Category: Uncategorized

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

 

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Perhaps you have seen or read Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” – an abstract and metaphorical piece that is described as a tragicomedy.  Very little happens in the two act play but it is rich with symbolism representing Beckett’s views on life, death, religion and suffering.

Beckett was from Dublin, Ireland, raised as a Catholic and was someone who witnessed the horrific results of two world wars.  Beckett described seeing thousands of war veterans return to Dublin after World War One – men who were severely maimed, blinded or insane from the brutality of trench warfare.  As a result, Beckett became an avowed Atheist.  The problem of evil and suffering in the world, called “theodicy”, convinced him that an all-powerful and loving God cannot exist.  Such a God, if he or she exists, would surely put an end to the pointlessness of evil and the distress humans experience as a result.

It is in this context that he wrote “Waiting for Godot” in 1953 – a work that many have described as one of the more important literary works of the twentieth century.

Briefly, the play revolves around two men – Estragon and Vladimir –  who spend their days waiting for a friend, Godot, who they believe will alleviate their boredom and misery.   They only know they are to wait by a leafless tree – and so they find one and there they stay – all while passing time re-living the facts that Estragon had been beaten the night before, that he is desperately hungry, that they have been waiting for Godot for many days, that the events of each day seem to repeat over and over, that their commitment to meet Godot may well be pointless and that they can escape their futile promise by committing suicide.

In both Acts, the two men are encountered by two other characters – Pozzo and Lucky – who walk by the tree each day.  Pozzo is, at first, an arrogant, mean-spirited slave owner who is comical in his pomposity.  Lucky is his hapless slave whom Pozzo intends to sell.  Lucky appears in Act One as a pitiful and maligned man with a noose around his neck from which he is led by Pozzo.  After carelessly consuming a meal of chicken and wine in front of the starving Estragon and Vladimir, Pozzo refuses to offer any help to them.  He instead commands Lucky to teach them the meaning of life.  Lucky does so with, at first, a rational but theological speech about trusting in a divine being.  His discourse, however, soon becomes rambling and completely ridiculous.

Act Two begins the next morning.  Estragon and Vladimir have again waited all night – even though they had intended to go home.  Such is the pattern of their behavior – the hopelessness of their situation prevents them from doing anything except wait.  The two men engage in absurd conversation – often trying to remember the events of the day before.  They struggle to understand what is real and what is imagination.  Even as they confirm that they had, indeed, waited for Godot yesterday, they remain unconvinced about what is true and if time has even passed.

Once again, they encounter Pozzo and Lucky.  Only this day, it is Pozzo who is dejected and clearly suffering.  He cannot remember who he is, what he is doing or where he is going.  Lucky still has the noose around his neck but it is he who now leads Pozzo – a man who, despite his distress, is remarkably no longer arrogant but humbled, considerate and sometimes insightful.  He utters one of the plays more famous lines: humans, he says, “give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”

The play ends with Estragon contemplating what will happen the next day – predicting it will be nearly identical to all others.  It is at this point that they discuss committing suicide but fail to reach a decision – putting it off until tomorrow.  Once again, they do not depart, they stand by the stark tree, and simply wait – as the curtain falls.

As I reflected this past week on my own understanding of suffering and how that relates to my mom’s situation, this play and Beckett’s commentary on the nature of life, suffering, and religion came to mind.  The play addresses themes of hopelessness, human misery and the existence of God.  Why do we exist if our time is spent waiting to die and thus meet a supposed God?  Estragon and Vladimir wait by a symbolic Cross, but they don’t understand why.  Life for them revolves around waiting for a unseen friend –  Godot, who is an obvious symbol for God –  but who never appears.  Is he a friend since he never shows up?  Is he even real?  What is to be understood by the stoic suffering of the two men, or the reversal in fortunes of Pozzo and Lucky?   When one does well, the other suffers.   Good fortune and suffering exist symbiotically, Beckett suggests.  Happiness cannot exist without its alternative of suffering.  The play tells us that misery offers a kind of purification, as we see in the character of Pozzo.  Only when he is brought low, when he suffers, is he decent, wise and humble.

As I elaborated in my message last week about my mom and her slow decline, human suffering is inevitable.  None of us will be spared from hurt or death.  In relating such truth to the Resurrection story, life appears to be a long series of Good Fridays – punctuated by a few, brief Easters of hope and joy.  Indeed, life in this perspective lacks any purpose and is even cruel in its random infliction of pain.

Spiritually, the problem of suffering and evil has been explored for thousands of years.   I suggest suffering and death are the primary motivations for religion – how to make sense of them and find solace from them.  If suffering is inevitable, how should we respond to it?  As a stoic?  As one who perversely seeks it as a way to perhaps find God?  As someone who is angry about it and thus with life?   Should one try to escape suffering through substance abuse or suicide?  Is suffering an excuse to hurt others in order to mask one’s own pain?

Christianity embraces suffering as necessary.  Only by suffering as a result of sin can we understand we have no hope except in God and his Savior son Jesus Christ.  Only they can save us.  Believers suffer now so that they can later go to heaven.

Jews and Muslims see suffering as a way to prompt humans to rely on God or Allah.  Only by following his many rules can one be worthy of an eternal and happy afterlife.

Buddhists and Hindus see suffering as a pathway to greater enlightenment.  By ending the cause of suffering – which they believe is due to selfish desires – does a person advance to higher and higher levels of contentment and peace.

But which path is true?  Or are they all, in some way, true?  Or, as many Atheists assert, is no path true?  Richard Dawkins offered an Atheist’s perspective on suffering when he wrote in his book River Out of Eden, A Darwinian View of Life, “In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good.”

Dawkins echoes the views of Beckett.  He tells us that the universe is random and amoral.  Suffering is a part of existence.  It lacks any purpose.  It just IS.  One issue with this line of thinking is that it can lead us to resignation and hopelessness – much like what Beckett portrays in “Waiting for Godot.”  If we can find no greater purpose to why we or others suffer, then life itself has no meaning.  Even more, if there is no justice in why people suffer, there is no reason to try and alleviate it.  Much like what the character Pozzo says, Atheists seem to tell us that we are born, we live for a while with a few moments of happiness, and then we suffer and die.  In the totality of the universe, humans serve no greater purpose than does an ant we haphazardly squash.

As tragic as it seems, that appears to be my mom’s lot in life right now – to simply exist until Alzheimer’s kills her.  But is that really the case?  Is my mom’s life now worthless and hopeless?  As I said last Sunday, I refuse to accept that proposition.

I see a higher spiritual meaning behind suffering.  While suffering may exist as a consequence of natural phenomenon or human propensity to act selfishly, I assert that the important thing to consider about it is how we respond to it – when we or others hurt.  As I said earlier, religious responses to suffering offer a bit of wisdom.  Even Beckett, in his Atheism, sees suffering as a path to wisdom and humility.

A part of my theology, which I often repeat, is that God is not an outside force that controls our destiny.  Nor is there a place, beyond space and time, that we can call heaven or hell.  God exists, but only in metaphysical sense – in us, in nature, in the universe of things.  It’s we who have the ability and the power to affect our lives and those of others.  We help to shape the world in ways that make it a form of heaven or hell.

But if our existence is by random luck, if we are simply an amalgamation of atoms and selfish genes, as Richard Dawkins says, that does not mean we, as gods of our own destiny, cannot add purpose and meaning to our existence.  In other words, we are masters of our own eternal destiny – which as I said last Sunday is defined by the legacy we create of courage, endurance, and goodness toward others.

Rabbi Alan Lurie, a contemporary writer on theology and philosophy, writes that while suffering is real, we choose how it will affect us.  How we choose to respond to suffering determines whether we are ennobled or debased.  Do we choose the path of wisdom, strength, compassion and humility – or that of self-pity, egotism, anger, and envy?

Indeed, it is a paradoxical truth that if suffering did not exist, we would suffer even more.  In this view, suffering has a strange utility.  Lurie relates the story of a mediocre golfer who one day cries out to God to allow him to always hit a hole in one.   A voice answers him, “Your wish is granted!”  Fame and fortune soon follow for this golfer.  No matter how he swings a club, he hits a hole in one.  But he quickly finds this boring and shallow.  And just as quickly, his fame and fortune end.  People are no longer interested in someone who is perfect. The golfer then shakes his fist at the sky and angrily says, “God, why did you grant me my foolish wish?”  To which a voice replies, “Who said I was God?”

The point Lurie makes with his story is that perfection is not so great and may even be evil.  Mediocrity, strangely, is not such a bad thing.  If we have no room to improve, what is the point of life?  Where is the challenge and the adventure?  In the same way, can heaven be heaven without some suffering?  As Beckett suggests, without pain, can we truly understand what it means to be happy?

It might be said, as some commented to me last Sunday, that I’ve done a good job finding a silver lining to my mom’s Alzheimer’s disease.  Perhaps that is so.  But, I try to see it differently.  Her disease is horrific to me only if I choose to see it that way.  I certainly was blessed and enriched by my three weeks caring for her.  And she, too, is finding delights in life much like a child – no longer is she constrained by adult filters of arrogance or indifference.  The world is new and fresh all the time –  since she often forgets what she has seen.   As I said last week, this a resurrection for her – something outwardly sad but inwardly, spiritually, something beautiful.

This is the case with any suffering.  We can choose whether or not it is tragic or, in some paradoxical way, good.  I do not intend to say that pain is not difficult – or that people should seek it.  But if we accept the fact that it is unavoidable, if we accept our lives are finite, then we have the choice, as Rabbi Lurie says, in how we respond.

Suffering offers us the choice to ennoble ourselves – to find dignity and value in what we experience, to learn from distress, to grow for the better in how we live.  Far too many people, including me, cry out when they suffer, “Why me?” But a logical response to that plea is, “Why not you, or why not me?”  “Who am I that is so special as not to suffer?”  And ironically the question might also be, “Who am I that I cannot be blessed by suffering?”

Pain and hurt diminish us in ways that strip us of our cockiness that we are immune from hurting.  Such humility can lead us to charity, empathy, kindness and service to others when we perceive their pain.  But we must choose to make those our responses.  We must purposefully choose not to allow suffering to cause attitudes of self-pity or bitterness.  Indeed, we might even see that those who are comfortably well-off are ironically worse off.  They have false comfort in health, wealth or success but they lack the spiritual wisdom and peace derived from suffering.

As we so often realize in life, it is only when we fall, it is only when we are deprived, it is only when we are at our weakest, that we appreciate the good in life – that of love, kindness, love and charity.

Once again, my intent is not to diminish the brutal hurt we see around us.  But if suffering has any value and meaning, it is in how we address it and work to alleviate it in others.   Evil and suffering are facts of life.  But their very existence make joy and peace possible.   Heaven is right here, right now, in this imperfect world.  And it is we, as true gods and goddesses, who can choose to persevere with courage, love and dignity for all.

To further make my point, with much love, I wish you all much pain and distress….

 

 

 

 

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

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

As many of you know, I spent most of the past three weeks taking care of my 81 year old mom.  She is in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s, a cruel disease that inexorably strips vital and intelligent adults of their personality, dignity and memory.  I had not seen my mom in about six months and she has declined during that time.  When I first arrived in California to pick her up, she did not know me.  She gets terribly confused and often does not know where she is or who is with her.  She’s lost weight, she is hunched over, she’s frail, she shuffles when she walks.  In caring for her, I daily picked out her clothes, brushed her hair, made her meals, guided her in what she can and cannot not do, and led her by the hand to cross streets and walk the beach – which we did each day for about fifty yards – until she got tired!

It was difficult for me to see her like this.  She was once an interesting woman with intelligence and ideas to share.  She was not a flashy person but she was always perfectly put together – her hair done just right, her clothing neat, pressed and well matched.  The two of us would often talk for hours on all sorts of subjects.  We were always close.  When I came out as a gay man twelve years ago, she quickly accepted me and told me she had often wondered if I might be so.  I was a sensitive, studious and soft spoken boy, after all.  It’s said that moms and their gay sons are often close and that has been true for us.

But as sad as it is to see my mom now, I also see in her not just a shadow of her old self, but also a person struggling to still find meaning, purpose and excitement in life.  Mom is now like an innocent and inquisitive child who delights in and wants to talk about all the things she sees.  I took her to the beach where there was a colony of seals with their new pups.  Mom pushed her way to the front of the crowd, to stand with all of the children, where she and they excitedly pointed and laughed with delight.

As something of a child again, mom has a sweet and caring nature.  In an air conditioned restaurant last summer, my sister complained that she was cold.  Mom, who was wearing a pullover shirt, promptly pulled it off and gave it to my sister.  “Here, dear.  This will keep you warm!”, she said as she sat there in the middle of a busy restaurant – naked above the waist.  My sister and I burst out laughing as we rushed to get her dressed.  Such is mom now – thinking like an innocent child – one without the filters of an adult and one who willingly gives the shirt off her back to help another.

