that we can then serve others.  This is not a holy huddle, the “frozen chosen” or a museum of self-righteous saints.  This is a hospital for flawed but deeply lovable souls.  And I am one of the patients most in need.  We invoke and remember our past – much as is done during Passover – in order to learn, grow and heal.

Let us be a Passover people – those who come together!  Together!  Together! – to remember and redeem our past, to honor it and to collectively work for and hope for a brighter future.

Message 52, Cinematic Spirituality, 127 Hours and Unleashing Our Hidden Strengths, 3-20-11

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

(Please see the end of this message for a transcript from a member of the Gathering, given in the form of an interview after the message was delivered.)

Many of us know the story of the gay rugby player, a determined flight attendant and a traveling salesman father of two who came together to thwart the efforts of terrorists to crash a plane into our nation’s capitol.  After the plane’s pilot had been brutally killed, these people somehow found the ability to fight back and confront knife wielding terrorists.  They were not going to die without a fight.  Or, we know the story of a runaway slave who travelled hundreds of miles by herself, in the dead of winter, crossing rivers and scaling mountains, all to reach freedom.  She then turned back in order to guide other escaping slaves on the same route.  This woman tapped into some inner power to determine her own destiny.  Or, we might know the story of a Canadian sixteen year old girl named Megan McNeil, diagnosed with a rare from of cancer when she was a child, who has fought against her disease for all her life.  She wrote a best-selling song that raised millions for childhood cancer research.  Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave of whom I just spoke, once said, “Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

What power and ability was within each of these people enabling them to confront such terrible obstacles?  What miracle of strength did they find inside to fight, to persevere and ultimately to conquer life itself?  In each of us, I believe, lies hidden unlocked strengths that enable us to face the challenges of life.  Such unleashed strengths empower us to survive and live in ways that grow and stretch us.  We are able to engage life as active participants – captains of our own ships – instead of as bystanders who simply endure.  We do not sit in heaven’s waiting room biding time until death.  We build a form of heaven here and now – for ourselves and for others.  This is not success as the world defines it in terms of money, power or health.  It is, indeed, success of the spirit and of that inner resolve to live with joy, fulfillment, empathy and positive thinking.

As we continue our examination of current films which might speak to us on a spiritual level, today we will examine the film “127 Hours”.   In the film, we watch the struggle to survive of someone who not only came to terms with his own successes and failures in life, but who reached deep within himself to find those inner qualities of calm, determination, gratitude, and joy.

One of the title slides in the movie, as we just saw, presents the simple aphorism: “There is no force stronger in the universe than the will to live.” And, if you will indulge me, I add to that my own belief that our desire in life is not just to exist but to thrive! Deep within our inner being is a yearning to love and be loved.  There is a hope for the future, a gratitude for all that we have been given, and an ability to enjoy simple pleasures like good food, intimacy with another, and recreation.  There is also, most importantly, a desire for peace and a powerful voice that tells us we are powerful, capable and intelligent.  Each of those hidden qualities are within us.  Our task, as we face the inevitable challenges, trials and setbacks in life, is to discover and then unleash those hidden strengths.

The most common reaction to what the main character does in the film “127 Hours” is, according to the director Danny Boyle, the statement, “I could never do that!” And his immediate response to people is, “Of course you could.  We all can.” I don’t think I will spoil the movie, should any of you choose to see it, by telling you that it depicts the true story of a young man who finds himself alone, stranded in the middle of nowhere and with his arm smashed and pinned underneath a large boulder.  After 127 hours of life examination and introspection, he summons that inner will to survive and he amputates his own arm with a dull knife.  He then repels down cliffs – using only one arm – and hikes for many miles until he is rescued.  It is a true story – one that could have ended tragically but which is uplifting not just because the young man survived, but because he found the keys to his inner core.   He survived this extreme difficulty and found himself.  With only one arm, he has now climbed 55 of the tallest mountains in North America, gotten married, fathered a child, written a book and established himself as a motivational speaker.

What I want most in life is to live not just for the gusto but with emotional contentment that I can only find inside of me.  And such strength will empower me to overcome the difficulties that I know await me.  Too often, I think my external circumstances are what will make me happy and what will get me through hardships – where I live, the friends I have, the events in my life.  I am slowly but surely coming to understand such is not the case.  Happiness and strength are found not outside of me nor can they be given to me.   I can only find them within.

People who have lived through a significant challenge say that to survive life, and to unlock our hidden strengths, we must search for those emotional and psychological abilities I believe we all have – what I call our three “P’s”.  We each have within us an inner reservoir of peace.  We each have the ability to see life with a positive attitude.  And we each are able to be persistent in finding the means to survival and happiness.  Three P’s:  peace, positive attitude and persistence are the hidden strengths within us.

