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

 

On October 31,1517 Martin Luther, a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg in Germany, published his ninety-five theses of criticism against the Catholic Church.  Protestantism, literally meaning “those who protest” was born.

Luther was primarily against widespread Church sales of indulgences to finance the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.  An indulgence was a purchased decree, ritually offered by a Priest, Bishop or Pope, that declared a deceased person should immediately enter heaven.   A popular phrase at the time said that a gold coin no sooner rang in the bottom of an indulgence collection plate, then the soul for whom it was given would enter paradise. 

Luther was rightly horrified at the practice not just because it exploited fears of the illiterate and poor, but because it had no basis in anything Jesus taught.  Indeed, much of Jesus’ teachings were against such greed and exploitation.

Fundamentally, however, Luther was also against the Church’s use of rituals as the way to gain favor with God.  His understanding of verses in the Bible was that a person’s faith was the only determining factor for salvation and heaven.  Whether or not someone is baptized, regularly confesses sin, regularly partakes of communion, regularly tithes money to the church, or is given last rites before dying – these are rituals that have symbolic value, but are not essential to being a good and faithful person.  The Church, Luther said, had turned rituals into man-made requirements while draining them of their purpose to initiate reflection, humility and charity.

For me, Martin Luther is one of the great figures in history.  He not only fundamentally changed the understanding of God, but his protests changed prevailing thoughts about individualism, human rights, and the ability of people to think on their own – without relying on the Church to do that for them.  The Age of Reason, the Enlightenment and all advances in human rights can be linked to Martin Luther and his 95 theses.

Because I admire Luther and his courageous acts against a Church that could have burned him at the stake, I have had a skeptical view of spiritual rituals.  My concern is similar to Luther’s.  Jesus often pointed out the hypocrisy of those who pride themselves on regularly practicing rituals of praying, giving, or attending church, but who forget the purpose and meaning of those actions.  Religious hypocrites of Jesus’ day piously prayed in public, but their words were repetitious and designed to puff up the person.  Such people ritually gave to, and sacrificed for the Temple, but it was only for display.  They’d forgotten that the intent of rituals is to symbolize ethics of forgiveness, kindness and devotion.  As Jesus is alleged to have said, such hypocrites are like whitewashed tombs that appear from the outside to be clean and beautiful, but who are actually filthy, dark and full of cobwebs on the inside.

That’s the danger of spiritual rituals for me, and it’s why I still am cautious when using them.  If they are practiced or recited regularly, and always in the same way, they are in danger of becoming something done by rote memory and not with heartfelt purpose.  They start to be practiced only to seem spiritual and not with the mindset to think about what one is doing – and why.   If and when that happens, the ritual becomes meaningless and mindless.  Sadly, that is often how I practice some of our rituals.  I can appear to be like a whitewashed tomb but am instead unthinking and neglectful on the inside.  I’d rather do nothing than falsely appear to be spiritual.  As a minister, I worry about leading any of you fall into that trap.

But that does not mean I consider rituals to be bad.  Indeed, I think what we and other Unitarian Universalists ritually practice is good.  But like anything that is helpful, rituals can also be taken for granted, or they can become so repetitious that they become meaningless.  They can become empty of their symbolic power. 

What is key for me is to not forget the reasons behind our rituals.   From the dawn of history, rituals have been an integral part of human behavior.  While some religions believe they have mystical power to influence the future, we don’t think that way.  But like all people, rituals have their place in our lives.  They implicitly tell a story that what we believe is important.  They are markers for major life events – ones like a child dedication, a graduation, a marriage, or a funeral.  They also help guide our spirituality by reminding us every Sunday of values like tolerance, compassion, social justice, humility, and many others.  Rituals are so important in our lives that, as my title of this month’s message series says, they define us.

But they are useful to us only as long as we diligently remember their meaning.  None of us want to be compared to the hypocrites of Jesus’ day who, for instance, prayed but did not believe in prayer’s ability to show empathy.  Or, we don’t wish to be compared to the sixteenth century Church that greedily used rituals to collect large sums of money by manipulating members to feel fear and guilt.  Nor do we wish to be compared to some modern churches whose services are full of rituals, but empty of any life giving inspiration, warmth or thought.

For any ritual practiced in our services, I hope its purpose is not only well understood, but also well remembered.  As I said in my message last week, practices we do routinely are distinctly different from practices we do ritually.  A routine is any action done regularly but has little or no symbolic meaning.  We brush our teeth as a routine, and that’s important, but it has no meaning in our lives other than promoting oral health.  A ritual, however, is done regularly and is full of symbolic value.  We drop small colored pebbles in a bowl of water every week as a way to express a private joy or concern.  We don’t think that act has magical power to influence life.  It’s a small act, but one that has a powerful meaning.  In our minds and hearts, we remember with gratitude the richness of life, and the challenges of illness, death or heartache.  Loved ones come to mind and we are both comforted and encouraged.

Later in our services, we have the opportunity to publicly share a joy or sorrow.  As your programs say, I believe this is our version of shared prayer.  Someone’s brief words at the microphone are not a plea to some god, nor do they have an ability to change anything.  They instead do something important for our inner selves.  We get to communally share something good and positive – or we can collectively grieve, reflect, and feel empathy.  That’s a powerful practice and one that initiates greater togetherness and more compassion.

I, however, admit to ongoing concern about that practice.  I believe in Joys and Sorrows beautiful ability to add love and celebration to our services, but I worry its purpose can be forgotten.  Indeed, about a year ago, I experimented with us not practicing Joys and Sorrows every week.  I was, however, reminded by several members that those services lacked the kind of heart and soul we want to feel.  I was wrong for undertaking that experiment and I apologize for it. 

But my equal hope is that we remember the purpose of the Joys and Sorrows ritual.  It’s purpose is implied in the name we give it.  We might broadly interpret anything that happens in life as a joy or concern.  But that broad understanding misses the original intent.  What recent personal event in your life sings in your heart, or weighs on your mind?  How can one state such feelings in a way that is spiritually motivated – to bring us together, to share, and also to respect time boundaries – those of fellow attenders who plan on the service ending after about an hour………or of our RE teachers who teach our children only for the 45 minutes they have planned?

I say all of this because I believe the intention and meaning of Joys and Concerns has always been as an opportunity to concisely share one’s innermost dreams, celebrations or laments.  That intention is in keeping with the larger values we hold dear – to support one another, to be compassionate, to foster unity, and build responsiveness to our world.  When we remember those, when they are our only motivation in its practice, we are true to why we come here.    

As I earlier said, I too often engage in some rituals by just going through the motions.  I sing the words, or do an action without remembering their meaning and value.  My mind sadly too often gets caught up in the logistics of our services – are they running smoothly, are all the elements in the right order, is the PowerPoint correct, is my message too boring, and, yes, will the service end within five or ten minutes of an hour?  I think of all those things and forget why I’m here.  How can any sense of reflection or inspiration be felt by you if I don’t feel those too?  This other-mindedness in me is something I’m working on.  I want to be present in the moment and live up to my role. 

One important ritual I confess to neglecting is our lighting of the chalice.  It’s a wonderful ritual but I often fail to ponder its purpose and symbolism as it is done.  Fortunately, the lighting ritual is for Unitarian Universalists not only a defining one, it is widely open to multiple understandings.  Its symbols are historically familiar ones – the chalice and the flame, but how we each interpret them are widely different.  Some see the chalice as representative of the so-called Holy Grail – Jesus’ communion cup.  It can thus be emblematic of our Christian roots.

Others see the chalice as representing ancient pagan cups used to ritually drink wine and joyfully celebrate life’s abundance.  Others interpret the chalice as symbolic of communal unity and togetherness – that we symbolically drink from the same cup of wisdom every Sunday.

Lighting a flame within the chalice speaks to universal concepts of purity and goodness.  Fire is an eternal force that’s existed since the beginning of time.  Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Christians all see it as a powerful emblem of their faith.  For us as UU’s, the flame can represent any of those spiritual traditions – or newer ones like Humanist and Atheist appeals to rational thinking.    

What’s important is that the comfort and tradition of regularly lighting the chalice should also lead us to reflect on what that means.  I love the fact that we usually have a child light it.  That speaks to our commitment to children and their own discovery of what is true and good.  As someone who appreciates rationality, the flame for me is symbolic of refining fact from superstition.  Fire burns away anything false and is therefore a truth agent.  More than ever, I want to be reminded of that imperative – that Unitarian Universalism stands for objective truth, that we commit ourselves to its pursuit, and that we reject rigid dogma precisely to keep our minds open for new or different insights.  (Rick Duncan’s chalice).

The national UUA organization expressly states that there is not an  official way to interpret the flaming chalice or its ritual lighting.  That statement is, in itself, emblematic of our denomination.  We purposefully do not practice rituals that are identified with other religions, we do not endorse any creeds, and we are gladly welcoming to people of all spiritual beliefs, or no beliefs.  Our spirituality derives from universal principles and practices that literally any person, anywhere in the world, could and would endorse: dignity, respect, compassion, democracy, service to others. 

When we light our flame every Sunday, we each can appreciate and reflect on it in our own way.  That’s an implicit freedom I hope we will remember.  We are not told what to think, but instead encouraged to think on our own.   I hope most of you will try, as much as possible, to arrive on time for this important ritual.  And then I hope both you and I will remember to truly honor the chalice lighting – and other rituals we practice –  by focusing on what they mean.

As much as I hope I am of some assistance to you in my minister role, I ask for your help to me.  Rituals are tools we invented to prompt us to remember, reflect and honor.  Please remind me to never let them become hollow and empty.  The ones we practice here – from those done every Sunday, to ones done annually or on special occasions, they symbolically remind us of our values and they bring us together.  They are full of symbolic meaning and, as a result, they define us.

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

About twenty years ago, when my two daughters were much younger, I decided that our small family needed something that would uniquely identify us.  I thought about writing a funny and memorable song or poem.  My girls were indifferent to the need for such a thing, but I was determined.