As I said goodnight one evening last week and essentially tucked her into bed, she looked up at me and asked if I would leave a nightlight on for her.  “I get scared in the dark”, she said.  I assured her a light would be left on and that I was just down the hallway if she needed me.  How funny that episode is to me – a deja vu experience – one that happened fifty years ago, only then it was me, a young boy, asking his mom to help him feel safe in the dark.

I hope my personal story was not too long or too boring for you.  We all have stories and I truly welcome hearing any of your own.  As I have reflected about mom, though, I find her life now is a simple and common story of someone dealing with challenge and finding ways to overcome.  Few of us will escape life without confronting difficult challenges that cause change.  How we deal with the inevitable struggles of life will say a lot about who we are as individuals and the kind of legacy we leave behind.

In many ways, stories of people facing and overcoming life difficulties are much like the Easter story.  In that story, Jesus had to face his own life defining challenge, his Good Friday trial and crucifixion, in order to experience a bright and hopeful Easter morning.

The night before his crucifixion, after he had celebrated Passover Seder with his followers, Jesus walked to an olive grove overlooking Jerusalem.  It was there that he found the quiet needed to settle his mind and reflect.  The story has him famously sweating in fear and begging God to spare him the expected trial and execution.  Like any human, Jesus did not want to experience heartache, abandonment and pain.  In this way, the Easter story is one we can all relate to – I can see in it elements similar to my mom’s story.  Throughout her life she implored me to help her commit suicide if she should ever be mentally or physically incapacitated – like Jesus, she wanted to spare herself pain.  But now, at a point which I know she would not have wanted to experience, I find resilience, beauty and gentleness in her that adds a new dimension to her life and to those who interact with her.  Alzheimer’s may be a nasty disease, but it has its own form of dignity.

I cannot now speak to and relate to mom as I used to, but I can relate to her in a far more empathetic way – to hug her, hold her hand, soothe her, seek to understand her, learn from her, ease the darkness that can overwhelm her mind – and then be a figurative nightlight to take away her fears.  In some strange way, her disease is a gift to me and to her – an opportunity for growth and expansion of her spirit – and mine as well.  She’s having her own Resurrection moment, a time in life that has renewed her as a different person  – one that might outwardly seem sad but which is, in truth, pure and beautiful.

For many of us, though, the Easter story found in the Bible is a difficult one to accept and celebrate since it defies rational explanation and offers no verifiable proof of its truth.  Without a literal resurrection of Jesus’ body, most forms of Christianity are meaningless.  Paul even wrote in one of his letters that if the resurrection is not true, his preaching and the beliefs Christians have in eternal life are all in vain.  But that notion is Paul’s interpretation of Jesus and the resurrection.  It ignores an opposing view held by many of his contemporaries at the time – people who were also early Christians.

Easter and the Resurrection, therefore, need not be interpreted as literal history.  Many early Christians, who were called Gnostics, did not believe Jesus’ bodily resurrection was historical fact.  Numerous second and third century documents discovered at Nag Hamadi, Egypt in the 1940’s point to a widespread early belief that Jesus’ body was not restored to life but remained dead and buried.  Gnostics believed it was Jesus’ spirit that was resurrected – a spirit that embodied his teachings, thinking and approach to life.  Their understanding of the Resurrection was a spiritual one – a type of resurrection that I see my mom undergoing, one that any of us can experience as we go through our own life trials.  Humans fear physical death while often ignoring the potential death of their spirits – that will happen if one fails to leave behind a legacy of goodness.

Our lives must mean more than an accumulation of years.  They must mean more than briefly adding to our comfort and pleasure.  A life legacy, a resurrection of the spirit, is found in how we deal with the challenges we face and how we assist others in dealing with their suffering.  What example do we leave behind in how we deal with challenge?  Do we persevere until we overcome, in some way, our struggles?  Do we instead give up and retreat into fear, anger, arrogance or self-pity?  What ripples across the pond of time do we send out into the future to touch other lives and distant shores of creation?  What is the condition of our humility, our gentleness, our kind speech, our efforts to affect, for the better, other lives?  Human bodies are corruptible and finite, but human spirits, defined by our minds, by our compassion, by our courage to endure, these are what live onward past the point of physical death.

Sadly, the Gnostics were quickly labeled as heretics by Paul and others.  Their understanding of Jesus and his spiritual resurrection lost out in the battle of interpretations.  It was Paul’s theology of a risen Jesus that eventually won and was codified in the New Testament.   Pauline theology is what most Christians believe today.  They are entitled to that belief, but my own thoughts and my own studies of what took place two thousand years ago lead me to conclude that Easter morning was not a literal event in history.  It is a valid and inspiring holiday only if we approach it in an honest and rational way.  Easter invites us to find resurrection moments in life that renew our spirits and grant them, not our bodies, life beyond death.

It was a contemporary of Jesus, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who uttered the famous axiom that the only constant in life is change.  The sad fact is that while many of us acknowledge this truth, we have a hard time accepting it.  Even change which we know will be good for us – we avoid.  It’s too difficult to start over.  Staying the same or avoiding challenges are easy for us.  Change makes us feel out of control and we are, too often, creatures who like to be in control.

But reality offers a different truth.  It is when we embrace change and seek ways to overcome its negative impact that we ironically have MORE control over our lives.  The actress Angelina Jolie recently revealed that in addition to voluntarily undergoing double mastectomies because she has a cancer causing gene mutation, she also just underwent a total hysterectomy to prevent uterine and ovarian cancer.  She had watched as her mother slowly suffered and died from cancer.  In her grief and fear over her own fate, Angelina found the empowerment to take control of her destiny and to offer, as a result, a legacy of courage and a model for other women.  As she has written in a recently published diary about her experiences, “I don’t want to tell you how often, every hour, I think about leaving my children without me.  I know now, however, my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer.’  It is possible to take control and tackle head-on any health issue.”

Please forgive me if it seems I trivialize profound challenges and make them seem easy to overcome.  That is not my intent.  I understand the gut wrenching fear and distress that life challenges bring any person – including myself.

What I want to offer today, however, is more than a reinterpretation of the Easter story.  The reality of the resurrection is that change is inevitable but it is often not what we think it will be.  The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne once said, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.”

He spoke to a common human psychology called “affective forecasting.”  We typically believe that good things in life will make us happier over the long term and negative events will make us unhappy.  But our forecasting of the future is so often totally wrong.  Things rarely turn out as bad as we think they will.  Often, change results in something different for us but also something new, fresh, and wonderful.  We find, from of the ashes of despair, a genuine resurrection!  Our willingness to courageously persist in overcoming a challenge is inspirational to others and offers us a form of life after death.

The legacy of Jesus’ life is not as Savior or Son of God – a figure to be displayed on the cross for pity and worship.  His enduring legacy is in his courage to confront elitist religious hypocrisy, to purposefully humble himself by reaching out to scoundrels, thieves, lepers, and prostitutes, to teach a way of life that promotes charity, social justice and empathy.

I hurt for my mom.  I hurt for the challenges I know some of you are experiencing.  We all hurt for the pain we see throughout the world.  But I also know my mom, with all of her confusion and loss of memory, is still a person of grace, compassion and dignity – a person still fighting the good fight to overcome challenges.  Her body and mind are failing, but her spirit is alive and well.  I hope the same will one day be said of me and of you.

We can each embrace difficult change in our lives.  As congregations, we too can reject irrational fear and accept the challenge we face – to insure the longevity and well-being of our two churches.  Life may often seem like a series of Good Fridays, days when we are tired and beaten down.  But today of all days tells us we have the ability to spiritually live on, to impact the world for good, to awaken in ourselves and in others a strength to persevere and a desire for goodness.  We are all Easter people.  We are all endowed with triumphal spirits that yearn to love, give and serve.  Challenges will yet afflict us.  But we can embrace struggle and, in the process, find our true resurrection.

I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

There are times in most of our lives when we experience feelings of wonder and awe.  It is the enormity and power of an object or thought that moves us in ways which transcend intellectual description.  To be in awe is to feel that one is in the presence of vastness – something greater than the self – either an object of immense physical size or a metaphorical force of a great power.

As humans, we often seek to accommodate the uncertainty we feel when we encounter vastness.  We are motivated to make sense of that which is greater than us.   Humans have long used theism and religion to understand powerful forces in the universe.  Something is so vast and so complex, many people believe, that only a god could have created and sustained it.

It is for that reason that other people, like many atheists or humanists, are wary of these feelings of wonder and awe.  Atheists often do not acknowledge a sense of spiritual awe because it implies, for them, a rejection of logic and a reliance on religious superstition.  Even so, people can encounter something awe inspiring without needing to religiously make sense of it.  Much of science, for instance, is motivated by mystery – by an awareness of something unknown and in need of investigation, testing and understanding.  Indeed, feelings of awe are felt by scientists, rational thinkers and the religious.  One group relies on logical inquiry and discovery.  The other relies on myth and supernatural explanations.

Religious awe, therefore, should not and must not invalidate feelings of awe in those of us who are non-religious but nevertheless spiritually inclined.  I assert that it is good and perfectly normal for us to welcome being awe inspired – to be moved and emotion filled when reflecting on or encountering something great or powerful.  That kind of feeling can lead us to positively act in ways that improve our world.   Logic, mystery and awe all work within us in order to motivate how we live and serve.  A thinking brain and an emotion inspired spirit are not incompatible.

A few years ago, I travelled to Sedona, Arizona with my partner Keith who was visiting there for the first time.  We took a long hike on the first day and ventured up a canyon.  As we descended down from the top, an expansive vista opened before us – of red rock formations, deep green pine trees, an azure sky and billowing white clouds.  I looked over at Keith and his eyes were filled with tears.  Alarmed, I asked him what was wrong.  He looked at me as the tears flowed and he simply said, “It is all just so beautiful.”

Having visited Sedona many times before, I had begun to take for granted the natural beauty of the place.  I’d lost my sense of awe and reverence for it.

But I can also clearly remember moments in my life similar to what Keith felt then.  Along with many of you, I’ve been privileged to witness childbirth.  I vividly recall the moment when my daughter Amy came into the world – her little body emerging, blinking and a bit stunned at the lights and the new environment.  It’s an emotional moment for any parent to see but I also remember being filled with wonder at what had just happened – an amazement at the mystical awe of new life, of my minor participation in bringing it about, and the overwhelming love and attachment I felt for my new daughter and her mother.  I stood their with tears in my own eyes – moved in a way that was, as I recall it, a profound spiritual moment.

Albert Einstein believed that there are three impulses which can motivate humans to be spiritual.  The first impulse, based on a primitive understanding of how the universe works, is influenced by fear.  Some humans react with fear toward things they don’t understand and so they invent or believe in supernatural causes – gods and goddesses – to explain them.  The second impulse is motivated by a desire for social morality.  Einstein believed the need for order leads some people to create or believe in a theistic being who rewards or punishes behavior – all in order to control society.  The third impulse that leads other people to spirituality is one he believed is the most mature and which originates in feelings of awe and mystery.  As Einstein said, “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.”

As a member of the Humanist Society of New York, Einstein was clearly not a theist.  The highest purpose for people is to strive for the ethical treatment of fellow humans, he believed.  It is certainly not to worship a theistic God – who he said is nothing but an expression of human weakness just as much as he believed the Bible is an honorable but primitive collection of myths.

What Einstein and many other scientists promote is not a rejection of spiritual feelings and emotions.  Science, logic, reason or rational thought are often the means to experience spiritual wonder.  Our thinking brains lead us to the point where we realize we are small, insignificant, and minor in the totality of an infinite universe.  What moved Keith at the sight of beautiful rock formations, or me at the birth of my daughter was not awe at a supernatural god who forms such things.  Instead, such feelings were motivated in us by an awareness of the natural explanations for the awesome phenomena we witnessed – at the billions of years of wind, rain and time that shaped mountains, or the intricacies of biology, DNA and chemistry that combine to give life.  Such forces, such power, such mystery that often science can’t yet fully explain, these spark in people soul stirring emotions of gratitude and humility.  Those feelings are the stuff of spirituality – the kinds of feelings that invite silence, deep meditation and even worship, if you will, of ideas and truths we struggle to assimilate into our limited brains.

I believe such transcendent moments of awe are essential for us.  Not only does spirituality humble us in a recognition of how small we are, that humility helps eliminate any arrogance or self-centered thinking in us.  We come to understand and see deep within ourselves – within our souls – that life and existence are not about the self.  Yes, we were each beautifully and wonderfully made, but we were made as a minor part of vastly greater things.  Compared to the billions of stars, the powers of gravity, thermodynamics, evolution and human biology, we as individuals are mere motes of dust floating through the cosmos.  Our existence is so insignificant that any feelings we may have of grandiosity or entitlement are comical.

