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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

I wish us all peace and joy…

 

 

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

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

Click here to listen to message or read below:

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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Message 107, “Renewing Gathering Vows: Leaning Forward in Faith”, 9-16-12

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

 

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“The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, is one of the most famous and heralded of American short stories.  While it is entirely fiction, the story details in unsettling ways the human propensity to fear change and to embrace traditions no matter how wrong or outdated.   Some of you may have read the story.  If not, I encourage you to read it in its entirety online or view a rendition of it on YouTube.  I will paraphrase a shortened version here.

The story opens by describing a small town of three hundred people.  It is early summer – June 27th to be exact.  School has just ended, crops have been planted for several weeks and the long summer is at its infancy.  On what seems a bright and hopeful summer day, there is nevertheless palpable tension in the air.

People begin to gather in the village square at 10 AM.   The annual lottery will be held and the whole village attends – apparently by choice.  It takes two hours to conduct and is held every year on same date.  Boys arrive first and each then goes in search of stones and rocks which are placed in small piles around the square perimeter.  Next, other children begin to arrive, but their play is tentative.  The women come next and assemble in small groups to whisper quietly about family, church or other bits of gossip.  Finally, the men and other heads of family arrive and mill around, talking about their farms and hopes for a good harvest.

Mr. Summers, the village Postmaster and leader of the lottery, announces its beginning.   Families quickly gather together – moms and dads sharply beckon their children to stand by their sides.  The crowd of three hundred is hushed – only the sound of birds and the wind is heard.

A few men carry into the center of the square a large black box.  It is scratched and chipped and every year people say it needs to be replaced.  But, year after year, nobody does anything to make a new one.  Old man Warner, the oldest resident of the village, says it cannot not be changed – the box is made of scraps of wood from the original box dating back hundreds of years, he reports.  While old and shabby, it is clear that villagers look at the box with a mixture of awe and fear.

Mr. Summers sticks his hand into the box and stirs its contents – folded bits of white paper.  It was only a few years ago that paper replaced wood chips.  Paper is more compact and can be stirred in the box more easily.  He then asks heads of households – mostly men – to come forward to pull out of the box one piece of folded paper.  Nobody is allowed to unfold their paper until everyone has picked.  Since there are several families whose men have died young, a few women come forward to pick for their families.

During the selection, a few women talk to one another about how the North Village – a town only a few miles away – had stopped the annual lottery – all in the name of progress, one woman said.  Another village further away also ended the lottery.  They seem happy another woman noted.  Mr. Warner, the old man, quickly speaks up and says the North Village is full of young fools.  “Nothing good will come from abolishing the lottery,” he says.  “It’s been done for hundreds of years.”  Others nod in agreement.

After all heads of family have chosen a folded paper, Mr. Summers announces they can be opened.  Very quickly, several women speak at once.  “Who has the paper with the black dot on it?”  People look around expectantly and most smile with relief.

Finally, it’s revealed that one of the men, Bill Hutchinson, has the piece of paper with a black dot on it.  His wife, one who had just nodded in agreement that the lottery must not be changed, speaks up.  “It’s not fair!” she says.  “My husband Bill was forced to rush in choosing his paper.  He wasn’t given time like everyone else to choose which paper to pull out.  It’s not right!”

Mr. Summers says that Bill had been given the same time as everyone else.  Others quickly agree.  Bill tells his wife to be quiet.

Mr. Summers then asks Bill how many are in his family – to account for all of his children and the few cousins living in the house.  There are ten of them.

Ten pieces of paper are placed in the box, one with a black dot on it.  Each family member solemnly goes forward to pick one out of the box.  The kids go first and as each does, they excitedly hold up a blank piece.  Bill finally chooses but his wife refuses.  “This is just wrong.” she says.  “It wasn’t conducted fair.”  Most in the crowd frown and shake their heads.  Bill takes her by the hand and forces her to pick the final piece.  Bill opens his paper and it is blank.  Mrs. Hutchinson has the one with a black dot.

“Ok.”  Mr. Summers announces.  “Let’s finish this quickly.”  People begin picking up stones.  Several of the women grab very large rocks – some so heavy they can barely lift them.  The men chose ones that are sharp edged.  A suitable stone was given to each of the Hutchison children.

“This is not right!”  Mrs. Hutchison yells.   The crowd quickly encircles her in the center of the square.  One small stone comes out of nowhere and hits her on the side of the head.   “No!” she screams.  But the villagers press in upon her as the stones begin to fly……….

What is troubling about the story is its depiction of crowd dynamics.  People often seem forced, by peer pressure, to go along with what others express.  Another clear theme of the story is the power of tradition.  People like to do things the way they have always been done.  Indeed, the story does not describe why this lottery, that nobody wants to win, is held every year.  The reason does not seem to matter as much as the tradition itself.  And the fact that other villages had abolished it only causes more ridicule of any idea to change its practice.  Only the foolish and the young, it seems, pursue change.

There is an obvious message in the story.  Traditions, rituals and time honored beliefs hold strong and often evil powers over people.  Too often we do not like change and we do all we can to avoid it.  We fear the unknown and what that might mean for us as individuals or as groups.  We don’t change old habits – even if we know some of them hurt us – negative ways of thinking, acting, eating or speaking.  The patterns of our lives, even harmless ones, become set and then become too comfortable.  We like things the way they are.

Louis L’Amour, the great fiction writer of western themed novels, wrote in one of his books, “Even those who fancy themselves the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us is convinced that our way is the best way.”

Two weeks ago, I reminded us of our Gathering motto – that we are a “Progressive and Inclusive” church.  We explored in that message what it means to be inclusive and how we will continue to be a radically inclusive church – one that chooses to love and celebrate others no matter how different.  As Don Fritz pointed out last week, we may not particularly like or agree with everyone, but we will love and respect them.

For today, I want to explore with you what it means to be a “progressive” faith community.  I want to discuss how we renew our vow to be a progressive congregation.  Like many labels, the word progressive has taken on many meanings.  For some, it is a generic phrase that simply means “liberal.”   But we are not a political organization.  Indeed, as a tax exempt church, the Gathering is legally barred from expressing political views about candidates, parties or how to vote.  As your Pastor, I want to insure that we scrupulously adhere to the law and to what is ethical.  We are a spiritual community – not a political one.

But our claim to be progressive does not apply to our politics.  It applies to our spirituality, our values and the way we will practice them.  To be a progressive is to accept the world as dynamic and ever changing.  Spiritual progressives believe the same.   They see faith, spirituality and its practice as constantly evolving.  Those of progressive faith do not accept ancient religious doctrines or practices as hard fact. They see the world as it is now and reinterpret universal truths – religious or otherwise – in light of new times and new circumstances.

Two thousand years ago, when the Bible was written, most people believed that some humans could be owned and held in bondage to serve the needs of others.  The New Testament commands slaves to obey their masters.  As human society evolved, as new ideas about universal human rights were developed, slavery was no longer seen as common practice – one that even spiritual people accepted.  Instead of being endorsed by religion, slavery was reinterpreted as a grave sin.

So too with gender equality.  Paul commanded that women obey their husbands, that they should wear head coverings to show their submission and even ordered that in decent Christian communities, no woman should have authority over any male aged 13 or up – in church or in a home.  Such paternalistic ideas were a part of many religions at the time – and some still hold them.  For most people today, however, such ancient commands conflict with a new spiritual understanding of human equality.  Indeed, even in some conservative churches and synagogues today, ones that profess to believe in the absolute authority of the Bible, those Biblical verses are no longer followed as women are now equal members and are given leadership positions, including that of being a Pastor.