I eventually self-choreographed a Slagle family dance as our identifier.  It was over-the-top ridiculous but nevertheless got the message across.  I introduced it on my birthday, tried to teach it to my girls and declared that it would henceforth be danced at all family occasions – public or private.  The dance is a combination of the chicken dance done on one leg, arms flapping like wings, barking like a seal, and a cheerleader finale spelling out our name and a loud “GO Slagle” at the end.

My girls thought it was horribly lame, and they half-heartedly learned it.  Later, they declared they would absolutely never dance it outside the family.  I was not deterred and for many years regularly reminded us to do it.  It did not matter they usually refused and I danced alone.  Whenever I suggested we do it in a public place, like at the end of sporting event in which my girls participated, they were so horrified they literally ran away.   

I was not a sadist, however, and made sure to do the dance privately  – even though I threatened otherwise.  I had my dignity to protect after all.  I’m even telling this story today with some fear, knowing you will want to see it.  No way!  It is soooo ridiculous that if I were to perform it here, you would immediately take a vote to find a new minister.

But the Slagle family dance took hold and, as my girls got older, they sometimes reminded me to do it.  They enjoyed seeing me make a fool of myself.  On a few occasions, they even danced with me.  I’ve not done it in many years and that’s too bad.  I need to do it again and with a family Easter dinner coming up, I just may do that.  I look forward to resurrecting it with future grandchildren.

The dance has become a part of our family lore.  We laugh about it and that makes me happy.  If I am remembered by my girls for anything, let it be that dance.  Even though it has never been something serious, it has helped bring us even closer.  It’s symbolic value lies in its up-front declaration that we are united, that in a very silly way we pledge our mutual support, no matter what.  In many ways, the Slagle family dance is our ritual.  I need not tell them that I love them.  Instead, I ritually – but in a funny way – show them.

And that helps introduce my April message theme – “Rituals that Define Us.”  When I suggested that theme to our Sunday Planning Team several weeks ago, I said I was reluctant to do it since it seemed perhaps too religious and boring – coming after my relatively intellectual March theme – “What is God?” 

The team, however, liked my suggestion.  It was Ann Bobonick who said that rituals need not only be solemn ones.  A ritual, she said, can be as simple as her regularly picking up her grandson Troy from school – or something else done often.  I therefore want to focus on a larger idea of rituals.  How broadly can we define them?  Why do we perform them?  How can they be both meaningful AND joyful?  Since First Sundays here are informal and lighthearted, today is a perfect one for me to consider rituals that define us for fun.

A ritual is described as an action which is regularly performed to symbolically remember or honor an occasion or idea.  Barbara Fiegs, who is a PhD psychologist at Syracuse University, says that things we do regularly are usually called routines.  They are important to us but what is different between a routine and a ritual is the degree of meaning we attach to them.  When performing something routinely, we apply very little afterthought to the action.  It has no strong symbolic value.  A ritual, however, is an action full of meaning.  Rituals are expressly intended to inspire. 

We don’t drop pebbles in a bowl of water every Sunday thinking such an act will literally do anything.  People we remember as we drop the stones into water will not be happier or healthier as a result.  Instead, WE are happier and emotionally healthier.  A dropped pebble represents the concern or joy we hold.  And, as we each practice that ritual, we are bound together in our thoughts for others.

As my message title today implies, rituals can be uplifting and fun much like my Slagle family dance.  Our First Sundays service, what we do today, is something very new but one I hope will also become a ritual – one Sunday a month when we let our hair down and are less traditional.  These services symbolically say that worship can be fun and that we are open to change.  This family we call the Gathering at Northern Hills, we ritually practice each Sunday shared beliefs in the dignity, diversity and equality of all.  But on First Sundays, we just do that in a way that is, I hope, slightly more relaxed and fun – even for those who plug their ears whenever the band rocks and rolls!

Experts assert that fun family and community rituals are vital to our well-being.  For children especially, family rituals are practices they not only can enjoy, but which implicitly convey to them identity, unity and universal values.  It may be an old adage, but the one that says: “a family that eats together, stays together” is often true.  Indeed, dining together is the number one family ritual child psychologists suggest.  A routine meal that is eaten quickly and with the TV on, can be transformed into one that is instead an enjoyable ritual.  That’s done by making family meals fun and a priority – by cooking together, recounting what everyone did that day, sharing inside jokes, trying new foods – and never making meals a time to rebuke or discipline.  Some families allow each child to pick the dinner food on a particular day of the week – for instance Taco Tuesdays, Waffle Wednesdays or, maybe for some kids, Spinach Sundays (probably not!)

We practice dining rituals here too.  We are a spiritual family after all.  The food we eat and the new people we meet every Sunday after the service, at our potlucks, on Souper Sundays, at the annual Auction, at our annual Holiday party, at Pub Nights, or at next Saturday’s Passover Seder meal, these are not routine, practical events.  They hold a spiritual significance.  They are rituals that define us. 

We don’t just say we are a beloved community.  We show it.  It’s why I say that what happens in the Quimby room after every service is far more important than what happens in here during a service.  It’s why I hope we will continue to strongly support and attend our social meals and events.  In this Sanctuary, you listen to me blah, blah, blah while you catch up on your sleep.  During social times, you get to enjoy yourselves!  We may not think them to be rituals, but they are.  Indeed, most of you say that it is the sense of community here, above all else, that brings you back.

Breaking bread together, whether at family meals or congregation social events, are rituals that do define us.  But experts say there are other fun rituals to practice.  Things we regularly do to celebrate holidays are examples.  My former wife, continuing practices begun by her parents when she was a child, continued them with our girls.  Every Christmas Eve the family reads the book The Night Before Christmas with each person reading a few lines until everyone says together the last lines – “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!”  Christmas morning is then begun by everyone opening their stockings filled with inexpensive gifts.  Bigger presents are later opened one person at a time – so that both the giver and the receiver share the spotlight.  When many family members are together, this process can take a very long time. But these are rituals practiced without question and are greatly enjoyed.  They define who that family is.

Birthdays are other events psychologists suggest as possible occasions for fun family rituals.  They are symbolically meaningful in how they are celebrated – perhaps by making the birthday person King or Queen for a day who picks whatever they and the family do.  The symbolism – and fun – are obvious.  This person is special and their life is one to celebrate.

Annual family vacations are the same.  It’s not the getting away that is important but the memories and the unity vacations build that are important.  I have a love for the western US because my family always took summer vacations out there when I was young.  My mom planned the trip for months in advance, we packed the family car and took off for two or three weeks to camp or stay in cheap motels, cook over a campfire, hike, and see wonders of nature like Old Faithful, the Grand Teton mountains, or the rugged coast of Canada’s British Columbia.  My siblings and I laughingly remember long hours riding together in the backseat, playing highway versions of scavenger hunt, or heeding the call of nature by the side of a road as passing cars honked at us.

My parents, with the time they took to plan and take annual summer vacations, told me and my siblings without words that family was important.  The ritual was in the long communal drives, the shared campfires, and the excited awe we felt in the midst of mountains and forests.  My parents rarely took us to Sunday churches.  But they did take us to nature’s cathedrals.  With our shared reverence for the outdoors, with our jokes, our car riding games, and our meals of burnt hot dogs, we ritually worshipped at the altar of love and togetherness.

A more serious but still fun ritual I began with my girls was to serve others together.  Partly due to my work as a minister and partly being intentional as a dad, I forced my teen girls to join me and other church folks to serve at charities.  Every month my daughters and I participated in a Sunday evening meal preparation at the City Gospel Mission homeless shelter in Over-the-Rhine.  I also forced them to join me on charity work trips – several to rural Appalachia to paint and repair homes, and others to Mexico to build homes, in a week’s time, for families living in crude shacks.  Like many teenagers, my girls were upset I took them away from their friends and the comforts of home, but once on these serving trips, they enjoyed themselves.  Today, they look back on them with gratitude. 

My daughter Sara has seared into her memory a young Mexican girl, whose family we helped, possessing a prized collection of bottle caps which she played with as her make-believe toy cars, trucks and people.  At the time, seeing such a thing taught Sara a lesson about materialism that I never could have imparted.  I believe those rituals of service to others, done together, symbolically told them in a mostly fun way that our family has a responsibility to give back.  These rituals of service helped make my girls who they are today – compassionate women with beautiful hearts. 

Families can do acts of service together as enjoyable ways to bond and build memories.  As a spiritual family, we do the same here.  As I hope you know, rituals of service to those in need are cornerstones of our ministry.  When volunteers here join together to cook a meal for homeless teens, assemble hygiene kits for them, or work at a the Freestore food bank, we have fun!  There is a great sense of comraderie and friendship building.  Words often attributed to Francis of Assisi are meaningful to me and ones I believe most rituals should echo.  I paraphrase them here: Preach the ethic of goodness as often as possible…………..and only when necessary, use words.

Next Sunday I plan to examine our unique UU spiritual rituals and find in their practice the symbolism and meaning I hope we can think about every time they are practiced.  In two weeks, I plan to consider rituals that relate to Easter – not as religious acts, but as ways the holiday speaks about life, death and ideals of non-violence or forgiveness.

For today, I hope our takeaway is the value of transforming routine practices into rituals that are enriching and fun.  I encourage all of us to break bread with family and friend, dance with abandon, sing out loud with joy (off key in my case), or find a loved one to serve a charity together – but do these things regularly and with meaning.  They are, indeed, fun rituals that define us.     

  

  

(c) Sue Cline, Guest Speaker at the Gathering at Northern Hills, All Rights Reserved

 

Good morning. Thank you for being here to hear my thoughts on a topic that seems all

too pertinent today. I have absolutely no academic credentials to make such a

presentation, so I am even more grateful for your presence. I am a qualified cynic,

however, having been reprimanded for same in a job performance review.

So, I knew I could not stand before you and rant about my decidedly one-sided

opinions. I needed to be better informed and a bit more objective, and informative. So in

preparation I have done some reading, questioning, and reflection to try to present some

thoughts on the topic of greed, and leave you with perhaps one thing to think about

going forward. I do offer apologies to economists and historians in the room: something

I have learned in this process is that I have certainly bitten off more than I can

chew—YEARS of study are required to get a proper handle on this subject, to

understand it in an historical perspective, and to speak with any authority. So we are

back to observations and opinions, which I hope can at least spur on some thought for

others in my particular boat.