And that, my friends, will lead us to fulfill our human purpose.  We exist to serve not just the self, but others.  We exist to make a positive difference in the universe – no matter how small.  We exist to live and work as a part of the fantastic cosmic whole – to use whatever power and intellect we have to ethically serve all creation.

That is why I believe we assemble each and every Sunday.  It is not just to stimulate our minds or fill our brains with facts and figures.  Nor is it to simply meet in social community.  Churches are not lecture halls or clubs.  For us, our two churches are spiritual change agents – places that stimulate our thinking in order to inspire our souls.  That is one of the beauties of progressive spirituality or Unitarian Universalism.  The mind and spirit compliment one another – working together to initiate change in us so that we can then help one another, nurture our families and serve the needs of a hurting world.

Importantly, our churches initiate change in us is not just through our our intellects.  As I’ve said before, relying on reason and logic alone for spiritual explorations will only produce cold intellectualism.  We must also consciously seek in our Sunday services moments of wonder, awe, introspection, emotion and even worship as we contemplate things greater than ourselves – things like the power of love, the beauty found in nature, the joys of community, the gratitude for all we’ve been given, or the inherent dignity and goodness of every human. Our desire is not to experience emotional moments simply for their feel good value, but to use such awakening experiences to humble us, fill us with appreciation and prompt us to an even greater desire to love and serve.

I know that most of us attend our two churches because we are spiritually inclined people – those who seek thoughtful insight.  What I have found in myself, however, is that too often I ignore or take for granted opportunities to experience moments of awe, joy or peace.  Much like I did in Sedona when I walked amidst towering mountains but did not fully sense their beauty, or when I awake some mornings and barely notice a wonderful sunrise, I too often fail, when I’m in church, to embrace a moment of soul deep introspection.  I focus, instead, on the tasks at hand – to conduct a service, to learn a few facts, to think about what I will do that afternoon.  And I miss the opportunity to awaken my soul and discover not just what I need to learn and know, but which I need to feel.

My default, in many of my Sunday messages and, indeed, in many of my actions, is to think my way through them.  I’ve come to understand, however, that thinking my way through life is not sufficient.  My head and my knowledge lead me only so far.  I must remind myself to also feel my way through life – to be sensitive to and aware of people around me and their hurts or needs, to discern those times to just sit and reflect, to not overlook opportunities to awaken my soul with awe, wonder, gratitude and love.  When I am sensitive – or aware – or awakened, I find from those spirit filled moments a renewed ability to then exercise my mind in meaningful ways.  If I feel a heightened sensitivity to the needs of others, I will likely be prompted to take action of some form to help.  If I am awakened to the gratitude within me for all that I have received, I will be more aware of all that I have yet to give and, hopefully, to then give more.  If I embrace moments of silent meditation, I will be far more calm and far more understanding in how I deal with life.

These are all reasons why I am a part of a church and why I believe Sunday services are useful in our lives.  I come for the community.  I come to have my mind stimulated.  But I also come to be spiritually awakened – to find a moment or two or three to experience the wonder of what I need to feel.

I encourage myself, I encourage all of us, to remind ourselves of the spiritual reasons why we are here.  Whether it be during Michael Tacy’s beautiful music, from a smile received from a friend, a thought from a reading or hymn, perhaps a word from the message, or an inspiration from a time of silent reflection, I encourage us not to take such experiences for granted.  Our souls and our spirits benefit from these moments and our lives, as a result, are enriched.

Sunday services offer us ways to improve ourselves and ways to help one another.  They can inform us about the beliefs of other religions and the social justice needs in our world.  But, more than just knowing about such things, more than being intellectually informed of them, we must also feel and experience them in our souls.  Right now, in this special hour we share every Sunday, may we willingly enter for just a moment or two, the realm of awe, wonder and worship that will sustain and strengthen us to meet our life purpose……….I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

Instead of a usual heart to heart talkback time when you are welcome to comment on the message, I ask us to instead use this time today for reflection and meditation.

For a few minutes, while Michael now plays contemplative music, I ask you to sit in silence, as still as possible.  [Pause]  If you will, please close your eyes and begin this meditation by focusing on your breathing.  Gently inhale and exhale – focus on each breath, allow any other thoughts to simply enter your mind and then drift away.  Use your soft breathing to give you peace.  [Pause]

With this sense of calm that you now have, gently bring your mind to think of a place, an event or a person in your life that fills you with feelings of wonder, gratitude, or love.  Fill your mind now with an image of that place, event or person.  [Pause]

Allow yourself to focus on the beauty, love and goodness of this image your mind now holds.  [Pause]   Focus on the feelings your image gives you.  Recall the feelings it has brought you in the past.  Do not be afraid of powerful emotions – give them the respect they are due.  [Pause]

For the next minute or two, simply go where your spirit takes you.  Go with what you feel and not what you think.  [Pause]   Rest in your emotions, reflect on what they are telling you, meditate on what they mean and how they want you to live and serve.  [Pause]  If you can, find right here, right now, a message that your soul has for you…

 

 

 

 

 

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

If you would like to download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

Ryan Patrick Halligan was a young man who attended a middle school in Vermont.  Because of complications resulting from his birth, he was physically and intellectually challenged.  His speech, learning abilities and physical coordination were other abled even as he was mainstreamed in local schools.  All was good for him, however, until he reached the fifth grade.  And then the bullying began.

He was bullied for three years – during his middle school years.  It became so bad that at one point he begged his parents to home school him.  While his parents considered this, Ryan came up with another idea – to learn kick boxing so that he could confront his tormenters and perhaps get them to stop.  And that is what he did.  It seemed to work.  Much of the bullying stopped.  One of his primary tormenters even became a supposed friend.

But that was only for a time.  The friend insinuated himself into Ryan’s life such that Ryan shared some thoughts that were meant to be private.  Some of Ryan’s thoughts suggested he had same sex attractions and these were later used against him and told to many others.

Ryan also began an online relationship with a popular girl at his school.  The girl routinely expressed romantic interest in him even as he also shared his thoughts with her – many of which implied he was gay.  It was clear, however, that Ryan believed the girl liked him and he thought of her as his girlfriend.  Ryan was only thirteen, and like many teens, he still did not understand his sexuality.

At the start of the school year, Ryan excitedly met this girl and several of her friends after class.  Instead of confirming her interest in him, however, the girl publicly humiliated Ryan.  She told him she had pretended to like him, that she really thought he was a gay loser and that she wanted nothing to do with him.  Adding even more insult, she posted online many of the internet chat sessions she and Ryan had conducted – ones in which he confessed personal thoughts about his sexuality.  Soon, Ryan’s words went viral in the middle school community.  Bullying of him by his previous tormenter reached a new intensity.  He became depressed.  A few weeks later, he committed suicide by hanging himself.

I mentioned the New York Times columnist David Brooks in my message last week and his thoughts about secularism.  I do so again today with one of his recent columns about ISIS.  He compared their actions with the vitriol directed at him by some folks who comment online.  Such Internet commenters, he writes, often use hate language, insult and intimidation to demean and tear him and others down.  Pretending to do so in the interest of correction and to assert themselves, the hate and bile many put out for the world to read is no different, Brooks writes, then the hate spewed by Islamic terrorists who behead or burn alive innocent victims.

While my own comparison may seem extreme, I compare the type of bullying Ryan Halligan endured to the horrifying online videos posted by ISIS.  Such videos are described as so horrible that I refuse to watch them.   The videos are the same as any form of bullying.  Individuals with deep seated insecurities, anger and resentments use verbal or physical aggression to project an image of power and superiority all in order to intimidate, humiliate and terrorize.

Our culture has reached a point where advice to others and differences of opinion in politics, morality, life or religion are not expressed in a civil and respectful manner.  Instead, people hurl invective, hate and humiliation at those with whom they disagree or who they consider an enemy.  Many politicians do this all the time to their opponents.  Search any online comment forum, and the same will be found written by everyday people.  Watch many college or professional sports games, and the same kind of bullying can be witnessed when some coaches scream at their players.  Few of us can be spared the comparison.  We too can gossip, argue with partners or disagree with others in mean spirited ways.  Assuming the righteousness of our belief, we too can humiliate, tear down and hurt others with the words we use.  As Jesus is said to have taught, everybody agrees with the universal ethic: “Thou shall not kill.”  But equal to the evil of murder, he said, is the anger, resentment and bitterness we can hold in our hearts and verbalize toward another person.  Why has our culture, why have our ways of communicating with others – to our opponents and those we love – reached a level of speech that is often so vicious?

That question is one implicitly asked in one of this year’s Best Picture nominated films “Whiplash”.  While the film, directed and written by a 28 year old relative newcomer, Damian Chazelle, is brilliant in its craft – masterfully using music, acting and cinematography to tell its story, the plot itself is disturbing.  A nineteen year old drummer attends a highly competitive music school in New York City – one that is intended to resemble the preeminent Juliard School of Music.  Andrew is a drummer – a very good one.  He is eventually recruited by one of the school instructors, a man named Fletcher, to join his jazz band.  Fletcher is an intimidating person – one with a shaved head, who dresses in all black clothing that accentuate his muscular physique.  He menacingly stalks the school hallways and he conducts his classes and his band like a boot camp drill sergeant.

At Andrew’s first session with the band, Fletcher builds him up beforehand – telling him to relax, have fun and do his best.  It’s clear, though, that band members fear Fletcher.  All of them look down at the floor in his presence – too afraid to make eye contact.  Once in the studio, Fletcher proceeds to rage at and humiliate one young, overweight player whom he disliked – using vulgarity, put downs and homophobic slurs.  Fletcher then turns to Andrew and asks him to set the beat for one particularly difficult jazz piece.  He repeatedly corrects Andrew, however, demanding he get the tempo just right.  After several unsuccessful tries by Andrew, Fletcher throws a bandstand directly at him – barely missing his head.  He confronts Andrew, leering inches from his face, slaps him, spews f-bombs, the word ‘faggot’, insults of his parents, and other invectives that bring Andrew to tears.  It is clear that Fletcher is a classic bully who used mind games to build Andrew up, so that he could then rip him apart.

The film proceeds with a psychological look at the relationship between Andrew and Fletcher – a teacher whom Andrew clearly dislikes but whose approval he deeply desires.  Fletcher later tells him his tactics of intimidation and humiliation are all in Andrew’s best interest – ones designed to not only make him try harder, but to push him beyond being merely good so that he can become great.  That is something the ambitious Andrew dreams of being.   As Fletcher confides at one point, the two worst words in the English language are, “good job”.

The director wants us to ponder that statement.  Is the path to being not just “good enough”, but great, one that is achieved through verbal violence, put downs, and physical intimidation?  Or is it to condescendingly tell someone “good job” – even if that means the performance was just OK?  Is bullying an effective motivator – much like some people once believed it helped shape boys into men – or as some believe today, as a way to express opinion, give advice or get the world’s attention?  Ultimately, I ask the question that is implied in the title of my message: how do we communicate “truth in love” to another?

One of the things I admire about the Jesus I interpret from the Bible is that he was often not god-like.  The night before his crucifixion, he tearfully prayed to be spared pain.  He was afraid.  He also got bitterly angry at his opponents – calling them a “brood of vipers”.  He later stormed into the Temple where he physically intimidated and confronted the religious hypocrites.  Gandhi, too, was very human.  He was a misogynist who sometimes belittled the abilities of women, he expressed some racist attitudes toward blacks when he lived in South Africa and he could be highly demanding.  Martin Luther King, Jr. got depressed, borrowed without attribution the words and phrases of others for some of his writings and speeches, had multiple affairs and was often not a devout minister.  What these prophets of history were – was human beings – great figures who helped inspire change but who were not perfect.  They too had feet of clay.  Their imperfections, their humanity – combined with their ability to motivate millions are what made them great.

What makes any leader or teacher of others great, therefore, is not just the iconic speeches and words they deliver.  While the ideals of Jesus, Gandhi and King were great, while their words inspired millions, they impacted others not just with those talents.  They did far more.

It’s usually not words that truly speak of love.  It’s actions.  As the Biblical book of James indicates, words are not enough.  If you say you love God but are not doing loving acts of kindness, you are a hypocrite, the book says.  If you profess a spirituality that is sincere, prove it with your works.  Try to speak to others and act in ways that are loving, compassionate, decent and just to your family, your partner, your friends and complete strangers.  That is also a test for any church congregation.  Don’t just talk the talk.  WALK the talk.

And that, interestingly, is the single most often cited way leaders and teachers are encouraged to lead and inspire others.  Words, either in praise or criticism, can be effective in motivating others.  What works even better is to inspire others with ones’ actions.  As Gandhi famously said, WE must BE, we must personally act out, the change we want to see in another person or in the world.