One of the benefits of the Bible is its many stories and examples of those who do find peace in the midst of trial.  While Jesus is depicted as the perfect example of one who faced death with strength and calm, Paul manifested his own abilities to be at peace.  He says at one point, writing to the Philippian church while he was imprisoned, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” Paul offers himself as a model to other Christians who faced persecution because of their beliefs – in his life he was repeatedly beaten and imprisoned for his efforts to spread the news of Jesus to a Roman world.  He was shipwrecked and near death during one of his trips.  He faced down an angry mob furious at him for proselytizing in the midst of Jewish Jerusalem.  He was finally sentenced to die – supposedly by beheading – for his beliefs and efforts.  And yet, he found himself able to be content – to be at peace – in any and all of those situations.

A calm mind and peaceful demeanor are essential to life happiness and to surviving difficulties or tragedies.  Aron Ralston, the young man depicted in the movie “127 Hours”, did so.  He found himself trapped and yet he did not panic.  He refused to allow himself to become unhinged by his circumstances.  I am in awe of people like him who are at complete peace in the midst of trouble.

Last Sunday, with only ten minutes to go before services were to begin, I was dealing with a computer issue.  There would be no words to our songs if I did not get it fixed.  Bob Freer came up to me as I worked and asked me a question.  I was flustered and frustrated and so, instead of answering him calmly, I snapped my response to him instead of using the kind of voice I should use.  If I can’t peacefully deal with something relatively inconsequential, how will I handle a life or death crisis?

Friends of mine repeatedly tell me to take a deep breath and to relax when I am distressed.  And such techniques are, indeed, helpful and they are recommended by many.  At times of even greater peril, we are encouraged to meditate by focusing solely on our breathing – the in and out rhythmic pattern of slow breath.

Others tell us to think of things for which we are grateful, thus encouraging a sense of joy, gratitude and contentment – like Paul found.  Lurking deep within us is this calm and tranquil pool of cool water that centers us – if we seek it.  I know we each have it.  It is so hard for me, though, to think joyfully and peacefully in times of crisis.  When my world seemed to be falling apart several years ago after I came out, as others attacked me in pretty vicious ways, I was in such acute distress – I could not sleep, I lost a lot of weight, I worried constantly.  But, I did survive.  I did get through it.  I eventually found a way to actually thrive.  But I wish I had survived with more peace in my heart.  In times of real crisis, remaining calm might be the difference between survival and death.  Such is one lesson from the movie “127 Hours.”  Even more, however, it is a lesson for life and for our genuine happiness.  Peace is truly inside of us!  We must simply find it and set it loose.

Shortly after Aron Ralston becomes trapped, he sets out to try and free himself.  First, he takes an inventory of what he carried in his backpack.  As an engineer, he then contrived an elaborate system to try and dislodge the boulder.  Throughout his 5 day experience, he used a video recorder to keep his mind active, to record thoughts and things he wanted to say to family and friends, and to delve deeply into his own past and his own failures.  All of these actions were, I believe, part of my second P action plan – he consciously did the work to maintain a positive attitude.  This was not an unrealistic view of his situation but a rational understanding of it combined with a future focused determination to find a solution.  Yes, he got angry.  He even contemplated his own death.  But he never gave up.

In the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, which many of you may remember occurred near here in 1977 and led to 165 deaths, many of those who survived did so because they simply acted.  Indeed, while some of the deceased were found near locked fire exits, many others of those who tragically perished were found still sitting at their tables waiting for rescue.  Those who lived had not done anything more profound than simply acting.  A great number heeded the call of one bus boy who pointed to an open exit and implored them to get up and follow him.  As Winston Churchill once said, “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.”

While it might be easy to ask how this shows a positive attitude, I believe it is evidence of a compelling urge to survive.  And such is reflected in the lives of those who are truly thriving and happy in life.  They dig within themselves to find the impulse to do something – to act in a way that shows hope for the future, to learn a new task, to undertake a hobby, to volunteer, to serve, to do what is necessary to, as I said earlier, build heaven here and now instead of waiting for it to miraculously appear.  To use the Biblical Paul once again as an example, at one point finding himself in prison, he joins with a friend to loudly sing joyful songs of praise to God.  He refused to succumb to the darkness of his situation and he called upon his faith to find solace and hope.  Once again, experts encourage the same – whatever we have faith in: ourselves, God, other people, the moral imagination at work in the world, we must use that faith to maintain a positive attitude – during our trials and in our very lives.

The third P in unleashing our inner strength is to show persistence.  And this, for me, involves a determination to use our minds to continuously think about life solutions.  Instead of allowing ourselves to lapse into what I call “pity parties” – affairs to which only you are invited and that echo the words of the famous song “it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to!” – we have to stay focused on the task at hand.  If it is a life and death crisis, we must quickly move into solution mode – find shelter, find food, find water, seek help.  If it is a crisis of health, we might learn all that we can about the illness and various treatments – or we might pursue mental exercises that will lead to fulfillment, peace and joy.

Whereas many animals have instinctive abilities to react with fight or flight in times of danger, as humans we have been given the ability to think and to rationally weigh our options.  Those who survive critical situations like Aron Ralston’s – and those who find inner strength to live in true joy – do so by engaging their brains.  This is not thinking about how bad the crisis is, or how bad life is, it is about reading, learning, engaging, and analyzing what can be done to survive or to make life better.