Years ago Luke Scott Peck, the author of a popular self-help book, The Road Less

Traveled posited at the conclusion of the book that the “original sin” was/is laziness.

This made sense to me at the time and still does, IF one believes, so to speak, in original

sin.

Over time, as I’ve become better read, more reflective, and thoroughly psychoanalyzed,

my own “conclusion,” if you will, is that “original sin” is greed.

Thinking that original sin is greed is fairly easy – it seems to be everywhere and in

everyone, to some degree; it’s pretty obvious in most instances; and, for ME, it provides

a foundation – and an excuse — for my own greed, for my own natural and well

cultivated cynicism, and gives me ammunition to be highly judgmental of others and

personally conclusive about all our global problems.

The problem with this view, however, is greed itself. I don’t believe original sin is any

more than a myth created, first, to explain “bad” people, and then, to keep the common

poor under the thumbs of those whose “greed” for power had put them in positions in

which they could benefit from the human condition of the “common man.” So there

goes my excuse for my own greed.

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Of course, as we know, greed is not all about money. Greed for power comes to mind,

for fame, for notoriety, also. I think one can also be greedy for love. This is a big topic,

and a subjective one. When does enjoying life’s pleasures honestly become greed?

My former pastor and friend, Rev. Steven Van Kuiken, was a huge help to me. I

actually have a copy of his 2000 sermon on Greed, which he delivered at Mt.Auburn

PC. It is so good, I was sorely tempted simply to begin with a big quotation mark and

read it to you. But I know better.

Greed, defined as excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions, is

a topic that has occupied me for quite some time. I think my obsession began when I

would read the annual articles in local and regional news about “the wealthiest people in

Cincinnati, etc.” I would go on a days-long rant, saying “NOBODY needs that much

money”, etc., “What do they do with all that money?” I took names, and personally

boycotted their businesses. Years later, during an hours-long procession of a local

businessman’s hearse through the streets of Cincinnati (so that all the people he affected

could pay tribute) an African-American friend and cafeteria worker at Cincinnati

Children’s, where I was working, countered my incipient rant about his apparent racism

with, “I don’t know about all that, but he did a LOT of good for the poor in downtown

and Avondale—we are grateful to him.”

That caused me to reflect on my opinions, and even on some of the facts about this man

and his family, and try to look at the larger picture. So, my biased blinders slightly

opened, I will confess that while I resent the establishment of suburban schools in the

name of religion, that allow the wealthy and white to escape the “OTHER,” I no longer

boycott UDF. I am not sure whether to be proud of that.

And I am striving, as I begin to make a personal judgment about someone based on

appearances, to remind myself that, unless it has been made public, no one’s personal

story is known to me.

I worked several years for an advertising agency in Cincinnati, and there began to grow

a bubble of questions and doubt about our motivation and methods. Advertising, most

basically, exists to create and sway opinion, and furthermore, to create desire for the

objects being advertised; the objective is to promote sales and, therefore, to increase

income for the purveyors and returns for the investors. How many things do we see

advertised that no one really needs, after all, and how many ads do we endure that

advise us to “Talk to your doctor about this miracle medicine, etc.”

Advertising isn’t all bad; it is deployed to promote the United Way, Artswave, pet

adoption, awareness of racism and xenophobia, and a myriad of important and good

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causes, but these are, in my opinion, mere sidebars to the real goals of advertising.

(There’s that cynical cap creeping up again….)

So I went from advertising to selling beer and supporting first-hand the establishments

that carried our brands. I ended my working career at Children’s Hospital, a worthy

institution whose mission is undeniable (but one which, sadly, is beholden to the bottom

line, just like so many, even “non-profit” institutions).

Greed is mentioned in the sacred writings of all the major world religions. And not in a

good way.

In the Quran greed is condemned, as is usury and even charging interest on loans.

“Greed makes men ignorant towards all the suffering around them.” Charging interest

on loans was condemned also in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Bible.

There are many references to greed and covetousness in the Hebrew Scriptures: In

Psalm 10, Verse 3 we hear “For the wicked boasts of his heart's desire, And the greedy

man curses and spurns the LORD.”

In the story of Job, Job confesses his greed "If I have put my confidence in gold, And called

fine gold my trust, If I have gloated because my wealth was great, And because my

hand had secured so much…”

In the New Testament, Jesus and his disciples had a great deal to say about greed. “For

the love of money is at the root of all evils.” And another, “For where your treasure is,

there also is your heart.” And the memorable analogy, expressed by Jesus himself:

“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich

man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

I could go on…

Native American lore is full with references to greed, avarice, and inequality. There are

too many to choose or quote. With this, Google is a help….

In Buddhism, there are three “poisons” which prevent us from reaching contentment:

GREED, aggression, and delusion.

In my reflections on this topic, I considered the opposite of greed, and determined that it

is perhaps the Buddhist principle of detachment from material goods and the cares of

the world. Another clear opposite is generosity, about which, without surprise, much is

written in all the sacred writings.

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Recent history is rife with examples of greed. (This is my favorite part – a mini-rant.)

Banks grant loans to those who, clearly, cannot afford to repay them; stock brokers

receive millions in pay even when the funds they manage crash and burn; CEOs of

public corporations rake in 150 times the pay of their front line workers; insurance

executives become wealthy while the average worker cannot afford to purchase their

products and has to rely on government and taxpayers (if that fund is not stolen from us)

to receive medical treatment; senior government executives are willing to put citizens’

lives at risk, ignore real and urgent danger to our planet, extract fuel with dirty and

dangerous methods, dismiss scientific facts, ignore sacred lands of our ancestors,

decimate the world’s animal, fish, and bird populations, and more, of course, ALL in the

name of profit for the corporations, their CEOs and their shareholders. Universities,

publicly or privately funded, hire disproportionate numbers of adjunct faculty rather

than provide the salaries and benefits that accrue to tenured experts. Churches’ pastors

live lavishly while exhorting their congregants to pray, and to give more to the church,

to secure eternal life.

We live in an economy, a global economy, of institutionalized greed. The US, and

indeed most of the global economy, actually are dependent on greed to keep going, and

growing. Economic growth, or GDP-Gross Domestic Product, is the global

measurement of success. Unfettered, deregulated free market capitalism is the enemy of

the workers who are the foundation of that GDP, and is a friend only to those for whom

wealth is the only measure of success. Without greed at the top, there is no motivation

to grow, or even to work. As one can see, greed is a slippery topic: would we be

motivated to work, for instance, if there were no greed? Interesting question.

Yes, I am little bit of a socialist. I am all for capitalism that pays a fair and just wage for

the services that a person performs or the goods that they produce, but we have strayed

far. In preparing this talk I have read about Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” in

which those who amass great wealth have a duty to share it with those who have less.

There are a few examples of those today—Bill and Melinda Gates come to mind, as

does Warren Buffet (But here comes that subjectivity again – when one observes the

luxurious lifestyles of these individuals, could one / SHOULD one conclude that there is

some hypocrisy there? I don’t know.)

And then there is Ronald Reagan’s “Gospel of Greed,” which describes riches piled on

the tables of the wealthy, with mere crumbs trickling down to the floor for those less

fortunate (or less intelligent, or less worthy), according to this philosophy. To provide

more crumbs for the lesser people, just pile more riches on the tables of the wealthy.

I also have been reading a rather dry, but ultimately fascinating book titled From Greed

to Wellbeing: a Buddhist Approach to Resolving Our Economic and Financial Crises by

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Joel Magnuson. It explains the movement toward institutional change based on

Buddhist economic ideals, SEBE, for Socially Engaged Buddhist Economics. It offers

hope for change of our institutions through first changing ourselves and then changing

our local communities before attempting to take on the entire globe. A huge effort, and

not easy, to be sure.

There is another measure of success, employed in a few places on the planet where the

business of wealth-gathering is conducted with the wellbeing of the people at the

forefront. The small Himalayan country of Bhutan measures its success on the Gross

National Happiness Index, which takes into account the general wellbeing of the

country’s citizens. Now, Bhutan is a Buddhist country and its government and its

spirituality are deeply intertwined. The four pillars on which Bhutanese government

policy is established are: equitable economic development, environmental preservation,

cultural resilience, and good governance. There’s nothing particularly Buddhist about

those principles, however, but there is basic morality.

We read frequently about “the happiest places to live,” etc. In fact, Monday, March 20,

was International Day of Happiness, (I had no idea….) according to the fifth edition of

the World Happiness Report, an initiative of the Sustainable Development Solutions

Network (SDSN), created by the United Nations. This report ranks 155 countries on the

variables of income, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived

freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption, and generosity. Not a word

about GDP, or top executive salaries, or the stock market. Norway is no. 1 and the other

9 in the top ten are: Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands, Canada, New

Zealand, Australia, and Sweden. Interestingly, each of these countries provides

healthcare and education, including higher education, for the wellbeing of its citizens.

The U.S. is no. 14, and quite frankly I am surprised it is that high in the list, given the

current general morale of the populace.

There is a movement among Buddhist economists to change the entire paradigm of the

global economic systems, measuring wellbeing of the people, not the wealth of the top

1%, or the GDP, or the stock market. This begins, as with most things Buddhist, with

individual change, for institutional change cannot come from without. There are

communities where inhabitants take wellbeing of citizens and the planet seriously and

where even alternative economic systems are being established. I am eager to learn

more about these.

We know that change must come from within. We as individuals need to adopt an

attitude of mindfulness about all things economic, and that includes the economics of

fairness and justice, the economics of sustainability, of environmental responsibility, of

equality across all facets of our lives. Solely as individuals we can be mindful of our

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spending, our use of cash vs. credit, the “need vs. want” motivation for shopping, the

motivation for gift giving, our acquisition of things. And not only our material

resources—we need to be mindful of how we spend our time: is it purposeful, is it

healing or destructive, is it selfish or generous?

