Dear Henry,

I’m writing to share my thanks for your gift of Walden. I’m reading it along with the congregation I serve, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, and with every chapter, every time, something wonderful brings me home to my Unitarian Universalist spiritual roots. Penetrating critique and insight. Continued relevance, even more than 150 years after you published the thing. Passages that make me howl with laughter. Passages of such beauty that I can’t help but weep.

Now we are on to Chapter 11, which you entitle “Higher Laws.” At one point, close to the end, you write about a man named John Farmer, but he really represents everywoman and everyman. “John Farmer,” you say, “sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day’s work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to recreate his intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his work…. But the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere … and suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the village, and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him — Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you?”

That’s what we read in Walden. A beautiful vision of essentials, conveyed, if not through notes of a flute, then through words of a book like your book, or through something else. A vision elevating us, opening us up to a voice of wisdom, which you and your Transcendentalist colleagues liked to call “genius.”

And so you say, “No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.” For genius, as you define the term, can’t possibly mislead. On this, Transcendentalism as a spiritual movement and a reform movement took its stand and takes it now. Genius is a capacity to glimpse, in one total vision, the right ordering of the whole of society which, in turn, leads to the maximum benefit of each individual. Genius, in other words, is not just mere idiosyncrasy, or eccentricity, which is how some people today might understand the term. Genius is, rather, a glimpse into order that is universal. Genius is like a compass which points towards how things ought to be—the ways and the rules—that will bring the world to fulfillment.

It’s something that Antoine de Saint Exupery illustrates in his book, The Little Prince, when he has the book’s hero speak with a great king:

“Sire [said the Little Prince]–over what do you rule?”
“Over everything,” said the king, with magnificent simplicity.
“Over everything?”
The king made a gesture, which took in his planet, the other planets, and all the stars.
“Over all that?” asked the little prince.
“Over all that,” the king answered.
For his rule was not only absolute: it was also universal.
“And the stars obey you?”
“Certainly they do,” the king said. “They obey instantly. I do not permit insubordination.”
“I should like to see a sunset . . . Do me that kindness . . . Order the sun to set . . .”
“If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?” the king demanded. “The general, or myself?”
“You,” said the little prince firmly.
“Exactly. One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform,” the king went on. “Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. If you ordered your people to go and throw themselves into the sea, they would rise up in revolution. I have the right to require obedience because my orders are reasonable.”

That’s the passage from The Little Prince, and Henry, you were acting out of that magnificently simple King-place within you when, one afternoon, near the end of your first summer at Walden, you went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler’s, and the village taxman informed you that you had not yet paid your taxes, and you said good. You spoke out of that deep genius vision place within, which saw American society at the time full of rules essentially requiring an entire category of citizens to go throw themselves into the sea of slavery. The system was not reasonable. So you said no. You did not “recognize the authority of the State which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its senate-house.” Your civil disobedience took its stand on your King-like genius, which enabled you to envision the kind of society that WOULD be worthy of your obedience, because it IS reasonable.

Would you pay the taxman today, Henry? Rules and laws requiring entire classes of people to throw themselves into the sea are still in place. People who can’t get quality, affordable healthcare. People who love each other but aren’t allowed the dignity of marriage. Always, always, the poor. And on and on. Just not reasonable. Just not right. Would you pay the taxman today?

For you, it is all a question of “life in conformity to higher principles.” And that’s the larger issue that you raise in our reading for today. You raise it with urgency. Your Transcendentalism (which us our Transcendentalism) is no easy spirituality. It’s not just about big moments of conscientious objection, as when you refused to pay your taxes. “Our whole life is startlingly moral,” you say. “There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.” Everything we do—even acts which are the most private and seemingly mundane—either amplify the music of genius within us, or muffle it, block it. There’s no neutrality, no Switzerland of the spirit. Everything that John Farmer does counts.

And this is why—so it seems to me—you spend so much time in Chapter 11 talking about food. Diet. “Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open,” you say, and how and what we eat can help to keep the channel open, or to close it. A very different motivation than the usual, than what is normally behind the vast array of diet possibilities currently out there, such as Atkins or South Beach, the Zone or the F-Plan, the Scarsdale Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Astronaut’s Diet, the Sleeping Beauty Diet, the Three-Week Trance Diet, or the More of Jesus, Less of Me diet. I’m serious. I could go on and on.

One food-related issue you bring up has to do with obesity. Drawing on an observation from science, you say, “It is a significant fact, stated by entomologists, that ‘some insects in their perfect state, though furnished with organs of feeding, make no use of them’; and they lay it down as ‘a general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less than in that of larvae. The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly … and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly’ content themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet liquid.” You say all this, and then here is your concluding insight: “The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them.” Henry, just tell me what you really think about the problem of obesity….