Even further, I believe we must also use persistence in self-examination.  Aron Ralston does this with brutal honesty.  And we must engage in that exercise as well.  This undertaking is not to beat ourselves up in some masochistic effort at self-defeat.  It is to use our minds to understand how we have failed, how we can learn from such failure and what can we do that is different such that success might follow.  Self-examination is never easy for it involves looking at ourselves in ways we do not like – to see ourselves in all of our naked ugliness, but then to conclude how we can be better.  Persistence in thinking rationally, in self-examination and in finding useful solutions to a dilemma, or to life, is a critical third P.

Like the subject for last week – overcoming fear, this week’s topic of unleashing our hidden strengths is one that I must re-learn over and over again.  The potential and the secret to a fulfilled, meaningful and happy life are in here – in my heart and my soul.  I will not get them from anyone or anything outside of me.    The power to survive and the ability to thrive are in my possession.  And they are in yours too.

There is such beauty and such strength in this very room.  As the Pastor here, I am so fortunate to know some of your life struggles but also each of your many strengths.  I am in awe of each of you.  I am in awe of the inner reserves found in the human spirit – to survive and to really live life with peace and contentment.  May we remember those internal reserves of peace, positive thinking and persistence.  In you, in me, in all of us, lies the strength to move mountains and, indeed, the strength to build a glorious heaven right here and right now….

Statement by a Gathering member – made in an interview after the above message:

I was born and raised in the Catholic church.  My father was in the Army and we moved every 2-3 years.  I have 2 sisters and a brother, of which I am the youngest.

At age 11, we were living in Raleigh, N.C.  There I was molested by the neighborhood bully.  I wouldn’t convey that story until 12 years later.

At age 12, we moved to Ft. Knox, Ky, and I soon discovered that I was attracted to men.  From my interpretation of the bible, I was doomed and on my way to hell.

Although I hadn’t experienced much, if any racism, I knew that there were some people in the world who hated me for the simple fact that I was black.  Now, I knew that even more people would hate me, because I was queer.  Yes, I had heard the jokes and the ridicule of effeminate men.  It seemed as if no one defended them.  So, I became devastated.  I wanted to be loved, not hated.  So now, I knew that I must live a lie because if anyone found out about me, I would just die.

I was pretty close to my siblings, but I couldn’t share this secret with them.  I often wonder why no one picked up on my femininity in my early years.  My brother would often come home with a bloody nose, bruises, fractured or broken bones, all from a day of fun.  Fun?  I didn’t think so.  I thought that fun was playing house or school with my sisters.  Dressing up in my mother’s old clothes, if dear ol’ dad wasn’t around.  I had mastered jumping rope and jacks.  Anything that my sisters did, I could do as well or better.  Those were good and fun times.

l was once a fairly popular little boy.  Now, instead of playing with my sisters or kids in the neighborhood, I relied on my HotWheels  and Matchbox car collections to keep me happy and content.  Somehow, I found inner peace and I learned to enjoy James.  I had to like me, the odds were not too many other people would.

Bullying:

At age 13, we moved to Cincinnati.  I was still in the closet as far as I knew, but I was bullied and harassed just the same.  My classmates found fault with y voice, my eyeglasses, my clothes, and even when my mother gave me a bad haircut, it gave them great pleasure.  There were so many days when I dreaded going to school.  I didn’t have any friends outside of school, so I kind of buried my nose in my school books.  I was elated when I made the ‘B’ honor roll.

In 1977 I was hired by Cinti. Bell as a directory assistance operator.  Then I became a local and long distance operator.  I loved those jobs.  In 1980, I joined the Air Force.  Over the next four years I walked very gently over eggs shells.  When I got out of the AF my job at Cinti. Bell had transferred to AT&T.

In 1987, I transferred to Jax. Fl.  I met a young man named Greg.  It was rumored that he was HIV+.  By 1992, he had developed full blown AIDS.  Family and friends had abandoned him.  I would often take Greg to the store or doctor’s office,  He had become skeletal thin and ghostly looking.  we would get all types of stares.  I would sometimes get sad just looking at him.  I promised myself that if I ever contracted that disease that I would commit suicide.  Greg passed later that year in my home.  Many years, I was diagnosed as being HIV+.  Suicidal thoughts were lingering but not at the rate that I thought that they would be.  I want to live more than I wanted to die.  I used to tell people that I was a lover, not a fighter.  Not that I was really much of either.  But if necessary, I would fight if I had to.

Sources of inner strength that have allowed me to overcome my life challenges:

Faith and prayer:

I know that some people say that God doesn’t answer their prayers.  I believe that he does.  It’s my belief that he sometimes answers no, or not yet.  I think that some people want so badly to hear yes, that they don’t hear him when he denies their requests.

In Jan 2008, I was diagnosed with anal cancer, which is in remission right now.  One of the side effects of the radiation: weakened muscles.  It appears that the muscles weaken worse in the evening hours.  That’s one of the reasons that I’m not able to join you all for book clubs and movie nights.  Depends, well they’re not always dependable.