That truth was presented by the Harvard Business Review in an article entitled, “Which Coach is the Most Effective: the Drill Sergeant or the Strong, Silent Type?”  The article revealed results from a study of 1000 business leaders over a period of months and how they improved the performance of their employees.  Half of them corrected, admonished or criticized employees.  They verbally suggested ways to be better.  The other half rarely used correction or criticism to admonish those they managed.  After a year, the work performance of the two sets of employees was measured and compared with that of a year before.  For those employees who had been verbally admonished, 22% significantly improved their performance.  For those who had not been verbally advised, 33% significantly improved.  Their managers had not managed with words but with deeds and actions.  They silently managed by performing many of the tasks they asked of their employees – often showing skill and dedication in meeting them.  They led by example.  They inspired by what they did, and not by what they said.

The Harvard Business Review concludes by asserting that both methods of inspiring others work.   But the non-verbal method clearly works best.  And that points to something they discovered about how and why people are inspired to be better.  People want to be LIKE those whom they admire and perceive to be good and competent.  Indeed, attacking people verbally is often counter-productive.  Persons who employ that method are perceived to themselves be flawed, insecure and petty.  Who wants to emulate them?  Who wants to try and live up to a nasty critic’s standards when that person is so clearly flawed in the vicious way they speak?

I look at Jesus as a great figure in history precisely because his primary method of teaching others was to inspire them by his actions, by his ability to forgive, by his loving acts toward outcasts, women, the sick, the thieves, the sinners, the poor.  While he exhibited a few lapses of anger, his primary method to lead was not to tell others how to be good.  He showed them.  A great leader, a great teacher, a great friend, a great spouse or partner is not someone who only tells another how to act, how to perform, how to be better.  He or she quietly lives that kind of life – he or she constantly strives to themselves improve, to themselves be gentle, humble and kind.  He or she lives out the illustration Jesus used to teach this ethic: don’t point out the small speck in someone else’s eye.  Work on extracting the log in your own eye!  Don’t pride yourself on being so aware of how others act or perform.  Pride yourself on working on how you act and perform.  If you want someone else to be great, try to be great yourself!

Our world is so full of pain that comes from natural causes – ones that humans cannot control.  Why, then, do humans so often add to those hurts with their own hurtful actions?  Why do humans demean, attack and humiliate others – especially people closest to them?  There are myriad reasons why  – to compete, to puff ourselves up, to hide our own inadequacies by focusing on those of others.  Mostly, we give in to our baser instincts – to grovel and fight so that we individually can get ahead and feel better about ourselves.  But is that who we want to be?

With every word spoken in anger, with every hate filled comment we make, with every taunt, every mean spirited criticism, every piece of gossip, every sentence that is spoken without gentleness – we wound another person.  And we wound ourselves in failing the universal test of goodness – to follow the Golden Rule.

I hate that which is in me that harbors malicious thoughts about another.  Instead, I yearn to be my better self – the good self that respects and decently treats political opponents, those who are my enemies, those with whom I disagree, those who have deeply hurt me.  Let me, let all of us inspire others by our example, by the way we live, by our efforts to correct our own imperfections and flaws.  To paraphrase Saint Francis, let us speak the truth in love, and…only when necessary…use words.

I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

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

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

Please watch the video at this link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzbKaDPMoDU

 

Writing in the New York Times this past Tuesday, David Brooks – who is called a liberal’s favorite conservative – wrote about the difficulties of being a secularist, atheist or humanist in today’s world.  As the ranks of the non-religious grow, from today’s historically high levels of twenty per cent of adults and a third of those under thirty, Brooks asserts that secularists will need to find a positive expression of their beliefs.  If secularism is to thrive, it needs to offer the world a moral code that motivates people to act in ways that positively impacts the culture, he writes.  Since secularists don’t call on centuries of religious theology or Scripture, since they do not rely on hope for an otherworldly eternity to motivate them, they must develop cohesive communities of like minded people.  They must also, Brooks suggests, put forward a consistent moral code that is inspirational enough to rally people to serve causes greater than themselves.

I read this column just as I was sitting down to prepare today’s message. Brooks offers a reasonable point – one that might speak to us.  It is not enough for any person or any group to simply be against something.  In politics, spirituality, morality and life itself, the best way to create change is not to be critical, but instead positive.  Secularists and humanists must not as much be against religion as they should favor a logical and loving alternative that truly inspires people – something which Northern Hills and the Gathering already offer and which must continue.

Over the past five years during February, I have looked at three Oscar nominated movies to find spiritual inspiration.  I’m doing the same this year.  Last week I looked at the film Imitation Game.  Today, I examine the film Selma.  While that movie focuses on a pivotal period during the Civil Rights fight of the 1960’s and how Martin Luther King, Jr. strategically steered passage of the Voting Rights Act, the movie implicitly offers a message that is subtly complimentary to one regarding equal rights.

In its one word title, there is no reference to Dr. King, his greatness or to any of the leaders who strategized with him.    Selma is a place that represents the struggle for equal rights – much like Birmingham, Watts, Ferguson, Seneca Falls or Stonewall also do.  But more than just being a place, Selma represents a community of people inspired not by God or visions of heaven, but the very worldly, here and now concerns of justice and dignity.  Selma can be for us much of what David Brooks writes – a symbol of the positive purposes a diverse but united community of people can offer the world.

The movie is really a collection of how everyday people came together to bring about change.  In it, we watch as Annie Lee Cooper tries to register to vote – but runs up against the wall of Southern systemic barriers to that basic right.  We watch in shock as Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young black deacon in a Marian, Alabama church, is shot to death by a white policeman when he tried to protect his mother from being beaten by white police during a protest.  We see the horror of four young black girls blown up and killed by the local Klan in their Birmingham church – which was used as a meeting place by black protesters.  We learn of the efforts by John Lewis, a Congressman today from Georgia, who led the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Selma.  We learn of the local group who had worked to end segregation, register blacks to vote and confront local racist politicians – years before Dr. King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference came to Selma.  We watch the many whites who joined the Civil Rights protests – ones like Unitarian ministers Clark Olsen and Olof Miller who were savagely beaten for participating in the Selma march, or Detroit housewife and mother of five children, Viola Liuzzo, who joined the Selma march and was shot in the head and killed by four Klansmen.  We see the hundreds of black protesters, young, old, women and men, who are run down by police on horses, beaten and bloodied during the Selma to Montgomery march.

What we see in the film is a community bound together in action despite their different backgrounds and beliefs.  We see people stirred and motivated to act in a positive and non-violent manner.  We see their leaders, including Dr. King, give direction and eloquence to these everyday people – but Dr. King and other leaders did not and could not carry the Civil Rights protest on their own.  Leaders cannot lead unless there are people who are with them, people who are willing to act.

Selma is a movie that ultimately honors a large and diverse group of people – it honors a grassroots social movement, one founded on centuries of oppression felt by everyday people.  We look back on the 1960’s and see the monumental force of Dr. King, but the movie Selma underscores the fact that history is not made by single individuals.  History is a fabric of stories woven together by the deeds and lives of countless everyday people.  It is these people, usually nameless and unknown, who comprise historical movements – be it the American Revolution, the fight against slavery, or the Civil Rights efforts.  It is from the ranks of such broad social movements that individual men and women rise up to be leaders and give inspiration to the multitudes.  Instead of great men and women making history, the reverse is true.  Historical forces that comprise diverse groups of people help make certain men and women great.

And that is the case with Martin Luther King, Jr..  He was the inspiring leader, the brilliant strategist, the voice in the wilderness who beckoned a generation to peacefully correct the wrongs of the past – but he was only one man.   Diverse groups of common people, comprised of Annie Lee Coopers, Jimmie Lee Jacksons, Viola Liuzzos, Clark Olsens and thousands like them – they are the often forgotten ones, the heroes and martyrs of history, of whom the movie Selma celebrates.

In this fiftieth anniversary of the Selma marches, we are rightfully asked to heed what the movie honors.  And, yes, we are also asked to ponder why the events fifty years ago echo the events of just a few months ago – of peaceful black protesters marching against oppression but facing white police aggression.  The protests of Selma and Ferguson are sadly linked across half a century.  One event asks us to remember and honor.  The other calls us to speak out and act.

But for us as members of Northern Hills or the Gathering, the message of the film also extends beyond our call to help reconcile racial wounds.  In many ways, we are like the people of Selma.  There are issues in our churches and our communities that need to be addressed.   How we come together, how we, with all of our different backgrounds and traditions, work together to address the challenges of our time will say much about who we are.

The last time I spoke here I asked us as individuals and as congregations to cooperate in acquiring what I call purpose driven wealth.  That kind of wealth is not comprised of money or things, but of meaning, self-actualization and purpose.  We earn this wealth by acting according to our purpose for living – to be positive agents of change in our families, churches and communities.  I suggested three goals for our two congregations.  First, to increase and improve our congregation care teams – to organize people who are trained and skilled in offering listening ears and empathy to fellow members who are hurting.  Second, I suggested both congregations cooperate and serve together in hands on outreach efforts for the poor, marginalized, hungry and homeless.  Third, I suggested we plan, implement and support ways to build racial justice and reconciliation through our Sunday services, our verbal witness and our hands on work.

I reiterate these suggestions.  I don’t want to forget them.  Interested persons for each of these goals, in both congregations, can contact me or other leaders and initiate plans to meet, discuss and implement positive goals for our futures.  Beyond these specific goals is a much larger one – one that we might learn from the movie Selma.  Our primary cause is to make a difference in the lives of ourselves, our children, our friends, and in our world.  We exist as people and as churches to serve others at least as much as we serve ourselves.  We offer a spirituality that is unique in its radical embrace of any and all people, to love them, to serve them, to be a force of free thinking and human compassion.  But to do this we must come together – moving beyond differences to unite in ways that will better fulfill our purpose.  We do so not for a god, not for a hoped for eternity in some abstract heavenly abode, but to instead help build a heaven on earth, right here, right now – an earthly paradise of peace, equality, decency and equal opportunity.

This worldly heaven, one that Dr. King spoke to and envisioned, requires we heed the example of everyday people celebrated in the film Selma.  As diverse people, the Civil Rights marchers came from different backgrounds and traditions.  But they found a way to unite.  One of the beautiful images of the film Selma is a scene where thousands of people link arms to peacefully confront forces of intolerance blocking their way.  Men, women, black, white, brown, ministers, rabbis, children, senior citizens, liberals, conservatives, northerners, southerners – all in one body – uniting to address the compelling cause of their time.

Like them, we too must come together and link arms for the compelling cause of our time.  We must cooperate.  We must support one another in humility and kindness.  We must sacrifice.  We must serve –  each in our own way.  Leaders and ministers do not make a church, just as Martin Luther King did not constitute the Civil Rights movement.   Everyday people did – and everyday people, acting in common, are the heroes of history and of our two churches.

The causes for our time at the Gathering and Northern Hills may seem small but they are important for our witness as people who defy division and seek spiritual unity that embraces universal ideals.  To that end,  our two congregations have been given a special opportunity – to meet as different but like minded people, to get to know one another, to discuss ways to cooperate, to dream of a combined body that will be greater, stronger and more purpose driven than either congregation left alone.   This opportunity we have, much like that which history gave to the people of Selma, is to move beyond our individual or congregation desires.  I did not join the Gathering just because I liked the Gathering.  I joined because it was a place I could live out my purpose in life to serve others.  That goal is much bigger than me or my personal beliefs.

I’ve heard about a few differences that might separate our congregations – mostly involving a few Sunday service practices.  No two sets of people with proud histories and traditions will ever be the same.  Indeed, our differences represent not stumbling blocks but, instead, wonderful diversity.  The people depicted in the movie Selma prove that point.  Some were activists who worked to change laws.  Some were advocates of confrontation.  Others were persons who saw the symbolic power of non-violence, attacked by forces of hate, as a way to build empathy in hearts and minds.  These groups differed in strategy and tactics.  But they found a way to unite according to their higher purpose – that all people have the right to be heard, respected and represented.

And those are ideals we also share.  We are not Northern Hills members.  We are not Gathering members.  We are not motivated by small differences.  We are members of a universal community of idealists, servants and activists, like the protest marchers of Selma, who envision a better world.  Yes, we each have our own unique histories.  Yes, we have our unique Sunday service practices that are meaningful and good.  Crucially, however, we share the important motivation to promote an alternative spirituality of reason and logic, focused through a prism of service and love.

As the Selma protest marchers neared the end of their fifty mile journey to the Alabama capital of Montgomery, under the malevolent gaze of the Ku Klux Klan, racist police officers, and Governor George Wallace – forces that would divide instead of unite, the marchers sang in unison: “Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on!” 

Those marchers knew too well that far too many change movements in history have fizzled out because their members lost sight of the prize – they focused on negativity, fear, uncertainty and differences instead of positive solutions.   And the ultimate prize for which they labored fell from their grasp.

