Author: Doug Slagle

Guest Speaker Joan Wyzenbeek,  “From Shame to Celebration”, 11-28-10

© Joan Wyzenbeek, the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

Service-Program-11-28-10

August, 1948    Newark Advocate

Newark, Ohio

Miss Joan Dixon has been sentenced to 1 year in Marysville Reformatory for carrying on relations with those of her own sex, one of which was Mrs. Maxine Northey.

I was born Joan Dixon in Newark, Ohio in 1930. There were many issues in my early life that brought me shame . . . My alcoholic father, poverty, our run-down house with the peeling paint. But the most devastating shameful event happened when I was 18.

At age 16, I had befriended a woman named Maxine. One day we were sitting on her bed and she leaned over and kissed me.  I didn’t know the words Lesbian or homosexual. All I knew was that it felt good and I was in love. I put a picture of Maxine on our family’s piano and I called her my sweetheart. By that summer in 1948 I was spending most of my time at Maxine’s.

I had a lecherous uncle, Henry, who also was attracted to Maxine, and he found that I was too much competition. He convinced my Mother that I was in great moral danger and that she needed to do something. Luckily my family was not in a financial position to have me committed to an institution – many gays and lesbians of that era were subjected to shock treatments. However, she did go to the local police and swear out a warrant for my arrest.

I knew there was something afoot, so I was trying to stay out of sight by walking in back alleys, but one day a police cruiser stopped and picked me up. I was taken to the county jail and there was a hearing before a judge. The charge was deliberate disobedience, and my sentence was to be served at Marysville Reformatory for women. When the police drove me to Marysville, though, we were turned away because I was 18 and deliberate disobedience was not an adult crime.

They decided to take me to the Delaware Juvenile Detention Center, but I was rejected there because I was no longer considered a juvenile. The local authorities didn’t know what to do with me – so they held me for 30 days. When the time was up, and I walked out the door, a policer officer asked me if I needed a ride somewhere and I said “Yes, back to Maxine’s.”

Maxine and I packed up our belongings and moved to Cleveland, hoping to find a more tolerant environment. I was young, and I soon realized that Maxine was an alcoholic like my father. The dysfunction in our relationship became so painful that one night I was walking the streets of Cleveland with a butcher knife, thinking I would end my life.

The shame and secrecy of my life was a constant as I embarked on a series of monogamous relationships with women. Each partnership was a little more functional, but throughout the 40’s and 50’s society was telling us to be ashamed. Gay bars were raided – the paddy wagon would pull up in front and load the customers in. I was always able to hide and avoid arrest. Of course, all of the churches were telling us that we were sinners. One night I went to a lecture by a prominent psychologist who stated “Homosexuality is a symptom of a deep-seated neurosis, much like alcoholism, pedophilia, and so on.”

So – I was a criminal, a sinner, AND mentally ill. If you’ve ever seen the documentary Before Stonewall, you might remember the trend I became a part of. I was living in Washington DC in the early 1960′ s, and my partner and I both decided to go to a psychiatrist and get “cured.”  The cure took hold to the extent that I married a good man and had two beautiful children. For once in my life, I felt like a respectable member of society. I enjoyed making references to “my husband,” even using it when I got stopped for speeding. “Oh, my HUSBAND is going to be so upset with me.” But guess what – the “cure” didn’t last. After 8 years of marriage, we went our separate ways.

In the 1970’s I got involved in the human potential movement and found that I was having some peak experiences that I could not explain. A friend of mine who was a Methodist minister suggested that I go to seminary. So I enrolled in United Theological Seminary in Dayton and completed a Master of Divinity program. I was planning to be ordained in the Methodist Church, and had started the process, but the church came out with a proclamation: ordained ministers must adhere to “fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness.” By then I was already in love with Pat Ritz and I knew that the Methodist ministry would not fit with the life we envisioned together.

I considered becoming a minister in the Unitarian Church, and even served as a student pastor at St. John’s in Clifton. But their humanist approach was not in keeping with the spirituality I wanted to explore and express. For awhile Pat and I joined a coven and celebrated the Earth holidays. One of the members of that group was Norah Fluent, wife of the pastor of Salem United Church of Christ. She introduced me to Alan Fluent and I found my denomination home –  the UCC! I was ordained just one block away from here, at Salem. It was a wonderful day, with friends and family in attendance. My son read a poem by Joan Baez, my daughter sang Day by Day and Pat was an acolyte – a role she never could achieve in the Catholic faith she grew up in. I served as community pastor at Salem, and also worked at the Free Store/Foodbank and Sign of the Cross, a housing ministry in Over the Rhine. So with The Gathering I am coming full circle!

The United Church of Christ has been in the forefront of seeking equality for the GBLT community, with many churches choosing the Open and Affirming designation. The national denomination has passed a resolution supporting gay marriage.

It’s inspiring that some members here are connected with PFLAG. One of my fondest memories is the gay and Lesbian march on Washington, DC in 2000. Pat and I were watching the groups march by when we saw a PFLAG contingent with signs like “I love my gay son, “ and “We’re proud of our Lesbian daughter.” We were dissolved in tears, and several women broke ranks and came out to give us big hugs. I’ll never forget it.

In my 80 years of life, I’ve lived in many different places. Some think Pat and I are crazy for leaving Florida, where we lived for 18 years. We spent several years in Lexington and never found a spiritual home there. Now Cincinnati is home because of The Gathering.

I knew we had reason to celebrate when we were chatting with Ginny Patterson one day and Pat expressed her appreciation for how much the congregation supports “our lifestayle.” Ginny gave her a quizical look and said “What do you mean – your lifestyle? It’s WHO YOU ARE!!”

It’s only been recently that I’ve been able to share the shameful story of my month behind bars. That experience, though, is probably the reason I have so much compassion for animals, and especially the ones that are penned and caged. They are innocent, as I was, and they have done nothing to deserve cruel treatment.

I am also a very strong advocate of justice, and there is one current issue that affects me deeply. You can say that we have come a long way, but until we have marriage equality, we have not won our rights. I’m afraid that the right to marriage for same sex couples will come too late for Pat and me. Even if the federal government approves gay marriage, we will most likely miss out on the biggest benefit – the one that comes when one partner dies. We get along fine on our combined social security income, but I worry a lot about what will happen to the one who is left when the other one dies – and most likely it will be Pat who is left. People who are legally married for at least 10 years are able to continue to get their own monthly social security, plus half of the deceased spouse’s amount.

I hope that young GLBT folks who are fighting for same sex marriage will keep us elders in mind, and try to factor in our many years of shared life. In our case it is 35 years and counting.

Yes, there is much to celebrate and much work to be done. With the help and support of all of you, I am becoming brave in telling my secrets, claiming my identity, acknowledging my life partner, and confronting injustice. Thank you so much for being here. I love you.

And now, as is our tradition, I welcome your comments.

Message 40, “Toward a New Thanksgiving: A Spirituality of Sufficiency”

November 21, 2010

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

Service-Program-11-21-10

I remember when I was much younger, perhaps around eight or nine years old, I got caught up in the fad of the times to collect marbles and then compete in a game to acquire someone else’s marbles.  This was a 1970’s version, I suppose, of the current fad to play with Gameboys or Nintendos.  And, as a gay boy before I even knew I was one, I was not a rough and tumble guy involved in sports like football, basketball or wrestling.  But I did like the game of marbles and that gave me entry into the world of the cool guys.

My mom bought me a starter set of marbles and I remember scouring through them to find the ones that were most valuable – those with intricate design, clear glass or swirled patterns.   Art and beauty were foremost in my mind.   The color and the design had to be just right!   And so I began to do all I could to acquire more and more of the most elegant marbles.  I held on to the ugly ones too.  The more I had of those, the more it seemed that I was good at winning them in competition!  I can’t remember how long this phase lasted for me, but I what I distinctly recall was my desire to have more and more marbles and to seek after only the best ones.  Playing for fun with other guys became less and less important – I might lose some of my prized marbles.  What became most important was to carry around with me a bag of beautiful marbles – in multiple sizes – which I would display to others hoping to arouse their envy.  I had become a little, greedy, gay, marble tycoon – acquiring far more marbles than I would ever need!

Commenting a hundred years earlier on that childhood affliction of mine called greed, Mark Twain once said, “A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he or she needs.” And the more modern commentator, Maurice Sendak, wryly noted on the same subject, “There must be more to life than having everything!”

What we seek today, as we have over the past two Sundays, is a new truth in our upcoming Thanksgiving.  The title of the holiday itself often frames our attitude at this time of year.  We are thankful for all of the blessings we have received.  In that regard, I imagine that on Thanksgiving forty years ago I was saying to myself that I was truly grateful for the hundreds of beautiful marbles I had collected.  What has stirred me, and I hope some of you in this November message series as we examined Native-American and Pilgrim spirituality, is the notion of living in balance – with nature, with each other, and with ourselves.  Thinking about the idea that our human propensity is to seek after excess – to desire more of things which we do not need – I wonder if our Thanksgiving thought this year and for the future might be gratitude for the things we don’t have?

This idea might be expressed in a number of ways.  I call it a spirituality of sufficiency.   This is not praise for all that we have or all that we must have.  Instead, it recognizes simple needs and sufficient supplies.  As a starting point, might we approach Thanksgiving with the humility the Pilgrims said they believed?   Once again, the ethic is to be thankful for all that we do NOT have – all of the unnecessary items and attitudes we could possess, but don’t – and to instead be satisfied that, for most of us, our basic needs in life have been met.

At that first Thanksgiving nearly four-hundred years ago, the Native-Americans shared their food with the Pilgrims in an attitude of sufficiency.  By sharing their food stores – their wealth – with others, they expressed a belief that there would always be enough for all.  This attitude was clearly expressed in their spirituality about living in balance with nature.  By consciously choosing to use and consume only enough for their needs, Native-Americans were assured that all parts of the universe would exist in harmony or within the Sacred Hoop of life as they called it.  I can well imagine the Natives giving thanks at that first meal not for the fact that their table was full with food, but for the fact that they had given away so much.  Since they believed in a spirituality of sufficiency, there was no worry.  They would have enough.  By giving away their food, they opened themselves to the joy, laughter and human connection of that first Thanksgiving meal.  As Mahatma Gandhi once put it, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every person’s need, but not every person’s greed.”

A new sense of Thanksgiving might compel us to reject the symbols of this holiday – a horn of plenty bursting with abundance, or a table heavily laden with all kinds of food.  Could we instead think in terms of economy, of ecology, of simple needs and of basic provisions?  Might we waste less, observe limits and choose never to take more than what is required?  All of this is certainly not the American way.  Our culture demands that bigger is better and that more is always the best.   More money.  A bigger house.  A roomy car with lots of horsepower.  A giant screen TV.  Larger food portions.  A plush and expansive church building.  Bigger.  Better.  More!  More!  More!  And that mindset leads directly back to the Pilgrims who so quickly were unsatisfied with a limited colony, who wanted more land and who wanted more power and more religious conformity.   From our very beginnings, Americans have seen life as having unlimited possibilities – to work more, achieve more, acquire more and consume more.  As we know, this has had both good and negative consequences for our environment and our way of life.

Almost all other species on earth have developed systems that value limits.  Instinct and evolution have taught them to spontaneously know when enough is enough.  Humanity, on the other hand, must consciously choose to set limits for itself.  We are a greedy and arrogant species.  We take more than we need and we think higher of ourselves than we should.  As we saw with Native-Americans, they chose to live a simple life within a natural system of inter-dependence and inter-connection.

This understanding of balance in all things must extend to all aspects of our lives if we are to fully achieve a spirituality of sufficiency.  In matters of wealth, might we come to redefine what it means to be rich?  Instead of material or financial criteria for measuring wealth, a new understanding of it would encompass having enough for one’s basic needs, having time to experience laughter and play and having access to meaningful interaction with other persons and other creatures.

Also, instead of placing a solely economic measure on our work, we might value it for the degree of satisfaction, community impact and meaning it brings.  Even further, diligence and hard work – which are often cited as the means to greater financial wealth – these might also be redefined.  We act in ways that seem virtuous – buying, selling or working hard to achieve economic growth that creates jobs or opportunities for others – but what if we cut back?  What if we realized we have enough and do not need more?  What if, in our work, we realized we already have enough and do not need to work more simply to achieve finances beyond what we need?  Concepts of job sharing come in to play.  Perhaps there are many of us who work and earn beyond what we need.  We could share our job in order to allow another to make just enough for their needs.

We can work harder at building the kind of quality wealth I just defined.  By working less – perhaps in job sharing – we would free up time in life to build the kind of wealth that we truly want  – emotional satisfaction, play, reflection and time for loved ones, friends and self.  Personal fulfillment and satisfaction, therefore, need not be met solely through our jobs or through an accumulation of wealth beyond our basic needs.

In our reflections, meditations and prayers this upcoming holiday season, can we envision a new spirituality in giving thanks?  There exist on this blue marble planet, hanging in the vastness of space, over six billion fellow humans.  It seems there can barely be enough of the sun, water, land and air we need to survive.  And yet there is enough if we appropriately share.  We find in our lives too many things and too many extras that consume our time and attention.  We frequently fail to live as humble souls in harmony with each other and with other creatures.   Let us give thanks, this Thanksgiving, for all that we do NOT have.  And let us remember that there are many who cannot offer such a prayer for they truly have nothing.  To the child somewhere in this world who rummages through garbage heaps to find daily food, to the homeless woman asleep on the doorsteps of a local church, to the confused and frightened gay teenager thinking of suicide, to the sick and weary one, alone in a nursing home or hospital, without friend or family, who simply waits to die, there can never be enough.  In our spirituality of sufficiency, we remember there are far too many people with whom we can share our bounty of time, of money and of love.