There has been an occasion when I would feel sorry for myself.  I would wonder what more can my poor little body endure.  a tear would well up in my eye, but it would never fall.  Then I would remember what a dear friend told me a long time ago.  She said that when people experience trauma in their lives and ask why me? the is why not you.  You are no  one except another of God’s children.  Should bad things happen to other people and never to you.

On being content:

I have an AF buddy who lives in a small town in S.C.  He doesn’t have a partner, nor do I.  He’s in great health, has a decent job, and he has a lot of friends.  He always tell me how unhappy he is.  He is always depressed.  I don’t understand.  If anyone should be depressed, it’s me and I’m not.  I have a saying: I’m happy to be alive…I’m alive to be happy.

I’m a simple person.  I watch a little television, talk on the telephone, surf the internet, ad watch old 1930-1950s movies when I can.  I sometimes play with my great-nieces and nephews.  I’m no longer addicted to alcohol nor drugs.  I’m very content with life.  Suicide no longer lives in my thoughts.

Message 51, “Cinematic Spirituality: The King’s Speech and Overcoming Our Fears”, 3-13-11

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

Service-Program, 03-13-11

A Pastor was once asked by his congregation to deliver an inspirational message on courage.  He thought about it a long while and, after much research and more reflection, he arrived at what he would say.  On the appointed Sunday, the congregation eagerly awaited the profound ideas he would speak.  He stood up and offered these words, “What is courage? — This is.”  And he promptly sat down without uttering another word!

In our search during March for spiritual insights from this year’s Best Picture nominated movies, I believe the film “The King’s Speech” offers some of the best.  Many critics have said the film is not so great in terms of its cinematic flourishes, its artistry or cinematography.  But, in my mind, the acting, the story and the restrained manner in which it was filmed all make it very, very good – certainly worthy of being Best Picture in 2010.

The movie is biographical and historical.  It traces the actual efforts of King George the Sixth to conquer a lifelong problem with stuttering and fear of public speaking.  The film depicts the cocooned life of royalty, the stiff-upper lip demands placed on British aristocracy and the historic crisis faced by Britain when its King abdicated the throne to marry a twice divorced American woman – all at a time when Germany and Adolf Hitler threatened the very existence of all Europe.

Bertie, as King George the Sixth was called, was crowned King after his brother gave up the throne and declared that he would pursue the woman he loved since, as King and head of the Church of England, he was unable to marry a divorced woman.

But Bertie was certainly no Knight in shining armor waiting in the wings to save the day.  He was the second son to a distant, demanding and demeaning father.  Born not to be heir to the throne but to live as a mere Prince, Bertie was raised not by his parents, whom he barely knew, but by harsh and unloving nannies.  He was essentially an abused child.  He was born with a knock kneed defect such that he wore leg braces into his teens – and thus the subject of cruel taunts.  Adding further insult, he was born left-handed and was forced by tutors to become right handed.  His father, King George the Fifth, famously stated: “My father was frightened of his mother, I was frightened of my father and I am damned well going to see that my children are frightened of me!”

Bertie stammered and stuttered from an early age.  His father railed at him to spit his words out, to act like a man and to be a proper royal.  In one infamous moment, Bertie was asked to give a speech opening London’s World Fair in 1926.  The speech was broadcast over the new media of radio.  His stutters, long pauses and a final inability to speak were painful to watch.   He was handicapped by sheer terror – of the public role forced upon him by his birth, his royal heritage and the demands of his an overly stern father.

And thus we have the basic set-up for the movie.  Bertie’s wife, concerned at her husband’s handicap and realizing he would be forced to speak even more as King, looked for experts to help.  None of them could.  She finally turned to Lionel Logue, a failed Shakespearean actor turned speech therapist and elocution teacher, who lacked any credentials as a therapist.  As a commoner and an Austrailian, Logue insisted that the Prince be treated in his shabby office, play by his unconventional rules of therapy and examine his past life of hurt and shame as the source of his fears and speech impediment.  Logue’s form of psychoanalysis and speech therapy worked.  Bertie improved – not fully conquering his stuttering but nevertheless facing his fears and slowly overcoming them with determination and Logue’s continued guidance.

In the climactic scene, King George the Sixth – Bertie, spoke to a frightened nation in need of their King’s reassuring words on the very day that England declared war on Germany.  He succeeded in a halting but effective manner.  His success helped to calm and rally Britain.  Indeed, the courage manifested in this speech was later shown by the King and his wife in the coming months when they refused to leave London while it was bombed by the German air force – killing thousands.  This shy, unassuming, stuttering King, stood as a symbol of the courageous English spirit at its darkest hour.

It is this theme, of overcoming fear, that I believe the movie speaks to us so eloquently.  All of us have had to struggle with fear in some form.  Indeed, as the famous author and playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “In this world there is only one universal passion: fear.” But how do we overcome our fears which are human responses to what we think and perceive will happen to us in the future?  As we all know, reaction to fear is hard wired into us as a self-protective mechanism – the fight or flight response induced by a massive flooding of adrenaline into our bloodstreams.  The brain, sensing danger, alerts the adrenal glands to excrete its hormone and thus stimulate the body to action – run away or stand and fight.