My friends, we cannot allow the same to happen to us.  The prize we seek is not the glory of our individual congregations.  It is not for our own comfort.  It is for the glory of our common cause.  We must harness that opportunity to build upon our cause, we must heed the calling of our shared beliefs, we must listen to our collective hearts that beat to a unifying and thoughtful spirituality.  I see us as one people who value the traditions of the past, but who also respect and compromise with the traditions of others, all in order to keep our eyes on the prize.  That prize, that glory, will not be a bigger church – with more members and more money.  It will instead be the greater realization of our purpose as people and congregations. We must march boldly forward united in our vision of being positive spiritual change agents.  Together, we too can be Selma.

 

I wish you all much peace and joy.

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

 

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

 

Winston Churchill said that the contributions of Alan Turing in winning World War II, who is the subject of the film Imitation Game, were the most important made by any single person.  Turing broke the supposedly unbreakable German Enigma code.  By doing so, it is estimated he shortened the war by over two years and saved millions of lives.  To break Enigma, he built what was a prototype of the first super-computer – one that the original IBM computer, ENIAC, was based.  He helped establish the Church-Turing math thesis which is the foundation of computational and computer science theory.  His mathematical algorithms are widely recognized as laying the theoretical basis for internet search engine algorithms used today by Google.  When President Obama spoke to the British Parliament in 2011, he cited Turing as one of the five greatest scientists of all time – joining the ranks of Newton and Einstein.

Despite all of his achievements, Turing was arrested in 1952 by British police and charged with gross indecency after he was found having sex with another man.  During questioning and at his trial, Turing admitted to the liaison but claimed he was not guilty.  Being homosexual is not a crime, he asserted.  Nevertheless, he was convicted and sentenced to spend two years in prison or, as an alternative, to undergo chemical castration.  That is what he chose, so that he could continue his work.  Injected with massive doses of synthetic estrogen, Turing gained weight, lost all his body hair, grew breasts, became lethargic and was profoundly affected mentally.  Medical experts confirm mental confusion and depression result from rapid replacement of testosterone with estrogen.

In 1954, Turing was found dead in his apartment from an apparent suicide.  A large amount of liquid cyanide was found in his stomach.  He had been deeply depressed by his chemical castration and by an inability to continue his work.  Since many of his wartime accomplishments were kept secret for national security reasons, his death was barely noted.  By 1967, when the British law forbidding homosexual acts ended, over 49,000 men had been convicted and punished for breaking it.  In 1995, Queen Elizabeth posthumously pardoned Turing even as she refused to acknowledge the law had been a mistake or to pardon any of the other men convicted by it.

A few years ago Stuart Blersch held a Gathering Book Club in which we read of the imprisonment of homosexuals by Nazi Germany.  They were the first concentration camp prisoners.  While many countries share in the shame of persecuting gays and lesbians, it is shocking that a country like Great Britain was doing so during many of our lifetimes.

Much of what I’ve just discussed is alluded to in The Imitation Game, one of this year’s Academy Award Best Picture nominated films.  The title is borrowed from Turing’s theoretical work exploring the subject of machine intelligence or, what we today call artificial intelligence.  The title also points to the major theme of the movie – that of imitation versus reality.  During most of his life Turning was forced to imitate a straight man – even at one point becoming engaged to his code breaking colleague, Joan Clarke.  In the film, he rhetorically asks one of his police interrogators “what is genuine love and what is an imitation?”  Well ahead of his time, he asked in a letter to a friend if going to bed with a man was not the equal to that of being with a woman?  I like vanilla, you like chocolate.  What is the problem?  Why is one form of sex condemned as indecent, criminal and an imitation, while the other is considered ideal and good?

Turing was also far ahead of his time in predicting that machines could mimic many forms of human thought – even claiming that machines think and process mathematical equations far better.  He conducted “imitation games” during which people were tasked with trying to guess whether they were playing chess against a computer or a human.  Most people could not tell the difference.  As he wondered, what is real intelligence and what is an imitation?

And the movie also pointedly asks what constitutes genuine morality versus one that is situational and seemingly imitation.  In order not to tip off the Germans that the Enigma code had been broken, Turing and war generals had to decide which German military actions would be prevented, and which would not – thus forcing them to choose between British and American soldiers who would live and those who would die.  Is genuine morality a fixed constant as found in the Ten Commandments – “Thou Shall Not Kill”, or is it flexible – perhaps allowing for the killing of some so that far more are saved?  Which morality is the imitation and which is real?

Since my task is to find spiritual insight from this film, the question of what is real and what is an imitation must be asked.  Indeed, that is the great philosophical and spiritual question of all time.  Why do we exist?  What is it that determines our existence?  What determines reality?  What is truly and universally good – the One Great Truth – what some call God?  What things, thoughts or morals are ideal and what are simply imitations?

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote at length about his understanding of reality.  Humans use art, he said, through media such as music, painting, sculpture and literature to portray what they believe is life reality.  Plato wrote that human representations of life are more true, or perfect, than the actual object.  A painting of a flower is a better representation of the object since the artist idealizes it – eliminating distracting elements that occur in real life like imperfections of shape, color  or things that diminish its beauty.

Plato elaborated on this idea by suggesting that even artistic representations of life are not truth, nor is the actual object.  Instead, what is true is our collective idea of an object or emotion – a fixed universal constant – of what, for example, a flower should look like.  That amorphous idea of an object, thought or emotion is Truth, according to Plato.  It’s not the actual object or our representation of it.  Ultimate Truth and goodness are intangible ideals.  In other words, human representations of objects or thoughts in art are imitations of the actual thing – and those actual things are imitations of universal ideals of that object or emotion.  For Plato, art imitates life which imitates a universally accepted perfect ideal.

All of this is heavy philosophy and if it seems too cerebral, I apologize.  But Plato’s influence on Christianity and its theology of an imperfect world contrasted against an ideal God and heaven has had a profound impact on western morality.  Confronting this issue of what is real and what is a flawed imitation helps us in our spirituality.

I assert that the perfect ideal truth of which Plato theorized is what many religions call God, Yahweh, Allah or Brahmin.  For many of us who choose to define Truth as something which is not a supernatural, theistic being, we are still left with question of what is Ultimate Truth and goodness?  What is the original creative power?  What is the purpose and meaning for all creation?  What is universally good?

Turing posed existential and spiritual questions with his development of the first machine that could act like a brain.  While we often believe that our hearts and souls are the seats of personhood, it is our brains that lead us to form moral and spiritual identities.  If we can build an artificial brain, can we thus build an artificial soul?  And if we do so, which is the real brain, the real soul – our flawed and fallible ones influenced by desires, hatreds and jealousies or, machines which employ constant mathematical truths to think in ways that are untainted by other influences?  Does a computer represent the perfect ideal of thinking and intelligence – one that Plato might have recognized?  Or, are our minds and thus our souls something far more complex – ones that are made perfect and ideal precisely because they are seemingly imperfect?

In Turing’s life, he constructed a prototype of the modern computer  and called it “Christopher” – named after a schoolmate who introduced him to cryptography and with whom he had fallen in love.  The tragedy of Turing’s life was his struggle with the purity of Christopher the machine – something that could “think” and crack complex codes – versus the seeming  imperfection of his highly intelligent brain which was strongly influenced by homosexuality.  Society told him such thoughts and behaviors were immoral and imperfect.  By building a machine without such impulses, and naming it after his beloved Christopher, Turing seemed to agree.  Math, codes, puzzles and computers are pure of thought, he asserted.  Human brains and thus human souls are beset by other influences like desire and emotion.  Which intelligence is better?

Turing was adamant, however, in asserting that being gay was an intrinsic part of his being.  While he imitated a straight man to persons who did not know him, to his very close friends he was fully out of the closet.  In order to be a friend of Turing, one had to accept his homosexuality as a part of his personhood and thus his reality.

But Alan Turing struggled with this idea of perfect intelligence.  He was able to conceive of theories and math far beyond other humans.  His brain was brilliant – one almost the superior of computers since he invented them.  But his thinking was also subject to sexual desire – a kind of thinking that would unfairly cause his ruin.  Logically, he knew the consequences in Great Britain for engaging in homosexuality.  But for him, that way of thinking was very real and thus not like the analytical machines based on math – a kind of thinking that logically eliminates non-procreative sexual desire.

My point is this: does the story of Alan Turing call us to better define the spiritual realms of Ultimate Truth and Ultimate goodness?  We assume that ideal human thought and behavior are not influenced by illogical actions such as anger, lust, arrogance and jealousy.  But Turing’s life and his homosexuality tell us the opposite.   Ideal human thought IS subject to illogical influences like emotion and desire.  In other words, Ultimate Truth – or God, if that is your word for it – is all about the supposedly imperfect.  Plato was therefore wrong and much of religious theology is also wrong.

To rebut Plato, the ideal flower is not a perfect concept of what we believe a flower to be.  The ideal flower is slightly mis-colored, misshapen or absent a few petals.  The ideal form of intelligence and thus the soul is not one that would never think of lust or anger, but one that does.  We can believe what we want but reality is reality.  Ultimate Truth – or God – is right here, right now, in each of us with all of our supposed imperfections.  We might change the here and now to improve it – much like we work to eliminate racism and hatred – but with all due apologies to those who are scientists and mathematicians, God is not a perfect mathematical equation.  She’s not logical with a fixed ideal of morality and goodness.  She’s often illogical, imperfect and certainly not like a computer.

In an ideal existence, what religions often call heaven, homosexuality and anger would not logically exist.    But, as I often claim, heaven is not an otherworldly idea.  Heaven is right here, as Jesus taught.  Indeed, people and things that seem to many religions to be imperfect are, ironically, ultimately true and good.

I assert my theory of Ultimate Truth and goodness is found in the Bible.  Jesus was good not because he was a supernatural God but because he was fully human with anger, temptation, doubt and fear.  He was good because he worked to change such things in himself and in others.  Indeed, I can even accept Jesus as a type of God, in an ironic way, precisely because he was not perfect.

This is the same truth I find in Alan Turing and which took me decades to find in myself.  It’s discovery profoundly changed my spirituality as it has with many others.  Platonic, Christian and western philosophy has twisted a sense of what is perfection.  They claim that certain thoughts or actions are not true, ideal or good.  But that has no basis in reality.  Religions and many societies tell people they must live up to their version of what is ideal even though that is impossible.  The greatest saints and heroes throughout history were often imperfect in thought or character.  Why do we, even those who are not religious, choose to judge human character using false notions of goodness – on matters like sexuality, reproductive choices or faith?  In my own life, I’ve had to come to terms with this question – am I good because I am human and imperfect or am I bad because I don’t try to imitate some religious standard?

Alan Turing was a tragic hero brought down by forces in our world that falsely determines what is ideally good.  Turing’s idealized visions of his boyfriend Christopher, his computer and all future computers – these are not representations of what is ideal intelligence and the soul.  And that is because they are too perfect.  Good and true is a way of thinking that includes seemingly illogical desires and emotions.  It is a man who loves another man just as much as good is also a straight woman who loves a man.  Good and real is a human soul who strives to be ethical and compassionate – even as he or she falls short with lapses of intolerance, fear or bitterness.   Goodness is is not to play an imitation game as religions tell us we must.  We are good, we are Ultimate Truth precisely because we are each occasionally NOT good or not a supposedly perfect ideal.  God is you, God is me, in all of our illogical, imperfect but beautiful humanity.

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

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

 

Many of you are aware that Time magazine recently selected Ebola healthcare workers for their Persons of the Year recognition.  The workers made headline news in 2014 both for their work and for the fact many also became victims of the disease.  They clearly deserve the respect Time’s designation offers.

The lives of most ebola caregivers are stories of danger, sacrifice and heartbreak that few of us can understand.  They volunteer from all over the world as they routinely work in conditions that would be unbearable for most.  The risk they face is huge:  the disease is easily transmitted through body fluids and the death rate often approaches 90%.  Workers must treat patients in protective suits that can only be worn about an hour at a time due to the stifling heat.  When they take off the suits, they face their greatest danger.  Any skin contact with the virus could result in their own death.  In a profession that calls for human touch and empathy, the workers can offer very little.  They are overwhelmed with the number of patients.  They experience a psychological toll of telling countless patients they have the deadly disease.  One ebola health care worker describes the work as like being at the front lines of a war and under continuous machine gun fire.

For this heroic work in terrible conditions, physicians with the Doctors Without Borders charity are paid $1731 a month.  Nurses make two-thirds that amount.  Native health workers in Liberia and Sierra Leone make much less – about $50 a week.

In the Time magazine article, Dr. Kent Brantley is quoted.  He worked at a Liberian hospital run by the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse.  Dr. Brantley contracted the disease when he took off his protective face mask to console the daughter of an ebola patient.  He then became the first ebola patient treated in the US when he was airlifted home.  He survived and is now disease free. He told Time that he hopes to soon return to Africa to treat more ebola patients.  He said, “I chose a career in medicine because I wanted a tangible skill with which to serve people.  Deep in the core of my heart, I still think that’s my calling.  I don’t want to go on with life and forget this.”