To be a member of a progressive spiritual community is to believe that ancient traditions, practices and Scriptures evolve over time.  Religious scholars call this “progressive revelation.”  Spiritual ethics and principles reveal themselves to humanity over time.  Indeed, this is a way to interpret the Bible, other scriptures and any written document.  What we discover from ancient texts are ideals revealed to us now in ways that were not apparent to the ancients or even to people a few hundred years ago.  Those people were not necessarily any more good or bad in their beliefs.  They simply operated under a different set of values consistent with their time and place.

Many interpreters of the Bible today find in that text an overall ethic of love and acceptance for all people – ideals that reveal to many people of today that god also loves gays, lesbians and transsexuals.  To be a progressive in faith is be open to such an interpretation of religious scripture.  To be a progressive in faith is to read and understand ancient texts in a new light, using new scientific discoveries and new wisdom.  The ancients, for instance, did not have a modern, scientific understanding of the human psyche and how sexuality is genetically determined, or at a very, very early stage of life.  Nor did they understand the cause of most diseases and handicaps.  Such afflictions were a sign of God’s displeasure and people who suffered from them were to be avoided as sinful or evil.

For us at the Gathering, if we accept and truly believe our motto – that we are a progressive church – then we must continue our effort to live up to that ideal.  We are open to progress.  We refuse to be rigid in our beliefs, practices, values and ways of doing things.  This does not mean we abandon old ways for the sake of the new.  Progressives build upon the past – not replacing it but adding to it.   They add new practices and new beliefs to time tested and valuable old ones – while accepting that very few things are forever.

Indeed, evolution is gradual and rarely sudden.  Change occurs over time and always improves upon the old.  It is usually rational, orderly and sequential.  It took centuries of philosophy and deep thought for humanity to evolve the rights of individuals – to move from the rights of Kings and nobles to the rights of serfs, farmers and laborers; to move from the rights of men to the equality of both genders; to then advance the cause of all races, faiths and ethnicities and, soon, to the right for any man or woman to love and marry whomever one chooses.

At each stage of human equality, however, were people who feared change and who sincerely sought to hold onto the ways of the past.  Progressives of each succeeding era embraced change, advocated for it and worked to implement it.  We at the Gathering are spiritual progressives working in our day and time to create change for the better – and to reject fear based injustice.

We do not accept that old ways of religion, belief and spiritual practice are unchanging.  We look to new ways to build upon the faith of our ancestors – to take their principles of divine love, generosity, decency, integrity, beauty, and compassion and build upon them.  We adapt them to the pressing needs of today.  We lean forward in faith.

In practical terms, I believe the Gathering must be rigorously progressive in ALL that it does.  How we conduct our services, our music, our prayers, and how we serve others must be continually examined and questioned.  Do they meet the needs not only of current members but of potential new members?  Are we willing to show our love to others and their diverse tastes by our willingness to adopt changed ways of doing things?

For us as a congregation and us as individuals, we know what we like and we know our core values.  We need not abandon them.  But, we are also willing to EVOLVE!  We are willing to build upon the good we have now and create something deeper, better and more meaningful – in music, in messages, in serving, in all that we do.

Countless philosophers and statesmen have opined on this subject.  Winston Churchill said that, “To change is to improve.  To be perfect is to change often.”  Machiavelli, the renaissance author of The Prince, wrote that “Whosover desires success must change his or her conduct with the times.”  And Dwight Eisenhower, the twentieth century Republican, said “Neither a wise person nor a brave soul lies down on the tracks of history and waits for the train of the future to run over him or her.”

We at the Gathering, therefore, will continue to be bold in our faith and how we live that out.  We renounce the status quo and confess that we are still a work in progress.  We renew our vow to be progressive.  We renew our vow to be bold visionaries.

It took a bold vision, for instance, to defy our seven year history of not holding a rummage sale – as minor of an example as that is.  It took boldness to challenge my expressed fears that a such an effort might fail and that we, as a group, would merely accumulate the collective discards of each other.  It took the bold vision of one man to propose the idea and then organize it.

It took the bold vision of one man to suggest a music concert as a fundraiser and then do the work to organize two of them.  It took one bold woman to suggest three years ago that this church was not doing enough to serve our community and then work with others to expand what we do.  It took the bold vision of one or two to think we could compete for a substantial grant to broaden our outreach to the homeless.  It takes visionaries to suggest new music, to pray new prayers, to organize new projects and to suggest new opportunities for our church space and location.  In here, we value visionaries and those who undertake to carry out evolutionary change.  Our congregation improves and is stronger as a result.

As we renew our Gathering vows this month, to be an inclusive congregation, to be a community that cares for its own and for others, and to be progressive in our faith, we insure our foundation is strong.  On that foundation, we will dream of unknown members yet to join our ranks, of new efforts to serve, and of increasingly meaningful ways to conduct our services.  As progressives, we know that change is inevitable and so we seek positive change that builds upon our past.  We acknowledge our need to grow in numbers.  We will continue to find new ways to tell others about the Gathering.  The Gathering is too special of a place not to be shared.  We envision the possibility of a new church home – not to have new space, but to enable us to further our work. We dream of new projects to serve the homeless and new ways to learn and grow.  For each of us, no matter our state in life, we know this is a place of vitality and action – we move forward, never backward – as we join spiritual progressives everywhere in advancing the universal human condition.

I wish you much peace and even more joy.

 

   

Message 106, Renewing Gathering Vows, Reaching Inward and Outward, 9-9-12

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

Click here to listen to message or see below to read it:

 

Several years ago, back when gas station attendants came out to your car and pumped the gas for you, a Pastor stopped at a station to fill his car up.  After stopping his car, he waited and waited for someone to show up.  His was the only car at the station.  Eventually, a young attendant came out to the car.  The Pastor noted disapprovingly that the attendant  had long, greasy hair, his face was covered with acne, his clothes were dirty and loose fitting and he very haltingly and slowly asked “May I help you sir?”

After being told the grade of gas desired, it took a long time for the attendant to figure out the correct pump to use, how to open the car fuel cover and then actually pump the gas.  The Pastor rolled his eyes as he handed the attendant his credit card.  It then took a very long time for the young man to return and stammer out that they did not take that brand of credit card.  After being given a different card, the attendant again took a long time back in the station office.  He reported back with fear in his eyes that this card also could not be used.  Exasperated, the Pastor sneered sarcastically, asking if they accepted cash.  He handed the young man two twenty dollar bills.  Once again, the attendant took a very long time to return with change and then counted it out slowly.  By this time, the Pastor was fuming.  He angrily snatched the change away, got in his car, screeched his tires to drive away and then backed his car back and forth several times over the sensor hose that rang a “ding-ding” in the station office before speeding off.

A few miles away, the Pastor realized what a jerk he had been to the young man.  He turned around and went back to the station where he apologized to the attendant for his behavior.  The young man slowly and haltingly replied.  “That’s OK, mister.  Everybody treats me that way.”

Like all of you, this story saddens and upsets me.  How many people are treated so poorly because of their perceived appearance, level of intelligence or abilities?  I imagine stories like this happen all the time and even in many churches.

I recall that at a lunch held at my last church for its Pastors, congregation leaders gave us each a personalized thank you card.  This was in appreciation for our work over the past year.  My card from the church leaders, however, came with a biting edge to it.

I was the Pastor in charge of Pastoral Care – the one who saw to the needs of hurting members.  Besides visiting the sick in hospitals and nursing homes, and performing many funeral services, I had several meetings a day with distressed, depressed or somewhat dysfunctional people.  Some of the more frequent members I cared for were perhaps like the young gas station attendant – for whatever reason in need of a listening ear, a kind smile, an encouraging word, a prayer or just a friendly presence.  I became jokingly but derisively known as Pastor to the oddballs.  And the card I was given at that Christmas party thanked me for ministering to all of the “fruits and nuts” in the congregation.  I did the so-called dirty Pastoral work nobody else wanted.