Experts tell us that it is in our perceptions and thoughts of a given situation that fears arise.  We see a snake, for instance, and our mind tells us that they are potentially dangerous, they could bite or wrap themselves around us, and thus we react with emotion and fear.  If it is in our perception of what might happen to us, then experts tell us that treatment comes with cognitive change – we must alter our thoughts and perceptions that created the fear.  And we must be on guard not to be tricked by our worrisome thoughts – they are like con artists fooling us into believing what we think will happen to us is literal truth.

Our fears, therefore, so often exert their influence over our lives – holding us back from our potential.  Fear of intimacy and love too often prevent us from deep and meaningful relationship.  As we discussed last month, fears of singleness and independence cause many to pursue unhealthy relationships or to cling dependently on another.  Indeed, general fears of life, of adequacy and of fulfillment lead some to addictions – drowning their fears in alcohol or drugs.  For others, fear of conflict, hurt and pain lead to closeted, frustrated and often empty lives.   Facing our fears is essential for peace, meaning and purpose.  As one who still battles the pressing weight of fear, it is not just courage I need but a clear mind and a soul that yearns to change.

Therapists thus encourage people to keep an open mind about fearful thoughts.  We have to be honest and examine them with objectivity.  For instance, “Ok.  I see a snake.  Now, is it likely that the snake will attack me?  If so, what if I slowly move away from it?  Is the snake even dangerous to me?  Such thoughts are essential for they lead a person away from an immediate fight or flight scenario.  On a more personal level, if I fear intimacy, how is it that a close relationship will change my life?  How likely is it the other person will hurt me?    What are the possibilities for real joy that come from love?  Do the benefits of a relationship outweigh the risks?  Cognitive change and calm analysis are essential but difficult to practice.  It takes time and effort to change the way we think especially with some of our most persistent fears.

Bertie, or the King, likely had to slowly alter his thinking about what might happen when he spoke.  Instead of fearing shame and humiliation – or the taunting words of his father and others – he might have gradually understood that most people are quietly rooting for a public speaker to succeed.

As Bertie found instances of success, he could have then thought about those past events and reassured himself that he was capable of speaking clearly and without humiliation.  Such memories are key in reassuring ourselves that fears of what might happen are frequently irrational.  Sensitizing ourselves to fearful situations – for instance spending time with harmless snakes – can lead us to understand that exaggerated emotions are wrong and irrational.  We will be OK.  We will be safe if we do not react without thinking.  As President Franklin Roosevelt famously stated to our nation in the depths of the 1930’s economic depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Interestingly, the Buddhist method of mind control and meditation offers a spiritual remedy to fear also found in western cognitive therapy.  As one habituates oneself to a fear – thinking about it and facing it head on – one learns to control and deal rationally with one’s emotional response.  This is mind control – consciously encouraging one’s own brain to slow down, relax, and think through a given situation in an honest manner.  And, of course, Buddhists also encourage a proactive approach to eliminating fear – by discarding worldly desires which lead to a fear of loss of the very things we desire.

Christian faith also offers some usefulness through cognitive change and mind control.  For those who have a strong faith in God and Jesus Christ, repeating to oneself that the Divine One is ultimately in control, can offer great peace.  This is best exemplified in Psalm 23, “Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.  Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Whatever our thoughts about faith, spiritual prayer, contemplation, and Scripture reading offer to many people genuine peace and freedom from fear.

And all of this leads me to my own life example of conquering fear.  As I watched the movie “The King’s Speech”, I could not help but see glimpses of my own life played out.  Indeed, I sometimes see my life as one long battle with fear – and thus withholding parts of myself.  With relationships, I too long feared seeking what was true for me.  In my work, I have often feared being assertive.  Many of my fears result from my own failures to act and to think rationally about myself and my worries.  But one overriding fear in my life rings true with what Bertie faced as well – fears of my father’s voice, his opinion and his disapproval.

Without wanting to unfairly disparage my dad, whom I love very much, he is a dominant figure in my life.  As a more sensitive and non-athletic young man, I was likely not the ideal son he would have liked.  My dad is an archetypical macho man.  He was very athletic in his youth – playing on the football and baseball teams and excelling at them.  I, however, was not born with high levels of eye-hand coordination.  I find throwing a ball or swinging a bat difficult.  I prefer sports like swimming and running.  I am also soft-spoken in contrast to my dad’s booming voice.  I prefer quiet discussion instead of verbal confrontation and I am, by nature, an introvert.

All these qualities were not taken well by my father.  Some of his comments to me as a young boy and teenager still echo in my mind: “Grow up!”  “Act like a man!”  “Don’t be a sissy!”  “Why do you throw a ball like a girl?”  And such comments from my father combine in my memory with taunts I heard at school  – words like “faggot”, “queer” and “sissy”.  Before I even knew I was gay, the collective gaydar of my father and other boys had essentially labeled me as such.

These youth experiences of mine led me to my own internal homophobia.  I was scared to death of being gay.  I hated even thinking that I might be gay.  I lived for over twenty years – from teenage years into my forties – deeply in the closet and panicked that I would be found out.  I was even so afraid of being gay that I tried with all my might not to be – I got married, fathered children and became overtly religious.  Fear of myself and of my truth, ended up hurting others as much it hurt me.