Within our family of friends and loved ones here at the Gathering, we have so much.    We are a deeply grateful people.  To whom much has been given, much is expected.

We have more than enough.

May we have hearts to give away our surplus.

And then, may we joyfully celebrate this Thanksgiving all that we do not have and do not need…

Message 39, Towards a New Thanksgiving: Pilgrim Spirituality

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

Service-Program-11-14-10

In the well known and often quoted Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke to a huge crowd of his followers.  His words echo through the centuries because they spoke to the rights of all people but more particularly to the oppressed, the marginalized and the outcast.  His words were a blessing to the poor, to those who mourn, to the humble, to those who hunger and thirst for justice, to the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted.  Others will mock you and attack you he said, but Jesus encouraged his followers by comparing them to persecuted prophets.  Finally, Jesus praised his followers by saying they are like a shining beacon or a prominent city on hill to which the whole world looks with respect and admiration.

And Jesus’ famous words have been used by countless groups and individuals to soothe and comfort them in their real or imagined afflictions.  This was the case with the Pilgrims of Plymouth colony.  As they fled England and an oppressive King and ruling church, the Pilgrims saw themselves as a powerless small group of individuals seeking only the right to prosper and practice their religion as they chose.  Using the words of Jesus, John Winthrop, who was Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony – an offshoot of Plymouth Colony, he said in 1630, “For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” This often quoted comment from Winthrop has become an icon of American culture and politics.  From Daniel Webster to John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, many have used this quote to cast a vision for our nation and way of life.  The quote is used, however, without realizing John Winthrop hated democracy and was strongly intolerant of others different from the Pilgrims and Puritans of early 17^th century America.  Quakers, Catholics, women perceived to be witches and, of course, Native-Americans were not only persecuted but cast out of the supposedly perfect city, or colony, on a hill.

And Jesus’ vision of millions of oppressed people becoming a light unto others was combined – in the minds of the Pilgrims – with the other ultimate Bible story of a persecuted, but God favored group, who sought refuge in a new land.  According to the Old Testament story that resonated with the Pilgrims, the Israelites were led by God and by Moses four thousand years ago out of the shackles of Egyptian slavery. They endured countless hardships in wandering the Sinai desert for forty years.  Just prior to entering Palestine, God reminded them of his favor and that they would inherit a land of milk and honey with abundant water and great opportunities.  Even so, God warned the Israelites not to exalt themselves, to remain humble and to NOT say to themselves, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.”

Our understanding of the Pilgrims – our prevailing myth about them – is that they united at their first Thanksgiving as a courageous people who fought religious persecution, who braved a treacherous Atlantic crossing, who nearly starved to death in a strange new land but who ultimately prospered and thrived.  They gave thanks to God and to themselves for their success.  As a nation and as a culture, we remember them and their apparent ideals each and every Thanksgiving.  But the facts do not support such a continued mythology.  There would have been no Thanksgiving had it not been for the Native-Americans.  90% of the food at that meal was provided by the Natives out of their own storehouses.  The fact that the remaining Pilgrims had even survived to celebrate a Thanksgiving was due in large part to the generosity, sympathy and trust of the Natives.

Indeed, the persecuted Pilgrims became persecutors themselves.  Native-Americans died by the thousands due to European diseases.  Their land was taken from them, fenced in as had never happened before, and they were routinely attacked and killed by the new colonists.  In a final act of defiance, the local Natives, under the leadership of a Native ruler who called himself King Phillip, a war was waged against Plymouth and the surrounding European colonies.  Of course, the Natives lost against the superior technology of the colonists and their local culture was virtually eliminated.  Currently, on every Thanksgiving day, the descendants of those first Natives, the Wampanoag, gather at Plymouth rock in a spirit of mourning for their lost culture and killed ancestors.

Throughout our American history and even today, the Pilgrims are seen as a brave and virtuous people who were blessed by God.  John Winthrop’s words describing his colony as a shining city on a hill still resonate in our nation.  Indeed, this Pilgrim story which ignores all of their sins, is an American heroic myth.  It is the foundation of an American belief that we have been blessed by God to spread our values and ideals across the land and that we are destined to be that city on a hill, shining out to the rest of the world as an example of democracy, justice, and moral standing.  As it is for many of us today, the Pilgrims failed to live up to their own standard of being poor in spirit, humble, merciful or peacemaking.

My intention in this message, as I said last Sunday, is not to account the sins of our ancestors.  Indeed, as I always say, truth is somewhere in the middle.  The Pilgrims were a complicated group of people – much like all of us.  As neither complete sinners or as heroic saints, their history and ideals and that first Thanksgiving should to be examined in a light of complete honesty.  As we looked to Native-Americans last week to find elements of their spirituality that can speak to us, we will look today to find elements of Pilgrim spirituality from which we might learn.

Scriptures, from each of the various world religions, offer unique insights into ourselves and our existence.  For us, the Bible is, by our tradition, a book we primarily look to for inspiration.  This does NOT mean we believe it alone contains all truth or that is infallible.  We find that other Scriptures and writings are just as profound.  From all off my studies in Seminary and elsewhere, the Jewish and Christian Scriptures we call the Bible were written by fallible people who sought to make sense of life and challenges in their own time and place.  It has survived for thousands of years not because of its claim to Divine status but because it has offered to millions of people, over thousands of years, ideas and words that are universal and timeless in scope.

And it is in that regard that we see how the story of the Israelites entering a new land or Jesus’ words about a city on a hill could so resonate and appeal to the Pilgrims.  For them, they likely only perceived the world within their own perspective – as an oppressed but moral and faithful people.  Their cause was right and so nothing else mattered.  When God asked the Israelites to be humble as they entered Palestine, such words impacted the Pilgrims only in relation to how they honored God.  The same would hold true for Jesus’ words blessing the poor, meek, and peacemakers.  While we see their arrogant and hypocritical treatment of Native-Americans and others, they saw only their Divine mission and purpose.

Their entering the New World was ordained by God and so anything good or bad that happened to them in their new home was viewed with that in mind.  The Natives were therefore instruments of Divine providence used by God to assist the Pilgrims.  In their view, there was nothing innately good about the Natives – only that God used them to help his chosen people.  Since it is God’s will that Christianity be extended around the world, according to the Bible, forced conversion of the Native was good.  Killing Natives either through conflict or disease was also good and a sign of God’s righteous punishment for heathens and those who were not Christians.

All of this speaks to our need for an open-minded reading and discussion of the Bible and of other topics.  We are all prone to close our minds to other realities and other viewpoints, believing we alone are right.  This holds true for how we might understand Islam, for example or how we might view political opinions different from our own.  One overriding message of the Bible and of Jesus is to seek after the heart of the Divine which exalts the meek and the humble and shows love for the outcast.  As much as I often feel persecuted as a gay man, for example, I can too easily turn into one who marginalizes those who hate me.    Much like the Pilgrims, I fail to live up to the standard I have set for myself.

The legacy of the Pilgrims and the Puritans continues to heavily influence American culture and politics.  A scene depicting the landing on Plymouth Rock is famously painted on our national capital rotunda – a mythic image framing our American heritage.  I have to wonder about that image, however, for it depicts a group of illegal immigrants entering a land that was not theirs and who then take it by force from Natives who had lived on this continent for thousands of years.  And the success of the Pilgrims in establishing a colony and later expanding across Massachusetts and elsewhere is mythically seen as due solely to their hard work.  Once again, they and we fail to hear God’s words.  As God said to the Israelites, we must NEVER say to ourselves, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” We ought to remember the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.  Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of the Divine.”

As we can learn from the mistakes of the Pilgrims, we can also learn from many of their good intentions.  Just before landing at Plymouth, Pilgrim men drew up what has been called the precursor to our own constitution.  The Mayflower Compact was a simple document containing only one paragraph.  But it outlined that all men of the colony would have an equal voice and all matters of governance would be submitted to councils created by the whole.  While women were prominently excluded, such was in character for that era.  Nevertheless, what was remarkable was that wealth, nobility and status of birth were not factors in who had a vote.  All men were equal.  Seen in the light of the times, this was a revolutionary document and frames one of the ideals of the Pilgrims – equality for all men no matter their position in life.  We here at the Gathering will continue to cling to such an ideal within this congregation – for equality in our community no matter race, age, gender, sexuality, politics, religious belief or economic status.

In civil matters, the Pilgrims established a governing council presided by an elected Governor.  In their church, the Elders oversaw matters of faith.  Church and state were thus separate entities.  This principle of religious freedom and separation of the secular from matters of faith was at first, a hallmark of Pilgrim society.  They had fled from England where church and state were so entwined that there existed no religious freedom.  Sadly, within only a few years, the lines between church and state were blurred and the governing councils became heavily influenced by religion.  Catholics and Quakers, also immigrants to Massachusetts in the years ahead, were banished from the colony and denied rights by the Pilgrim and Puritan majority.  In England, the Pilgrims were a persecuted minority.  In America, they became an arrogant and exclusive majority.

It was too easy for them, as it might be too easy for us, to allow the opinions and thoughts of the majority to hold sway over the rights and opinions of a minority.  A morally cooperative spirituality calls us to listen, learn and consider the rights of all persons and all creation.  In the same manner that a minority must never presume to tell the majority how it must think or act, so must the majority be gentle, understanding and tolerant of a minority.  For the Pilgrims, for our nation and for our little congregation, in our dialogue about religion, politics, or ANY other matter, moral cooperation and unity are ideals we must never forget.

As theological Calvinists, the precursors to modern day Presbyterians, the Pilgrims believed in absolute predestination of people and creation.  God has foreordained what will happen throughout history.  There is no free will.  Humanity cannot earn or lose God’s grace.  As the Bible says, it is a gift from the Divine.  Thus, according to the Pilgrims and to modern day Calvinists, some are chosen by God to enjoy heaven and some to burn in hell.  Only God knows who the favored ones are.  Humanity does not.

As upsetting and disagreeable as this theology might be, it caused the Pilgrims to constantly, and fearfully, examine themselves for signs of God’s grace in their lives.  According to them, if one has been chosen by God, then evidence of godliness and Christian morality will be evident in one’s life.

For us, self-examination need not be about whether or not we are favored by the Divine One.  But the benefits of self-examination might still be applied in our lives.  I must regularly ask myself uncomfortable questions.  Do I fall short of a morally imagined life?  Am I appropriately humble?  Do I treat all people with respect and dignity?  Am I caring, compassionate and merciful?  Do I forgive?  Do I, as Jesus asked, hunger and thirst for justice?  What subtle forms of racism, sexism, arrogance, homophobia or intolerance do I possess?  Am I self-focused or others focused?  In my heart of hearts, am I loving and understanding towards my enemies and those with whom I disagree?  Are my attitudes towards all creation – like that of Native-Americans – consistent with compassion and respect?  Let me continually examine myself in my refusal to believe I am already perfected…

Much to the contrary, I stand before you an imperfect man.  So often I find myself acting far short of the ideals I profess to believe.  How much do I really help the poor?  How humble am I really?  Do I always act with love?  The answers to such questions are……… “not much.”  We might see in Pilgrim spirituality many examples of arrogance and hypocrisy.  But, as I like to say about any church or any form spirituality, such places are NOT museums of saints but, instead, hospitals for the weak and those in need of growth.  I hope that is what the Gathering is on Sundays – a learning center or hospital – but certainly not a museum.

The myth of Pilgrim heroism and righteousness is false.  But, many of their values are still valid.  Do I wish that history might be changed and European greed and arrogance against the land, the animals, the resources and the Native-Americans might have been different?  Of course.  But history is to be learned from so that it is not repeated.  Each and every Thanksgiving, when we honor our Pilgrim heritage, might we instead reflect on our own values and our own spirituality so that we do not also repeat their sins?

Dear ones, let us be genuinely humble people.  Let us deeply consider others more than we consider ourselves.  Let us never believe our own goodness and our own abilities have made us who we are.  We are the products of so many who have assisted us in the past.  Let us be meek, let us be peacemakers in ALL of our interactions, let us be poor in our lifestyles and sympathetic to those in need, let us seek justice, let us be a small light that shines brightly.  Let us give.  Let us love.  Let us be gentle Pilgrims who daily enter the lives of others with peace and joy…

Message 38, “Toward a New Thanksgiving: Native-American Spirituality”

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

Jon Stewart, our great TV comedian and social commentator, once related that, “I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast………..and then I killed them and took their land!”

I love how in that one statement Stewart perfectly punctures the prevailing Norman Rockwell vision of our upcoming November holiday.  It is said that with time, unpleasant truths become fuzzy and are forgotten.  I believe that is the case with Thanksgiving.  The myth of brave Pilgrims who had come to North America for religious freedom, built a colonial city named Plymouth, struggled mightily through hard work to build a thriving city and then sat down to a feast where they gave thanks to God for their new found prosperity, …..is one such false piece of history.   The truth is much less heroic.  The Pilgrims were persecuted in England as rogue religious people who threatened the state Church and its orthodoxy.  They fled to the Netherlands and lived there for twelve years where they freely practiced their faith.  The decision to depart for the New World and risk everything was not because of religious persecution in Amsterdam however.  Because the Pilgrims were so anti-social and so dogmatic in their own beliefs, they could not assimilate into Dutch society.  They were not forced to leave.  They left by their own choice even though they had full rights and privileges.