While that card was intended as a joke, its message has stuck with me.  I believe that every person, in some way, might be called a fruit or a nut.  We each have our idiosyncrasies.   As we discussed last week, that is one of the hallmarks of the Gathering as a faith community: we embrace and celebrate everyone for the diversity they add.  But the implicit message I got from that thank you card was that not everyone was worthy of receiving attention, love and respect.  Only the so-called beautiful people or normal appearing people need apply.

I have told many of you that after I left my hospital administration work over twelve years ago, I felt like I finally found my calling in life – to be a Pastor.  It is a role that fulfills me and makes me happy.  I feel enormously blessed to work here at the Gathering.  Everybody should be so lucky to work at what they love doing.

While I am no more special than any of you in my ability to care or not care for others, I know that I do empathize and identify with those on the margins of life.  That’s because I consider myself a bit of an oddball.  I grew up a privileged white boy, but I was usually on the outside of what many consider the “in crowd.”  I was quiet, studious, a non-jock and, frankly, somewhat nerdy.  For most of my adult life, I was a closeted gay man trying to suppress who I am.  I’ve lived my life feeling like I’m not normal.

And that feeling in me led me to my role as a Pastor.  I enjoy doing my part to care for and listen to the supposed misfits in life – those who are, in truth, every living person.  As an avowed misfit myself, I identify with the hurts, feelings, struggles and passions of others.  We each need the company and ministry of friends, family and our faith communities to reach out to us, to tell us we’re special, to encourage us, to listen, to hold our hands when we’re afraid, sick or simply challenged by life.

And that ethic of reaching out to others is one of the vows we each implicitly take when we join the Gathering.  In this September series on renewing our Gathering vows, we discussed last week how we will continue to accept and celebrate everyone and anyone – no matter how different.  And next week we’ll consider how our Progressive spiritual values in faith and actions also inform who we are.

But today, we renew our vow that the Gathering will continue to be a church defined not just by what we believe, but by what we do.  We don’t just say we love others.  We work to actually show it.  We will be a community that cares.  We will be a spiritual community that walks its talk – where every member is involved in some significant way in reaching out.  Indeed, few of us attended here for very long before we felt a desire to give back some of the attention and care we have been shown.  Hopefully, we practice the dual ideals that every member will be cared for, and every member will herself or himself be a caregiver.

Writing in the year 120 CE, the Greek historian Lucian noted about the early Christian community, “It is incredible to see the fervor with which the people of that religion help each other in their wants and needs.  They spare nothing.  Their first legislator (Jesus) put into their heads that they are all brothers and sisters.”  Such attitudes by early Christians is one reason why that faith exploded in popularity and membership – becoming by 300 CE the official religion of the entire Roman Empire.  Early churches met in homes – many of which were communal residences where members lived together.  Meals were cooked and eaten together.  Resources were shared and those in need were assisted and loved.  Unlike the cruel and often indifferent Roman culture, Christians treated one another as beloved family members.

Sadly, many Christian churches and places of worship no longer live up to that model.  Today, a primary reason why people look for a new church is to find one where members truly care for one another.  It disheartens me every time I hear about a church or faith community mistreating or bullying one of its members or even its Pastor – often for petty or heartless reasons.  Witnessing such cruelty, is it any wonder why the unchurched often say they want to have no part of a faith community?

In his Biblical letter to the house churches at Corinth, which he founded, Paul strongly but lovingly challenged its members for their non-Jesus like behaviors.  Many members had segregated themselves into exclusive small groups and ignored new members and those who believed differently.  Some members, for religious reasons, refused to eat food sacrificed to pagan idols.  Those who considered themselves more enlightened scorned such beliefs as misguided.  They openly flaunted eating such food in front of those who were opposed.  Paul did not say they were wrong to believe that all food is ok to eat, but he challenged their lack of empathy, their haughty attitudes and their lack of sensitivity to fellow church members.  Show each other love and understanding he implored.

Others in the Corinthian church claimed to be spiritually superior because they could speak in tongues – an unknown spiritual language.  Those who did not were seen as inferior Christians.  Even worse, church services were chaotic affairs with multiple members all speaking strange words that nobody else could understand.  Extravagant and expensive church meals were also held that essentially excluded those who could not afford such a luxury.

Paul condemned the Corinthian church for being so divided and so uncaring.  That is why he wrote his famous First Corinthians, chapter 13 verses on love.  He wrote:

“What if I could speak all languages of humans and of angels?  If I did not love others, I would be nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  What if I could prophesy and understand all secrets and all knowledge?  And what if I had faith that moved mountains?  I would be nothing, unless I loved others.  What if I gave away all that I owned and let myself be burned alive?  I would gain nothing,  unless I loved others.  Love is kind and patient, never jealous, boastful, proud, or rude.  Love isn’t selfish or quick tempered.  It doesn’t keep a record of wrongs that others do.  Love rejoices in the truth, but not in evil.  Love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, and trusting.  Love never fails.”

Implicit in Paul’s words is the notion that a church or person might believe and speak all of kinds of great and wonderful things, but unless they truly ACT with love and care, to each other and to the outside world, they are spiritually WORTHLESS.  They are as good as dead.  Those who claim to be spiritual, who claim to seek the best for humanity, who claim to actually be loving people, they must walk their talk.  Paul’s advice to the Corinthians is beautiful poetry that perfectly expresses the ideals of Jesus.  They capture how Jesus lived his life.  And they express how any faith community and any person, Christian or not, should act.

Caring faith communities are attuned to the needs of fellow members.  It is not just the job of the Pastor or a few volunteers to serve hurting members.  People pastor one another – asking them how they are doing, taking the time getting to know them, inviting them into their lives and their homes, and spending time listening to the hopes, dreams, fears and pain of one another.  Caring people and organizations are unafraid of, and non-judgemental toward, the so-called oddball.  Every person is valued, every person is made to feel loved, every person is a vital part of the whole.  Caring faith communities do not simply say they support social justice.  They actively do the work to build it.

For the Gathering, just as we play an important role as a radically inclusive community – a witness to the wider world of celebration for everyone and anyone, so too are we an important example in how we care.  As a Progressive church, some might assume we are focused more on what we believe than on what we do.  Many major studies on the demographics of giving indicate that people of conservative faith give more and are more likely to be charitable than those who are secular or liberal in faith.  Religiously conservative people, data shows, are more likely to give generously to charity and more likely to volunteer for civic organizations, programs to help the poor, the elderly, and local schools.

One startling analysis shows that of the 10 most generous states in the nation, according to IRS statistics on charitable giving, 8 of them voted Republican in 2008.  Of the ten least charitable states, nine of them voted Democratic.

While these studies do not account for the amount of giving to religious organizations versus giving to non-religious charitable groups, the perception remains that progressives only want to give away other people’s money – not their own.  While this may, in some instances be true, such a stereotype is just as pernicious and wrong as saying all conservatives are greedy and heartless.  We must move beyond such labels and consider the intrinsic values of any faith group or any individual.  The Gathering serves a vital function in proving such stereotypes wrong.  We are a progressive AND a caring faith community.

As members of the Gathering, we each vow to serve in some way the charitable outreach efforts we support.  We vow to live peaceably with one another, to speak with kindness, listen with empathy, check our egos at the door and reach out to someone in here with meaningful friendship, love and concern.  We vow, as we are each able, to give to the work of this place.  We give our trust, our time and our resources to this congregation which is more than a place or a collection of people – it is an idea, an idea!  that deeds of service are important, that every human is worthy of respect, and that showing love to others covers a multitude of imperfections.