Soon after he was evacuated home to be treated for ebola, Donald Trump went on a cable news channel to criticize our government for allowing Dr. Brantley, and thus ebola, into the country.  Trump sat in his penthouse office, a man who is reportedly worth over a billion dollars, and criticized efforts to save the life of a doctor who makes a little over $20,000 a year trying to end an epidemic that could spread across the planet – a man who feels called to put himself at great risk in order to serve others.  The contrast between these two men is stark – one a billionaire who makes money manipulating financial markets, and the other a relatively poor man who saves lives and perhaps much of humanity.  Who is richer?  Who is likely happier and more satisfied with life than the other?  Who is amassing the kind of wealth that cannot buy things but which provides lasting value to our world?  By purely monetary yardsticks, Donald Trump is exponentially richer.  By the yardstick of social wealth or, what I call purpose driven wealth, Dr. Kent Brantley has acquired a fortune.

And that is the subject of my message today.  Might we resolve in 2015 to better practice an uncommon New Year’s resolution – to focus on acquiring purpose driven wealth as much or more than we do on making financial wealth?

Social, or purpose driven wealth, is defined as the intrinsic moral and cultural value of efforts to support and serve others.  It is the intangible value we place on work that is not economically rewarded, but which fulfills our need for meaning and purpose.  Robert F. Kennedy, in an oblique way, defined it best.   Our nation’s Gross National Product number, he said,  “does not count the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything – in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”  In other words, money does not determine the value of who we are as caring people.

Indeed, experts and economists struggle with assigning dollar value to the concept of purpose driven wealth.  How, for instance, do we measure the value to society of caregivers and parents who work at home tending children, the elderly or the sick?  How does society account for the benefits of volunteer work, of equal opportunity, of preventive medicine, of sanitation, of access to decent and affordable health care?  What about the unpaid value of parents, teachers and social workers versus the inflated amounts we pay movie and sports stars?

The answers to these questions are not easy but they nevertheless point to the fact that there exists wealth beyond what we traditionally or culturally count.   Such wealth is earned but it is often under-compensated in monetary terms.  It is our inner selves that yearns for this non-economic wealth, like it did for Dr. Brantley.  We’re inspired to reach beyond our own needs, to sublimate ourselves and meet our calling in life.  In doing so, we begin to amass purpose driven wealth.

I call it that because to acquire it, one must fulfill one’s purpose for living.  Our lives are not just our own.  Our human purpose is to serve the needs of family, friend and community over those of our own.  To do that, we must sublimate many of the innate instincts humans feel.  As Darwin and other evolutionary biologists pointed out, species survive by following four “F” instincts of survival.  In order to live, all life forms must 1) feed, 2) fight in competition for scarce resources, 3) flee danger, and – to avoid using the word for the fourth “F” – all life must 4) reproduce.   Such instincts lead all life to instinctively be focused on self-interest.

But humanity has realized over the ages that community, cooperation and compassion for others enables a better way to survive.  Humans have discovered the value of going beyond the four “F” instincts to also care for others – much like what ebola healthcare workers do.

We find purpose driven value not only from communal cooperation but also from what experts call the “warm glow” affect.  We ironically derive as much or more pleasure when we help meet the needs of others – as opposed to only meeting our own needs.  While we can and should contribute the excess of our money to help others, studies show that voluntary, hands on service to others produces the greatest warm glow affect, as well as offering the highest return on value.  Donating one’s labor is a greater sacrifice than donating money since we give only a portion of the money we have or earn.   When we donate our labor, we give its entire value.

Purpose driven wealth therefore has immense emotional and psychological value.  Numerous studies indicate that people give to others in order to find meaning and purpose and thereby achieve greater happiness.  Indeed, experts assert that the warm glow we earn from serving others is stronger than what we feel when we buy expensive things or when we receive a large amount of money.  And the warm glow is not fleeting.  It influences how we feel about ourselves as valuable members of society.  This positive sense of self worth adds to what constitutes purpose driven wealth.  Ultimately, larger bank accounts or more material things create temporary emotions of happiness.  Meeting one’s purpose in life through serving others is longer lasting.  Our actions to help others extends far beyond our lifetimes – creating the kind of legacy that offers a form of life after death.  The old Jewish proverb holds true – when we save one life, we save the world.

The Bible tells us that Jesus encouraged his followers to acquire purpose driven wealth.  As he said, store up the kind of treasure that rust and moth cannot destroy.  The wealth that lasts is the kind of wealth that builds a form of heaven on earth and is multiplied far into the future.  That uncounted future wealth is today’s purpose driven wealth.

The Buddha, during his early years, practiced mindful yoga and self denial to such an extent that he achieved the highest state of meditation.  But such mindful ecstasy faded quickly as his body clamored for his four “F’s to be fulfilled.  Only when he began to express selflessness – not just through denial but through compassion and serving others – did he achieve lasting happiness.  As he said, empathy for others is the positive way to get out of endless introspection and focus on the self.  How can we dwell in self pity or in the pursuit of worldly gain when we feel the needs of others?  Encouraging loving kindness toward others is a primary way to release the mind from selfish desires.  According to the Buddha, service, empathy and compassion are pathways to enlightenment and inner joy.  And that inner contentment is another way to define purpose driven wealth.

What I propose is as much for me as it is for you.  I often say to the Gathering that I choose message topics that I need to learn and follow.  As most at the Gathering know, I spend 12 days a month in Florida.  I had already found a home there when the Pastor position at the Gathering became available.  Instead of moving back to Cincinnati, the church and I worked out my schedule of three Sundays a month working here with one Sunday a month off.  And it is during those 12 days that I work offsite in Florida.  Many of my friends down there often ask me why I continue my Cincinnati church work for modest pay and don’t permanently move south to enjoy life.  While that is admittedly tempting, I’ve never seriously considered it.  How do I leave work that gives me happiness, meaning and purpose?  How do I leave a church and people I deeply care about?  How do I value work that allows me to make a small difference for good in the world?

My story is certainly nothing special.  Many people, including all of you, build purpose driven wealth in serving family, friend and stranger.  But my schedule and work remind me of my life purpose.  They remind me of my struggle to release my mind, as the Buddha taught, of selfish thinking.  Few of us will ever reach his Nirvana state of happiness through serving others, but that ought to be our goal not just because it is the right thing to do, but in an ironic way, because it is selfish.  We make ourselves happier when we are SELFLESS.  Like the Buddha, we find contentment when the meaning for our existence goes well beyond the satisfaction of personal needs.  To be focused more on ourselves is, instead, a lonely and often sad state of being.  Only by connecting with others in understanding their pain, in listening, in offering assistance for their needs – do we find community, common cause and, ultimately, joy.

To that end, I encourage in this New Year a resolution to think as much about purpose driven wealth as we do about financial or material wealth.  I encourage this resolution for us individually as I do for our two churches.  Specifically, I humbly offer three suggestions for how the Gathering and Northern Hills congregations can cooperate in 2015 on ways to expand purpose driven wealth.

First, I suggest we strengthen congregation efforts to serve fellow church members.  That includes building well functioning teams of trained care givers and listeners for members who are hurting.  It involves further inspiring youth and adults to practice empathy and compassion.  It involves continued work to make our churches known for member support – for staying in touch with those who have not recently attended, for insuring all members in need are cared for.  By helping one another, we better enable our congregations as a whole to serve the outside world.

Second, I suggest we explore and then implement ways our two congregations can cooperate in charitable outreach service – for the Inter-Faith Hospitality Network, for the Freestore, for the People Working Cooperatively organization, for other charities.  By combining our volunteer efforts and working together in the community, we will double our impact, get to know one another, empower our spiritual journeys and better attract new members who seek places where they can serve.

Third, I suggest we further expand ways to advance racial understanding and reconciliation.  One way is to volunteer in at risk schools as tutors and mentors.  Many people believe education inequality is the single greatest factor contributing to racial and income inequality.  Another way is to continue to reach out to African-American congregations to join us in building racially sensitive communities.  The work of Ray Nandyal and other Northern Hills members, reflected in plans for next Sunday’s Martin Luther King service, is a great example of such efforts.

Along with my own work, we will need volunteers from both churches to step forward to help meet these cooperative goals and others suggested by any of you.  Our churches have long been focused on serving others.  But we do so by inspiring people and………never by failing to understand that health or family situations can prevent the work of some.  We each give and serve in our own ways and ALL efforts are deeply valued.  For the new year, let us build upon our traditions of service.

It is doubtful any of us will acquire the financial wealth of Donald Trump.  It is also doubtful our two churches – either alone or merged – will reach the status of a mega-church – one that has thousands of members and million dollar budgets.  I doubt that these are even desirable goals.  But we can individually, and as churches, aspire to amass purpose driven wealth – the kind of intangible wealth built by caring parents, volunteers and compassionate people everywhere.  Let us, therefore, resolve to be rich in the kind of wealth that truly matters.

 

 

 

 

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

To download and listen to the message, please click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

In 1989, Spike Lee released perhaps his best movie, one entitled “Do the Right Thing.”  While controversial at the time, the movie has since been acclaimed by numerous movie critics as one of the 100 best films ever made.  It was extended the rare honor of being accepted into the Smithsonian Museum’s National Film archives of historically landmark movies.  Spike Lee was nominated for an Academy award for the screenplay.   Recently, the film has been further praised for describing in that film events and issues eerily similar to those in the recent killing of young black men.

Spike Lee plays a character in the film named Mookie, who works as a pizza deliveryman.  Mookie works for Sal, who is of Italian descent, and who owns a pizzeria which is the center of life in the predominantly African-American New York neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvessant.  Sal has two sons, Pino who intensely dislikes blacks, and Vito who is a friend of Mookie.  The two sons represent the twin poles of white attitudes toward African-Americans.

The story takes place on one of the hottest days of the year.   The heat adds to a simmering tension in the neighborhood which gradually builds from small confrontations, to a race tinged argument between Pino and Mookie, to a racial killing and mass protest.

One of the film characters, a man named Buggin’ Out, challenges Sal the pizzeria owner, about a Wall of Fame inside his restaurant which displays pictures of famous men – mostly Italians but noticeably lacking anyone of color.  Buggin’ Out demands that Sal include on the wall photos of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other famous blacks since the pizzeria is in the middle of a black neighborhood.   This issue becomes the spark that ignites racial conflict.  Sal refuses the request claiming that as owner of the restaurant, he can depict anyone he wants.  Buggin’ Out quickly tries to start a boycott against Sal and enlists both Radio Raheem and Smiley to join him.

Tensions continue to rise in the community with several small provocations until Radio Raheem confronts Sal about his racist attitudes all while his boombox loudly blares.  Sal becomes enraged, calls Raheem the “n” word multiple times and smashes the boombox to pieces.

With Sal’s blatant racial epithets, a fight ensues.  Many come to Raheem’s defense including Mookie.  Pino and Sal confront them along with several white customers.  The fight spills onto the street and the police are called.  They arrive and a white officer places Raheem into a chokehold even though Sal is fighting too.  Raheem is literally pulled into the air in a chokehold as his feet twitch and reach for the ground.  He goes limp and is thrown to the ground.  The police look on impassively.  A police officer thinks he is faking and brutally kicks him but it is soon clear Raheem is dead.

At Raheem’s death, the crowd turns on Sal and his sons.  Mookie, however, picks up a trash can and throws it through the restaurant’s front window.  It is later clear that Mookie’s action was intended to divert the crowd away from attacking Sal.  The protesters, however, cheer Mookie’s action and start a fire.  The restaurant is soon engulfed.  The police arrest most of the protesters.  Once the crowd has been arrested and dispersed, Smiley, the mentally challenged man, walks into the burned out restaurant and hangs a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X on the Wall of Fame.  The film ends with Sal and Mookie warily reconciling.  There is a fade to black as two quotes fill the screen – one from Martin Luther King, Jr. and the other from Malcom X.

King’s quote is one of his most famous:  “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.”

Malcom X’s quote offers a contrasting view:  “There are plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in those positions to block things that you and I need.  Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to it, and that doesn’t mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense.  I don’t even call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence.”

Viewers are left with the troubling question of just what constitutes “doing the right thing.”  Turn the other cheek, OR intelligent self-defense in reaction to institutional white violence?  Let’s watch the chokehold scene from the movie and compare it to video footage of what happened to Eric Garner this past summer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LSBpwmMnVM

(Stop this video at about the 1:30 point – if you wish.)

“Do The Right Thing” is clearly not a standard holiday story.  And yet, for this year’s Kwanzaa holiday, and indeed for Hanukkah and Christmas, it seems an appropriate one for me to tell today.  It is a troubling story that examines racism in all of its overt and subtle manifestations.  Why are blacks disproportionately members of the underclass?  How do hidden institutional forms of discrimination – like substandard education and an unjust legal system – work to deny opportunity to African-Americans?  How does institutional privilege, on the other hand, give whites distinct advantages?