And this inability to compromise and adapt came with them to the New World.  Instead of seeking to learn the ways of a new land and a new climate, the Pilgrims steadfastly insisted on using European agricultural methods and crops.  After landing in the fall of 1620, the new colony suffered through a starvation winter.  Out of an original 102 colonists, by the first Thanksgiving the following year there were only 52 surviving.  Ninety percent of the food at that first feast was provided by the locals – the native-Americans.  Indeed, had not a Native-American named Squanto, who knew English having spent time in England after being kidnapped by English fur traders, had he not encouraged the Pilgrims to plant corn instead of barley and then taught them crop rotation and proper fertilization techniques, it is likely Plymouth colony would never have celebrated that first Thanksgiving or any more for that matter.  The Wampanoag tribe ethic towards the Pilgrims is one found in nearly all Native-American cultures – to give freely and to help others without holding back and that by giving, one earns respect while insuring there will be enough for all.

Many of the European ethics brought to the Americas, on the other hand, were of conquest, forced conversion and greed.  Two years after being saved from starvation, the Pilgrim governor, Mather the Elder, publicly gave thanks to God for destroying the heathen savages to make way for the growth of Plymouth colony.  Within less than twenty years after the Pilgrims arrived, the local Wampanoag tribe, which selflessly assisted the Pilgrims, was virtually wiped out by new diseases brought to the New World by the colonists.

The intent of my message series over the next three Sundays is not to offer a sobering history lesson into the sins of our ancestors.  Instead, I hope to frame Thanksgiving in a new and hopeful light – to look at Native-American and Pilgrim spirituality in ways that offer inspiration and insight to us today.  My goal is to try and find a new way to think about giving thanks and the idea of Thanksgiving itself.

Indeed, the moral imagination of Native-Americans is one that echoes loudly for us.  It is not based on some theological construct of a supernatural Being showering good things on those who worship and give their lives to Him or Her.  Instead, it is rooted in the most basic of our human impulses – to be at one with creation, to honor and revere its beauty, to give and share with others and to build a culture founded on the well-being of all people and all creatures.

I have said several times that religion is the construct of flawed humans seeking to impose their own beliefs, rules and practices about faith on others.  Spirituality, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of religion.  It is not man created but instead a natural force we seek to understand.  It is communal in nature.  It is open, free and not concerned with established doctrine but with the emotional and physical well-being of all humanity and, indeed, all creation.  It finds transcendence and inspiration from multiple sources and it is not afraid to be ever evolving or find new ways of thinking and reflection.  As a Native-American leader named Walkingfox puts it, “Spirituality is not religion to American Natives.  Religion is not a Native concept, it is a non-Native word, with implications of things that often end badly, like Holy wars in the name of individual Gods and so on. Native people do not ask what religion another Native is, because they already know the answer. To Native people, spirituality is about the Sacred Mystery, period~”

In that regard, Native-American spirituality offers, as Marsha has just beautifully explained to us, a new way to think about our upcoming holiday and how we lead our lives.  Of primary importance to Native-Americans is that they see their spirituality as infused in all aspects of life.  Their ceremonies are designed not so much as rituals but as practices designed to continually unite them with the universe as a whole.  From eating to sleeping to working and to pleasure, Native-Americans have countless prayers and ceremonies to remember, honor and unite themselves to great and transcendent powers.

While it is impossible to speak of Native-American spirituality as one single monolith since there are hundreds of variations, tribes share with one another common views about creation and life.  They find a duality between humans and the universe with each inextricably linked.  In their understanding of other life forms, plants and animals have human spirits within them since we are all a part of the same source.  And we, ourselves, have plant and animal spirits within us.  Toward that end, in Native American traditions when they harvest grain, or eat a plant, or hunt and consume a deer – these are all ways that life nurtures and benefits itself.  For them, these are sacred acts.  To the American Native, humans are a part of the animal and plant kingdom and they are a part of us.  But it is not mindless consumption that Native-Americans practice.  Before any meal, before any hunt and before any harvest of a crop, Native-Americans not only give thanks for the nourishment about to be obtained, but they pray to, honor and bless the ancestral spirits that inhabit their food.  It is a way to exalt nature and to further the interests of all creation.

This spirituality finds a web of life pattern where all creatures and all humans are inextricably linked and coexist together – each to the benefit of the whole.

I have often spoken of a moral imagination within humanity – that conflict and competition between people are zero sum games since nobody wins in the long term – and that cooperation and unity are the ways to individual and collective prosperity.  Native-Americans have taken that to a new level – all creation must cooperate in the survival of each other.  Humanity and nature are not distinct entities competing against the other.  Animals, plants and humans – in Native-American beliefs – co-exist and each offers their work, their lives and their physical selves so that all will prosper and live.  This is the ultimate form of moral imagination that I believe can speak to us.  Such Native-American spirituality defies traditional religions like Christianity where man is the focus of the created universe.  Those religions say we are destined, by a theistic god, to dominate and control the universe because we are the special reason for God’s creation.  Instead, universal moral imagination says that humans are but a minor piece within creation and that our purpose is to work for the survival and benefit of all things – our environment, fellow creatures and the plant kingdom.

This ideal is expressed in a Native-American belief called the Sacred Hoop.  Bear Heart, a Native-American writer, wrote in his book The Wind is My Mother, “Our old teaching is that the universe is in harmony as long as we keep the Sacred Hoop intact.   The Sacred Hoop is the circle of life—the Four Directions, the Earth, and everything that lives on the Earth.   It includes not only the two-leggeds, but also the four-leggeds, the wingeds, those that live in the waters, those that crawl on the earth, and the plant life.   Everything is part of the Sacred Hoop and everything is related.   Our existence is so intertwined that our survival depends upon maintaining a balanced relationship with everything within the Sacred Hoop.”

Whatever our personal choices and beliefs are about all created life, I believe we can find merit in Native-American traditions.  This deep respect and reverence for all life forms extends to how they view the individual in relation to family, clan, tribe, nation and world.  Existence, as I frequently mentioned in my last two monthly series, is not about us as individuals.  It is about the whole community. The compelling cry in every American Native action, as noted in a book entitled God is Red, is, “That the people might live!” This is so even for the well-known vision quest ceremonies Marsha mentioned.  One seeks insights during vision quests through fasting and prayer in order to self-actualize, and thus go out and do more for the community.  This speaks to our spiritual selves here at the Gathering.  We seek growth and worship not for our congregation or as individuals.  We exist to serve the wider realm of our community and earth.

And we give to others with that same understanding.  At that first Thanksgiving, Squanto and his chief were invited by the Pilgrims to bring their families over for a small meal of celebration.  Not knowing that family, for the natives, meant virtually an entire tribe, over a hundred Natives showed up.  And the Pilgrims did not have nearly enough food.  So the Native Americans proceeded to raid their own storehouses of food – saved for the upcoming winter – to provide most of the meal to their hosts.  This was in keeping with the Native-American ideal to share, to live communally and to practice a belief that by giving away even meager assets, there will still be sufficient resources for all.  Indeed, the individual was accountable to the tribe and community, not the other way around.  Once again, the ethic was that we live and exist not for our own benefit.  We live and exist so that the whole – the wider community – will prosper.  As I say too often to count, our purpose in life is not to sit and wait for a perfect afterlife.  It is to build heaven – to make life better for all creation – here and now.

Many tribes and Native-Americans have been accused of being Marxist in their ideology.  Such is hardly the case.  But Native-American spirituality says that land and natural resources cannot be individually owned since these were not originally given to them by the Great Spirit.  Land, water, the sun and all things within them were given to all life forms to use prudently, without waste and with deep respect.  Such things belong to nobody since they were originally meant for universal use.  Native Americans differ strongly from Europeans in that view of nature.  The land, its creatures and its resources are holy.  An abstract, supernatural God that we cannot see, feel or touch is not what is Divine.  Indeed, in direct contrast to Paul’s words in the Bible, it is the creature and the created land that we worship for those alone contain the great mystery of existence, beauty and immortality.

European-American concepts of land ownership, taking down trees, damming up rivers and slaughtering thousands of buffalo just for their hides were not only foreign to the Natives, such practices were non-spiritual and, indeed, sinful.

It is an ironic note that the Pilgrims would later claim the local Wampanoag tribe had given them the land on which Plymouth was located.  Such was not the case.  The natives had merely permitted use of land the tribe had previously cleared and farmed as a way of sharing with people in need.

Of final importance for us in understanding Native-American spirituality is their reverence for children and the qualities they possess.  Children were worshipped by most tribes for they represented to them the mystery of creation.  And, as even the Bible says Jesus noted, children possess, according to Native-Americans, a unique sense of humility, wonder and curiosity about the world.  Once again from his book The Wind is My Mother, Bear Heart tells an ancient Native-American story about a baby girl just born.  Her four-year-old brother asks the parents, “Can I be alone with her for just a little while?” The parents said, “Not right now, but a little later you can.” The next day he asked again, so the parents finally agreed and soon after hid near the baby’s crib to listen and watch.  Then the four-year-old went up to the crib and said to his baby sister, “Tell me about the Great Spirit. I’m beginning to forget.” Native Americans, according to Bear Heart, say that children came here to teach us—to teach us how to be humble and to teach us how to be giving and forgiving.

For many of us here today, we live our lives insulated in bubbles of our own making.  We live, work and move about in man-made cocoons that are climate controlled and far removed from the natural world.  Our spirituality is too often superficial and something we only think about on Sundays.  As much as we desire a world of giving and sharing and concern for all creation, we also spend too much time focused on ourselves – our own well-being, health and financial condition.  I plead guilty to all of those accusations and yet, in a few short weeks, I too will sit down and claim a weak thanksgiving for my life, my family and my friends.  My awareness of spiritual forces all around me is too often numbed to their reality, as my mind is occupied with insignificant matters – work, bills, and the mundane activities of life.  I will drive by a small park without noticing the trees or fail to really hear the sounds of birds as I walk into my home.  I live in a bubble that isolates me from physical, emotional and spiritual connection with life itself.   I am isolated from the mysteries of my own existence, from the wondrous forces of nature, from fellow creatures and from the grand design of the cosmos.  Spirituality, in the end, is not something I live and breathe every moment of my life.

And I know for myself and for many of you, the times when we escape from our bubbles and return to the natural world – these are truly spiritual moments.  I have hiked by myself far back into the wilderness of Arizona’s red rock areas, into Colorado’s mountain vastness and through the forests of nearby Red River Gorge.  I’ve glided through coral reefs, biked along our local bike paths and walked early in the morning along an empty beach.  When I hear nothing but my own breathing, the breeze through the trees, the water swirling around me or the occasional bird, the symphony of those sounds rivals anything I might hear in church or at Music Hall.  We find in those moments a sense that while we are alone and insignificant, we are also a part of the great and powerful forces that create mountains and rivers and forests.  At those times, I become a fully spiritual person sensing the Divine mysteries all around me.

That is the spirituality of the Native-American – a daily awareness of interconnection within the web of life and within the web of human communities.  I want to find that place of humility, of total giving of self and resources to the larger community and of respect and honor for fellow creatures as they are a part of me and I am a part of them.  This transcendence into the Great Mystery is actually reality itself.  We might never turn back to the high civilization of Native-Americans who every moment lived in balance with one another and with the universe as a whole.  But, may we, even in very small ways, acknowledge Native-American wisdom and seek the same…today, tomorrow and in our upcoming Thanksgiving.

“Secrets”, Guest Speaker Doug Meredith

(c) Doug Meredith and The Gathering, UCC; All Rights Reserved

I’m bisexual

I was emotionally and physically abused when growing up

Jill and I just got done filing for bankruptcy

My parents did, too

My aunt was sexually abused by my grandfather as a child

My other grandfather is bipolar

Two of my cousins were sexually abused by their father

If you’re feeling a little uncomfortable right now, that’s the point. Everything I’ve just told you are secrets. Secrets that I’ve kept, secrets that were kept from me, and things that I’m still sometimes tempted to keep a secret.

It’s a powerful temptation, the urge towards secrecy, and it comes from many places all around. The need to seem better than we are. The shame of failure. The pain of past memories weighing down on us. Fear of rejection and ostracism. The list is endless.

We’re taught young about how to make and hold secrets, sometimes without any conscious adult prompting. We’re shown that we embarrass our parents when we say what we really think about grandma’s turkey at Thanksgiving. We’re not supposed to snitch on our friends. We’re supposed to pretend that we like the school bully during the class play.

It seems to me that half of the social skills we’re taught in school are how to lie through a smile and hold our secrets close. I’d imagine everyone here felt or saw the results when an embarrassing secret got out. What happened when someone found out that the nerdy girl in school had a crush on the popular boy? Or even worse, the popular girl?

Ridicule. Isolation. Emotional and physical pain. The “best” kids, if I can even use that term, learn secrecy quick. They learn how to fake what they’re supposed to be feeling or doing instead of what they really want to do. The girl who flunks a math test so that the boys don’t think she’s too smart learned secrets early and well. And most of the time she’s rewarded for it: friends, social acceptance, understanding about how “math is so haaard”.