This congregation believes in the fundamental calling we as humans must fulfill.  Yes, we may enjoy the delights granted us – of beauty, love, family, friends and good times.  But in our hearts and in our souls is the impulse to give back.  It is the call to love our neighbors as we too wish to be loved.  It is the yearning to serve a higher life purpose than mere self-gain.  It is the kinship we feel for those often on the margins of society – gays and lesbians, racial minorities, immigrants, the poor, the sick, the physically or mentally challenged, the ones without hope.  It is the heart that breaks when we see a hungry or homeless child; it is the tears we weep when a friend suffers; it is the gratitude we feel for the blessings of life.   Such are the values on which the Gathering was founded and will continue to practice.  We exist to serve and to care.

We extend our hands of friendship inward to fellow congregation sisters and brothers.  We offer our serving hands outward to our community.  To this we renew our pledge: Our numbers might be small and our resources might be limited, but our hearts will be as large as our purpose and together we will leave a lasting legacy that this place, this idea called the Gathering, will make a difference.

 

 

Message 105, Renewing Gathering Vows: Everyone and Anyone, 9-2-12

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

 

Click here to listen to the message.  See below to read it.  

 

 

During the four centuries just prior to Jesus’ birth, Judaism split into a number of different groups each professing to follow the true religion.  By the time Jesus was born, these interpretations of Jewish faith created a mix such that the different groups separated from and even despised the others.  One such group, the Samaritans, centered their worship around Mount Gerazim in central Israel – where they believed God really lived.  This was not just different practice from what most Jews believed, it was considered total heresy.  God had resided on Mount Moriah – or Jerusalem – for centuries, since the days of King David, and her very embodiment dwelt in the large and ornate Temple built on its summit.

Since the Samaritans centered their worship outside of Jerusalem, they also mixed and intermarried with non-Jewish populations.  Samaritans were seen as impure, false Jews and were even derisively called half-breeds.  To the many other traditional variations of Jews, Samaritans were considered worse than gentiles or non-Jews.  They had abandoned the true faith.   While it seems odd to us who consider a Samaritan to be a good person, to most Jews of Jesus’ day, they were low life scum.

Jesus’ teachings about tolerance toward others who are different are not only remarkable for his time, they have lasting value because they speak to a universal spiritual truth.  His parable of the Good Samaritan is not just a simple message about caring for those who hurt.  It is primarily about inclusion, sensitivity and a strong rebuke to those who adopt superior, arrogant or haughty attitudes towards others who believe or act differently.

It was a Samaritan man who showed compassion and love for a wounded and near dead traveler he found along the side of a road.  A Jewish Priest from the Jerusalem Temple – a Pharisee – had instead walked by the suffering traveler, ignoring him completely.  The Priest was so blinded by his beliefs not to touch anyone who might be ritually unclean, that he became cruel and callous.  An arrogant religious lawyer also from Jerusalem – a Levite –  passed by the traveler and he too ignored the man who was clearly in need of help.  But the Samaritan, this religious lowlife, was the one in Jesus’ story who stopped to help, carried the man to an Inn and paid for his stay so he could recover.  He faced the same issues of ritual uncleanliness as the other Jews but he was the one who practiced the true love of God.  We can only imagine the shock and anger most Jews felt when Jesus told his parable – he was severely condemning their fundamentalist, uncaring and exclusivist attitudes.  A Samaritan may well be a better person than you, he implied.

Later on, Jesus stopped on his travels to drink at a well in the middle of Samaria.  Nearly all Jews of his day would have taken a long detour just to avoid Samaritan lands.  But Jesus was not one to exclude others.  At the well, Jesus spoke at length with a Samaritan woman about her spiritual well-being.  She was finding love in all the wrong places.  Jesus’ willingness to meet, speak to and show concern for a Samaritan woman was scandalous.  Jewish men never spoke to women they did not know and rarely spoke to any women – they were not worthy of a man’s time or alleged intelligence.  And to speak with a Samaritan woman was even more shocking.

By his stories and his actions, Jesus openly defied predominant Jewish standards. He was a religious and spiritual radical who openly defied centuries old traditions as he revolutionized ideals about what compassion and love should be.  His friendship with prostitutes, tax collectors, criminals, women, lepers, the sick, the mentally and physically challenged, working class men and women, the poor and religious outlaws is legendary.  He lived a life of being inclusive to everyone he met – sharing his friendship, his concern and his attention.  As he said, the real heart of the Divine is a source of spiritual love for all people and, most especially, for the marginalized.  Nobody, in his view, should be treated poorly and with disrespect.

But Jesus is not the only prophet to have practiced such ways.  It is told that Muhammad, after debating a group of Christians about theology, offered them use of his mosque in which to pray and worship.  When questioned about this by his followers, Muhammad replied that just because Muslim and Christian traditions and beliefs were different, that did not mean they should not show respect and hospitality to each other.

Gandhi was a lifelong Hindu but he taught that Muslims and Christians should not only be treated well by the majority Hindu population but they should be included and welcomed within the new nation of India.  One of his laments was to see greater India divided into two nations – a Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India.  Inclusion of all people and all faiths was not just an ideal to talk about.  It must be practiced.

When this faith community, the Gathering, was founded out of the ashes of religious fundamentalist discrimination toward gays, lesbians and those who supported them, a motto was appended to our name.  We are a “Progressive and Inclusive Church.”  Such a statement, consistent with the actions of Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi and many others, was intended to identify this faith community as one that will work at the vanguard of full inclusion of everyone and anyone.  In that regard, this will be a radical church.

While our motto was originally intended to express inclusion of gays and lesbians, we have since recognized it extends to all.  Indeed, I like to tell and even shock others that our Progressive Christian congregation enjoys the company of members who are Atheist and Buddhist.  Such people are not just tolerated.  They are fully included and celebrated for the diversity and knowledge they bring.   Indeed, I am a Christian apostate and skeptic myself – considered by some who send angry e-mails – to be guilty of grave sin for speaking heresy and helping to lead all of you astray.

My point in this September series on renewing Gathering vows is to remind us of our ideals in a way that insures they remain strong and vital.   Indeed, it is important for any person or organization to periodically rededicate themselves to living true to their values.  Otherwise, such stated values become stale and forgotten.  For the Gathering to remain relevant to the spirit of its origins, and thus be an alternative faith community, it must continue to be inclusive, as we will discuss today.  Second, and up for consideration next Sunday, it must both meet the needs of its members by reaching inward with care, while it is outwardly focused on serving the community and wider world.  Finally, to be discussed in two weeks, the Gathering must be a Progressive spiritual community not in the political sense but in the marketplace of faith, values and outlook to the future.  We do not rest on tradition and tired dogma.  We embrace progress in ourselves, our practices and our beliefs.  To borrow a motto from a cable TV network, we lean forward in faith and to the future.

It is said that humans often seek to exclude others based on two inherent attitudes.  First, we often see the characteristics and beliefs of others who are different as sinister shadows of ourselves.  In someone who is different, we can discern beliefs or actions that are an inward and unwanted part of ourselves.  For whatever reason, we find such beliefs unacceptable in ourselves and thus unacceptable in others.  We exclude different people from our company so they do not remind us of our shadow selves.  Homophobia is a classic example of this.  Those who hate gays are often hating homosexual tendencies in themselves.