Kwanzaa is a non-religious holiday intended to empower African-Americans.  It was specifically begun in 1966 by Ronald Karenga, founder of the Black Power movement, as a way to counter the predominance of white oriented holidays.  Blacks, Karenga believed, should celebrate ideals that are unique to their heritage and to their cultural advancement.  Kwanzaa, which means “first fruits” in Swahili, celebrates seven African ideals to be focused by and for the Afro-American community.  They are:  Unity, Self-determination, Purpose, Economic cooperation, Service to others, Creativity, and lastly, Faith.  While “Do the Right Thing” is not a Kwanzaa story, we find in the film a struggle to assert African-American culture, to find pride in that identity, to fight against unjust white privilege.  This sense of being marginalized, isolated, disregarded, ignored and controlled – all by white economic and police powers – are the provocations that lead to angry protest in the film and, indeed, in recent protests around our nation.  Juxtaposed against such African-American anger is an often clueless white attitude that seems incapable of understanding the daily violation and humiliation many blacks feel.

What sadly seems apparent today with the recent killing of young black men and resulting protests is that Kwanzaa ideals of black dignity and pride are under assault.  Despite decades of advances in civil rights, despite twice electing a black man as President, white privilege is still predominant.  Kwanzaa ideals of black empowerment seem powerless.

Data released last week shows average black household net worth declining while that of whites has increased.  The education gap between blacks and whites has increased since the 1960’s – over thirty percent of whites have a college degree compared to less than 20 percent for blacks.  Nearly half of the 2.5 million people incarcerated in the US are African-American men – most due to relatively minor drug offenses even though whites use drugs at five times the rate of blacks.  Young black males are 21 times as likely to be killed by police then similar aged white males.  Sadly, we are still pondering the implicit question Spike Lee asked in his movie, what is the right thing to do?

That question seems most pertinent to white Americans.  How do we do the right thing for fellow members of the human family?  How do we take the ethics and values of this holiday season – those of peace, justice, equality – and incorporate them into our permanent attitudes?  How do we use a holiday that honors the birth of Jesus – himself a man of color – to remind ourselves of our continued call to understand, to learn, to grow, to empathize with those who live on the margins?

I am struck by the irony that Christmas in particular celebrates the birth of Jesus who came as a liberator and spoke of peace on earth not in a simplistic turn the other cheek way, but in order to confront poverty, inequality and hypocrisy.  Indeed, the mythic story of Jesus’ birth tells us of a poor family of color following the orders of white Europeans.  This mythic family had to travel a long distance to be counted by whites, and they were marginalized as poor and unworthy once they arrived.  Jesus’ birth, as the myth goes, so alarmed King Herod, the white Roman King of Israel, that he ordered a mass killing of young boys – all boys of color – so that he could insure the death of the one who was born to be a revolutionary.  Jesus, as his birth story goes, was born to liberate all people from injustice, hate and intolerance.  How many white Christians today contemplate that fact as they celebrate Christmas?  How many of us as humanists see the holiday in this light?   Should we not celebrate a peace on earth that is real for everyone – of being secure in one’s neighborhood, of not being unjustly killed, of economic fairness, of equal rights and equal opportunity?  Two thousand years of honoring a man of color and his birth, a man who taught genuine peace between all people, and yet we still fail to practice his teachings.

Jesus, much like Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, was unjustly killed by white power.  He was a radical martyred because of his words:  blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the persecuted.  Are not such blessed people he referred to – those who are today often marginalized, feared or killed – Are they not blacks, undocumented immigrants, the homeless, people of color, the poor?  I stand here as a white minister speaking to a largely white congregation.  What is the right thing for us to do?

I have few answers.  Indeed, my hope is that I and other whites will simply listen to African-American suggestions.  Too often, well intentioned whites want to determine what blacks must do.  My own intention is to continue to try to understand not just my role in helping to make things better, but my implicit role in how I have shared in the sins of racism.  I, like many whites, still harbor vestiges of racism – a lack of compassion, a failure to understand, an unwillingness to see how our society extends to me advantages just for being white.

As I repeatedly say, the only way we can adopt attitudes of humility, mercy and empathy, is to simply listen more than we speak.  Our opinions and thoughts do not matter as much as do our attitudes and our willingness to self-reflect and then change.  All of the programs and efforts to address racism seem pointless unless we are able to change white hearts – and that change must begin in our own hearts.  We must figuratively put ourselves in the shoes of others in order to perceive as they perceive, to suffer as they suffer.

Recently appearing in the New York Times was a story of a young boy born to African-American parents asking his mother if, in any interaction with the police, he could simply pretend to be white.  “That’s safer”, he said.  It seems he has a very light skin color.  His mother lamented, but understood, his desire to appear white and forego a pride in his own heritage, culture and community.

Kwanzaa, however, seeks to address that.  Many Christians are critical of the holiday because they read Karenga’s words that blacks must assert their own holiday and their own culture.  Sadly, that approach would not be necessary if all people heeded the ethics of Jesus and other prophets like Buddha, Ghandhi and King.  As we all know, just beneath the melanin of our skin colors, we are all the same.  Even more, we all have the same universal desires for freedom, opportunity, respect and love.  Our hearts beat the same.  Our souls dream the same.

This holiday season, I want to deeply reflect on the ethics of Jesus – the man whose mythic birth is the substance of what many celebrate.  As we hear chants of “Don’t shoot” and “I can’t breathe”, might we hear echoes of Jesus as he called out from the Cross and gave voice to all people of color: “Why have you forsaken me?”  His words may or may not be historically true, but they ring across the ages precisely because they were uttered by an outcast, by a man familiar with the stings of poverty and the taunts of powerful elites.  If many in our society worship him, if many of us look to him as a great human prophet, why can’t we adopt his ethics – particularly towards people of color?

Perhaps most of all, I must read and understand the 7 principles of Kwanzaa – to honor them as declarations by African-Americans of their proud and unique culture.  Their’s are voices calling out in the wilderness, much like of that Jesus: “Our lives matter.  We are people too.  We are mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers who have been too long harassed and hated.  We ask for dignity.  We ask for justice.  We ask for the simple peace on earth that all humans seek.”

Let me, let us – truly listen to those words this holiday season, this coming Kwanzaa – and deeply reflect on them.

 

 

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

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In the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II, those Jews who were not immediately sent to gas chambers were forced to work at hard labor until they were physically worn out.  They were fed one meal a day consisting of stale bread, watery vegetable soup and a dollop of rancid margarine.

At the conclusion of the meal, camp guards allowed the starving prisoners to jump into the empty margarine barrel and lick the sides of it.  This provided sadistic amusement to guards who laughed at the sight of desperate people fighting to get a few extra calories.  At one feeding area, there was one man who daily refused to engage in the frenzy.  Even though he was as emaciated and hungry as the others, he would not give the guards satisfaction at watching him lick a wooden barrel.

One evening, that changed.  This man who had tried for so long to hold on to his dignity, finally gave in as he jumped into the barrel and rolled around with abandon.  He took special effort to smear the oily margarine over as much of his body as possible.  His actions drew the attention of the camp commander as he and other guards were especially pleased to see this particular Jewish man finally broken.

Once that man returned to his barracks, he quickly tore off his shirt and pants and began to search them for areas smeared with grease.  He tore his clothes apart into long thin strips.  Others in the barrack were alarmed.  They said he had gone mad as they tried to stop him from tearing up his clothing.

“Do you know what tonight is?” the man replied.  “Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah!”

He continued to examine his shirt to find more spots stained with margarine – which he then tore apart.  Later that evening he led an entire group of barracks in lighting Hanukkah flames.  The wicks came from the oily strips he had torn from his clothing.  The story is a true one retold by several Bergen-Belsen holocaust survivors.

Like most of you, I cannot imagine the horrors of life in a concentration camp.  They must have been especially bleak places with rows of unheated cabins, muddy pathways between them, and an ever present pall of smoke and ash hanging in the air – a reminder of the brick buildings and chimneys where fellow Jews were gassed and cremated.   Forced to exist in that kind of hell, few could have found anything positive or hopeful in it.

And yet the story I just related indicates that the human spirit in those camps had not been extinguished.  In the depths of unimaginable suffering and terror, hope would not die.  It must have been a hope in goodness, a hope in persistence, a hope in life itself that motivated this man to help many others celebrate Hanukkah.

As a minor Jewish holiday, Hanukkah, which begins in two days, has often seemed more of a response to the prevailing dominance of Christmas – a desire not to be overwhelmed by the Christian celebrations.  Nevertheless, Hanukkah has itself become commercialized, trivialized and combined with other December holidays to the point where its meaning is often lost.  While many scholars believe it comes from a myth – that of a miracle when one day’s supply of oil used to light a lamp lasted eight days – Hanukkah has nevertheless been celebrated because of its inherent lessons.  Ideals such as faith, endurance, and hope have long defined the holiday.

While Jews celebrate Hanukkah as a story that hallmarks that religion’s survival over centuries of time, it also teaches important universal values everyone can appreciate.  In a world where wars and violence happen as I speak, where diseases ravage nations, where millions live with poverty and hunger, where injustice and discrimination affect too many, where young black men are murdered in our nation’s streets for no reason and the racial divide seems to get worse, the holiday season can seem like a cruel way to pretend such problems do not exist.  And yet Hanukkah asks us to remember our problems while hoping and working for their solution.  For me, Hanukkah – much like the story I just told – invites us to hold on to the thin strips of hope we can muster – that all humans are, at their core – good, that a world of misery can be made better, that our own lives of hurt, grief and setbacks can be improved, that as long as people with compassionate hearts endure, there is hope, after everlasting hope.

Several contemporary psychologists have recently proposed a new theory about the psychology of hope.  According to them, hope is essential to life.  People cannot successfully live without it.  But hope, as it is defined according to these psychologists, is not a simple emotion consisting of optimism and positive thinking.  It is, instead, a cognitive sense that originates from our reasoning abilities.   To have hope is to believe that the future will be better than the present and, most importantly, that one has the will and the power to make it so.

According to this new psychological research, hopeful people are more successful than others – they are happier, more fulfilled and healthier.  Genuine hope comes from the ability to rationally set goals, work towards them and deal with inevitable setbacks.  Hopeful people might even be cold-eyed realists and seemingly lack an optimistic spirit but they have the cognitive determination to devise strategies for overcoming the struggles that everyone faces.  They have the will to work towards a better tomorrow.

And Hanukkah as a holiday clearly embodies that ethic.  As the original Hanukkah story is told, the Jews who re-captured the Jerusalem Temple from the control of a non-Jewish nation, found they only had enough consecrated oil to light the Temple lamps for one day.  Instead of simply giving up, Jews persisted in restoring the Temple and lighting the lamps anyway.  The lamps, according to the story, miraculously stayed lit for eight days until new holy oil could be made.  Hope gave those Jews the desire to restore their Temple as an inspirational symbol, to believe they had the ability to do so and then to perform the necessary actions to achieve the goal.

That same kind of hope allowed a Jewish concentration camp man to refuse to abandon his dignity, to instead make a plan to inspire himself and others, to then carry it out and thus provide some light in a dark and horrific place.

Most people in the Gathering know that I and my family have been dealing the past two years with the onset of Alzheimer’s in my mom.  A crisis happened several days before this last Thanksgiving when my mom became extremely agitated, paranoid and upset.  It was almost impossible for anyone to reason with her and calm her down.  My siblings and I were deeply worried.  My mom was getting worse, my dad was giving up in his ability to care for her and there seemed to be few good options.

But then my sister and I took action.  We consulted with an expert who offered assurance and valuable advice.  We researched the suggested options and made plans for a Thanksgiving day family conference call to discuss them.  I was nevertheless fearful the meeting would not go well.  My dad seemed defeated, at the end of his rope and leaning toward finding an Alzheimer’s residence center for my mom – something that has long been a great fear for her.

But our family conference produced its own holiday miracle.  Instead of argument or fear based decisions, we came together to rationally set goals for the future.  Out of concern and love for both my parents, we came up with a list of agreed strategies that will allow my mom to stay in her home and give my dad his rest.  My family is as dysfunctional as any other, but we did not give in to our demons.  We came together in the promise that tomorrow can be better for all of us – even my mom.  With her progressing confusion and our heartache at this long goodbye, her life need not end, it need not lack her comforts of home, it can continue to be one where her friendly and loving personality can still shine.  For my family, hope still endures.

I tell this story of my own because it highlights in its own small way the work of millions of families throughout history – particularly Jewish families who in many ways represent all those who face persecution, difficulty and suffering.  Jewish families and friends unite for each of the eight days of Hanukkah to remember values that keep them together – those of unity, loyalty, love, and faith in human goodness.  Such family and friend celebrations need not only be for Jews but for all people this holiday season.  We can give thanks for all that we have as we renew our goals for the future.  We can express our collective promise to do the work of building a better future for all humanity.