Jill uses a phrase from her early childhood education days: logical consequences. Kids understand logical consequences. If I do this, then that happens. What logical consequences are being taught inadvertently in this scenario?

Be what you’re supposed to be. Say what you’re supposed to say. Do what you’re supposed to do. Keep everything else a secret.

Not all secrets are bad, of course. Buying a present for somebody you love and surprising them with it can be great.

Jill likes to tell the story about how I proposed to her, although that little secret plan had some hiccups. Surprise birthday parties? Well I don’t go in for that, but other people do! Surprises are secrets, but they’re secrets of timing: waiting for the moment you picked out to disclose them, hopefully providing an unexpected moment of joy to the receiver.

On the other side of the coin, what about our white lies and withholding? Telling somebody they look nice when you don’t mean it? Thinking somebody is making a mistake, but letting them go on anyway? Saying “fine” when someone asks “how’re you doing?” on the worst day of your life?

They’re so tempting. They make it so easy to get through our social lives without getting bogged down, make us feel like we’re helping out by not making waves. Sometimes it’s just a matter of not caring enough about the person or situation.

Whatever the reason, they’re little cop-outs. I’m guilty of them too, but we shouldn’t pretend they’re for the other person’s benefit. Even if the other person wants our lie, wants us to keep our true opinion a secret, it’s of no benefit to them to go along. Why would we encourage others to walk through the world half-blind to what others are thinking? To ways in which they could be more the person they want to be?

What we should be taught, what we should be teaching our children, isn’t how to keep what they’re feeling a secret. It’s how to tell a truth. What we truly think can cause pain, can be hurtful to hear. The truth is not always a comfortable panacea, nor easy to find a way to share.

A moral person doesn’t succumb to lazy temptation, though. We find a way to tell truth with as little pain as possible. When a friend asks how they look, we don’t say “you look like crap run over by a semi and then set on fire!”. We might instead do the old trick of compliment, constructive criticism, compliment. “Those pants look wonderful! Maybe a blue shirt would look better, though? It’d show off how much you’ve been exercising.”

That’s a flip example, of course. The bigger the painful truth, the harder it can be to find a gentle way to talk about it. Nobody said the high road was easy, though. That’s why it’s called the high road.

Let me give an example that we’ll all run into. A hypothetical friend of mine is dating someone I don’t really like or trust. Hopefully, being a paragon of virtue as I am, I’ve got tangible reasons to be concerned. Maybe I’ve got another friend who dated said person in the past and talked about their horrible temper. Maybe they made a pass at me while my friend wasn’t around.

Either way, I can either keep it a secret or tell my friend. If I keep it a secret and something bad happens, it’s at least partially my fault. How could my friend have protected themselves without the information I kept from them? If nothing bad happens, all well and good right? Well sure, on the outside. But it’s a dangerous game I’m playing internally, deciding that I know the situation better than my friend. One day I’m gonna be wrong, and it won’t be my life alone that’s hurt by my decision.

There’s a point to be made here: the truth is just the truth. It’s information we can disclose or keep. Plenty of people fall into the trap of sharing truth with the expectation that the other person will do the same thing with it that the teller would’ve. That’s no less presumptuous than withholding truth. In both cases, I’ve decided that I know what’s best for you better than you do. Sometimes, very rarely, that might be true. Mostly it’s bullshit.

We don’t know most of each other half as well as we like to assume. Maybe my friend’s new beau went through years of anger management therapy and was upfront with them about it. Maybe he or she made a pass at me because it’s an open relationship. Maybe, in the end, I’m never going to have all the facts. All I’m required to do as a truth teller is speak what I know. All I might do as a friend is be supportive in whatever they decide needs to happen next. If they want my advice, I’ll know.

As a person, my only requirements are open eyes, an open mouth, an open mind, and an open heart. Open eyes to see my truth. An open mouth to speak it. An open mind to understand the truths of others. And an open heart to accept their decisions, even when they would not be my own.

Even more fraught and difficult than sharing truths with one another can be sharing them with ourselves. Self-deception is no more or less than trying to convince oneself that a secret doesn’t even exist. We’re good at it. If we learn to keep our truths to ourselves in 1^st grade, we’re taught self-deception by the 5^th. We like our supposed friends even though they pick on us and diminish us every day. We’re really happy with the boyfriend or girlfriend who puts us down or shoves us in a box that’s comfortable for them. I’m happy. Really. I swear.

Why am I happy? Because… aren’t I supposed to be? So I must be happy, despite the gut-wrenching fear or anger that I feel. What are my emotions next to what I’m supposed to be feeling? I must just be broken a little bit. I’ll just ignore them. And so, caught up in supposed to’s and shoulds, we let the lies of the world leak into our own morality and reality. We diminish what our hearts tell us as illogical or irrational, unworthy of notice. We try to find our path using another’s moral compass, which never works to keep us on our own true North no matter how well-intentioned.

Mark my words: if we never understand and value our emotions and instincts for the value they provide, we will never arrive at a place of lasting happiness. We will forever be led astray by the demands of a world who wish us to change a little bit here, compromise a little bit there, and then tries to convince us that it was all our idea. The truth of who we are will vanish in the mists.

How many gay people have been led astray by self-deception? How many were convinced that they couldn’t be gay because, well, good people weren’t gay. How many got married because they weren’t gay, dammit! How many people stayed in a marriage of mutual anger and mistrust because they really love me deep down? How many lives were left in wreckage when they hit the cold, hard icebergs of truth, far off course from where they wanted to be and feeling desperately alone? Deception is damaging, and self-deception no less so just because we’ve convinced ourselves, too

I’ve brought a couple other concepts into this sermon: truth and lies. They’re relevant because of this: all lies create secrets of the truth. Yet the most powerfully secret is not the one covered by the lie, but the one covered by stifling silence.

You know the secret I’m referencing. It’s what we don’t talk about, or what the children don’t need to know, or even worse too revolting to put words around. It’s judgmental silence, a deliberate omission, the censorship marker across the pages of memory.

LGBT people know it all too well. It’s all the times you’re not told about Oscar Wilde’s persecution when reading “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” in Lit class, while you’re given full account of Lord Byron’s (straight) romances. It’s the yawning chasm where LGBT relationships should be on television. In families, it’s the places where you’re not asked how your partner is doing. Thankfully these moments are becoming less common in our society as a whole, because they’re worse than lies.

Lies tell you that you’re wrong. Judgmental silence tells you that you shouldn’t exist. Lies tell you a path is wrong. Silence blocks the fact that the path is even there. Lies stab you in the heart. Silence demands that you stab yourself. The truth can destroy a lie simply by existing. Silence swallows a truth, leaving only ignorance.

The deafening silence on LGBT issues in some communities is unforgivable, damaging many people for their entire lives, stunting them or driving them to suicide. But what about a more common reason?

I mentioned in the beginning of my sermon that my aunt was sexually abused by her father while a child. The evils perpetuated on her were abetted by the deafening silence of a mother who knew, neighbors who probably suspected, and a society that wouldn’t believe even if they were told.

My aunt, who I greatly respect, had a life filled with those silences. She got pregnant in high school and was forced to give birth in a convent, then shipped home to pretend like nothing had happened. She married a physically abusive man who started sexually abusing her daughters.

I respect her for what happened next: she filed for divorce and a restraining order, supported her children through custody and criminal proceedings that lasted for years, and made a firm decision to break the cycle of abuse.

Today her daughters call Charlene “the queen of over-sharing”, because she knows what silence can do and made a personal decision to avoid it whenever possible. It’s only through her that I actually learned any of this. My father  and uncle maintain their absolute silence to this day.

But I only learned because I sought the information out, because I knew that something was behind so much of the crazy family dysfunctions I grew up experiencing. Which is a silence that even my aunt, a woman of great intent and stubbornness, has fallen into. My father inherited it as the silence of “what good would it do?” My aunt knows it as the silence of “best if it dies with me”. Either way it’s the most well-intentioned silence in the world. From scalp to shoe sole, two good people not saying something for what they believe are good reasons. It calls out to us in the siren voice of “putting the bad behind”.

The voice is wrong.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Santayana made it a cliché. The truth at the center of it remains no matter how often it’s repeated. Abuse begets abusers, victims and cycle-breakers. Abusers and victims require silence to perpetrate the cycle. Cycle-breakers end the silence. My aunt was a cycle-breaker. I’m sure if she thought one of her family was being sexually abused, Charlene would’ve charged in and done her level best to end it. In that limited scope, she was strong.

But my life is evidence of the dangers in even complacent silence. Every one of her siblings knew they had been wounded, so they desperately tried to create a happy, happy, HAPPY family where their kids wouldn’t have to deal with that. Smiles that looked like grimaces, Christmas photos carefully orchestrated, and pleasant chatter about nothing consequential filled my childhood.

They were another form of silence trying to construct perfection (or at least eccentricity) over the secret of deep pain. And because I grew up believing that my family didn’t experience deep pain and suffering, what was I supposed to think the time my brother choked me until I passed out? When he kicked in my bedroom door? When he threatened to beat my head in with a golf club? When my parents stood by powerless? Was I supposed to believe that others would understand? Or that myself and my immediate family were freaks and aberrations who had to suffer together, alone?

I know now what message my extended family wanted to send, but the desperate perfection they broadcast into my brain left no room for moments of horrid, embarrassingly personal pain. So rather than hurt that image that we all so obviously cared deeply about, I hurt myself. I crippled myself emotionally in ways that I’m still coming to terms with.

I say this not for sympathy, but as a warning. Was I sexually abused? No. Was another cousin, who currently struggles with alcohol and drug addictions? Not to my knowledge. Would the story of what happened to our aunt have done us any direct good? Not exactly.

But by not sharing, by having this illusion wrapped around us for our own good, we the damaged ones were made the freaks in our family. We both would’ve been better-served to have seen at least some of the wounds secreted in the people who wanted to be there to support us. We didn’t need paragons on a pedestal. We needed human adults who had suffered and survived. We needed role models, not demi-gods.

Even if your story isn’t so dramatic, the world needs it. If your nephew is “too young” to know that his uncle or aunt is gay, you’re denying them a chance to see a human being worthy of respect.

If your grandfather is “too old” to know about your partner, then he’ll never know how much joy you’ve managed to find. If you pooped your pants in grade school, that’s even a story someone could benefit from hearing.

Sharing your true self, flaws and all, invites the same from those around you. Offering up your own pain can show you’re not afraid for others to show theirs.

If you talk to a granddaughter about healthy relationships and disclose the significant other who beat you up in college, you’re not just opening an avenue of trust for her to talk to you about where a black eye really came from.

You’re showing her that you’re not uncomfortable with hard conversations. You’re building a relationship of trust where she can disclose that she’s pregnant, or a lesbian, or would prefer to be called Kyle. Secrets are designed to put us up in the shrine of who we think we should be, untouchable and utterly useless in the real world. Truths put us back down on the ground, dirty and hurt humans who strive to be better but fall on our faces. Touchable to others. Sometimes petty, often preoccupied and distracted, but also compassionate, empathetic, and striving creatures who are more Christlike than any marble statue could hope to be.

Yet here we mostly sit in silent, inscrutable secrecy. And not without reason. Even when we decide to share of ourselves, the world makes it desperately difficult. Society is just so damn polite about secrets. It begs you to stop talking with every uncomfortable glance away. Every shifting in a chair. Every cough. Yes, even in this room. Even in a Gathering of people who say we desire open and honest dialogue. I’ve been complicit in it as much as anybody else. How many times have we all created a space that screams “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

And, even worse, how many times have you or someone you loved shared a painful secret only to have all your listeners suffer amnesia? It’s the infamous long pause between “I was raped two years ago” and “Wasn’t that movie we saw yesterday just great?” We’re messing with the script and, just like in a play, society is desperately granting us every permission to get back on dialogue. Because ad libbing and being fully present with another human is hard.

It would be deeply ironic if I kept secret a time when we as a church did this, because it might make us a little uncomfortable. And I hope everyone here can accept this story in the spirit of understanding how far each and every one of us has to go. A few weeks ago, Doug Slagle started his sermon series on money with a powerful discussion of the moral and ethical value of wealth.

In the comments afterward, Ken Cunningham spoke tearfully and at length about how much he and his husband John were suffering from the struggle of keeping their business and personal lives afloat. I was in the room that day and the discomfort was so thick you could’ve chiseled in it.

To my eyes, it seemed as though the energy was trying to squeeze the poor man’s lips shut. And when Ken, a man who stays til the bitter end of every coffee hour, fled immediately after the service, how many of us went in private to try and ease his obvious sorrow? And how many of us simply thought we were doing him a favor if we never brought it up again?

I don’t know. I simply ask you to reflect on what, if anything, you were feeling in that moment. And to reflect on the power our social and emotional pressure can bring to bear.

The world does no favors for those who would violate the comforts of secrecy. It will push every one of us to believe that we should really “wait for the right time” which never comes. When is there ever going to be a right time for sharing awkward, even horrible, moments with each other? The present moment is the rightest time we’re ever going to find to tell the powerful truths that matter most for us to say and others to hear.

The world will give little thanks. There will be very few pats on the back for saying what others wish us to omit. That’s not the point. If you’re waiting for the world to give you a medal, you won’t have lived a life worthy of one. We have it in our hands and on our tongues to rise above the rules of shame and reach out to our better angels.