Coming out nearly seven years ago was my own act of shouting, as Bertie does in the movie, “I have a voice!” But that episode in my life was not easy nor without its own fears.  How would the world now treat a gay Doug Slagle?  How would my daughters – whom I love so very, very much – react?  What would my parents – and my father most of all – say?

My process of facing fears has never been easy.  They can be so debilitating.  Ultimately for me, I rationally concluded that the possible pain I feared could not be worse than life lived with worry and doubt.   The depression, loneliness and sense of emptiness that often haunted me because of my fears are now receding into a distant past.

As I came out, I understood some of my fears were irrational.  I would survive.  While some people abandoned me, others did not.  My daughters embraced me with love and support.  I found new friends and a new church all of whom affirmed me and helped me understand that being gay is not something to be feared but rather embraced and celebrated as another part of a diverse humanity.

My father still looms large in my life.  He is, at heart, a very good man who has done a lot of wonderful things in this world.  Over the last year and a half, he has accepted Ed and been extremely nice to him.  Just over a week ago, my parents concluded a two week stay with Ed and me – when they daily had to confront the fact that their son lives with another man.  They were gracious and kind.

But my dad can still make disparaging comments and he still finds it hard to accept me as a man in my own right.  As much as he attends the Gathering when he is in town, he sometimes cannot let go of himself and show interest in my messages.  Such slights often hurt but they are a part of who he is and how he too was raised.  My fears of him have diminished as I have altered how I think about him – to forgive him, to understand him, to realize I am ultimately in control of my life.  I do have a voice.  After so many years living in fear of myself, my father and what others might think of me, I am now a reasonably happy man.

And happiness, my friends, is what life is all about.  We are here to pursue it as much as we are here to provide it and assist others in finding it.  Happiness comes with personal fulfillment and freedom from want and freedom from fear.  So much suffering in our world comes as a result of fear – both from within our minds and as a result of outside forces.  And we must work to reduce the hurts and fears others face – fears of hunger, poverty, war and disease.  But how much human potential is locked away in any of us because of fear – to share love, to serve others, to work and live in truth?

My friends, Madame Curie once said, “Nothing in life is to be feared.  It is only to be understood.” Let us understand ourselves and our minds.  Let us examine with clear minds past hurts and traumas.  May we let go of fear and realize the life possibilities that lie so tantalizingly close.  It is often said that the fear of death diminishes the joy of life.  But our fears can be overcome through simple courage – courage to understand our fear filled emotions, courage to see them as potentially irrational, courage to embrace, to engage, to confront, and to be who we were created to be.  Such acts of bravery are never easy but they speak with power.  It is in the small acts of life that we are heroic – like overcoming a stutter, or coming out, or finding and giving away love.  The everyday hero is not free of fear – he or she has simply faced it with honesty.  May each of us shine brightly as beautiful, capable and wondrously created souls free of fear…

Message 50, “Cinema Spirituality: ‘Black Swan’ and the Battle of Good and Evil”, 3-6-11

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

Service-Program, 03-06-11

If you have been attending the Gathering over the past year – and not falling asleep during my messages – you will recall that we have looked to a number of sources to find spiritual insight.  I hope that reflects the fact that life itself is a spiritual concern and everything we do is important in terms of finding meaning or purpose.  We’ve found spiritual truths in poetry, nature, baseball, native-Americans and in comic book superheroes – to name a few.  About a year ago, we looked at popular movies to see if there were topics or themes in them from which we might learn.  And so I decided to mine that particular resource once again.  What cinematic verities in 2011 can we find that speak to us on a spiritual level?  I hope there are at least three – what we will look at in upcoming Sundays.  In my mind, movies are simply new ways to tell a story – part of a tradition thousands of years old.  We learn, laugh, think and cry in ways that teach us something about life, about ourselves and about creation.

This year I have picked three Academy Award nominated Best Picture films for our consideration.  Today I want to consider the film “Black Swan” and its story of the struggle a young ballerina fights within herself – between conforming to the virginal and allegedly good and moral ways of her youth and the evil or dark forces that seduce her to be more worldly.  Next Sunday, I will look at the film “The King’s Speech” and how a monarch, used to power, prestige and privilege, is nevertheless confronted with the common fears of us all – and how he must both face and overcome them.  Finally, in our third week, we will consider the movie “127 Hours” and the true story of a young man who undertakes the most horrific of actions to save his own life.  How does he unleash hidden powers and strengths within himself – and how might we learn from this movie and his story to call upon our own hidden abilities we might wish or need to unleash?

As we just saw from the trailer for “Black Swan”, the movie is a disturbing psychological exploration of a young woman’s descent into insanity.  As a rising ballerina, she is chosen to perform the role of a lifetime – to star in the classic “Swan Lake” but in way never done before.  She will play both the pure and virginal Odette or white Swan as well as the conniving black swan Odile.  This performance will be like no other rendition of “Swan Lake” for it will literally and symbolically focus on the ancient struggle of good and evil – only this time it will be played out within the life of one dancer.  It will force its audience to confront the reality of this struggle – good and evil – within themselves.   Interestingly, as a story within a story, this is the same theme of the movie.  How does the virginal Nina, who has finally achieved the role of a lifetime, deal with new temptations and seductions?  Which force will win inside her mind?  Will she remain pure and innocent – or will she succumb to the encouragement of her director and her understudy to be more worldly, sexually aggressive and passionate – and thus a better a dancer?