Second, we often exclude others because they challenge our sense of self.  If I lack basic humility, I will assume I am totally correct in my beliefs and anyone who believes or acts differently not only is wrong but is a threat to my sense of superiority, value and being.

What people must do, experts say, is detach their sense of self from their beliefs.  Such detachment does not mean one abandons one’s beliefs.  It merely unties them from a sense of smug superiority.  Too often, we tend to become an embodiment of our beliefs – inhabiting them so strongly that if we or anyone else questions them, we risk losing our self-identity.  But our identity has more to do with how we lead our lives as opposed to what we believe.  That was the problem with the Jews of Jesus’ day – they believed more in their religion than they did in acting out the principles of that faith – to show the love of God.   Individual identity, therefore, must not be tied to the fact that we are a Christian, Democrat, Progressive, Jew, Tea Party member, American or any other belief based group.  Do we treat ourselves and others with humility, decency, love and respect?  That must be the basis for our identity.

Indeed, humanity has moved toward increasingly complex social orders as a way to improve life for everyone and thus love others.  This is moral imagination at work.  Through mutual cooperation, humanity has moved from small clans where the known world comprised twenty people or less, to tribes of a few hundred, to villages and cities of thousands, to nation-states of millions and now, currently, toward a global community of billions.  At each stage of social evolution, individuals and groups learned new ways to cooperate, care for one another, and include increasingly greater numbers of people within their common identity.

Currently, humanity is at another historic threshold.  We are moving to even greater inclusivity, acceptance and tolerance of the other based less on national, ethnic or religious beliefs than on universal human values of decency, respect and equality.  We are moving to a new era of global human identity that embraces the values of Jesus, Muhammad and Gandhi – we are learning to treat everyone, no matter how different they are, with greater respect.  National, ethnic and small group identity walls are slowly but surely breaking down as humanity evolves toward a global social awareness.  Humanity is only at the beginning of this trend and it will take hundreds of years to complete.  But technology and moral imagination are moving us to the next social frontier of ONE human family.

And the Gathering plays a vital role in this process.  Indeed, we have positioned ourselves at the leading edge of this trend.  Like Jesus nearly two-thousand years ago, we are spiritual rebels.  We defy traditional religious practice and do not limit inclusion into our midst only to those who think and believe as we do.  Indeed, that would be impossible since we are so diverse in our beliefs.  To echo a statement of the Burning Man group – one that holds annual celebrations of social inclusion – the Gathering believes in radical inclusion.  We welcome all strangers to our midst.  We have no prerequisites or standards of belief or practice necessary for inclusion as members in the Gathering, other than one’s acceptance of us.  No matter what one believes, he or she is welcome here as long as they adopt a similar respectful and inclusive attitude.  We do not measure or value one’s worth.  Everyone and anyone is valuable.

As a radically inclusive congregation, we are known by our respect for each other.  Everyone has equal access to resources and events.  We actively work to eliminate all forms of discrimination in here and in the world.  We engage all members in the decision making that affects the congregation.  We value diversity.  We respond quickly and with love to any sign of discrimination, hateful language or exclusion in our midst.

Inclusivity also extends beyond our willingness to welcome all others.  Our language and our speech are also radically inclusive.  We choose to refer to the Divine not just by gender neutral words but with pronouns and names that are gender affirming.  God is not just Father.  She is also mother.  In here, she can be entirely feminine – a force who might even appear female.  So too might Jesus be figuratively gay, black or a female.  He certainly lived a life that identified with such groups.  The god force we believe in is at its very essence an inclusive force for good.

Importantly, our spiritual inclusion also allows that the divine may not be a theistic being, but a force of nature or of love.  Indeed, God may not exist for some of us and the Gathering will not insist that she does.  Such openness invites accusations that we believe in everything and thus nothing.  That argument is a fallacy.  We do not just believe in radical inclusion.  It is simply who we are.  And that concept applies to our expression of God.  The god of your understanding is welcome and celebrated here.

Along with our inclusive spiritual language, we will try to speak the same toward created beings.  Humanity may dwell at the apex of power in the universe, but it is not at the apex of significance.  We are but one of a million different species in the wide and varied realm of creation.  However each person expresses appreciation for other created beings, we will be inclusive.  Vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, carnivore, animal rights activist or one who simply loves nature and animals – all are welcome.  We may not each agree in our beliefs on such matters, but we respect those of others while maintaining enough humility to acknowledge we may not individually  have all the answers.

And that will remain a primary part of our identity and a challenge for our future.  How can we walk our talk to be inclusive?  The very foundation of inclusion is a humble attitude.  We do not presume to be anointed ones with superior beliefs.  Indeed, we might all be very wrong.  This is not meek self doubt.  It is a strong and confident assertion that at the Gathering we are all still learning and nobody has access to absolute truth on any matter.

This admission of ours, that we might be wrong, is key.  We continue to search for what is true and good in the world while refusing to arrive at conclusive answers.  We value exploration and asking questions over steadfast dogma and doctrine.  If there is a God or god force that animates and controls the universe, who are we as flawed humans to presume we know absolute Truth?  Many will say God revealed herself to humanity in Scripture and thus we can know such Truth.  But equal to one group’s assertion that their revealed Scripture is true, is another group’s Scripture, or lack of Scripture, with the same claim.  Who is right and who is wrong?  We believe there are many pathways to God or Truth and all paths are respected in here.

On all matters, as members of this congregation and as individuals living and working in the outside world, our call is not to abandon our beliefs but to express them with humility, to acknowledge the possibility of error, to respect the beliefs of others and to be people of peace.  We yearn in all things – politics, lifestyles, and faith – to unite and never divide.  We have this beautiful idea, this place we call the Gathering, to help us practice this ideal of humility which is the foundation of being inclusive.  In here, we are each friends and people who support and celebrate one another no matter our differences.

My friends, I ask us each to imagine in our minds what heaven on earth might look like.  In such a vision, the Gathering can and will serve as an imperfect but beautiful model for an inclusive heaven on earth.  Such a place will be one of peace, empathy and celebration.  The well-off will serve and dine with the struggling, the drag queen will dance with the straight man, the women will speak loud and clear, the men will practice humility and sensitivity, the challenged will teach the capable, the strong will walk with the weak, the lonely and hurting will find a place of rest, the ones burdened with guilt or shame will find approval, and every member, every person will dedicate themselves to look outside these windows and serve a hurting world.  May we renew our vow to continue building such a wondrous vision open and welcoming to everyone and anyone.

 

 

Message 104, Poetry to a Spiritual Theme: Rumi and Finding Our Inner Spirit, 8-19-12

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

 

Click here to listen to message or see below to read:

 

Several years ago a woman named Pam Reynolds was diagnosed with a very large arterial aneurysm in her brain.  Normally, such a condition is terminal and doctors can only prescribe limited drug treatment.  The patient must simply wait for the inevitable time when the aneurysm will burst and he or she will internally bleed to death.

In this case, however, Pam was referred to a pioneering neurosurgeon who attempts to surgically remove such arterial aneurysms of the brain by essentially killing the patient.  In an operating room, the patient’s body is chilled to 60 degrees, the heart is stopped, blood is drained from the body and all brain activity stops.  For all intents and purposes, the patient is clinically dead.  Then, the surgeons cut into the cerebral artery and remove the aneurysm.  The person is slowly warmed and the heart is hopefully restarted.  There is great risk in the process and not all patients can be revived.

In Pam’s case, all went well.  She was effectively dead for approximately two hours but she was revived after the successful procedure.  What is remarkable, however, is that afterwards she recounted all of the circumstances that took place during the time she was clinically dead.  She described in layman’s terms what the surgeons did, the instruments they used and even recounted, nearly verbatim, the comments made by nurses during her surgery.  She relates that she essentially hovered over her body and looked down as the doctors and nurses worked on her.