By speaking your secrets and freeing your truths, bonds of genuine trust can be formed to last the years. By sitting determined in the moment when someone else shares their hard pains, the moments when there is no Miss Manners reply, by sitting in those moments with a spirit of deep love, respect and compassion, we reward bravery. We leave open the door to more honest pain and discomfort, even anger, but also to support, love, euphoria and revelation towards each other.

And that’s really the end point of sharing and receiving secrets, I suppose. A world where no one shares their true reality is a world where we never grow. A world where we stay within the comfortable borders is not a world. It’s a prison. A zoo. A world where we cannot accept the secrets of others is a world where we set limits on how close others can really get. We hedge them into the comfortable place where we now understand them, blocking ourselves from the unexpected joys and lovely uniqueness that’s really out there, content with our shallow, gray understanding of a technicolor world.

I end my little sermon with the challenge I ask the world to give back to me every day: to open the book of our lives, hearts and minds and read from them in bold, loving voices. Without edits or abridgments from shame or discomfort. Because each secret held inside diminishes the richness in our souls, turning us further into craven caricatures that learn nothing, help no one. And each truth let out deepens our lives, teaches us where to strive, and invites the world to walk a little easier on our path, for the witness of another mere human who made it before.

As is customary, I’d like to break the silence now and ask you to share your truths.

Prayer

Creator and ultimate truth, we ask you to help us connect with each other in bonds of truth and love. We pray that you open our hearts to hear the secrets that the world would share with us, and soften the hearts of others to understand our own. We hope that by such examples, wounds in ourselves, our communities and our planet may be healed, and peace may be found. To you we lift up this prayer, and the prayers to follow.

Message 37, Let’s Get Rich?  Give It All Away??  10-17-10

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

Service-Program-10-17-10

Most of you are aware of the Jesus story when five thousand people are fed from five loaves of bread and two fish.  It is one of the supposedly supernatural miracles frequently referred to when people discuss the divine nature of Jesus.  At the beginning of the story, he has just landed on shore after having retreated – to find peace and quiet – in a boat to the middle of a large lake called the Sea of Galilee.

During Jesus’ work in the northern region of Palestine called Galilee, thousands of people had heard about the teachings of this radical young rabbi.  He was unlike any rabbi or religious leader heard or seen before.  Jesus did not address all of the fine points of Jewish religious observances – like regular sacrifice, ritual washing, Sabbath rules or dietary regulations.  He was focused on reaching out to the poor, to the sick, to women, and to all those who lived as outcasts at the margins of supposedly decent society.  During this time of Roman occupation and collusion with them by Jewish religious elites, many were looking for a prophet and inspirational leader.  Because of his teachings and how he led his life, Jesus became hugely popular.  The hopes and dreams of thousands were invested in him as one who could change lives for the better.

And so Jesus came ashore and found the huge crowd waiting for him.  He walked through the crowd, talking and reaching out to them with his compassion and concern.  He was at a remote place and his disciples eventually told him that it was getting late and would soon be dark.  Should they send the crowd away at such a late hour so they can go get food?  Not wanting to disperse the people who had walked so far to see him, Jesus told his disciples to instead feed them.  But the disciples immediately protested that they only had a few loaves of bread and a few small fish – only enough for themselves.  Jesus asked for the food and then broke the loaves and fish into small pieces and told the disciples to distribute the items to the crowd.

Afterwards, they amazingly discovered that five thousand people had been adequately fed – and there were still leftovers – all from that original small supply of food.  A miracle!  How could so many be fed out of such seemingly insignificant resources?

I am not someone who interprets this famous story literally.  Far from it.  Whether or not this feeding event actually took place, I believe it offers us a profound lesson in how we view our own limited resources.  Despite the fear and caution of the disciples – who refused to trust and to have confidence in a situation of scarcity – Jesus saw instead abundance.  He saw potential in the human spirit.  Instead of holding onto the small supply of food – needed to feed himself and his few disciples – Jesus gave it all away.  And it is in that example of giving that he created a literal miracle which came about not because of some godly intervention but because of human kindness and generosity.

As the disciples handed out their food, I imagine others in the crowd began to offer their own scraps of food to people around them.  They saw Jesus’ example of giving.  They shared.  They gave away.  They were extravagantly, perhaps foolishly, generous.  As the disciples and the crowd began to be less preoccupied with their own meager supplies of food and recognized that by sharing there was more than enough for all, generosity exploded.  Clenched fists of self-concern opened up into outstretched arms willing to give everything they had to eat away.  A human being named Jesus, not some superstar god, created this miracle of giving and sharing.

Such is the miracle of abundance which I believe is evident in our world.  When we freely give away what we have, we participate in a world in which everyone’s needs are met.  This helps to nurture and create the kind of people we want to be, the kind of church we want to be and the kind of world in which we want to live.  We as a people, as a church and as a world are interconnected, cooperative, generous and willing to share with others.  We see life as not something to be feared but as open with possibility.  Instead of living in a world we perceive as destined to be full of hunger, poverty and need, we live in one in which heaven can be created by us – by our work and by our generosity.

And that leads me to this concluding topic for our October message series.   In this series about money and time, I pose today’s theme as a question – “Give It All Away?”  We’ve discovered over the last two Sundays, I hope, that our money and our time are two concerns which closely reflect our overall life values – are we selfish……..or selfless?  Do we use money and time prudently, in balance and in a way that reaches out to family, friends and strangers?   Do we hoard money and time or do we give them away?   Is our attitude about time and money focused on the “me” or on the “other”?

My purpose today is not to create guilt or to lecture anyone about being generous.  Indeed, we must all see to our own needs first so that we are then able to give and help others.  The Buddha said that one cannot help oneself if one does not help others.  But, just as important, the Buddha also noted that one cannot help others, if one does not help oneself.  So, if I do anything in this message, it will be to provoke questions, to inspire reflection and to encourage self-examination about giving in general.

My understanding of generosity is that it does not solely encompass financial or material giving.  A generous person is one who embodies that quality in all aspects of their life.  They share their time freely, being willing to listen and understand others.  They are emotionally giving through their happiness, their smiles and their positive outlook.  They show extravagant hospitality to all people – friend and stranger alike.  They volunteer time to charities and organizations.  They give others the benefit of doubt despite one’s flaws or mistakes.  They forgive.  They recognize the inherent dignity and worth of every living creature.  Spiritual generosity, therefore, is not something that is contingent on having lots of money or not.  It is a holistic attitude and one which is attractive to other people.  We want to be around those who are truly giving with their time, compassion, understanding, empathy, money, and happiness.  As Mother Theresa wisely said, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of Divine kindness:  kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”

That ethic of Mother Theresa’s is daily lived out by charity workers around the world.  As I’ve mentioned on a few occasions, I was privileged to travel several times to the nation of Haiti on outreach trips with one of my previous churches.  On one of those trips, I visited a hospital run by the Sisters of Charity which cared for dying children.  I walked into a large open room with row upon row of cribs and small beds, where perhaps a hundred children were tended.  Most suffered from either tuberculosis or AIDS.  At one point as I walked through the room, a Sister reached down to pick up a seven year old girl, who looked like a holocaust survivor she was so thin.  I forget the girl’s name now but she had been born with AIDS.  She was blind, she could not speak or walk or barely lift her head.  The Sister held her in her arms like an infant and lightly tickled her under the chin.  A small smile crossed the girl’s face.  This Sister handed the girl to me to hold for a while and it was impossible for me not to choke up.  As horrible as this situation was – repeated in the story of each of the many children in that hospital – I realized later that I was just a visitor – a tourist into some of the horrors of our world.  I gave some money and I gathered information to share with others back in my church but the Sisters – those who worked in this hospital day in and day out – were the truly generous.  When symbolically asked by the Jesus, whom these Sisters deeply respect, to give away everything they had in this world – money, material things and their own time – they willingly answered “yes – here I am.”  The example of such charity workers like them deeply humbles me.  I am a terribly and horribly selfish person in comparison.

Ultimately, though, our personal generosity is something we establish within our own hearts.  It is not something others can or should impose upon us.  If we feel guilt or compulsion in our giving, I do not believe we have truly given.  As the Bible says, “Each one must give just as he or she has purposed in his or her heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for the Divine One loves a cheerful giver.”

That attitude speaks to how I hope we can all approach this church’s upcoming annual pledge campaign.  Are we confident about our future?  Do we see things with fear or with wide-eyed optimism?  Are we focused on our scarce resources or might we imagine the abundance we have and that is all around us?  Is this a place that creates change in people’s lives – both those who attend and those we serve outside these walls?  Are homeless young people better off because of us?  Do we help the hungry?  Have homeless families been served by this congregation with love and understanding?  Are gays and lesbians treated with respect, with dignity and with the value they deserve as equal citizens?  Is our music inspiring?  Do we truly care for one another in our times of illness, challenge or despair?  Do our messages pose questions that provoke thought and encourage change?  Are meaningful relationships formed here?  Are visitors helped in finding a new community of friendly faces?  Does this place matter to you and to others?  Is there value here?

Two weeks ago during our talk back time after the message on attitudes toward money, a few of you envisioned the dream of us all living within a commune – where sharing is free and easy and everybody works together for the common good.  While we do not call ourselves the Soviet Socialist Church of the Gathering, we have within our power to be something like a commune.  All of us have the ability to manifest spiritual generosity here, in our families and in our neighborhoods.  As we are transformed by the realization that life is not about us but about our service to the wider world, counting and hoarding our money and our time becomes meaningless.  We each work and save for what we eat.  We give of ourselves in kindness to one another and to strangers.  We treat others with dignity and affirmation.  We build close and strong families who are then able to go out into the world to make it better.  We give away time playing with a child or talking to a teenager.  We meaningfully relate with a spouse or partner.  We help a friend and we volunteer for the homeless, the hungry and the marginalized.  We open our hands with generosity, seeing the fantastic opportunities we have to serve others.  In sum, we see our lives, we see this church and we see our world as alive with possibility.  We can literally change all creation for the better and we have each been blessed with friends and associates in this congregation who are willing to join us in that undertaking.

My friends, I do not propose that all of one’s generosity must be focused on a church – let alone this church.  Indeed, I know that so many here give abundantly to other causes – to scholarship funds to help young people learn and grow, to social justice organizations that fight for equal rights, to animal rights groups that call each of us to treat fellow creatures with love and understanding, to a myriad of other very worthy causes.  Generosity of spirit calls us all to, as I said earlier, give as the Divine One puts into our hearts to give.  And that includes to whom we give.  If we are passionate about advancing art and beauty in the world, we give to creative and performing arts organizations.  If our passion is to see education improved, we give to a school or university.  If we yearn for a world free of disease, we support the heart association or the cancer society.  If we care about animals we give to the zoo, a local shelter or animal rights groups.  If, as I hope, this place called the Gathering finds a meaningful place in your lives, I pray it finds a place in your giving.

Some of us have the ability to give more.  Some live with a tight budget and paying the monthly bills is a regular concern.  My hope is that we can all meaningfully and generously give something to this place – both in time and in money.  It is said in the Bible that to whom much is given, much is expected.  And I believe that is true.  But the Bible also wisely says that those who sow sparingly also reap sparingly and those who sow bountifully, reap bountifully.  I, like most of you, do not believe in the gospel of wealth that god will somehow pour out his financial blessings if you only give away all of your hard earned money.   But I do believe that generous people and generous churches are surrounded with that same spirit.  People who are spiritually generous as I mentioned earlier – who freely smile, listen, show kindness, and give away happiness – are the kind of people who discover others being generous to them.  Generosity attracts generosity.  And the same holds true for churches.  That is why I believe it is so important for this congregation to be actively involved in outreach to our community – in volunteering, giving away money, feeding, clothing, mentoring and caring for those in need.  We walk our talk.  We see the world as not about us but about others.  We think positively as we work to create heaven on earth.  We go out into the world refusing to accept things as they are but confidently determined to work for things as they should be.

This is the last of my Sundays with you during my first year at the Gathering.  It has gone by so quickly and it has been an amazing ride.  When I next see you on a Sunday, I will begin my second year with all of the hope and excitement for this place that I have had over the past year.  Whether we are big or small as a church, we have a purpose.  We help to change lives for the better.  We matter in this community.  Pat Crahan and Brandon Wiers have both said very eloquently that they see the Gathering as a place of great depth where each of us continues to grow and stretch ourselves in how we treat one another, in our giving, in our learning and in our impact on the world.  I am confident and absolutely positive that we will walk hand and hand into our future with love, with abundant generosity and with the dream of peace and contentment throughout all of creation.

Message 36, “Let’s Get Rich?  Count the Clock!”, 10-10-10

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

Service-Program-10-10-10

We have 168 hours in each of our weeks.  There are 720 hours in an average month and 8,760 hours in a year.  Over a ninety year lifetime, one will have 788,400 hours of time.  How much is just one of those hours worth?  Since an average person in the U.S. can expect to earn approximately 1.1 million dollars over an entire lifetime, the economic worth of each life hour is about one dollar and forty cents.  That seems pretty cheap.  If you waste an hour here or there, no big deal!  We can make that up or even not worry about its loss too much.  But what if we waste an hour a day?  Over that 90 year lifetime, one will have thrown away $45,990.  That is some serious money.