We need to detach ourselves from our obsession with possessions and acquisitions. We

need to be generous. We need to use our resources, be they many or few, for good.

“For where your treasure is, there also is your heart.”

Thank you for this opportunity.

 

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

Murray Pantirer was born in 1925 in Cracow, Poland.  After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Pantirer and his family were confined with other Jews.  His parents and sister were sent to Auschwitz where they were killed.  Murray and his brother were sent to a work camp.  Somehow, Murray was then put on a list to work in a weapons factory owned by Oskar Schindler.

Schindler was an avowed Nazi who described himself as being motivated by three ‘w’s’ – wealth, women and whiskey.  Nevertheless, Schindler undertook to protect 1098 Jews by employing them in his factory.  When he was asked later in life why he risked himself to help others, Schindler replied that the treatment and killing of Jews had been inhumane.  He determined to save as many as possible.

Despite horrific accounts of brutality by the Nazi commandant who oversaw the factory – daily taking out a rifle, for amusement, to shoot Jews below his office, or literally feeding people to his German Shepherds – none of the Jewish employees under Schindler’s care suffered from such acts.  Schindler would not allow it.  Nearly all of the persons he brought to work in his factory survived the war and were freed.

Murray Pantirer was one of them.  He moved to New Jersey where he used skills acquired in Schindler’s factory to start a construction business. He built it into a prosperous company that employed hundreds.  He contributed heavily to causes in Israel, to Holocaust remembrance charities and he was a founder of the Holocaust museum in Washington DC.  Presidents Reagan and Bush, Sr. personally honored him. 

Pantirer married and produced three children, nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.  Others of the so-called Schindler Jews now have over ten-thousand descendants.

In the Jewish mishnah, which is a book of commentary on verses in the Torah, there is an often repeated phrase.  “Someone who saves even one life, saves the world entire.”  That phrase clearly applies to Oskar Schindler but it’s also been applied to other heroic individuals who undertake acts of courage and sacrifice to save or serve others.  We might think of charity workers who serve in the slums of Haiti, those who tutor inner city kids in our nation, or doctors and nurses who rushed to Africa two years ago to treat and care for victims of the Ebola virus.

I’ve said in some of my past messages that an act of service for others is much like dropping a pebble into a large lake.  Concentric ripples move outward from that point to gently touch distant shores far removed from where the stone was first dropped.  I use such an image as an analogy for how we impact the universe in ways we often do not know.  One small act of goodness is propagated into the world to impact persons and places we will never know.

I also use the ripple analogy for how we build a life legacy – one that influences lives long past our deaths.  Any act of service we do for others will ripple across time, far into the future, so that we figuratively live forever.  When we save, nurture, care for, or serve even one person today, we save the world entire for tomorrow.  That is how we live eternally.

As I’ve often said, I don’t believe God is a grey bearded figure sitting on some cloud controlling the universe.  Instead, God is us.  We are the human gods and goddesses called to love and care for the lame, the hurting, the distressed and the oppressed.  It’s us, not a religious God, who build a version of heaven on earth.

I say this to set up my final message this month on the theme “Who or What is God?”  I’ve said over the past month that she is a unifier.  That concept of God is found in all of nature and in the physical laws that control it.  Everything is interconnected such that the universe is, I believe, God-like. 

I said last Sunday that God is Truth.  All that is objectively real, verifiable and proven by empirical evidence can be called capital ’T’ Truth.  This is of such importance, especially in our nation today, that I assert Truth is worthy of the title God.

Today, I claim a final concept of God – that she is timeless, and so are we.  She’s the forever standard of goodness like the Golden Rule.  She is the lasting power of physics, science and Truth.  She is all that is forever.  I believe she is all these things………AND, she is also us.

What we do today, in big or small ways, will influence the world for eons.  The universe will barely know our names, but it will know we existed – that we loved, served, and helped build a better future.  As Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine once asked, “Are we being good ancestors?  In other words, we have a responsibility for the future and when we meet that challenge in this life, we become eternal.

A common definition of ‘infinite’ says that it is something limitless or endless in space, extent, or size.  It’s impossible to measure or calculate.  That fits my belief in a God concept.  She is, as Albert Einstein once said, “the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality.”

Einstein arrived at that understanding of God through his theory of relativity.  He said time is an abstraction.  It is a measurement humans created so that we can better understand ideas of existence.  We cannot see or feel time.  Indeed, Einstein proved that it is infinite.  It is not a finite thing.  It’s changeable and flexible depending on where it is measured.  Time on a spaceship, for instance, is slower than time on earth.  A clock on the space station runs slower than an identical version of that clock on earth.  Persons on the space station therefore age at a slower rate due to factors related to both speed and gravity.  A Russian cosmonaut holds the record for most time in space – and thus the most that any human has gotten younger – by 20 milliseconds.  If engineers ever devise a way to travel at a velocity approaching the speed of light, time travel will be possible.  A human, traveling at the speed of light, could venture to distant galaxies, return to earth hundreds of years later, and yet be only a few years older.

The universe and the concept of all Truth are also infinite.  The universe has been proven to be expanding.  Powerful telescopes show that the distance of objects billions of light years away continues to increase.  The universe moves into eternity. 

Regarding the idea of Truth, an Italian mathematician named Bernard Balzano showed that it too is timeless and can even be used to define the idea of infinity.   

When we think of capital ’T’ Truth, it can only be true if there is also a corollary idea that Truth is true.  That corollary idea requires its own corollary that IT is also true.  In other words, the second truth corollary must prove the first, which must prove the original concept of Truth.  This extension of one truth…needing another truth…to prove capital ’T’ Truth…that sequence extends infinitely.  (This is heady stuff so I apologize if you feel your mind about to explode.  I feel the same.)

So, before I get too “far out”, I want to bring my thoughts back to something more practical.  If we think of ourselves as one with the universe, with Truth, and with infinity, and are thus God-like, then we can aspire to a higher goodness in how we act and think.  Hindu and Buddhist yogis have suggested that a sense of oneness with everything (the universe, Truth and time) that is a way to detach and let go of the self.  We can liberate ourselves from our self-centered egos – the part of us that thinks of “me, me, me”.  

Liberating ourselves from our egos means we let go of the demands of our bodies to move into a spiritual awareness of what is called the universal self.  This universal self is itself an all encompassing idea of God.  A universal self exists without boundaries of space or time or matter.  It intuitively senses communion with other people and creatures.  It knows what is objectively real, and it rests in the peaceful equilibrium of eternity.

This universal self, which we can become, experiences what, as Einstein said, can only be called an awareness of being.  This universal-spiritual self is what Oskar Schindler became for moments in his life when he saved other lives.  It’s what we are whenever we move outside ourselves to give and serve and love.  It is who we are when are at peace with everything. 

The more we become a timeless, universal, ego-less self, the more we are able to recognize our God-like attributes of oneness and the less we will fear, hate, feel sad, or judge others.   We can find an all-encompassing concept of God – one far beyond what religions describe – by simply letting go of our egos. 

I have not come anywhere near being a universal self – much less being God like.  Indeed, as an imperfect person, I hate that I have petty wants, small minded fears and hurtful anger.  But that does not mean I can’t strive to become a universal me – one that selflessly serves and cares for others, one that does not worry, one that loves without boundary.  I want to be fully at peace with death, but I also want to celebrate a glorious eternity that awaits me when I will commune with all humanity, all of nature and all of the shooting stars above.

If I do that, I can create a lasting legacy with every word I speak and every action I undertake.  How good of an ancestor am I?  What pebbles of compassion and love do I drop into the lake of time?  What ripples of impact will I send into the future that help insure a world of equality, justice and opportunity for my children’s children?  What one life – or many others – will I save and thereby save the world entire?   

When we are at one with everything, when we embody Truth, when we become ego-less selves who live forever in the good we do, we are holy and divine.  Immersed in eternity, we will speak and act with love, peace and joy. 

Who or what is God?…………….She is you…..and she is the person next to you.  And I worship in your presence.

            

     

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

President George W. Bush, you may recall, publicly claimed on several occasions his absolute certainty in the existence of God.  He had, he said, experienced her work firsthand.  In his thirties, Bush was a wayward man with little direction.  Although he was married and had two daughters, he still acted as if he was a college frat boy.   Despite being born to privilege with the opportunity to learn from persons of prestige and accomplishment, Bush was washed up at a young age.

When he turned forty, however, his wife persuaded him to join a men’s Bible study.  The group thrived on bringing others to God.  For whatever reason, the group appealed to Bush.  He quickly became a regular and was taken with the group’s lessons on forgiveness and change.  Later, after his father arranged for him to meet Billy Graham, Bush had an emotional born again experience.  As Christian evangelicals say, he recognized his sinfulness, admitted he was powerless to change himself, and accepted Christ as his savior.

From that point onward, Bush was a different man.  He gave up alcohol, dedicated himself to work, became a successful Texas oilman, and was soon a rising politician.  By age fifty, he was elected Governor of Texas twice and on his way to be President.  As he claims, all of that was due to God.  God, for Bush, is demonstrably true because she dramatically showed herself in his life.

I related last week that I had a slightly similar experience.  I had turned to Christianity and God for many of the same reasons as Bush – to change me.  I’d had same sex attractions for much of my life and I hated the supposed sinfulness of it.  I wanted to be what is mistakenly considered normal.  God was the solution I turned to in my fear of eternal judgement.

I thought, at first, that God had changed me.  But over time, it was clear she had not.  Being gay is not a disease.  It need not be a destructive part of one’s life.  It is not a sin or flaw in any reasonable understanding. It can be – and is – uplifting and empowering.  Love is love is love.

This realization that God did not and could not change me was its own epiphany for me.  It made me question the truth of God and led me to rigorously examine faith in general – an inquiry that was unafraid to consider religious inconsistencies, misdeeds and hypocrisies.  Through intensive study I arrived at what I perceived to be a concept of God as capital ‘T’ Truth.  The God concept of an all powerful Being who either condemns or forgives – I determined is NOT true.