The shattered lives, nations and institutions we see all around us  need not be despaired.  But neither should they be ignored in a holiday effort to turn a blind eye and be happy.  Rather, such suffering forces us to remember the human spirit evident in the centuries of Jewish survival, in the struggle of modern day Palestinians, in the many who peacefully march in our own nation to demand a fair and color blind justice system.  Their stories inspire us about the importance of having hope in our own lives and in persevering despite the odds.

The great Jewish scholar Theodore Herzl Gaster once said that “the Hanukkah story teaches the value of the weak against the strong, of passion against indifference, of the single unpopular voice against the thunder of public opinion.  The first Hanukkah was a struggle fought in the wilderness and in the hills; and its symbol is appropriately a small light kindled when the shadows fall.”

My thoughts regarding the importance of hope in our lives is not intended to diminish the very real pain many of us can feel.  Such pain seems all the more acute during the holidays when Sundays at church, various parties, gift giving and the media all seem to conspire to tell us we should be merry.  Far be it for me to tell anyone how they should feel, or that experiencing grief and heartache are somehow wrong.

Holding on to hope and having the cognitive will to create it by using our minds and our reasoning abilities – these strategies do not tell us feelings of despair are invalid.  Rather, in an ironic twist, the very effort to create hope is itself a form of hope.  Belief in the power of hope to create change in our lives is a form of healing and a way out of pain.  As I said earlier, it is not blind optimism.  It is rational.  It is planned.  It is firmly rooted in all that we believe at the Gathering and at Northern Hills Unitarian Universalist – we rely on reason combined with the pull of our hearts to define how we live.

Perhaps some of you saw a recent news story about a young man who died in August from smoke inhalation in a tragic college dormitory fire.  When he had turned sixteen and obtained his first driver’s license, he signed up to be an organ donor.  Upon his death, his wishes were fulfilled.  Many of his organs were used to help others and his heart, in particular, went to a Viet Nam war veteran who has been active in serving the needs of other vets.

Recently, the young man’s family expressed a desire to meet the heart recipient who was also willing to meet them.  A meeting was set up and one news camera was allowed into this very private and poignant gathering – something they all hoped would promote organ donation.  As I watched video footage of the meeting, I could not help but be deeply moved.  Each of the boy’s parents and his sister embraced the heart recipient upon meeting him.  They held onto him as if they were not meeting a stranger but someone they intimately knew.

Later, each family member was offered the opportunity to listen with a stethoscope to their son and brother’s still beating heart – one that was giving life to someone else.  The sister put the stethoscope on the man’s chest and listened for several moments as tears poured from her eyes – here was her beloved brother’s heart – she was hearing it beat away – his spirit was still alive.  Here was proof of hope in a better tomorrow.  Out of the tragedy of a young death, life beat onward in its never-ending struggle not just to survive…………..but to thrive.

That is the message of Hanukkah.  That is a message for our holidays.  In the days ahead for each of our celebrations, in the eight coming nights of Hanukkah, let us remember the lights of hope we each have, and in our abilities to shape a brighter future.  May Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas never cause us to ignore suffering.  But may they also remind us that it takes only one small light to overpower a world of darkness.

 

I wish us all Hanukkah peace and joy.  

 

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

 

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The December holidays find symbolic substance with the telling of stories.  Indeed, both Hanukkah and Christmas celebrations are based on stories – each being ones that most scholars believe are myth.  Even so, we still use contemporary stories to add greater meaning to the ideals behind the original holiday stories.  I’ve used more modern stories in my messages over past Decembers – using ones like A Christmas Story, The Grinch that Stole Christmas or the Peanuts Christmas TV show.  I plan to do the same this year using different stories each Sunday to add dimension and, I hope, spiritual reflections to our holiday season.

The “Gift of the Magi” is an enduring and famous short story written in 1906 by O. Henry, a pseudonym for William Sydney Porter who was a popular author of his time.  The story is set in a large city.  Della and Jim are young, they live in a modest apartment and have only two possessions which are prized by both.  Della has long, luxuriant hair which is a feature that grants her great beauty.  Jim owns a prized gold pocket watch that once belonged to his grandfather.

On Christmas Eve, Della tearfully contemplates the fact that she does not yet have a gift for Jim.  She had tirelessly saved a total of $1.87 to spend on a gift  – a small sum even in that time period.  She decides to head to a local beauty shop where she sells her long hair – likely to be used in making a wig.  She then goes out and finds the perfect gift for Jim – a $21 gold pocket watch chain.  She rushes home to prepare Christmas Eve dinner and excitedly wait for her husband.

Della is sitting at her kitchen table as Jim arrives home.  He is immediately stunned at the sight of Della.  His reaction causes Della concern as she had moments earlier prayed that Jim would still find her attractive.  She admits she cut her hair and sold it in order to buy him a Christmas gift.  Jim then ruefully gives Della his gift which is an expensive set of hair combs – no longer useful but for which she is overjoyed as she had long wanted them.   Della then shows Jim the pocket watch chain she had bought him with money from selling her hair.  It is then that Jim explains he had sold his watch to buy her the expensive hair accessories.  The story ends on a poignant note – each had sacrificed the one material thing in the world they held dear in order to express love to the other.   O. Henry concludes by invoking the original Christmas story of the three wise men, the Magi, who brought expensive gifts to the baby Jesus – gifts rooted not in their value but in worship – much like what Della and Jim offered to one another.

While themes from the story are beautiful and obvious – those of deep affection and sacrifice, there is also an underlying truth about giving that O. Henry conveyed.  When we give to another, it is often not the material item, the time or the money that matters most.  What we do when we give to a person or organization is to make a statement.  The gift is merely a symbol of a deeper motivation, a deeper thought, a deeper emotion.  Similar to many other occasions in life, our deeds say volumes more than do our words or, in this case, a material gift item.

As in many areas of life, Jesus taught certain ethics that often ring universally true.  We need not consider him divine in order to still appreciate his wisdom.  Throughout the gospels, Jesus warns both his followers and his enemies to be true to themselves.  Be honest with your heart and don’t be hypocrites, he warned.  Search and seek after the real nature of God in order to be a version of the same.  Practice spiritual attributes that ring true to all people.  If you wish to be devoutly religious, he taught, do so in private to preserve your spiritual humility.  If you wish to give to a church, charity or person in need, do so anonymously to preserve the kindness of your motivation.  If you endeavor to sit in judgment over someone, he said, examine yourself first and seek to correct your own inadequacies.  And, most importantly of all, if you want to practice genuine spirituality, then go out and serve the least of humanity – the poor, oppressed, hungry and sick.  These are the kinds of Jesus ethics that made him not the Christ Son of God but a great human guide who pointed to universal values that can be used to describe the divine, or simply the power of love.

Illustrating that fact, the gospels describe Jesus as coming across a tax-collector named Matthew, sitting at table set up at a crossroads – the better to encounter as many taxpayers as possible.  Tax collectors of the time were Jews hired by the Romans to enforce and collect money owed to the empire.  As payment for their collection services, they could charge over and above the mandated tax.  As Jewish employees of Rome, they were seen by other Jews as greedy traitors.  Tax collectors were hated and considered to be profoundly evil since no devout Jew would associate with, or work for, pagans.

For some reason, tax collector Matthew and Jewish rabbi Jesus hit it off.  Matthew may have been struck by the power of Jesus’ outreach to him and to his teachings to serve others and not just himself.  He decided to join Jesus and his band of followers.  Soon after, he told other tax collectors about this amazing man named Jesus.  A dinner party was soon held where Jesus mixed in the company of despised tax collectors.

As always with human nature, judgmental tongues began to wag about the notorious dinner parties Jesus attended.  He was accused by self-righteous Jews, the Pharisees, that he must be a sinner too since he liked to hang out with all kinds of bad people – prostitutes, thieves, tax collectors and drunkards.  How could he claim to be a spiritual teacher, how could he claim to be a rabbi when he did not act like a proper Jew?

Jesus’ response to the Pharisees was perfect.  He said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’   I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus quotes from the Old Testament book of Hosea when he tells the Pharisees to learn what “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” means.  He effectively silenced these religious Jews, who would intimately know the book of Hosea, by reminding them of the true nature of God.  God does not care about receiving things out of obligation.  She desires that humans instead understand genuine spirituality – to love, serve, and give from an honest and compassionate heart.

A sacrifice, for practicing Jews of the time, was a religious obligation – something one must do in order to be considered a believer.  Animals were sacrificed as a way to give away wealth in a show of worship and to atone for sins.  Much like many routine and repetitive religious practices in any church even today, sacrifices became little more for most Jews than a box to check if one wanted to be pious.   The real desire of God, Jesus taught, is not to receive ritual gifts designed to show devotion.  The goal is for humans to grow and change their hearts by acting more spiritual – to show compassion and love, mercy over sacrifice.  By dining with and extending friendship to tax collectors, Jesus was modeling true spirituality instead of hypocritical judgement and ritual box checking.  He did not go to the Temple and openly display his piety by giving to God obligatory animal sacrifices.  Instead, he gave away compassion to people inwardly wounded by their greed.  This kind of love, when given to so-called sinners, is a gift of mercy.  It is a god-like gift.  No judgement.  No condemnation.  “Come, follow me, have dinner with me.  Learn a better way to live by serving others.”

Ultimately, Jesus implied that the Pharisee’s hypocritical judgements spoke the truth about their spirituality more than did their obligatory sacrifices and prayers.  With their self-righteous attitudes and arrogant displays of public piety, the Pharisees showed themselves to be falsely spiritual people.  Their actions displayed the true motivations of their hearts – to merely appear devout, to boost their egos, to go through the motions of religiosity without any heart or soul.  Jesus, on the other hand, modeled loving spirituality.  He didn’t judge.  He simply showed people how they could be better.

The very same lessons are implicit in O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi”.  They are lessons we might heed this holiday season in our own gift giving to friends and family.  They are lessons we might heed in our pledges to the Gathering or to any other organization.  What kind of message are we sending with our holiday gifts?  What kind of message do we want to send?  Is it one merely of obligation and duty?  Is it one of repayment for past kindnesses?  Is it a message of appreciation?  Is it one of love?  Is it a statement to endorse the ideals, ethics and values of another?  No matter what or how we give, we are quietly but emphatically sending a message.

I assert that our gifts can and should be spiritual statements.  I repeat, they should be spiritual statements – as opposed to obligations or rituals we feel compelled to offer.  Gifts can reflect not only our thinking toward another, but also our inner values like love, compassion and sincerity.  If we seek to understand ourselves, if we seek to plumb the depths of our honest motivations in how and what we do or do not give, we will find the true spiritual feelings we want to express.  That kind of inward search strives to eliminate negative attitudes like arrogance, anger or jealousy – the kinds of motivations Pharisees had.  Might we find the humility of Jesus to love someone who seemingly might not deserve it – a modern day outcast like a tax collector?  In giving to people we cherish in our lives, might we find the kind of pure love of Della and Jim – a love that is greater then the sum of our worldly possessions?  If we do that, might our gifts to those we love be somehow different?  Perhaps they would be less lavish in their financial cost and, instead, more thoughtful and meaning filled.

To the Gathering and other organizations we support, might our gifts of time, talent and treasure be measured not just by our generosity, but by ethical beliefs we hold dear?  We may not like all of its actions, but we can acknowledge with our gifts that it stands with us in what we value, that it is a place into which we are adopted as people who both love and are loved, that it is an organization that gives us meaning in our lives.   Might our spiritual sacrifices to this Temple we call the Gathering be motivated by the good that is in each of our hearts – a desire to make a difference, to further the work of a worthy organization, to symbolically express, through our giving, the ideals we each have – service to others, open celebration of all people, a shared quest for enlightenment?

Might our Sunday mornings be gifts of time to ourselves and to each other – motivated by the inner yearning to touch the transcendent, to experience moments of heightened awareness, to connect with people we care about?  Might our meditations and prayers be gifts of sincere caring, words of hope and appreciation we send out into the ether of universal consciousness?  I ask us each to reflect on the the motivations of what we give in time, money and spirituality here and elsewhere – do they honestly reflect what our hearts and souls believe?

The “Gift of the Magi”, as a holiday story, strikes a chord in many people because it shows us what giving can look like.  Della and Jim’s gifts were materially useless and yet spiritually profound.  In their worthlessness, the combs and gold chain were transformed into talismans of the giver’s hearts – items to be cherished not for their utility but for what they represent.  Jesus likewise taught what giving can and should be – spiritual expressions showing mercy, kindness, humility and love.  To find those wellsprings of spiritual goodness in ourselves, we must examine our inner motivations honestly to eliminate negative thinking.  In giving to loved ones, to friends, to the Gathering this holiday season, let us find the spiritual center from which all our words and deeds flow.

 

I wish all of us a spiritual, and peace filled holiday season…