The problem with this approach at placing a dollar value on our time is that ultimately such a method is meaningless.  The credit card advertising campaign telling us that certain life experiences are priceless, is essentially true.  How might a dad value even one hour a week spent with his son or daughter in meaningful connection?  What dividends of love, affirmation and wisdom might result from those weekly one hour sessions?  What bank account of memories might be created – of ballgames, important conversations or life lessons taught?  How much do we value an hour of lying in a loved one’s arms, hearing his or her heartbeat and simply finding a quiet peace together?  Such an hour might seem wasteful when we could be working or surfing the internet or watching the latest show on TV.  We each might tell ourselves, as I ask these questions, that such moments of deep connection with a loved one or friend are not wasted and that they are, indeed, priceless.  But, how many of us – in the midst of all of the choices we have for spending our time – regularly choose to meaningfully and lovingly talk to a spouse or partner, play with a child or visit a friend?  How many of our 788,400 life hours are simply idled away creating nothing memorable, productive or meaningful?

Our message series this month is framed as a question, “Let’s Get Rich?”  Last Sunday we discussed finding an appropriate attitude towards money – understanding that it has practical and spiritual significance to improve the condition of humanity and all creation.  Money is to be put to use and not hoarded.  It is to be earned and it is to be freely given to make our world a better place.  For today, I hope we can reflect on how we value our time and how that relates with our attitude towards money.  We learned last week that simplicity in how we live has a high value.  Do we allow a love of money and things to control us or do we control them?  Do we limit them and seek, as much as possible, simplicity in our lives?  If we do, then I propose that the value we place on our time will increase.  Indeed, we might move from a mindset that time is money to one which says that our time is priceless.  It has infinite value.  Every hour of every day is precious.  Once it is gone, it can never be reclaimed.

Johan von Goethe, the renowned German writer, once said, “Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.” And Henri Louis Bergson, a noted French philosopher of the early 20^th century, noted, “Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being counted.”  Ka-ching.  Ka-ching!  Another hour spent.  Was it worth it?

The implicit message we learn, therefore, is that while time is NOT money, it is its own currency.  It is of immeasurable worth but, since that is so, it must not be wasted.  It should, like money, be used for productive purposes – for ourselves, our families and then for others.  Like money, it should be used simply and not extravagantly – time should never be simply thrown away.  We use it not only for work to meet our basic economic needs but we also use it for rest, for renewal and for personal fulfillment.  In this regard, the spending of our time – like the spending of our money – must be done with wisdom.

As Americans, we are known for our work ethic and industrious attitudes.  As a nationality, we are efficient and no-nonsense individuals who spend vast amounts of time at work – to make money.  As we discussed last week, work has its value and we are to earn what we eat.  The Biblical book of Proverbs wisely notes that, “The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.” But, in studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, Americans work, on average, far more hours than is needed for their basic well-being.  Studies show that as wealth has increased in the United States, we have responded by working even harder.  Our desire for money has only increased.  When levels of general happiness are measured in our country, however, we have stayed at mostly the same level over the past half-century.  We are no happier for our extra wealth.  In Europe, however, as their wealth increased, they responded by working less while their general happiness levels have greatly increased.

The Wharton study found that if we think about money and our work too much, such thoughts become self-fulfilling.  We simply want to work more.  If, however, we spend time thinking and planning about other uses of our time – like time with family or other less lucrative pursuits, we will indeed then spend more of our time doing those emotionally enriching things.  This holds true for rich and poor alike.  How we think about our time – do we think mostly about work, or do we have a balanced perspective about it – is key to our happiness.  We will act in accord with our thinking.  Once again, the Bible is a source of wisdom.  The Psalms tell us, “It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors. So consider your mortality, so that you might live wisely.”

We learned last Sunday that it is possible to have a spiritual perspective toward money.  As Doug Meredith noted during our talk back time, money is an enabler of either our best or our worst attitudes.  The love of money can enable greed, lust and arrogance.  Or, a respect for money can enable a healthy work ethic, generosity and compassion.  The same must hold true for our time.  Do we hoard it solely for ourselves – to work, rest, and use as we like?  Does it inspire arrogance on our part – our time is too valuable to give to simple things like reading, laughing, meditation, play or conversation with others?  Do we make productive use of our time – to meaningfully connect with another person or to work diligently and fairly?   Do we give away time to others – do we volunteer – to visit with a friend, to play with a child, to serve someone or some organization in need?  Indeed, just as I said last week that an audit of our checking accounts might best reveal our attitudes towards money, so too will an audit of our calendars or day planners reveal our attitudes towards time.  Is our time and is our money spent selfishly – with just ourselves in mind – or are we giving, generous and caring in its use?

A spiritual and balanced use of time must include its efficient and productive use.  Since we will never get back any of our time, it should not be wasted.  Time must be well managed and priorities must be set.  In our daily lives, do we go from task to task with no set plan or do we allocate it according to what is most important?  A daily “to do” list is a recommended solution to how we can waste time by running to and fro.

An efficient use of time is also important.  Can we learn to delegate tasks to others who can do them better?  Can we humble ourselves and recognize that we cannot do it all – we must share with each other our daily work?  Asking for help, giving away portions of our work, getting an assistant or partner or seeking advice from another are important if we are to find time in our days to enjoy rest and be at peace.

Jesus offered his wisdom regarding another aspect for a spiritual use of time.  We must be honest in our attitudes toward using and giving time.  He said, “Simply let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no.’” In other words, when we say “yes” to a project or event or other use of our time, it must be sincere and the task undertaken without regret.  In the same manner, we must learn how to gently say “no” when others ask for time that we cannot give.  Many of us have generous and giving hearts but we can also give beyond our abilities.  We burn out and we lose control of our lives.

Finally, in another act of personal transformation that we discussed last month, I believe we must die to our own time needs.  This does not mean that we do not find time for rest or renewal but, instead, that we see our time as serving a larger purpose than just for ourselves.  Our time is to be used to build a better earth – for humanity, for fellow creatures and for our environment.  We are to build heaven on earth, as I so often repeat.  In that regard, we come to see that our purpose in life is not to simply exist for our own sake, it is to serve others – family, friends, community, complete strangers.  When we do find time for rest, it is to recharge ourselves so that we can better improve the world.

We are also to give complete and honest labor at our jobs and careers.  Wasteful or idle time at work is a form of theft.   Do we give time to our families, close friends and associates – to build intimate and meaningful connections?    Are we listening, empathetic and fully present during those interactions or are we simply using time with others to meet our personal needs?

After our time at work – used to earn money necessary for our needs and those of our families, and after time we give to loved ones to nurture vital relationships, and after the time we give to ourselves for rest, are we finding time to share and give away in volunteering?  The actress Whoopi Goldberg said that if every American gave five hours of their time per week in helping others, it would be the equivalent work of 20 million full-time charity workers.  Imagine what could be accomplished by that work force!  And Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, quality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up.”

For us here at the Gathering, such an ideal represents the core of who we are.  We will continue to walk our talk.  We will not simply speak in favor of justice, we will do our part to work for it.  As a congregation, we will continue each one of us to volunteer in meaningful and significant ways.  The work of this church cannot be done by a few.  It must be done by all of us.  This is not a place of spectators.  It is a place of activists and givers and volunteers.  I am personally so touched by all the work that goes on here – those who organize outreach to homeless kids, those who regularly show up to serve them, those who plan the music, who provide it, who manage our finances, teach our youth, host our Book Clubs, create our websites, plan our events, cook our food, greet our guests, serve at the Freestore, brew our coffee, assist homeless families..….the list goes on and on and on.  We serve and give our time not for this congregation but to learn and grow and work for a better world!

My friends, I stand before you as one who must listen to this message more than perhaps any of you.  I need to find a healthy perspective on my time.  It is said that we can spend our time for a variety of wrong reasons – for greed, for ego, to avoid other tasks or to please people.  Too often I spend my time worrying about what others think of me instead of focusing on the beauty of the moment.  Without any desire on my part to brag, I have tried over the past year here at the Gathering to do my very best, to work as hard as possible for the sake of this great congregation and to serve with love and understanding.  In the course of my work and the many hours I dedicate to it, though, I have sometimes neglected my daughters or Ed or my close friends.  Commuting between two cities only adds to those issues.  The busy aspects of this job can take me away from what is most important to me.  That is something nobody has forced upon me.  I have put those burdens on myself.  I must hold myself accountable for finding time to meet my daughters for lunch, for knowing when to shut off the computer, for accepting the fact that I can only work so much, for simply enjoying the company of a friend.  I have told several of you who work so hard here at the Gathering – don’t burn yourself out!  I must tell myself the same thing.

I believe we are each so fortunate to have been born.  Our lives are not without hardship and suffering.  But they are filled with joy and love as well.  We live for but a breath of time.  Across the eons of existence, our years on this planet pass almost as a blink of an eye.  A thousand years from now, our lives will barely be remembered – if at all.  But that does not diminish our significance.  We need not be remembered.  Only that we mattered.  We have a purpose.  We can literally change the world.  For every time you look into the eyes of your partner and tell him or her of your deep love, you have blessed another soul.  For every child you hug and teach the ways of life, you have touched the future.  For every tired or sick or hungry person – or animal – you have comforted, you have reduced suffering.  What ripples in the pond of creation have we spawned by one act of our giving?  Those ripples we create with our gifts of time spread ever outward, touching distant lives and far off places we will never know. Dear ones, let us indeed count the clock.  Let us see the value of time.  It is a currency to be spent wisely.  It is a currency to spend generously.  It is the only thing we really possess and it is the only thing we truly lose.  Time for you.  Time for me.  Time for love and charity….

Message 35, “Let’s Get Rich?  Money, Money, Money!”, 10-3-10

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

Service-Program-10-03-10

There is an old story about a fisherman who was relaxing one day by his boat.  His wife was at his side while he laughed and played with his children.  Several fish cooked over an open fire.  A passer-by stopped and asked the fisherman why he was not out at sea fishing.  He replied, “Well, I already have caught all the fish my family and I need for the day.”  “But,” the passer-by answered, “If you caught more fish you could sell them and make enough money to buy a motor for your boat.”  “And why would I want that?” the fisherman asked.  “So you can go farther out to sea and catch even more fish to sell.” said the passer-by.  “What would those fish bring me?” asked the fisherman.  “Why, you could then buy another boat and, with time, you might even own a whole fleet of boats.  My goodness”, exclaimed the passer-by, “you could catch lots of fish and make lots of money and you would be rich!”  “Why would I want to be rich?” said the fisherman.  “So you could enjoy life and have lots of free time!”  the passer-by almost shouted in exasperation.  “But that is exactly what I have right now.” replied the fisherman.

This quaint parable speaks volumes about our attitudes on money and life.  It is wonderfully illustrative but, to be fair, there are several flaws to the fisherman’s approach.  An ethic of sufficiency is good up to a point – but what about helping others?  What about preparing for a future when he cannot fish?  What about training his children how to fish?  Even so, the parable points out the fact that there is almost nothing else that so much shapes our life decisions and our personalities as how we think about money.  And, it is with that theme in mind that I begin an October series with the questioning title “Let’s Get Rich?”

I want to examine with you three different aspects of that theme this month.  Today we’ll look at general attitudes towards money and wealth.  How might we acquire real prosperity?  Is money intrinsically evil, as some say, or are there healthy and more spiritual ways to define it and use it?  Next week, we will consider how time and money often are in conflict.  We tend to love money and seek more of it, while neglecting that resource of ours – time – which is limited.  How might we manage our time in ways that reflect a spiritual approach to life?  Finally, on the third Sunday in this series, we’ll explore the possibly frightening idea of giving away all our money to others.  What roles do giving and generosity play in a balanced perspective on money?

In the Bible, Paul warns a young protégé of his, Timothy, about money.  He wrote, “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge people into ruin and destruction.  For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil….. But flee from these things and pursue faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.” Too often, people misquote this passage and declare that money is itself evil.  But the Bible clearly says that it is the love of money which is evil.  If this is so, should we instead hate money?  Should we be indifferent towards it?  Or might we instead have a more nuanced respect for it – neither seeing it as inherently negative nor as something to be worshipped?

Just as I advocate with all areas of thinking, I believe truth resides somewhere in the middle between two extremes.  With regard to a spiritual approach to money, I don’t believe money and wealth are themselves evil and neither do I believe those who make lots of money are necessarily wrong.  By itself, money serves a practical purpose.  It allows for the easy exchange of goods and services without having to resort to barter or other simple economic systems.  The paper we keep folded in our wallets and the numbers showing up in our bank accounts have no intrinsic value more than the paper on which they are printed.  We agree to accept it, however, as a payment for labor or for manufactured items.  Indeed, without money as a form of economic exchange, it is likely that most jobs and most forms of production could not exist.  If all you had to exchange was the labor at which you are skilled, it would be very difficult to find many grocers or landlords to accept that as payment for your food and housing.

From an economic standpoint, then, money is a good thing.  Using it to build factories and invest in manufacturing equipment, for instance, helps to create new products to enhance human life and to provide jobs.  From a spiritual perspective, the same holds true as well.  Money is to be used for productive purposes.

In his parable of talents, Jesus tells a story about three servants who receive sums of money – called talents in his day – from their wealthy boss who is departing on a long journey away from home.  After his return, the servants are called to account for how they used the money.  Two of the servants report that they had put the money to work – perhaps investing in land or flocks of sheep to sell – and thus had doubled the amount entrusted to their care.  But one servant tells instead how he buried the talent of money in order to save it and thus return it to the boss.  He is sharply rebuked, called lazy, and fired on the spot.  The lesson of the parable story told by Jesus is that the Divine ethic is clearly NOT that making money is bad, but that hoarding it or putting it to unproductive use is negligent and, in the long term, wrong.  Francis Bacon, the famous English scientist and philosopher, noted that money is like manure.  It has no use except to be spread.  Henry Ford further refined this Jesus money ethic by saying, “The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.”