But did you really have a lot of “vast abdomens” in your day? We sure do now. Two-thirds of Americans, more than 190 million of us, are overweight or obese, making this, in the estimate of the Obesity Society, “the most fatal, chronic, relapsing disorder of the 21st century. Obesity is a leading cause of United States mortality, morbidity, disability, healthcare utilization and healthcare costs. It is likely that the increase in obesity will strain our healthcare system with millions of additional cases of diabetes, heart disease and disability.”

It’s a mess. As Yale University scholar Kelly Brownell puts it, “If you go to McDonald’s today, you can buy a quarter-pounder with cheese meal—that means the large drink and the large french fries—for less than it costs to buy a salad and a bottle of water.” And then he says, “There’s something wrong with that picture.” Over $30 billion dollars spent each year on food advertising, and too much of it is making our children gross feeders, too much of it makes eye-catching claims about products being healthy when they are anything but. Laws allowing this tantamount to demanding that entire classes of people throw themselves into the sea…. I know personal responsibility is, of course, a key factor in making things better, but to really win the battle against obesity, completely, we’ve got to change the laws and make them reasonable. Come together in our schools and in our neighborhoods. Fashion the changes from a genius-oriented, King-oriented perspective. If increasing taxes on cigarettes led to a drastic drop in smoking, then what might just a penny per ounce tax on sugared beverages do?

A tax law, which even you, Henry, would approve of and would, in fact, contend has deep spiritual implications. “Every man,” you say, “is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own…. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.” Once again, the urgency theme. No act is too small to impact eternity.

It’s prophetic, Henry: your comment about “gross feeders” and “vast abdomens.” And so are your comments about eating meat. You say, “there is something essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh…. Having been my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually complete experience.” Again you say, “The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth.” Because of my year-long happiness pledge to abstain from meat, I’m starting to understand this better and better.

All I know is that, 150 years later, your words still sing. The John Farmer in me gets it. But John Farmer today is bringing different experiences than your readers from yesteryear. John Farmer today often brings a lack of awareness of this uncleanness to which you refer. Or, he’s bringing a hyperawareness of it, a hypersensitivity.

Fact is, many people today have no idea what it’s like to be one’s own butcher and scullion and cook and consumer. We just grow up and through a consumption pattern that has been set up for us by culture and by family. We take it for granted. It’s just who we are. We go to the one-stop grocery store, look into the freezer, grab what’s lying there (shrink-wrapped or in a box), and there is no thought regarding where it comes from and what the journey there might have looked like. Shopping for price tag and taste only.

And then there’s the people who bring something completely opposite: hyperawareness and hypersensitivity. They’ve researched the ins and outs of the “industrial agriculture system”—defined in part by mechanical methods of planting and harvesting; animal agriculture on a mass scale; human manipulation of natural processes through a variety of means like chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides; or growth hormones for livestock; or genetic engineering. This is industrial agriculture, and it has led, undeniably, to a radical transformation in food production, resulting in levels of plenty around the world that have simply been unknown in all previous generations of human existence. Starvation has always been a major threat for the human race—except now. Thanks to industrial agriculture.

And yet when these people look more deeply into it—this source of human plenty, this ultimate reason for why we can one-stop shop—what they discover is also a vast ugliness. An uncleanness that you, Henry, could never have even dreamed. All the unintended consequences of the system, including pollution, economic injustice, and a decrease in biodiversity. All the hidden costs, all the environmental side-effects. Those shrink wrapped chicken breasts we buy at the grocery store, for example: how the living beings they came from were “confined in windowless sheds filthy with their own excrement; [how] their beaks were seared off to prevent them from pecking their neighbors due to the stress of overcrowding; [how] breeding and hormones had sped up their growth so that the weight of their bodies deformed their legs and arrested their hearts; [how] they were fed a constant stream of antibiotics to stave off disease (meanwhile creating antibiotic-resistant strains of disease with the potential to plague the rest of creation); and [how] their feed might legally include ground-up cattle parts, as well as the corn from those vast fields treated with enormous quantities of pesticides and herbicides” (from Amy Hassinger’s “Eating Ethically” in the Spring 2007 edition of the UU World). This is just one instance of the vast ugliness that comes at a person when they dare to look deeper into the industrial agriculture system.

As for what all this hyperawareness and hypersensitivity can lead to: one form it takes is to hear about what happens to chickens and other animals and to hear about all the flaws and downsides of industrial agriculture and simply to shut off. To deny. The shock of it all so overwhelming that we turn a blind eye. This, or the other extreme: to hate with pure hate the agricultural system that has blessed humanity; to demand that the system change instantly and immediately, even if the changes are not sustainable in the least; to see humanity as one big blight upon the earth and for oneself to feel ashamed for even existing—to feel cursed by an original sin—to believe that one has no right to take a place in an interdependent web and a circle of life that, in truth, love us and make room for us and only want us to leave a lighter footprint…..