Pam’s experience is not unique.  Similar experiences have been described by many other people.  For a person to have some form of consciousness without a heartbeat or brainwaves seems impossible.   As yet, this has NOT been medically or scientifically explained.  Skeptics argue that patients describe what they imagine a procedure to have been like and that details come from hearing things after they have been revived.  In most instances, however, such explanations are not possible.  Doctors and neuroscientists are left without any firm conclusion on how these near death observations take place.

My purpose is not to consider the question of life after death but, instead, to dive into the spiritual idea of having a dual reality – however this might be explained – of a physical body and an inner spirit existence.  Do we each have an inner spirit?  How might be find it?  And, if we do, what is its value to us?

As someone who believes in the ability of the human mind to understand and ultimately explain most things, this subject is difficult for me to fully appreciate.  I lean far more toward the rational and shy away from matters of the apparently supernatural.

I greatly admire, for instance, the seventeenth century philosopher Rene Descartes who coined the phrase, “Je pense, donc je suis”, “Cogito ergo sum” or, in English, “I think, therefore I am.”  In his book Discourse on Method, Descartes revolutionized Western thought.  His proposition said that all things – including creation and life itself, can be proven by reason and science ALONE.  The realm of the supernatural has no role in fact finding.  Naturally, the Church was aghast at Descartes and his implicit rejection of God and the supernatural.

Indeed, the consequences of Descartes’ proposition have been the gradual elevation of science to a near religion.  Science, as this thinking goes, has the ability to explain everything and we must turn to it for answers about any matter.  Most Western thinking and philosophy has thus determined that God is dead and that there can be nothing that is outside what can be rationally explained.

The result for many people, especially those of us of Progressive faith, is that we are left adrift and alone without the opportunity for mystery, myth, intuition and an inner spirit to offer any insight.  There are, however, many scientists, theologians and philosophers who are pushing us beyond the age of pure science into a post-modern world where rational thinking and some form of spirituality exist side by side.  Stephen Jay Gould, a well-known physicist and cosmologist, has proposed a truce between science and faith, saying that science looks into the realm of empirical fact and explanation while spirituality explores the realm of meaning, morality and values.  Other physicists and scientists have proposed that meaning and morality DO exist within science and are not separate from it.

A recent paper out of Cambridge University indicates that from the moment life first began, it was inevitable that intelligent life – like humanity – would evolve.  This would indicate that we are not random creatures but there was and is a purposeful meaning, whatever its source, to be found in evolution and science.

A neuroscientist out of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that the brain waves of meditating monks and praying Franciscan nuns are nearly identical.  While this doctor can explain the science behind brain waves, he cannot explain why they are almost identical in these two groups.  There is something universal, perhaps an inner spirit, that animates spiritual emotion, thought and feeling.

Philosophers and writers like Karen Armstrong have argued that western rational thinking, by itself, is a dead end street.  It is incomplete, determinist and a dogmatic form of belief itself.  Rationalism denies the experiential reality that myth, mystery, faith, spirituality, and intuition have played in human history.  No matter where such beliefs and practices come from – God or human imagination – such feelings, practices and rituals are real and they shape our behavior and understanding of the world.  They have provided meaning to billions of people since humans first evolved.  To reject spiritual mythos, as Anderson calls it, is to reject the truth of ourselves, our traditions and our history.  Existence and the universe are far more complex than reducing them to just one way of understanding them – through science.  Myth, mystery and our inner spirits add vital nuance and truth to our ultimate reality.

What this means for me and for us here at the Gathering is, I hope, what I often propose.  Between the two seemingly opposite poles of scientific rational thinking on the one side, and a total belief in God or the supernatural realm on the other side, there is a gray area somewhere in between.  Truth is rarely at the extremes.  It is always found in the messy and confusing middle.  In this instance, science and the spiritual realm – the stuff of meaning and morality – they merge at some point.

As someone who leans strongly towards the rational, I must push myself towards the spiritual realm of the unexplainable if I hope to find greater insight.  I must search for and continually find that inner spirit within me that feels, hurts, loves and exists apart from my rational mind and physical being.

As I said, this is difficult stuff for me – to dive into the core of my essence and find the inner soul.  That is the place, for instance, that loves my daughters unconditionally and without reason.  They could do a thousand things to hurt me and it would not matter.  I don’t how that emotion happened – that I can love them and could die for them no matter what.  This is also an inner place that cries for no reason at hurts I see around me, the place that dreams and yearns for good things and bad.

Others describe this inner spirit as existence outside the body – a sense of being that does not think but merely is; a sense of being that feels, emotes, perceives and drifts.  As quickly as I struggle to define this spirit essence, I fail because it is beyond words and beyond rational explanation.  In truth, we can only experience it and perceive its reality.

Read with me now two poems by the Islamic Sufi mystic Rumi that offer some insight and encouragement to find our inner spirits.

Light Breeze 

As regards feeling pain, like a hand cut in battle,

consider the body a robe you wear. 

When you meet someone you love,

do you kiss their clothes? 

Search out who’s inside. 

Union with God is sweeter than body comforts.

We have hands and feet different from these. 

Sometimes in dream we see them.

That is not illusion.  It’s seeing truly.  You do have a spirit body.

Don’t dread leaving the physical one. 

Sometimes someone feels this truth so strongly

that he or she can live in mountain solitude totally refreshed. 

The worried, heroic doings of men and women

seem weary and futile

to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit.

 

          The Spirit Self

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,

no light and no land anywhere,

cloud cover thick. I try to stay

just above the surface,

yet I’m already under

and living with the ocean.

 

What I find interesting about these poems from Rumi are their call to live a more transcendent life – to plunge into the deep waters of oneself and find the god force or whatever it is that animates one’s inner spirit of love, compassion and feeling.  As Rumi writes, when we do so, we go inward – away from memory and intellect – and into our mystery selves.

Some have likened this process as similar to watching a sunrise or sunset.  Just before the sun finally sets or finally rises, there is a pause – a moment of transition that is neither night nor day.  The sun is there and yet it is not.

When I visit my parents in California, I often enjoy going to some rock formations just above the ocean to watch the sun set.  At the transition point when the sun just sets, a rare phenomenon sometimes happens.  At the split second when the sun seemingly descends into the ocean, a green flash of light will occasionally appear.  This can happen anywhere in the world and is the result of sunlight shining through the upper edge of ocean water at the horizon. It is a brilliant but momentary display that quickly fills the sky and then is gone.

Despite knowing the science behind the flash, I have felt in the very few times I’ve seen this, something wonderful and uncommon.  I remember one time likening it to seeing the face of God.  As Rumi implied, many people in mountain solitudes or witnessing sunsets find transcendent moments of not only great beauty but a mysterious inner peace.  One feels the sacred power of the universe, the life giving light and force that made us and sustains us.

Others suggest finding the inner spirit simply by letting go of thoughts and awareness of physical sensations.  Finding a totally dark and quiet room will often help.  And for me, that is what works best besides moments of seeing beauty in nature.  In bed and in the dark of night, I sometimes find small glimpses of my inner spirit.  The house is still, all is black and if I lie motionless, I can cross a threshold from hearing my heartbeat and the sound of my breathing into a state of great peace.  I perceive things more clearly – who I am, my role in life, the wonder of existence.

I find in such elusive moments a time without worry or fear.  It’s just me, and all is good.  I used to believe that these moments were when God revealed himself or herself to me – when I could somehow touch eternity.