The main character in the movie “Black Swan” is, as I said, named Nina.  She is a technically brilliant and driven ballerina who nevertheless seems to lack something extra – a verve, or passion or worldliness that gives any great artist the ability to be real and approachable.  Nina lives within a cocoon of child-like innocence.  Her bedroom in her mother’s apartment is decorated in frilly pinks and adorned with dolls and stuffed animals.  Her mother is over protective and, while urging her daughter to be the dancer she never could be, still holds her back from achieving greatness.

The ballet director is a hard-driving choreographer modeled after the great Georges Ballanchine – a man who fed upon young and innocent ballerinas – and made them into stars.  This director chides Nina for her innocence and encourages her to sexually awaken.  He appoints as Nina’s understudy a dancer who is her opposite – a technically mediocre ballerina but who is worldly, seductive and overtly sexual.  She may not be technically good but she exudes an earthy sensuality so needed for the role of black swan.  Nina is threatened by her competition.  Can she overcome her virginal and innocent inclinations and give in to the temptations posed by the director and her understudy – to lose her virginity, to drink, party and flirt with young men?  Will she remain a symbolic Madonna – or become, to put it politely, a fallen woman?  Will she be able to believably dance the role of Odile – the character in Swan Lake who is evil incarnate – the Black Swan?

Some commentators have likened this movie to the age-old Biblical story of creation found in the book of Genesis.  In that story, which we all know so well, Adam and Eve are given free access to Eden – a type of heaven – in which existence is perfect.  Their only command is not to eat the fruit of a certain tree – the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  But Eve is tempted by the serpent – by Satan himself – to eat the fruit and to be like god.  Why should the Divine One alone have access to all truth?  Which should Eve choose – goodness and obedience to god – or evil and seduction by the devil?  Such is the dilemma faced by Nina and the temptations of a Satan like ballet director.

Theologians across the centuries have debated the meaning and the ultimate impact of Adam and Eve’s fall.  Are their ancestors – tellingly first represented by the evil Cain – doomed to be born in sin?  Are we the inheritors of their evil ways?  Are we born with evil intention?  Or, to the contrary, did Adam and Eve make a choice and thus we, too, make the same choice over and over again?  When we commit some form of misdeed – a lie, an angry comment, a selfish attitude or a failure to help others – are we choosing evil over good or have we been born with such propensities hard wired within us?

Of further concern to all of us in this debate between good and evil, is which side ultimately wins?  Are we good people who simply commit mistakes because of our humanity?  In other words, are most people inherently good such that good can be said to eventually win in our world and in most of us?  Or, is our world so dark and so filled with people who hate, who do not care, who are selfish and unfeeling – that it might be said that evil is the ultimate winner?  Is the Bible correct when it declares, ““Who can understand the human heart? There is nothing else so deceitful.”  Is Christianity correct when it suggests that sinful humans can ONLY atone for deceitful hearts and evil actions through believing in the death and miraculous resurrection of Jesus?

How do we consider the idea of reward and punishment for being good or evil?  Why does it seem that so many who appear good suffer disease, disaster, and setbacks?   Why does evil so often appear to prevail?  Will eternity, in some form, sort this out?  Is there a heaven for the good and a hell for the evil?  Or, do those places even exist?  If they do not, what purpose is there in being good?

Finally, what constitutes our definition of what is good?  What is moral and right?  On the opposite side, what actions and things are evil and bad?  As many of us well know, elements in our culture consider me, a gay man, to be full of evil and sin.  I live an unnatural life contrary to the desires of god and other cultural norms of goodness.  Who is to say that my way is right and their opinion of me is wrong?  To boil all of this down to its core, is there some universal standard of goodness to which almost all humans agree?  Is there an ultimate source of Truth?

Each of these questions are addressed, in some form, by the movie Black Swan.  Ultimately, Nina gives in to her desires – she grows up and becomes a sexual being, she moves away from her mother and she acquires a passion that transforms her.  And it clearly influences her dancing.  In the climactic scene, Nina dances as Odile – the Black Swan – with such tenacity and exuberance that she literally inhabits the role of the evil temptress.  As we saw in the trailer, she even plucks a black feather from her skin.  In the movie director’s vision and opinion, it would seem, giving in to one’s darker desires offers reward.  Nina is fulfilled, awakened and dances like none before, once she embraces her more worldly desires.  Evil – if one classifies Nina’s actions as such – has its reward.  It has won.  Is this the message of the movie and what we are to learn – to embrace the dark side of ourselves and thus become more capable?  Within our dual selves – the light and dark sides of us – do we find genuine light when we embrace our darkness and stop repressing?