I relate these stories because they help set up the topic of my message today.  Last week, I examined the theme of “What is God?” from the perspective that she is a part of everything and thus a unifier.  Today, I propose the idea that God is Truth.  As I said last Sunday, I use the word God very loosely and place it within quotation marks to indicate a non-traditional definition.  I also use the feminine pronoun to indicate my distaste for implying God has male attributes – ones I believe can be  paternalistic and domineering.

Getting back to my opening stories, they are evidence of opposing ways to determine what is true.  One approach is to find Truth through emotion and  fear.  The other is to study, observe and inquire.  A classic definition of ‘truth’ states that it is anything in accordance with fact and reality.  It is the opposite of anything false.  But as we see, George Bush  is convinced he found Truth because of an emotional response to life change.   I believe I found Truth because my life did not change – and that, THAT most importantly in my mind, prompted me to study and use my reasoning abilities to determine the difference between opinion and fact.

       I believe the ideal of capital ’T” Truth embodies God-like qualities because it is founded on objective fact and proven empirical inquiry. Truth is the good force that can and should guide our lives – since we logically reject what is false.  It’s a common cliche, but appropriate to say, that if the devil is real, he would be the father of lies.  Conversely, we can also say the opposite: if God is real, she would be the mother of Truth.

Modern philosophers have boiled down three primary ideas on how Truth can be defined and thereby discovered.  A coherence theory says that truth is found through interconnected true beliefs.  Something is true if it coheres with other beliefs one may have.  An example used by one philosopher says that the proposition John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln is true if we believe historians report facts they learned from previous historians; if we believe newspapers in 1865 reported accurate information; and, if we believe modern encyclopedias are trustworthy.  In other words, the original proposition is true because it coheres with the other beliefs we hold – all of which report Booth shot Lincoln.

A correspondence theory of truth says that something is true only if it corresponds to reality and what actually is.  Something is true if it is consistent with what is verifiably seen, heard and touched. 

       Plato and Aristotle initiated this approach by calling Truth “aletheia” which literally means to un-hide.  The ancient Hebrew word for Truth was “emeth” which literally translates into firmness or constancy.  Both words implied that Truth is a reality that is unchanging and open for anyone to perceive.  Indeed, reality is defined as something that exists objectively and independently from opinion.  I cannot assert that this podium does not exist and have you accept that as truth.  It’s here.  You see it.  You can touch and feel it.  No matter that I might opine it isn’t real, its existence corresponds with objective reality.

The third primary theory of truth is called a practical or empirical one.  This says that truth is only found through inquiry, examination, experiment, or discovery.  This theory began in the last two centuries with the rise of both journalism and advanced science.  Rigorous standards for these forms of inquiry require multiple sources of validation to be true – through eyewitnesses, documentary evidence, or positive results in scientific experimentation. 

I might say, for example, that President Obama broke the law by illegally wire tapping his opponents.  But such a statement is not true unless it is verifiably proven by multiple eyewitness accounts or by several forms of media evidence – like written, video or audio recordings. 

       I might also say that there is water on the planet Mars.  That statement has always been implicitly true, but we didn’t know it to be so until satellites orbiting the planet recently detected frozen water at its northern and southern poles.  In each of these cases, empirical evidence is required to prove truth.

What is troubling for these three widely accepted standards for determining truth is the rise of what is called a post-modern theory of truth.  That says something is true if a large community of people believe it to be true – even if other methods for determining truth say it is false.   This approach allows opinions and emotions to determine truth.  As we all know, this theory has emerged only within the last ten years and was particularly highlighted during the last election and in the current Presidential administration. 

For instance, this year’s inauguration crowd was claimed to be the largest in history because many people believe that to be true – no matter that photographs of the crowd, when compared to photographs of other inaugural crowds, indicate otherwise. 

On a more serious level, human caused climate change is believed to be false.  This is believed by millions even though the overwhelming evidence from science indicate human carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming and climate change.

Or, take the issue of immigration.  Millions of people believe as true that immigrants harm our economy because they take the jobs of citizens, they use social services like schools and healthcare without paying for them, and they commit large numbers of serious crimes.  These assertions have nevertheless been proven false.  Most undocumented immigrants take jobs nobody wants, they pay taxes at the same rate as others and they commit far fewer crimes than native born.  Even more, immigrant buying power and strong work ethic actually produce a substantial benefit to the economy.

The concept of alternative facts is not just an amusing statement.  It’s a real assertion by many people who say truth depends on what a large portion of the community believe. 

        As I said last week, fear is the primary motivation for most religious beliefs.  I add today my assertion that fear is also a primary motivator for denying truth.  No matter the reality of a situation, if enough people feel honest fear about immigrants, African-Americans, Muslims, women or any other people or issue, their understanding of what is true will be strongly affected.

But this new approach to truth directly affects human well-being.  I believe it is a danger not only to the stability of our government and culture, it is an existential threat to our very survival.  This is why I submit that the ultimate power in the universe ought to be defined as capital ’T’ Truth and we ought to honor it as something God-like. 

No religion, no supernatural God, no physical law, no science, no math, no humanist belief – all the things people say are God-like, these cannot be and, are not, real unless they are firmly grounded in what is factual and true.  In other words, the foundation for how we understand ourselves and the universe is meaningless unless it is true.  We each must be able to symbolically stand on solid ground – that being capital ’T’ Truth.    

Factual relativism, on the other hand, – what is true for you may not be true for me – this is an untenable way of thinking.  It will lead to human destruction.  If is it widely adopted and not fought, humanity will have evolved to a point where it has ironically regressed to be lower than other animals.  They at least have concepts of Truth hard wired into them through instinct.  Humans will have rejected the great ability we’ve evolved to possess – to use reason, logic, science based inquiry and empirical deduction to discover Truth.  We will have transformed into creatures who reject the power of our brains to instead be governed by the primitive, fear causing organ at the base of our brains called the amygdala.

Just as I proposed last Sunday that fear is the opposite of love, I claim today that it is the opponent of Truth.  Fear leads to irrational thinking and actions.  It overrules the brain and stimulates knee-jerk behavior to fight or flee.  Fear emphatically stops any reason based thought.  Allowed to dominate, fear prevents any of the three primary ways to discern what is true.

Spiritually, Truth is the beauty discovered in distant galaxies, the intricate complexity of a beetle, the profound reality of things we cannot see – cells, atoms, quarks and dark energy, the majesty of a complex mathematical equation, the prompt to love and defend the oppressed, or simply the accurate reporting of what IS.  Truth is all that is good in the universe – since that which is evil is implicitly false.  From the dawn of time to the infinite boundary of this universe, Truth stands alone in its singular nobility.  It is worthy of our everlasting pursuit……….and honor.  Truth is worthy of the title God.

I wish you all much peace and joy…               

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

My message series this month explores the idea of “Who or What is God?”  Since some of you know I am NOT a theist, it might seem odd that I consider such a theme.  If you note the way I’ve written the title of this series, however, I do so with ‘God’ in quotation marks.  My use of the word is not intended to connote its traditional definition.  I use the word very loosely and only so that I can express concepts of God and not its literal meaning.

       I also use the feminine pronoun to refer to God.  That does not mean I believe God is a gender, much less a person.  I use the feminine to indicate that I believe if God was like a human, she would be a she.  I also purposefully want to renounce historic notions of paternalism and male domination connected with God.        

What is important, however, is that I believe people can come together under the concept that God is a force of love and unity – and thereby reject the standard concept of God which is based on fear. Contrary to traditional notions of God, she is not judgmental.   We have no reason to fear her.  Indeed, my understanding is that she is far more complex than a supernatural Being.  We can understand her with our minds and be like her by how we act.  She is, in essence, a force for good and a part of all nature and science based reason.   

That is the focus of my message today.  Next week I will assert God is truth.  Finally, in two weeks, I’ll claim she is timeless.  For me, these messages are my attempt to promote how concepts of God can and should bring people together.

Some of you may remember the film 2001, A Space Odyssey and its opening scenes showing very early humans foraging for berries.  They had to compete with wild boars for them.

Eventually, these hominids in the film discover how to attack, kill and eat the boars.  They realized large leg bones from other animals could be fashioned into weapons.  These weapons enabled humans to reduce competition for berries and eat more meat.  It also enabled them to defend against, and attack perceived threats.

The film depicts one early man throw a weaponized bone into the air.  We watch as it tumbles in a cloud filled sky.  That image immediately cuts to one of a space ship………soaring through interstellar space.  We see in two great cinematic moments the evolutionary history of humanity.

What is remarkable is that the early human scene highlights what was the time period when fear combined with religion and began to control human thought.  Humans had evolved larger brains due to a high protein,  meat based diet which enabled them to mentally be aware of death and to imagine abstract ideas.  A large bone, for instance, was abstractly conjured in ancient minds as something to fashion into a weapon.  The higher mental ability to think abstractly, and understand threats, these led to the first religion.

Archaeologists have proven that assertion by discovering Neanderthals buried their dead after adorning them with symbolic figurines and beads.  This indicates ritualistic behavior and the existence of early religion.  There was a purpose to such actions far beyond the mourning of dead.  Neanderthals prepared and ritually empowered their deceased for an afterlife existence.  That suggests they conceived of a higher power, or God, as a force that made such an afterlife possible.

Even more, believing in an afterlife also indicates they were acutely aware of their own mortality in more than an instinctual way.  Animals can sense when they are threatened.  But that sense does not suggest, experts say, a deeper awareness that one will cease to exist.  Once early humans evolved to become fully aware of death and ceasing to exist, they were frightened.  Indeed, death still scares many people.  With the understanding of what death means, ancient humans turned to the abstract world to find reassurance.  People do not really die, they hoped.  They move on to another form of existence.  The ancients could not observe that existence, but the idea of it soothed them, and they so they believed or hoped in an afterlife.  God and religion were thus created as a result of fear.