A cancer survivor talks of once seeing a mass of thousands of monarch butterflies overhead.  As she watched them, and thinking to herself they were migrating on their annual pilgrimage to warmer climates, the butterfly mass appeared to form a large face – undulating, colorful, smiling and floating across the sky.  In that moment, the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the butterflies in halo beams of light.  Such a time was, for her, almost an out of body experience – one where she felt totally at peace and in the presence of a god force.  That source of all love was assuring her spirit that she would be OK.  Over a year later, she was told she is in remission from her cancer and she is convinced that resulted from her spiritual communion with a love beyond explanation.

Reinhold Niebuhr, the great progressive theologian, once said that when he sought to get in touch with his spirit, he went to a quiet place and then contemplated the meaning of infinity.  He would ponder the idea that when you subtract a million million from infinity, you still have infinity.  He said that as his mind exhausted of trying to grasp that unreachable idea, he gave in to its power and thus found the unfindable.  Like walking to the edge of a steep cliff and then jumping off, such an experience for him was one of surrender to the fall and then finding he was not falling at all.  In his progressive Christian beliefs, this was finding the trust and love of God.

One poor soul is said to have once asked Louis Armstrong to describe jazz.  His reply was, “Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know!”  And that applies to the mystery of our spirit selves.  You can only know it. For each person, it is a different doorway to enter and a different reality to feel.  Ultimately, one must simply drop one’s rational thinking and self-awareness. Like Rumi describes in his poetry, one submerges into a figurative ocean and dreams of a body wholly apart and disconnected to the physical.

For us, the question is why we should seek our inner spirit.  Is this not a form of self-absorption and effort to remove oneself from the reality of life and all that we are called to give and do?  If we find our inner spirits, even on rare occasions, might we find a greater peace?  For me, such rare times are often the only moments when I feel totally free of worry – when I don’t think about my health, my work, my finances or other concerns.  Indeed, far from being a journey into self-focused thinking, finding the inner spirit can be a way to tap into the powerful forces that govern the universe – forces like love, altruism, intuition, empathy, generosity, compassion, justice and freedom.

Paul, in the Biblical book of Galatians, wrote that if we talk about being spiritual people, then we must walk and act as if we are spiritual people.  We must walk our talk.  And this must  especially be true of us at the Gathering.  If we claim a spirituality of understanding, love, tolerance and celebration for all people and all creation, then we must act out those ideals in our daily lives.  We must not just talk in the spirit, we must live in the spirit.

To do so, we cannot only think and rationalize our way through life.  Such an approach is incomplete, as I am increasingly discovering.  We must sometimes spiritually feel our path through life – going in directions that are led by our inner spirits.  We must find the core of our essential selves that cries and laughs and feels and simply is a force of love and goodness.  I can’t tell you exactly how to get there – to your inner spirit.  I struggle to find the way myself.  Your journey is one for you to discover.  Let go of body and mind.  Embrace myth, mystery, the unknown and the ethereal.  As Rumi wrote in his poems we read, don’t be afraid of your inner spirit.  Don’t presume to say you do not have one.  Whether or not it is from a supernatural phenomena or a rationally explainable force of nature, that does not matter.  Your spirit exists, it has value and it waits for you to find it, dwell within and then go forth in a great burst of goodness to the wider world.  I wish all of us a bon voyage on that quest…

Message 103, “Poetry to a Spiritual Theme: Joy in the Morning”, 8-12-12

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

Click here to listen to the message or see below to read it:

 

Why do evil and suffering exist in our world?  Why, for instance, do young children regularly get sick, suffer through long illnesses and then die?  Why are there tremendously destructive natural forces at work in our universe which spawn death and sorrow – earthquakes that kill and maim, tidal waves that drown and obliterate, cancers and other diseases that cause suffering?

As Epicurus, the famous ancient Greek philosopher noted, if there is a God who is unable to prevent such evils, then that being is not all powerful.  If there is a God who is unwilling to prevent such evils, then that being is cruel and malicious.  If there is a God who is able and willing to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?  As a final proposition, according to Epicurus’ reasoning, if there is a God who is both unable AND unwilling to prevent evil, then why is that being called “God”?

We are thus faced, as Epicurus and all humanity has confronted, with the problem of evil and suffering.  This is not a problem with the fact of its existence.  We experience the reality of suffering from the moment of birth. The problem is in how we reconcile evil’s observable reality with notions that this ought to be a just, perfect and loving universe – controlled by a loving God or other force for good.

But my concern today is not in a theological or philosophical discussion on why the god force of our personal understanding does not eliminate suffering.  It is, instead, with how humanity in general – and then each person specifically – comes to terms with the truth of evil and suffering.  In keeping with this month’s theme, we will use spiritual poetry – today, the Psalms of the Bible – to hopefully find insight.

Unless we are pathologically unstable without empathy for others, each of us yearns to not only be good, but to help create and then live within a good universe.  Nevertheless, we confront evil inclinations in ourselves as well as in our world.  We see people inflict horrible suffering on themselves and on fellow humans and creatures.  We witness natural forces wreak random havoc, death and disease.  We understand that all living beings die but also, often, suffer in that process.

Just as much as we acknowledge the reality of evil and suffering, so do we also experience moments of pure transcendence.  There are great forces for good in the universe.  If we open our hearts and souls, we are often profoundly moved by sensing forces beyond our understanding – forces of goodness, love, peace and well-being.  Such forces move people to acts of great compassion, selflessness, and heroism.  Gazing out on the natural realm, we are also struck by the sheer beauty and inherent goodness of creation – the immense eternity of our cosmos, the inner workings of living beings, the wonder and joy of life itself, and the mere fact that we breathe, think and function.  Whatever it is that animates existence, we are in awe of that breathtaking power.  Evil exists but we know that the essence of the universe, and all life, is good and loving.

Such dual realities – the existence of evil and the truth of goodness – give us pause.  Therein lies the source of our discomfort.  Spiritually speaking, how do we reconcile the existence of evil in a good universe?  What is our response?  Do we retreat in fear, sadness, anger, and doubt?  Do we block out the bad through destructive behavior or attitudes?  Or might a spiritual response be to accept both, acknowledge the existence of evil and suffering but find in the persistent and yearning good of humanity a cause for celebration?  Instead of seeing the existence of evil as something incongruent to how we believe things should be, and then despair, might we instead find joy in the reality of good despite evil?  When love can exist despite hate, when compassion exists alongside indifference, when the wonder of creation and the richness of life exist despite disease and death, is that not reason for joy?

Whether one is Jewish, Christian or a skeptic, the Biblical Psalms have endured as deeply meaningful poetry because they speak to the universal questions about the problem of evil in our world.  How do we make sense of a universe where evil exists alongside love and truth?

Throughout the 150 Psalms, there are three distinct voices of poetic expression found in them: praise at the goodness of life and creation; bewilderment and hurt at the dissonant reality of evil; and finally joy at the understanding that despite suffering, life is still good.

In the first type of Psalm, much like people have always done, the Psalmists revel in the beauty and delights of creation.  Whatever it is that created us – God, natural selection, or other unseen forces – that power is good and worthy of praise.  Such words are exemplified in Psalms like the following:

From Psalm 8, verses 1-8

You have set your glory

   in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants,

   you have established a stronghold against your enemies,

   to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens,

   the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

   which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

   human beings that you care for them?

Lord, our Lord,

   how majestic is your name in all the earth!