For that purpose, spirituality tells us that money is something we earn by our labor.  It is not freely given nor should it be acquired by unjust means.  The Biblical book of Proverbs tells us that, “Wealth obtained by fraud dwindles, but the one who gathers by labor increases it.” Furthermore, money must be paid equitably for hard work.  Robert Bosch, the music equipment manufacturer and entrepreneur, said, “I don’t pay high wages because I have a lot of money.  I have a lot of money because I pay high wages.” This is in the same spirit as Henry Ford who paid workers on his assembly line wages that were three times the average, while he provided an inexpensive product – the Model T car – that revolutionized human transport and improved life for millions.  The Bible is once again enlightening.  It admonishes that one must not muzzle an ox – prevent it from eating – while it works to harvest grain.  In other words, we are to work for what we eat BUT, just as important, we are entitled to be paid fairly for our work.

And Buddhists echo the same message.  While most assume that Buddhism abhors money, such is not the case.  It is an instrument designed to meet and provide for human needs.  Hoarding and being a miser were strongly deplored.  The Buddha encouraged human contentment in all things.  Living a simple life with few possessions is the path to nirvana and true happiness.  Indeed, being frugal but not miserly is a high ethic, according to the Buddha.

Islam proposes an equally practical perspective on wealth.  The most excellent jihad, according to the Q’uran, is one that conquers the self – and in this regard money is to be used not to meet excessive desires of the self but it is to be shared with others and to be put to use.

I often shake my head at the continual emphasis, by some Christians, on supposed Biblical injunctions against so-called sins of the flesh – like sex, drinking or abortion.  In truth, however, the Bible and Jesus in particular spend more time discussing money issues than any other topic in the Bible.  There are over 800 verses about it.  And virtually all of them warn against attitudes of greed, love of money and unproductive uses of it.  Most people have heard Jesus’ declaration that it will be harder for a rich person to enter into heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.  Such a statement gives wealthy Christians fits and many try all sorts of ways to re-interpret it.  Jesus issued this declaration after a rich young ruler had approached him asking what he could do to get into heaven.  Jesus looked him over, probably discerning the young man to be arrogant and lavish in his use of wealth, and simply told him that to be right with the Divine One, he must give away all that he has.  The rich young man was shocked, shook his head sadly and walked away.  He loved his wealth too much.

While I clearly believe that the Divine heart is with the poor, the outcast and the sick, such love is also open to all persons – rich and poor alike.  Jesus gave us the amusing image of trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle but then quickly added that as impossible as that sounds, with the Divine One, all things are possible! In other words, even the rich can get into heaven.

My point in that regard is not to offer comforting words about wealth.  Instead, I believe the Biblical message – and overall spiritual message – is that people can have wealth…………but wealth must not have them.  Jesus said at one point that “No-one can serve two masters.  You cannot serve God and wealth.” And we know from other verses in the Bible that the way to serve god – the Divine One – is through feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, healing the sick and fighting the unjust.

Extending the idea of a moral attitude towards money, it is surprising to note interesting and perhaps ironic characteristics of America’s millionaires.  In a 2008 study by the Spectrum Group, there are 6.7 million millionaires in this country.  A huge majority of them work.  Many own their own business.  On average, they do not own new or luxury cars, on average they do not buy name brand food, clothing or household items, they invest over 20% of their annual income, they charitably donate a greater percentage of their income than does the middle class, and nearly 90% gained their wealth on their own – in other words, it was not inherited.

My point is again not to say that millionaires are good and others are bad.  It is to simply point out, again, that wealth is not necessarily evil.  Indeed, we might say that on average, one has a better chance of becoming a millionaire with a healthy perspective on money than if one does not.  Overall, we see that most millionaires – not all – worked for their money, they put it to productive use, and they are frugal in their spending.  Even so, as Jesus implied many times, money brings with it lots of dangers for one’s spiritual health.  No matter how much money we have, whether we are rich or poor or somewhere in between, we are warned about our attitudes towards it.  Indeed, I believe those who have little wealth can have as much of an unhealthy attitude towards money, how it is acquired and how it is spent, as can a rich person.

How can each of us, in our own hearts, think about money in ways that exhibit simplicity, selflessness, hard work, generosity and productivity?  What purpose does money and wealth serve for us?  Does it control our lives?  Do we obsess over it?  Do we use it for selfish purposes? Do we use it to only meet basic needs and do we use it for productive purposes?

I must daily challenge myself in regard to these questions.  As I have spoken before about dying to myself, how I spend money and how I earn it is a clear indicator of whether I have truly done that.  I talked to you a few weeks ago about my own spiritual awakening around ten years ago, the epiphany when I realized my purpose in life is not to serve myself but to think of others first.  Transformation came for me with regard to money – and is still a work in progress – as I learned to be less concerned about the balance in my checking account.   I grudgingly adopted a more giving perspective with money – realizing that certain portions of my income should be given away – to causes and organizations that help to change the world for the better.  I still have a long way to go in adopting a more spiritual outlook on money – I need to accept the value of my own labor while I also need to continue growing in my generosity.

An old proverb, by some long ago anonymous author, says that “If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can’t buy.” And Mother Theresa once said, “Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace.” It might be simplistic to assert that we should focus more on our spiritual bank accounts than on our stock portfolios.  But, I believe we all know such is truth.  Can we seek to build a spiritual abundance of contentment, generosity, productivity, love, trust, and simplicity?  Might we find that money has its purpose – to meet our basic needs and to grow for the sake of improving the lives of all humanity – and leave it at that?

In my messages last month, I spoke about the time all of us will face when we know that our days and hours are almost over.  Are money and things what we will value most at that moment?  Will we have found our life meaning in them and in a relentless concern about wealth?  Or will we find peace in the knowledge that our lives and our money mattered – that we built loving and close relationships with others, we served and gave to others, we lived simply, we lacked selfishness, we forgave?

Our attitudes about money are a crucial test for us.  To the Divine One at work in our universe, we ask for wisdom and guidance with regard to it.  We ask for continuous spiritual surgery on our hearts – may money have no control over our lives and may we work diligently and wisely so that we have more to give away for the betterment of all creation….

I wish you all peace and love.

Message 34, The Times of Our Lives: Spiritual Wisdom, 9-19-10

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

Service-Program-9-19-10

Many of you have seen and remember the recent Academy Award nominated movie “Precioius.”  It is not an easy film to watch.  It portrays an overweight, African-American girl, living in a housing project with her embittered, welfare abusing mother, who regularly beats and taunts her daughter.  Precious has already given birth to a Down’s syndrome daughter – the result of being raped by her father.   And she is once again pregnant – also the offspring of her own father.  Precious is functionally illiterate, an un-wed mother, overweight, a sexual abuse victim, poor and trapped in a life that seems to have nowhere to go but further down.  As a final punch in the viewer’s gut, we discover along with Precious that she has tested HIV positive – also a result of being raped and sexually abused by her father.    I still choke up when I think about this young girl asking plaintively of her teacher, “why me?”  This dark and horrifying portrayal of life in an urban hell is not pretty nor is it unrealistic.  There are young girls like Precious who walk by these very doors.  Pete and Ginny Patterson worked with girls like Precious and she is like the homeless young adults at Anthony House we help to serve.

My point in reminding myself and all of us about the reality of such pain and suffering is to partially rebuke the easy and simplistic message I have offered and one might take away from my message series this month.  In this series, entitled “The Times of Our Lives: Spiritual Awakening, Transformation and Wisdom”, I discussed over the last two Sundays the concepts of awakening and then being transformed by the realization that life is not about us.  Our purpose in life is not to serve ourselves but to serve and love others.

As I have contemplated that ideal over the past week and in my research for today’s message on spiritual wisdom, I realized that it is so simple and so nice to dispense such platitudes like the importance of forgiveness and sacrifice.  How nice and yet how utterly arrogant that message is to those – to any of you – who have truly suffered.  How dare I, or anyone else, tell someone like a Precious Jones that life is not about them? There are people in this world – perhaps in this very room – who have never had the opportunity to feel like one moment of their lives was comfortable or enjoyable or even remotely about them.  For many of us, including myself, the facile platitudes and messages about life that often come out of Scriptures or spirituality are what make us cringe when we consider organized religion.  “Let go and let god” is one such platitude.  “Die to yourself” is another – both of which I too easily offered the past two Sundays.  Try offering those messages to a starving, homeless child in Haiti or to a poor, unwed mother living just blocks from here!

And yet, I find I cannot totally reject the seemingly simplistic notion of self-sacrifice or serving others.  Indeed, that is the one beautiful moment in the film “Precious” when she embraces her Down’s syndrome daughter and her newborn son and finds strength, redemption and, I think, spiritual wisdom in her decision to love and care for them.  Precious chooses to love and care for her children while she also embarks on an effort to educate herself.  She refuses to be a victim much like her mother had become.  As the film ends, Precious walks into the future as a survivor and as one possessing innate wisdom.  Perhaps, then, platitudes have elements of wisdom within them which, when spoken in the right context, have meaning and truth.

What, I ask you then, is spiritual wisdom?  If my simple platitudes of service and sacrifice and forgiveness can ring hollow and yet contain a germ of truth, are they wise?  Can they enlighten us?  At some point in our lives, I believe we all find a certain imperfect spiritual wisdom about life and meaning.  We are awakened to a new reality that life is not about us, we transform our lives to act out that new understanding and then, after living some years as a newly changed person, we often realize all of our conclusions are not so easy, so simple or so perfect.  We find wisdom to be something complex, elusive and holistic.

In my messages the past two Sundays I encouraged us to deny ourselves and to love and serve others as our purpose in life.  Yet, even Jesus said that we should love others as we love ourselves.  How can we love someone else if we cannot love our own selves?  How can we serve another if have not first met our own needs to give us the strength to give?  Buddhists encourage gentleness with the self in terms of recrimination or self-denial.  In serving others, we must find context and nuance.  By encouraging, fostering and meeting our basic individual needs, we can better serve, love and care for others.  We find, then, that true spiritual wisdom regarding serving others is not so easy.  Dying to the self must be undertaken within the context of dying to selfishness.  It must then be coupled with a holistic appreciation for our Divinely inspired abilities to help others.

It is the very complexity of finding wisdom that I believe brings us here every Sunday.  Such is one purpose that the Gathering serves and which I believe makes this congregation unique.  Andre Gide, a famous French philosopher, once said “Believe those who are seeking wisdom; doubt those who find it.” Such a statement humbles me.  As a Pastor, I have no more insight into what is wisdom then any of you.  What I offer on any given Sunday is, I hope, more thought provoking then it is conclusive.  It is in our collective wisdom and in our continuous search for it that we find glimpses of profound insight.

Spiritual wisdom is also inclusive.  It is multi-faceted.  It incorporates many traditions and many beliefs.  It is NOT exclusive.  True wisdom must, I believe, be open to many sources of insight.  Those who are wise have learned and listened to many people, they have read and considered many books and pieces of knowledge, they look to the secular and to the religious, they accept inspiration from the Muslim, from the Hindu, from the conservative and the liberal.  Wisdom accepts the ironic possibility that it is not always right and that it is not yet perfect.

If wisdom is open to other insights, then it is reasonable to assert spiritual wisdom is ever evolving and ever changing.  John F. Kennedy said, “Change is the law of life.  Those who look only to the past or to the present are certain to miss the future.” And Kennedy has perfectly stated the progressive ideal in which I believe true wisdom lies.  I do not assert a political statement but an attitude we must all seek.  Progressivism moves into the future with confidence and not fear.  It accepts new knowledge and new traditions and new sources of wisdom without necessarily throwing out all of the old.  This is an ideal for us here at the Gathering as we move into unchartered territory of change and growth.  If we choose to remain as we have been, we have chosen safety and comfort over the potential for finding new sources of wisdom.  Many of you heard and appreciated Lisa Blankenship and her sharing last week.  She and her partner Genevieve are relatively new members here.  If we forestall progressive but reasonable growth, and seek instead to hold onto what we have now, how many future Lisa’s and Gen’s and Bob’s and Dick’s and Debi’s and Donald’s – and their wisdom – might we be closing ourselves off to hearing from and listening to?  I believe genuine wisdom is therefore open to change.

Those who have arrived at a point of being spiritually wise are also listeners more than they are talkers.  They appreciate silence and reflection.  On this point philosophers and prophets throughout history have agreed.  One anonymous author wrote, “To appear wise, one must talk; to be wise, one must listen.” D.J. Kaufman, a noted contemporary thinker, says, “Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening.” And the Biblical book of Proverbs asserts “Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who listen and take advice.” How often do we consider those who dispense lots of facts or opinions as wise?   In truth, we frequently discover that it is the person who listens more than speaks who holds the key to wisdom.   Listening and appreciating silence is an attitude of our hearts that involves a desire to be present and to seek enlightenment.  Tom Nauer wrote in a wonderful poem of his, entitled “The Beauty of Silence”, “Within my being resides a knowing, which is only now in the process of showing.  Tranquility, serenity, mental fertility, the beauty in a silence of knowledgeability.”