I’ve discussed here before the beginnings of my spirituality.  I was first drawn to religion and Christianity many years ago because of its promise for redemption.  At that time, I hated that I had gay attractions.  I was ashamed of my supposedly sinful nature.  I was afraid of the supernatural concept of God judging me and sending me to hell.  I began attending church and later got so involved that I attended Seminary and became a minister.   

There is a church sign I saw recently that that says “God answers knee mail.”  I remember being on my knees a lot praying God would make me “normal.”  It eventually dawned on me, however, that God could not change me because my concept of God, at the time, does not exist.

What I also realized was that my fears, about how I would be judged, had led me to religion.  Later, I understood most religious impulses are based on anxieties similar to mine – fears of death, of eternal judgement, hell, or simply nothingness.  Fears motivate many religious ideas about God – that one must win a supernatural Being’s favor in order to enjoy a happy and eternal afterlife.  Sadly, I believe, religions often foster even more fear.  Religions fear those who do not think or believe like them.  They stereotype, condemn and oppress others for their differences.  Such fear initiated Jewish conquest of ancient pagans, Roman attacks on Christians, Christians fighting Muslims during the crusades, and today’s discriminations against Jews and Muslims.  The world is divided based largely on fear – and how God is defined. 

What was true for early humans and for modern religions is that fear is not conducive to unity.  It’s exclusive and judgmental.  Fear is the opposite of love and unity which, as I say, ought to define our understanding of God.

Baruch Spinoza, of whom I often refer, was the philosophical father of this kind of a unifying God awareness.  He was, in his 1677 book Ethics, the first to articulate the idea that God and science work together.  God exists in all of nature and the forces that control it.   For Spinoza, God, and nature are almost interchangeable.  They are essentially united.

What we see all around us, Spinoza believed,  – in our bodies, in oceans, plants, animals and the cosmos – are things of beauty.  They are beautiful in their complexity and in the ways they work and came to exist.  We see in nature, therefore, the invisible hand of God-like creative forces.  But we know, thanks to reason based science, that those forces are physical laws such as thermodynamics, entropy, evolution, mathematics and biology.  Such observable and provable principles are not supernatural.  There is no magic in them.  There is instead a logical cause and effect to them.

Importantly, these forces and natural laws are not fearful things.  Death is part of nature as all things eventually decay and become something else.  But that is not something to dread.  I am made up of the stuff of stardust and will one day return to it.  So will you.  That is an amazing and wonderful truth.  Accepting this leads us to reassurance, celebration and love for all creation.  It also unites us.

As I said earlier, fear is the opposite of love.  Fear pits one person or one group against another.  Love, on the other hand, refuses to have that mindset.  And Spinoza’s thoughts about nature were that it is a good and creative thing.  It is not selfish or vengeful – wanting to exclude or condemn for petty flaws.   Spinoza’s concept of God is that she is expansive, generous, and part of everything.  Such a God concept understands the processes of nature and celebrates them.  Seeing God and nature as interchangeable allows people to embrace charity, gentleness, humility and peace.  Science based forces thus share what most religions describe as a God attribute.  God is Truth.  And Truth can never be divisive, scary or hateful. 

That idea was the foundation of Unitarianism.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, from whom Unitarianism derives many of its ideas, said this, “Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE.”

Native American beliefs say God is the Great Spirit or simply – the One.  They also believe in a circle of life type of God – that what we are today will be something else in the future.  The molecules that course through our bodies at this very moment are the same as those found in all of nature.  Everything is related – everything is ONE.

Hindu sacred writings, the Upanishads, offer similar concepts.  They write, “Brahmin, or God, is without parts or attributes…it is One without a second.”  For Hindus, Brahman is the whole of reality and it is definitely not an anthropomorphic, personal Being.

Many Jews likewise sees a natural unity to the concept of God.  Hasidic and Kaballah Jews refer to God as Ein Sof – the One, a force that is immanent and a part of everything.

Open theology in Christianity explores that thinking as well.  God, according to open theology, is integrated into creation.  God is the sum of all truth.  God is not apart from sciences like evolution and astrophysics. 

       Sufi Islam is also a reconciliation between fundamentalism and the reality of science.  God, for Sufism, is a force that energizes and defines the universe.  God is not a Being but a unifying idea.

Finally, Buddhism perhaps best expresses this concept of God.  Even though Buddhism has no equivalent word for God, some say it is the Buddhist nirvana.  To reach nirvana, a perfect state of being, people must seek awareness of all that is real.  In that sense, reason and logic work in tandem with attitudes of peace and kindness.  When these are realized, something which only a few attain, one reaches a state of nirvana or what could be called God.  Many Buddhists refer to this as discovering All……..and becoming One.

What I found, after my disillusionment with religion, was a kind of spiritual atheism.  God is not a theistic Being but she is nevertheless real in the sense that I see an interconnection between all people and, indeed, all nature.

It’s a well used phrase but one that accurately describes the oneness that Unitarian Universalists believe – there are many many paths, but one Truth.  This means people do not each seek a God concept in the same way, but they seek the same thing.  For our beliefs as UU’s, we therefore affirm the wisdom of science and the primacy of Golden Rule morality.  God is the totality of reason and the completion of love and service to others.

Moving away from an abstract concept of God into one that is rooted in the natural world, we find the peace we all seek.  This is a God concept that quotes our minds and brings us together instead of dividing us with fear.  Whether we call her Ein Sof, Brahmin, Great Spirit, All in One, or nirvana, God is a unifier.  For me, God is everything that informs ours minds and our hearts with reason and goodness.

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

Last Sunday I quoted Leo Tolstoy from his book War and Peace about the true nature of love.  It is only real, he wrote, when it is a sacrifice of both soul and body for another.  Throughout history people have sacrificed their reputations, freedom, happiness and lives to love whom they wish.  Their stories highlight how most societies are often judgmental and discriminate against love between consenting adults that is considered different.  Forbidden love is, much like racism or religious intolerance, a serious and ongoing from of bigotry.

Antony and Cleopatra were two such hated lovers.  As the preeminent Roman military commander of his time, Antony fell in love with the Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra.  After she moved to Rome to be with him, and after they had a child out of wedlock, Roman public opinion was outraged.  A man of aristocratic birth should not marry an ethnically different woman.  The Senate stripped Antony of his command and banished them both.  Antony and Cleopatra later committed suicide after realizing their relationship was impossible.

Dante Alighieri and Beatrice Portinari were also forbidden lovers.  Dante is the famed Italian poet who wrote the classic Renaissance work Divine Comedy.  As young adults, they were strongly drawn to one another. They penned passionate love letters to the other and sought to be married. But they were forced by societal rules to remain apart.  Arranged marriages were the standard of the time.  Dante and Beatrice were engaged by their respective parents to other persons and thus were forbidden by law to be together.  Beatrice, three years after marrying another man, died supposedly of a broken heart.

Richard the first, better known as Richard the Lionheart, was undoubtedly homosexual.  As a military commander of courage and skill, he was a hero of his day – as he still is in England.  Numerous accounts written while he lived, however, indicate he was gay.  For many years, he had a young Knight as his lover and he frequently confessed and repented, in public and at church, for what he called “that sin”.

Richard later fell in love with King Phillip the second of France.  A writer of the time documented in official royal papers that, “They ate every day at the same table and from the same dish, and at night their beds did not separate them.  And the king of France loved him as his own soul; and they loved each other so much that King Henry of England, Richard’s father, was absolutely astonished at the passionate love between them and marveled at it.”

Richard, however, was forced to marry a woman since he wanted to be King.  The two never had children and their relationship was said to be strictly formal.  Numerous books about Richard, however, still refuse to consider these facts.  The Encyclopedia Britannica says that any accounts indicating Richard was homosexual are unproven.  That is, of course, true since such a private matter, from nine hundred years ago, cannot be proven beyond doubt.  Many in England today, and most members of the British royal family, refuse to acknowledge that the great, courageous and very masculine military King Richard the Lionheart was gay.

A more recent British King was also forbidden to love the person he chose.  In 1936, King Edward caused a constitutional crisis in England when he proposed marriage to a divorced American woman named Wallis Simpson.  English society was shocked that their Queen might be a divorcee.  Parliament considered forbidding the marriage.  Winston Churchill condemned it.  King Edward then announced on national radio that he would choose love over being King.  He abdicated his throne.

Richard and Mildred Loving were not of royal birth, but their forbidden love will also go down in history.  Married in Washington DC in 1958, this interracial couple moved back to their Virginia hometown.  A month later, at 2 AM one morning, police broke into their home, found them in bed, and arrested them under a 1924 law forbidding marriage between blacks and whites.   A judge later found them guilty of a felony and sentenced them to prison.  He said, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents.  The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”  The judge said he would commute their prison sentence if they left the state – which they did.

In 1963 then Attorney General Robert Kennedy encouraged them to challenge the conviction in court.  Two ACLU lawyers took the case.  In 1967, in a landmark Civil Rights decision, the Supreme Court ruled in the Loving’s favor and struck down all laws forbidding interracial marriage.

In 2016, in another landmark case, Obergefell vs. Hodges, the Supreme Court used the Loving case as legal precedent to rule that laws forbidding same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.  Any two adult Americans, the Court essentially ruled, have the right to love and marry as they please.

Tragically, homosexuality is still illegal in 76 countries.  Miiro and Imran are Ugandan young men who just last year were arrested while sleeping together.  They were dragged through the streets naked.  They were evicted from their home.  Their belongings were burned and they were thrown in jail.

Imran was later paraded in front of all students at his school while they beat him and yelled horrible names.  His mother disowned him in front of the assembly saying he was not worthy to be her son and she preferred him dead rather then alive and gay.  To this day, Imran and Miiro live in hiding.  Many Ugandan politicians are heavily supported by American Christian evangelical churches and ministers who encourage them to uphold anti-gay laws.

All of these stories beg the question: how can any romantic love between consenting adults be illegal?  Whether it be laws or standards against divorced persons remarrying, interracial marriage, or ones against same sex unions, discrimination against different forms of love are usually based on religious beliefs – which are subjective, open to interpretation and not based on reason.