 

This creation or wisdom Psalm – and others like it – reflect human words of hope, promise and awe.  While Jews of that era and believers today read in such a poem words of praise to a creator God, even the skeptic might see it as expression of delight in a complex and wondrous universe.  While we now have far greater understanding of the cosmos and the forces that dictate its function, we are still spellbound by its intricate beauty and vast expanse.  Much like the Psalmist points out in Psalm 8, who and what are humans compared to the infinite wonder of galaxies, solar systems and an ever expanding universe?  Implicit in such words are the wonder and awe of how small we are within the created order.  Similar Psalms point out the beauty of the natural world, of mountains, animals and desert landscapes that speak of a powerful creator God or creative force.

When we ponder such reality, when we gaze upon endless forests, soaring mountains or teeming wildlife, who cannot help but be inspired?  From the smallest of essential building blocks to life, to the miracle of any creature’s birth, we are amazed and in praise of all created glory.  As the Psalmist wrote, all life and all creation figuratively shout in praise at the majesty of God – a force we know by many names.

The second type of Psalm gives voice to the confusion and even anger at the reality of pain and evil in a supposedly beautiful world.  Such sentiments are expressed in Psalms like the following:

 

From Psalm 102, verses 1-11

Hear my prayer, Lord;

   let my cry for help come to you.

Do not hide your face from me

   when I am in distress.

Turn your ear to me;

   when I call, answer me quickly.

 For my days vanish like smoke;

   my bones burn like glowing embers.

 My heart is blighted and withered like grass;

   I forget to eat my food.

 In my distress I groan aloud

   and am reduced to skin and bones.

 I am like a desert owl,

   like an owl among the ruins.

 I lie awake; I have become

   like a bird alone on a roof.

 All day long my enemies taunt me;

   those who rail against me use my name as a curse.

 For I eat ashes as my food

   and mingle my drink with tears

 because of your great wrath,

   for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.

 My days are like the evening shadow;

   I wither away like grass.

 

I recall that when my oldest daughter Sara was about a year in age, her mom set her in front of a large mirror.  She was in awe.  Most children have similar reactions at the first such experience.  Sara stared in wonder at this person looking back at her.  She reached out to touch the other, she twisted her arms in wonder that her reflection mimicked her.  She was delighted in the attraction, miracle and fun of this other life form.  She echoed the sentiments of the creation or first type of Psalm.

A few days later, Sara fell off of one of her riding toys and scraped herself up in a bad way.    She was bloody and sore and she wailed in pain at the hurt – pouting her little lips in seeming disgust at a cruel world.  I happened to take pictures of both reactions – memorializing her wonder at an image of creation, contrasted with her cry – the universal cry – at the pain life also brings.

Her realizations mirror our own unease and dis-ease.  After our awe at the reality of a beautifully complex universe and mysterious creative force, we very quickly understand that our world is full of hurt and evil.  Others seek to harm us, death stalks us from behind every corner, suffering is a real and present reality.  Where, oh where, is God or other forces of good in our universe to prevent such evil?  Why, oh why, must such evil exist?  Expressions like these are found in the Psalm we just read and others like it.

David is supposed to have written many such Psalms – ones of lament, sorrow and confusion at the strength of his enemies, the shame of his own errors, and the sharp pains of life.  Indeed, he often cried out like Job does to God – a God who seemed to hide his or her face in the midst of great suffering.

In times of our distress, we ask how such evil can exist.  Where is the good in our world?  Where is God and why does she allow such hurt?  We cry out, much like Jesus is said to have done on the Cross, why God, why have you forsaken me?

When our suffering endures or when death itself knocks at our door or at the doorway of a loved one, we seek answers.  We submerge ourselves in fear, depression, anger or destructive behaviors – all as ways to cope with the reality of suffering.  These expressions, while harmful if they last too long, are normal human responses to pain.  Indeed, the Bible implicitly understands such expressions.  They indicate the struggle of our minds to make sense of God and the universe.  Ultimately, they are expressions of faith in the reality of goodness.  If we had no faith in healing, compassion, generosity, love and mercy, we would not cry out in their absence.

Such words of distress and confusion are found throughout the Psalms.  They speak to a spiritual search for truth and to the problem of evil.  The Bible has not ignored or censored such expressions but, instead, uses them as ways to inspire and strengthen all people who can relate to the reality of pain.   Expressions of lament and protest at a cruel world lead us to a dawning understanding of life, suffering and ultimate joy.

At such an epiphany, we find final resolution to our questions and the dissonant reality of suffering.  Evil exists in a world of great beauty.  It will darken any day.  It will haunt every night.  But, despite that reality, God is still good and love remains a constant truth.  Such a view is expressed in the third and final type of Psalm, ones of joy, examples of which read as follows:

 

from Psalm 30, verses 5-7, 11-12

Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people;

   praise his holy name.

For his anger lasts only a moment,

   but his favor lasts a lifetime;

weeping may stay for the night,

   but rejoicing comes in the morning.

You turned my wailing into dancing;

   you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.

   Lord my God, I will praise you forever.

 

And finally, from Psalm 35 verses 9-11:

Then my soul will rejoice in the Lord

   and delight in his salvation.

My whole being will exclaim,

   “Who is like you, Lord?

You rescue the poor from those too strong for them,

   the poor and needy from those who rob them.”

 

Our souls cannot help but shout with joy when we understand the enduring truth of beauty and goodness in our world.  Numerous Psalms express these emotions.  At his own epiphany about suffering, David exults in the ultimate goodness of his God.  He wants to sing God’s praise forever.  In the story of his crucifixion, Jesus shouted in victory, just before his death, that his life’s work was finished.  Job claimed joy in the assurance and realization that God had never abandoned him.  We too, no matter our beliefs, can claim in our moments of solace, in the peace we find through meditation, in the love that surrounds us and reaches out to touch us, in acts of justice that have advanced the cause of equality throughout history – we too can claim victory and joy at the persistence of goodness in our universe and in our lives.

My friends, much as we looked at last Sunday two Japanese poems that point us to live in the eternity and peace of the present – to let go of the past, not worry about the future but exult in the sights, sounds, smells and pleasures of the here and now, so too do we find in the Biblical Psalms insights on how we might find resolution to our never ending search for lasting joy.

That comes not just with a focus on the wonders of life.  Nor is it absent in our suffering.  It is found, according to the Psalms, in a new understanding that no matter the hate, hurt, death and destruction we witness in our world, God is not absent, goodness is also a reality, the cause of justice marches onward, new life still springs up all around us, hope is not lost, life remains a glorious experience.  When we fully understand this fact, when we deeply feel that no matter what life throws at us, that good is not dead, we inwardly celebrate.  We find anew the joy that seemed to die when suffering came upon us.  We gain a new wisdom – one that accepts the truth of suffering while celebrating all of the wonder we see around us.

Such is a primary reason all of us are here today and why we continue to come back to this place.  Pain may exist outside these doors, but in here there are deep friendships, in here are some keys to happiness, in here we make commitments to help heal a broken world, in here are found moments of goodness.  Like the Psalmist noted in the last two passages we read, we may weep at night, but we rejoice in the morning.  From the ashes of our personal despair, in here blooms hope and wisdom.  The poor, needy and lame remind us of an imperfect world, but our purpose and our hearts direct us to make it better.  Even though hate and intolerance exist, we choose to be a force of love and acceptance to any and all people.

When I visited John Curley in the hospital last Monday, two weeks after a surgery that did not go well and after several days in the intensive care unit, John choked up – with tears in his eyes – as he looked to the window mantle filled with cards of love from many of you…..filled with beautiful flowers from our congregation and others in his life.   With his partner Ed at his side, John knew in that moment the joy and wonder and awe of genuine goodness.  Pain had visited his room but so too, in a strong and loud voice, had compassion and hope.  Life, it seems, remains a…very… very… beautiful… thing.

I wish each and every one of you much peace and even more joy.