As Tom noted in his poem, in our silence we find an inherent knowing of wisdom.  In silence we can hear and feel the Divine.  She speaks to us without sound and without words.  Her voice is found in the stillness of our souls as we ponder and sense the universe all around us and within us.  In this manner, as I spoke last week, we find the imageo dei – the image of god – who is us.  We are god and she is us.  What profound feelings of love and beauty and oneness with all creation are found in being still?  Genuine spiritual wisdom therefore involves a choice to listen, to be still, to be present and to be silent.

I believe the wise are also those who know themselves.  They are self-aware.  With their flaws, the wise understand where they need to grow and to change.  They are therefore quick to know when they have acted inappropriately – with anger, neglect or cruelty.  They readily offer apologies and seek reconciliation.  They are emotionally stable in that they are empathetic, compassionate, joyful, peaceful and lacking in complaint.  The wise also have inner confidence and they understand their innate gifts.  They are the truly humble, knowing where they are imperfect and where they are strong.  True wisdom, I believe, does not need to boast or show itself for it is secure both in what it does not know and what it does.

For Buddhists, wisdom additionally incorporates non-violence and a lack of anger.  To be wise, according to the Buddha, is the highest attribute one can obtain.  Wisdom involves being calm, free of fear, content and lacking the desire for material wealth or fame.  The wise understand the things that are important in life – friendships, family, peace of mind, health, self-awareness and compassion.  Spiritual wisdom for the Buddhist therefore includes an ability to discern one’s true interests from those of the ego and the selfish “me” found in all of us.  Such a message is echoed in the Biblical book of Ecclesiates which declares, “Vanity of Vanities!  All is vanity.  All the pleasures that people desire fail to give meaning to their existence.”

While there are as many qualities to being wise as there are opinions on the subject, my final thought on wisdom includes the ability to know when to act.  The wise are not merely contemplative or silent.  Qualities such as diligence, optimism, hard work and perseverance are evident in the wise.  They are not impulsive but wisdom involves sensing when action is important and when it is not.  The wise understand the value of action and of work.

Implicit in this message about spiritual wisdom is the danger that I have offered ALL of its qualities.  I have not.  Inherent in being spiritually wise is being one who is fascinated with the big picture of life, who senses things that are important, who knows what is ethical and what is evil, who understands meaning and who is able to apply wisdom for the enhancement of life for all people and all creatures.  But those are merely my thoughts.  Spirituality in general is ineffable and mysterious.  It is known through the heart and in the soul.  It is felt and not known.  Spiritual wisdom is much the same.  Indeed, wisdom is never the same as mere knowledge.  One can be vastly informed and know many things without being wise.  And, one can be profoundly wise without having multiple degrees or a mental storehouse of facts and figures.   I have known people who are deeply religious because they have exhaustively studied theology and the Scriptures but they are not wise.  They can recite the doctrines of all the world’s many faiths and they can quote by memory from the Bible, but they lack spiritual wisdom.  Of Popes, Bishops, Doctors of Divinity, Pastors, Rabbis and Imams, these are all titles with worthless spiritual meaning.  They are, in truth, false wizards hiding behind a curtain.  Instead, we are all Pastors.  We are all spiritual persons.  We all have the imageo dei written on our hearts, indicating we have inherent spiritual wisdom within us.  As much as we can be still and hear the Divine, we can also be still and hear the spiritual wisdom of all eternity – to feel, to love, to walk humbly, to work, to be at peace and to be joyful.

Message 33, “The Times of Our Lives: Spiritual Transformation”, 9-12-10

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

Service-Program-9-12-10

Lily Tomlin, one of the great comedians of our time, once said that, “I always knew I wanted to become somebody when I grew up. Now I realize I should have been more specific!”

And so she has pointed out, with the irony only comics can offer, the issue many of us face.  We have lives that are filled with lots of events and family members and friends.  But we still ask ourselves what is the meaning of life?  We build careers and we pursue great acts of service for our communities, but we often find no cohesive purpose to what we do beyond personal fulfillment.  Too often, people find themselves near the very end of their lives and they struggle to understand the significance of their long journey.  Many of us live and die without knowing where we have been and where we are going.  Who are we besides a superficial set of descriptions about what we have done and what we do?

One anonymous commentator on life said that, “Birth is God’s way of saying you matter.”  But why is that so and how do we arrive at a place where we not only intellectually understand that we matter, but we also feel it?  To ask a more relevant question for this morning, why are we here at this time and place – is it to just hear the Greenhill’s Strings play some great music?  Is it to spend time with good friends or to feel good about ourselves?  Or is it something deeper and more meaningful?

In our message series this month entitled “The Times of Our Lives: Spiritual Awakening, Transformation and Wisdom”, my hope is that we arrive at a few conclusions about purpose and meaning – for ourselves, for life, for this church and even for the time we spend here today (or waste – depending on your viewpoint!).  Last week we looked at the first spiritual period of our lives – a moment or process I believe each person experiences – when we are awakened and arrive at the conclusion that life is not about us.  How is it that we die to former selves and, in the awakening process, find that we don’t die at all?  I believe in our awakening we find that life is full of feeling, compassion, love and empathy NOT for our own sake but for the sake of serving others.  Each person awakens to that realization at some point in their lives and, as some of you pointed out last week, we often must re-awaken to that ideal each and every day.

In the spiritual evolution of our lives, therefore, we arrive at a point where we are indeed awakened to our potential and our purpose to live for others.  And the next step then involves actually changing.  We begin to live out what Lily Tomlin opined in her life observation – we make specific who and what we were created to be.  That doesn’t solely involve becoming a teacher or a lawyer or a social worker or whatever life work we choose.  Those are things we do.  It is, I believe, a total transformation – a maturing or growing up, if you will, in becoming not just a person who does certain things but a person who IS certain things.  In other words, are we defined by the tasks we perform in life or are we defined by the ideals we manifest in life – like compassion, selflessness, empathy, sacrifice, love and forgiveness?  Becoming defined by those ideals is what I mean by spiritual transformation.

Please join me now in welcoming up front one of the members here at the Gathering who will to share her spiritual life journey – Lisa Blankenship.

In the Bible, Paul told the Christian community in Rome,  “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of the Divine.” In this quote, we find a nugget of wisdom within a divine text pointing the way toward greater spiritual enlightenment.  Transformation involves discovering our god-selves and then offering our powerful skills to family, neighbors and the world.

If, as I often say, God is not some mystical force out there but she or he is in here, in us, then spiritual transformation is about becoming that little god – a force for good and positive change.  In our pre-awakened lives, we too often think of ourselves as god-like, but only in the sense that we are powerful creatures operating within a mini-universe of one, to love and serve the “me”.  By renewing our minds, as the Bible says, we transform ourselves into human versions of god who are powerful creatures capable of creating a universal heaven on earth.  Such is, I believe, our true purpose and the reason for our existence.  Eons of evolution have not brought us to a place of power and capability merely for us to use it for the selfish ends of our own species and our individual selves.   Indeed, if we believe that life is ever-changing and ever-evolving, we are called to be a part of that process of change for the better.  To spiritually transform ourselves we must become manifestations of the Divine – earth bound gods who love, serve and sacrifice for others and for the ultimate good of the entire universe.

In this regard, the famous psycho-analyst Carl Jung had it right.  After studying Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, Jung concluded that personal transformation constitutes the mysterious heart of all religions.  Through transformation, we see and meet the Divine and thereby discover our true selves.  Unlike Freudian analysis which is often accused of an obsessive focus on the self, Jung turned psychoanalysis on its head in proposing that the spiritual experiences of awakening and of transformation are absolutely essential to our emotional well-being.

And, if this is so, just what is it that we transform ourselves into? If we are to become little versions of god, what does god look like?  As I look to the prophets throughout history who have pointed to the heart of god, I find two common characteristics in describing that ideal.  We must become peacemakers at one with all creation through forgiveness – and then we must sublimate ourselves to the will of all creation and all humanity through personal sacrifice.  With these two – forgiveness and sacrifice – we manifest the Divine.

If we truly wish to transform and renew ourselves, than we must be people of forgiveness.  And only then are we people of true peace and love.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “He who is devoid of the power to forgive, is devoid of the power to love.” And, if I can add an addendum to King’s words, such a person is unable to be spiritually transformed and thus incapable of bringing genuine goodness to the world.  Forgiveness involves letting go of past hurts and resentments.  It means, once again, letting go of the self and our own need for justification and merit.  If we hold on to the feeling of victimhood, we live only within the self and the universe of “me”.  If, on the other hand, we are forgiving people, we can find understanding, empathy, and compassion for others – and perhaps even for the one who has hurt us.

In forgiving others we are to reach out to our past, present or future oppressors.  We do not absolve or excuse their actions against us but we refuse to allow them to prevent us from extending peace and love.  Bassam Aramin, the Palestinian founder of Combatants for Peace, often talks about his own journey of spiritual transformation into a god-like man of forgiveness.  As a teenager he was sent to prison for seven years for attacking a convoy of Israeli soldiers.  And, once in prison he relates how one day he and all of the other Palestinian prisoners were severely beaten as a part of an Israeli training exercise.  During his beating, he suddenly remembered a movie about the holocaust that he had previously seen.  And he remembered how he had cried as he saw Jews led off to the gas chambers.  In that moment, as he was bloodied and bruised by Israeli guards, he suddenly felt himself no longer a victim but instead one who empathizes with and understands the fear and anger of Jews who had suffered so much under their oppressors.  His pain was their pain and theirs became his.

In his awakening moment, when he could have been filled with hatred and thoughts of revenge, he vowed instead to become a force for peace and forgiveness.  On his release from the Israeli prison, he founded the Palestinian and Jewish organization of Combatants for Peace which works for reconciliation in the middle-east and in conflicts around the world.  Several years ago, Bassam was again confronted with the choice to hate or forgive.  His ten year old daughter, standing outside her school and not involved in any act of conflict or protest, was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier.  Despite an investigation by Israeli authorities, no punishment was ever meted out for the killing of an unarmed child and the soldier in question was allowed to remain unidentified.  In the spirit of his peace movement, however, soon after justice was denied, over a hundred Israelis arrived at his daughter’s Palestinian school and built a playground and garden in her name.

In prison, Bassam Aramin awakened to the idea that life was not about him and his victimhood.  He cried the tears of one who could identify with others who hurt and are oppressed.  And he found spiritual transformation in his work to forgive, as one who brings together historic enemies.  Finally, in a father’s worst nightmare, he offered proof of his transformation by refusing to seek vengeance for his daughter’s death.  As Mohatmas Gandhi once said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

Such change in a person does not come without cost.  We cannot love and we cannot forgive unless we not only die to ourselves but also sacrifice our needs and our desires for those of other people.  A change of attitude into a sacrificial mindset is the ultimate evidence of spiritual awakening and transformation.  Sacrifice – like forgiveness – involves denying the needs of the self and working for the needs of others.  Sacrifice means doing for another without any expectation of a return in kind.  It is the truest form of love – to love another unconditionally and to love beyond the need for its return.

As we discussed last Sunday, acts of genuine altruism are never easy nor do we ever become perfect in forgiving and sacrificing for others.  If you recall my earlier quoted words from the Bible that transformation comes from renewing our minds, such change is not something that just happens to us.  We must consciously choose to change.  We must embark on a journey of transformation involving a regular choice to alter the way we think.  By learning to test our previously unquestioned thoughts, we can transform our cognitive thinking.  Instead of reacting with anger, bitterness and hatred when I am wronged, transformation for me must include asking myself why I react with hate, why did the other hurt me, what ways did I contribute to the conflict, what can I do to create peace and reconciliation in the situation?

To be proactive in my newly transformed approach to life, I might no longer ask myself what is in it for me whenever I do something for another.  I will change the premise upon which I base all of my actions.  No longer will I think of the potential rewards coming from my actions.  Instead, I will learn to act sacrificially.  My motivations will not always be so pure, but I will have begun to change and alter my outlook on life.  Indeed, I can even begin to see my actions as affecting the big picture of all human relationships and all creation.  My acts of forgiveness and sacrifice are not merely done for another person, but they help to advance unity and peace in our world.  To again quote Martin Luther King, Jr., he said, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle.”

My friends, I hope you might begin to see and understand these spiritual times of our lives.  I believe we will each confront the ultimate question we all face.  Why am I here, what purpose do I serve and what is the meaning of my life?  Shall we wait until our lives are nearly over, only to understand and be awakened to how selfish and self-focused we have been?  In our last moments before we pass into eternity will we remember those we hurt, those we refused to forgive, those we could have helped or listened to or sublimated ourselves before?  Or can we now be transformed to think with our hearts and feel with our heads – understanding we are here to build an earthly heaven of peaceful coexistence and well-being for all?  Can we not die to the big “me” in all of us and find our true god-selves, the person we were created to be who gives, who cares, who nurtures, who walks humbly, who forgives and sacrifices and loves with abandon?

This is mystical stuff of which I speak.  As I said earlier, we are not a mere evolutionary amalgam of atoms that now dominates our world.  Whatever creative force brought us to this point, we exist for a purpose.  All of creation is a beautiful and fantastic gift – the product of billions of years of refinement.  If we are to preserve our universe and advance the cause of human dignity and well-being, we must begin with ourselves.  Peace and sacrifice and forgiveness will never happen between Muslims and Christians or between Palestinians and Jews or between any two of us in this congregation unless they first begin individually.  Mohatmas Gandhi said that we must be the change we want to see in the world.  For myself, may that change begin with me…