Experts say prejudice toward different forms of love comes from the human propensity to categorize and stereotype others.  Throughout history people have stereotyped Jews, blacks, Asians, homosexuals, the divorced, the other abled, the overweight, senior citizens, and now the transgendered.  By categorizing people into different groups based on appearance, or whether they conform to specific standards of behavior, societies determine who is a part of the “in-group”.  We socially discriminate because of our desire to elevate ourselves, or our group, over another.  That’s precisely the reason why Ta-Nehisi Coates in his book Between the World and Me says whites created the concept of race – so they could categorize people, make themselves superior, and thus diminish all others.

Logically and scientifically, such discriminations toward different variations of love make no sense.  People fall in and out of love all the time.   Others are victims of a spouse who leaves them.  Should a divorced person be any different from another? 

Same sex attraction has been documented in over 500 different animal species – it is a common part of nature.  Even more, it has been accepted and approved within many human civilizations – from ancient Greece to the Mayan culture where homosexuality was the approved form of love.

Discrimination against interracial unions makes even less sense especially given what science has proven.  Genetically, as shown by the mapping of human DNA, all people are virtually the same.  Every human shares 99.9% of genes.    We are biologically all the same.  Any differences between people are based on subjective categories societies create.  Furthermore, humans have engaged in procreation with people of different ethnicities and skin colors for thousands of years.  There is no single person who is therefore of so-called pure heritage.  We are all, even white supremacists, human mixtures. 

The right to love whom one wishes is a basic right – one implicitly codified in the U.S. Declaration of Independence that all people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Since giving and receiving love is both a basic freedom, and a path to happiness, it is therefore a logical inalienable right.

It’s also a spiritual right embodied in the Golden Rule to treat others equal to how oneself wishes to be treated.   Reason tells us that when I  allow you the choice to love whom you wish – that is equal to the same wish I have to love whom I choose.  I should extend to you the same right I want  for myself.  Jesus said this Golden Rule is the foundation of ALL morality.  Buddha, the Quran, the Torah, the Hindu Upanishads, Native American wisdom, and Confucian ethics all promote the Golden Rule.

This idea gets at the heart of empathy.  If I purposefully try to understand your romantic attractions, I’ll realize they are essentially the same as mine.  As I said, we all want the same thing.  We want to love someone else and we want someone else to love us.  Spiritually, ethically and rationally, it makes no difference which consenting adult we choose to love.

Unitarian Universalists have always been at the forefront of advocacy for human rights.  As we all know, UU’s were leading abolitionists, proponents of gender equality, Civil Rights activists and gay rights advocates.  UU’s now – very, very tentatively – support ALL alternative love expressions between consenting adults – ones like polyamory.  There is a UUA sanctioned group called Unitarian Universalists for Polyamorous Awareness.  This group seeks to educate and advocate for the rights of adults to love, if they wish, multiple other consenting adults at the same time.  That advocacy does not extend to legal marriage like polygamy, but it does uphold the ideal of which I speak:  Any form of romantic love between consenting adults, that does not harm another, should never, never be stigmatized or forbidden. 

That fundamentally means that persons who engage in alternative forms of love are to be respected like all others.  There is nothing negative about their character or basic goodness.  Romantic love defines our common humanity.  Any love for another person uplifts the giver and bonds him or her to all that is true and sacrificial in the universe.  Expressed toward any adult who willingly receives it, love is never wrong.  Love is love is love.

I imagine most of us have experienced some form of discrimination in our lives.  Some of us have felt intolerance on extremely cruel levels.  The hurts I’ve felt from bigotry, as a gay man, does begin to compare with that felt by women, people of color or Jews and Muslims.  But that fact does not make the pain I’ve felt any less real. 

It hurt deeply when I came out – and the previous congregation I loved served for many years – turned its back on me.  Revealing one small piece of my identity – whom I wish to love – suddenly made me evil and grotesque – even though I was still the person I’d always been.  Fellow ministers said God hated me and that I was going to hell.  Close friends, persons whom I’d officiated at their marriages or their parents’ funerals, or sat with while they recovered from serious illness, they rejected me.  As I said, they have a right to their personal life choices about love, but do they have a right to judge the content of my character based strictly on supposed standards of whom I should or should not love?

No.  And neither do any of us.  I still choke up when I remember the first day I walked into the former Gathering.  At a time when I had rejected all forms of spirituality, when I believed them all to be hypocritical and often hateful, at the Gathering I was immediately surrounded by people who took interest in me as a person.  They expressed love and support for me in ways I’d rarely felt.  I’ll never forget that open-armed acceptance.

I felt the same thing when I first began coming here two and a half years ago.  I believe it was my fourth Sunday as a guest minister here when I told my story as a part of the message – including my coming out experiences.  Afterwards, many of you, whom I barely knew at the time, hugged me after the service and assured me I was in a welcoming place.

May we always be a welcoming congregation.  May we make our homes, schools and workplaces the same.  As enlightened individuals, let’s never judge others based on whom or how they love.  Instead, I pray we simply celebrate the fact that they DO love.  Quite simply, let’s celebrate the noble ideal of love in general – however it is shown.

I wish you all much peace and joy. 

     

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

Last month two men, who were referred to me by a friend, asked if I would perform their marriage ceremony on Inauguration day.  They contacted me just a few days before and so I was hesitant to do it.  I do not perform off the shelf, cookie cutter weddings.  I like to meet with a couple weeks beforehand and plan a ceremony that is special just for them.

But this couple explained that they had been so traumatized by the recent election that they wanted to do something positive on Inauguration day.  Having been partners for years, they had often talked about getting married.

Their hurry up ceremony, they told me, would not only be a statement of commitment to one another, it would be a statement of hope on a day when division and intolerance were seemingly honored.  I agreed to officiate their wedding on that basis.

January 20th began cold and overcast but by the four o’clock wedding hour the sun had come out.  We stood at a river-view overlook for the ceremony.  White, billowing clouds scudded across a blue sky.  The river sparkled beneath us.  The heavens seemed to smile.  A few of their friends gathered to watch.  Included with them were the son and ex-wife of one of the men.  As I pronounced them husband and husband, the boy and his mom burst into tears.  I was concerned that seeing their dad and former husband get married to another man was too much for them.

Instead, the newly married couple, the ex-wife and the young son quickly came together in a long and tearful hug.  The woman later assured me that she and her son were not sad.  They had cried tears of joy at the beauty of the moment and the fulfillment of truth for a man they still deeply loved.

I thought afterwards that such love is what life is all about.  On a day that many mourned as one defined by the victory of hate over compassion, I was blessed by being with this couple, and their families, who said “yes” to forgiveness, kindness and truth.  In so many ways, I identified with their feelings.  I know the pain and heartache that happens with coming out, with divorce, and with a decision that disrupts so many lives.  I also know the love I received when my own daughters, and my ex-wife assured me of their continued support.  Love, it seems, is far more than an emotional feeling.  It’s a gift of self and a statement of goodness when hate or anger could easily predominate.

At that wedding I recited a reading that is offered at many weddings.  The reading has become so common that I sometimes think it trite and I usually prefer not to use it.  But it has stood the test of time.  It still resonates and speaks wisdom.  And so, on this occasion, I thought it appropriate. 

In a letter that the Biblical Paul wrote to a Christian church in ancient Corinth, a church that was known for its wealthy and arrogant members who looked down on and mistreated marginalized persons, Paul expressed these beautiful words:

If I speak in the tongues of angels, but do not have love, I am only a loud gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and sacrifice myself and my body, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.

Paul tells us that love is, indeed, a gift.  It is a way of telling or showing any person that against all the prompts of selfish instinct, I will be patient with you.  I will be gentle and caring to you.  I will feel joy for what you have and what you do.  Toward you, I will be humble and sublimate my needs to yours.  I will honor you by listening and serving.  I’ll forgive and forget the hurts you have inflicted.  Your feelings will be first, mine second.   I’ll believe only what is noble and true about you.  I’ll protect you from being hurt.  I’ll trust and believe in your goodness.  I will do all these things as long as I live.   

As I said last Sunday, whatever it is we believe God to be – or not to be – she is a force of love.  Love is quite simply what defines the universe.  It embodies all that is good, beautiful, positive and true.  Its opposite – hate – embodies all that is negative, cruel and false.

Leo Tolstoy, in his famous novel War and Peace, wrote, “Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.  Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.”  He tells us in these words what I believe is true about love in general.  Whether we serve the homeless, volunteer to teach our children, repair our church building, kiss and embrace our partners, sit quietly by a friend, or advocate against racism – we must do so motivated by a desire to be concerned, passionate and honest.  As Paul and Tolstoy wrote, such prompts, if they be sincere, spring from love.

And if that be so, then love is what conceived us.  It is a creative power that brings all new life, thar stirs distant galaxies, that defines the stuff of reason and truth.  Love is art, music, science, poetry, medicine, teaching and so much more.  When we do any loving act for another, we must do it with honesty and pure intent.   We must want to give away a piece of ourselves. 

In that regard, Tolstoy also wrote,

There is no love apart of that love which gives away its soul for a friend.  Love is only love when it is self-sacrifice.  Only when a person gives away to another not only their time, but when he or she spends their body and gives away their life…

I elaborated last Sunday on the relatively simple concept of understanding the love language of those who are special to you.  If you were not here, you can listen to or read that message on our website.  By learning which of the five so-called love languages that our partners, children, friends or colleagues most prefer, we extend to them a gift.  We consciously choose to love them in way they both prefer and completely feel.  In essence, we sacrifice what we prefer for their sake – for their sense of well-being and comfort.  We fulfill, with our deeds, our purpose for living – to let go of the self and love others.

Walt Whitman, in his well-known anthology of poems, Leaves of Grass, wrote this, 

Love the earth and sun and animals,

Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

Stand up for the stupid and crazy,

Hate tyrants, devote your income and labor to others…

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church,

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Love, for Whitman, is to sacrifice our lives, our needs, our prejudices, and our bodies for the sake of another.  In doing so, we love them at least as much as we too want to be loved.