Indeed, according to Sigmund Freud and his theories on psychoanalysis, only through examining deeply repressed events in our lives can we come to terms with them.  In his view, repression of our so called darkest desires causes us to desire them even more and leads us to neurosis as in Nina’s case.  When we reveal them to our conscious minds, however, such temptations lose their power and we are better off.  Such a theory explains why those who engage in very strict diets often fail because they crave the foods they are denied – and thus often fail to stay on the diet.

As ground breaking as Freud was in his examination of our inner minds and what shapes them, he nevertheless assumed that what we repress is evil or dark.  In Freud’s view, homosexuality is a part of our darker selves.  My 44 year repression of it led to my discontent.  But my acceptance of it should have led to my freedom from its influence.  In Nina’s case, repression of her sexuality leads to her insanity but when she gives in to her desires, she is set free.  Implicit in Freud’s argument is that original sin exists.  Only those who are able to dig up their subconscious feelings of lust, envy, greed and hate can be freed from them.  As the Bible quotes Jesus, the truth will set one free.

But the very word “truth” leads us to an essential problem.  From what authority do the Bible, Quran, Buddha, Freud and others call certain human desires evil?  And what authority determines what is good?  Some of you might recall a message I gave last spring entitled, “What is Truth?”  You can still find it online at our website.  Are any religions the source of Truth?  Is there any universal Truth?  Is there any definition of good to which everyone can agree?

When Friedrich Nietzsche declared that “God is dead”, many assumed that he believed there is no universal standard of what is good.  It is assumed that he believed goodness is defined by individuals according to one’s particular point of view.  This led to the concept of a “superman” – a human so enlightened that he or she alone could determine for himself or herself what is right and what is wrong – what is good and what is evil.

But many people have overlooked Nietzsche’s definition of good and evil.  In his view, morality is that which is defined by prevailing cultures and religions.  Ethics, on the other hand, are human actions that are governed by a sense of the other.  Are one’s actions ethical because they take into account another person’s feelings?  This gets to the heart of my argument in my message “What is Truth?”  Good and evil are determined NOT by arbitrary standards – what is good for Christians may not be good for Muslims for instance.  Instead, one universal truth – one universal definition of what is good and evil – depends on how we treat other people.  Is an action life enriching or life debasing?  Is an action one that we would wish upon ourselves or one that we would logically avoid?  Under this standard of truth and definition of evil, murder is wrong because taking the life of another does profound injury and is not something we wish upon ourselves.  Our human sexuality, on the other hand, is something good if it does no harm to another and if it is life enhancing – an expression of affection for another human being.

Nina therefore is not repressing her dark side any more than she is supposedly acting with purity.  By living according to a standard of innocence, she complies with a cultural standard of what is good.  But that is morality.  When she grows up and embarks on her own sexual journey, she has not embraced something dark.  I do not believe she becomes a Black Swan.  Instead, she has enhanced her own life.  That is ethical and right in a way that I believe most humans might agree.  She has not hurt anyone and she has only helped herself.  What we might look to as a spiritual answer to the ancient dilemma is – as I asked earlier – do one’s actions promote life and happiness in others – or do they not?  Have I acted according to the Golden Rule or not?  This is not god telling us what to do.  It is our common humanity which informs us.  Hate tears downs.  Love heals.  Violence hurts.  Compassion uplifts.  Intolerance divides and separates.  Embracing diversity unites.

As many of you who are familiar with the Swan Lake story know, evil does not triumph at the end of that ballet.  But neither do the forces of good win.  Ultimately, the ballet concludes as a tragedy with the Prince and Odette dying in their battle against tyranny.  They throw themselves into the lake where they drown – thus preventing the possibility that evil shall win.  This too seems to be the message of Black Swan the movie.  Goodness is often sacrificed on a righteous altar.  But Black Swan the movie asks its viewers to view the battle between good and evil in more complex terms.  By accepting and then releasing the supposedly dark side of our dual natures, it says, we become whole human beings.  Our inner black and white swans are a part of us and it is unhealthy, according to this theory, to repress either one.

My assertion, and one we might all accept, is that it is NOT darkness that lurks within us.  The characterization of pieces of our minds as dark or evil is simply what culture, religion and society have created and imposed upon us.  Instead, I propose universal standards which focus on human decency towards one another.  For me, that is the ultimate source of goodness.  If I do not wish to be stolen from, I should not steal from others.  However, if I wish to express myself in ways that only impact me or which ultimately benefit others, this must certainly not be seen as evil.

My friends, good and evil do exist but we must use reason and universal standards to discern them.  As we come to terms with parts of ourselves that others tell us are evil, we should not succumb to religious or cultural morality.  We fight too many struggles in our lives to have to deal with standards of goodness that are unique only to certain populations.  For those around the world who are simply asking for the right of free speech, for those who ask for democracy and liberty, for those who yearn for equal rights, for those who suffer discrimination because of their sexuality, race or gender, their appeals are good.  The arc of human progress is, indeed, a long one but it bends towards goodness and justice.  From our very beginnings as a species, such truths are self-evidently good……………….do our actions enhance life or diminish it?  That is the question.