Writing perhaps the quintessential love story, Shakespeare in his play Romeo and Juliet shares that sentiment.  Love comes by chance and is often fickle.  It can burn with a fiery passion that both wounds and inspires.  But above all, love is noble.  It defines itself through the goodness it creates.  When we see love, when we feel it, when it we give it away, our inner angels prompt us to do and speak even greater good.  Anger subsides.  Greed and intolerance stop.  Our hearts are open.  Shakespeare writes at the conclusion of Romeo and Juliet the ultimate purpose of the tragic, all consuming love he described in his play:

Two households, both alike in dignity

in fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

from ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,

a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,

whose misadventured piteous overthrows,

do with their death bury their parents’ strife.

The love of Romeo and Juliet, passionate, sacrificial and suicidal, nevertheless inspires reconciliation and an end to the hate between their families.  It is similar to what the two men I married wanted their ceremony to represent.  Our nation, riven by anger and intolerance, might be inspired in one little corner of it by the marriage of two people.    If so, love will serve its purpose.

To any of us as lovers past, present or future, Carl Sandberg also wrote a well known and oft recited poem.  He wrote this,

I love you for what you are, but I love you

yet more for what you are going to be.

I love you not so much for your realities

as for your ideals.

I pray for your desires, that they may be great,

rather than for your satisfactions,

which may be so hazardously little.

A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall.

But the most beautiful rose is one, hardly more than a bud,

where in the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working

for larger and finer growth.

Not always shall you be what you are now.

You are going forward toward something great.

I am on the way with you

and therefore I love you.

Once again, a writer has captured the spiritual truth of love.  We often define love as the preference we have in a romantic partner, or the favor we have for our children and members of our families.  It might even be defined as the delight we feel in friends who support, care for and enrich us. 

But Paul, Leo Tolstoy, Walt Whitman, Shakespeare, Sandberg and other great writers all say something very different.  Love is not lust.  Love is not favor or preference.  Love is not a warm feeling.   Love is giving your all to me.  It is me doing the same for you.  It’s a parent working and struggling to feed and educate their child.  It’s a lover pouring himself or herself into the happiness of their mate.  It is our collective nation giving its resources for the well-being of the least of our inhabitants – the undocumented, the poor, the oppressed, the weak.  It is each of us forgetting  and letting go any prejudices or fears of Muslims, African Americans, the other abled and political opponents.

Erich Fromm, author of the book The Art of Loving, says it best…

Infantile love believes We love because we are loved…

Mature love understands We are loved……because we love.

        With those words, I wish you peace, joy and very a happy Valentine’s Day this Tuesday.

   

   

                

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

 

Unfortunately, miscommunication is one of the common causes for distress and dysfunction in relationships.  Consider these next three stories in that regard.  A husband washes and vacuums his wife’s car every Saturday.  Afterwards, he mows the lawn and usually finishes with other yard work.  After every meal, he clears the table, washes the dishes and cleans the kitchen.  He also regularly does the family laundry.  At a marriage counseling session, his wife exclaims that her husband doesn’t care about her – that he rarely kisses or hugs her.  The husband is stunned to hear his wife say that he essentially does not love her.

Or, there is the story of a fourteen year old boy who comes to his dad with the idea to hand make a sculpture for the family living room.  The dad tells the son that it’s a great idea, praises him for his artistic skills, encourages him to make the sculpture and then gives him $100.00 to buy the supplies.  Later that day, the dad is surprised when he overhears his son tell his wife that, “Dad doesn’t pay any attention to me.  He’s always so busy!”

And, there’s a story about a business owner who generously pays and rewards her employees.  Salaries she pays are at the top of what is offered in the industry and she also includes bonuses, several weeks of vacation, and medical / dental insurance.  But she is upset when two of her important employees quit and say that they were ignored in their work.  The owner, they say, rarely offered them direction and they had to figure things out for themselves.  They also complained that she never told them they had done a good job – even though the business is very successful.

In each of these instances, a failure to communicate deeply harmed a relationship.  The husband, dad and boss each respectively believed they were showing appreciation and love to the important people in their lives.  But it’s as if they were not heard.  It’s as if they were speaking French but the others spoke English.  Their languages of love fell on deaf ears.

Experts say this is an all too common problem in marriages, at the workplace, with friendships, and in families.  People with good intentions, who deeply love their partner, spouse, child, friend or colleague, are speaking one love language when the other responds to a much different one.

Consider the three stories I just related: the wife of the husband who is helpful around the house, she longs to be physically touched in a way that tells her she’s valued.   His acts of service are nice but they don’t fulfill her.

The dad who encourages his teenage son frequently offers him praise for things he does or thinks.  He compliments his abilities and tries to empower him in his goals.  But the son would instead like his dad to spend much more time with him, perhaps join him in making the sculpture, take him to a museum or just sit and have a long conversation with him.   The dad uses words of affirmation to show love, while the son feels loved when quality time is given.

The business owner gives her employees the independence to do their jobs without interference.  She also generously rewards them for their work.  These things, she believes, show that she greatly appreciates them.  But the employees want and need more time with their boss.  They want more instruction so they can learn and grow.  They also want to hear praise for work well done.  The boss shows her appreciation through giving.  Many of her employees want her time and her words of affirmation.

This concept, that humans express and receive love in five different love languages, those being words of affirmation, quality time, touch, acts of service, or giving, this was pioneered by Dr. Gary Chapman, a psychologist and marriage counselor.  In 1995, he published a book, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, which has been wildly successful and has been on the New York Times Bestseller list continuously for eight years.   Its concepts have been applied to the workplace, for children and for almost any interpersonal relationship.

Chapman believes every person has a primary love language that is meaningful to them.  As in all things, people have different likes and dislikes.  People feel most loved in unique ways.  We also express love to others in different ways.  In other words, we each have a strong preference in how we show and feel love.

The important thing, Chapman says, is to discover and learn the preferred love language of those who are important to us.  Doing this will dramatically improve our relationships, allow us to be more efficient, open channels of communication and improve our empathy.   Just as we want to be understood when we verbally communicate, we need to love others in ways they understand.

And that comes through communication as people share what “floats their boat” so to speak.  It also comes through listening and sensing the emotions that deeply move another.  In an open, honest and gentle conversation, the wife in my first story might tell her husband how she appreciates his acts of service.  She would then add, however, that what really makes her feel special is when he holds her hand, embraces her or shows physical affection.

The husband shows love by doing acts of service because that is the way he feels loved.  And in any gentle dialogue between the two, the wife will understand that fact.  Her goal is not to tell her husband to change his love language, but to tell him she would feel fully loved if he learned to also speak another one – hers!  In a healthy relationship, he will still do acts of service for her, and she will understand that’s his way to show love.  But he will also, also try to practice his wife’s preferred love language.

As I said, this idea is not limited to romantic relationships.  All parents want to connect with their kids in loving ways.  Parents of teenagers especially want this.  But many times parents express love to their kids in ways that aren’t clearly received.  Just as is the case for any human to human relationship, gentle communication is key.  One love language does not work for all.  Our unique personalities create in us unique ways we understand love.

To effectively show love to someone who responds to words of affirmation, you can express appreciation for something he or she has done.  You can praise a specific skill they have.  You can encourage them in a task they have undertaken.  You can often, but without prompting, compliment their appearance.   You can, on a special occasion like a birthday, tell them how much they mean to you.

You should avoid offering any non-constructive and non-gentle criticism – especially to someone who feels loved by words of affirmation.  For these people, words matter a lot.

For someone who feels love through physical touch, it is the oldest and most elemental form of love.  Before humans invented spoken language, touch was the way to express feelings.  To speak this language, you might offer a high-five, pat on the back, handshake or other gesture that extends appreciation and praise in a physical way.  Hugs, when appropriate, are also nice.  In romantic relationships, one should pay particular attention to making sure the other feels close and secure with your physical presence.  One should, however, avoid any form of touch when the other gives physical or verbal cues that it is not welcome. 

To those who feel loved through acts of service, you should perform tasks for the other that are unexpected and that make their life easier.  Taking time away from your work to assist a colleague with their project,  cooking a meal and delivering it to a sick friend, spending significant time doing extra household chores, surprising your child by picking them up after school, or making a surprise breakfast in bed, these are all examples.   You should avoid putting your tasks ahead of theirs and you should never fail to follow through on doing a promised task.

For those who value receiving gifts, one should not mistake that for materialism.  Usually, this person feels loved when receiving small gifts that show thoughtfulness and effort.  Handmade gifts are often liked as are ones that show creativity and special attention to what the other truly needs.  For a person who feels loved by receiving gifts, one should never forget to give something nice on a birthday, anniversary or holiday.  To such people, forgetting to give is especially hurtful.

Finally, to those who most appreciate receiving your quality time, you should regularly spend extended hours listening to and conversing with them on subjects important to them.  You might also suggest doing a project together or take regular vacations with him or her.  You should happily do an activity with them that they enjoy – but which you do not.   You should also avoid any distractions when with them.  The key is to tell them, without words, that no matter what you do together, it is their company that matters most to you.

To love and be loved is one of the essential needs humans have.  From the moment we are born, we yearn to bond with our parents and others.   All humans want to feel connected to another person in heart and soul.  To show love for another is ultimately a selfless act – one that says their needs come first.  But, as I’ve just discussed, the love we show is only effective if the recipient in turn feels loved.  That means we must use both our empathy skills and effective communication to hear and understand what the other needs and wants.

When we listen to another and identify how they feel, we speak a spiritual language.  We come to know them on a deeper level – one that understands their innermost fears, dreams and desires.  Loving them is then about soothing their emotions and meeting their needs.  Our goal with any form of love is to sublimate ourselves for the sake of another.  As I frequently say, I believe our human purpose is to build a life legacy of kindness, humility and service.  Quite simply, life is about loving others.  Whatever we believe God to be, or not to be, I believe the eternal and universal force that animates the everything is, indeed, love.  Since that is so, it’s essential we learn to speak love as often as possible – and only when necessary to use words.

I wish you all much peace and joy.