What I’m saying, Henry, is that both forms of hyperawareness and hypersensitivity are obstacles to living in the truth. We cannot any longer turn a blind eye to the ugliness of industrial agriculture; and yet reactive hate towards the system and towards ourselves is no answer either. Perhaps you are in agreement with me, for you say, “Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way — as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn — and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”

I appreciate this. It is wrong for the laws of our land to require animals to throw themselves into the sea. The genius vision in you sees that, and I see it. But I and we also know that it is a journey. It is a destiny we must drive towards, to become a better human race.

And it will not be without its complexities. One comes up in the very opening of the chapter, where you say this: “As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented.” All I can say is, Whoa! Way to make a point! Your point being, I think, that there is within each of us the animal, representing energies which become creatively useable by us only when tamed and transformed. Healing the division within ourselves is necessary to healing divisions without.

And then there is this complexity, which, truth be told, I’m really relieved to know about. You yourself were not a strict vegetarian. You ate meat rarely, it is true; but there were times when practicality or convention left you with few or no options. Said your friend Moncure Conway, “Thoreau never attempted to make any general principle on the subject [of vegetarianism], and later in life ate meat in order not to cause inconvenience to the family.”

You see, I’m writing this letter to you fully aware that I’ve not been perfect in my pledge to eat a meatless diet this year. Oh, I’ve given up my “I [heart] bacon” T-shirt, and I’m no longer the rabid meat-eater that I was. But once and a while, there have been times when practicality made things difficult, or the time of year. Like Thanksgiving with friends. Or the Superbowl. Henry, I know: “There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.” Yet in the eye of your genius, as in mine, we know that perfectionism is an obstacle to growth. We are tempered by reality. We are tempered by humility. Wee must not allow our big genius visions get in the way of our living with each other. Even Transcendentalists must remember that we need not think alike to love alike.

And so may our Transcendentalism never become a grim affair of finger-pointing and guilt-mongering, even as it urges us forward. Let us sing our spirituality. Let it be the same kind of music to us as it was to John Farmer. Lovely notes from the flute, waking us up from our slumber, gently raising us above the street, above the village, above the state in which we live, so we can see it all from a mountain-top perspective. A voice in the music, saying to us: “Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you?”

Henry, I love you—thank you for being a spiritual grandparent to us all—

Sincerely,

Anthony

Our reading today is from a book by Susan Vaughn M.D., entitled, Half Empty, Half Full: Understanding the Psychological Roots of Optimism.

Once upon a time a scientist broke the rats in his laboratory into random groups. The rats in the first group were placed one by one in a big tank of water made opaque with milk. They had to swim for a set amount of time. These rats were the lucky ones, since their tank had a tiny island hidden under the water on which they could perch without having to swim. Their island was always in a fixed location in the tank, there for them to find without fail, a way of getting a tiny leg up and a respite from the swim.

The rats in the second group swam for exactly the same amount of time in the milky water as those in the first group. But their tank had no island, no oasis amid the vast vat. After their swims, the rats in both groups were plucked from the water, weary and bedraggled. Both groups then rested, ate, and otherwise recuperated before the real Rat Race.

When the big day came, both groups of rats were at it again. The researcher once again made them swim one by one. But this time all the rats swam in a tank without an island. Much as they swam, there was simply no oasis to be found, no respite from having to paddle like mad just to stay afloat. The researcher rescued them before their whiskered noses slipped beneath the water. Then he carefully recorded precisely where and for how long each rat swam before returning it to its cage, wet and waterlogged, probably surprised to be alive.

When the scientist tallied up the time each rat spent in the tank, imagine how surprised he was. He found that those lucky rodent racers whose island had been there for them the first time swam for over twice as long, looking for the island where it had previously been. In contrast, those who had never found a predictable foothold in their hour of need were reduced to wandering aimlessly around the tank, swimming in seemingly directionless circles, chasing their tails in vain as they looked for a means of escape.

Now, you may find it a stretch to say that the rats that had experienced a consistent island in their prior swims were optimistic. But given that they were broken randomly into two groups in the first place, how else can we understand what kept them looking for twice as long as their competitors rather than paddling haphazardly around the tank? Isn’t their belief that there is something definite to swim for a positive expectation rooted in the reality of their earlier experience? Since there was no island in the tank in which they took their second swim, isn’t it fair to say that what made the difference as to whether they sank or swam was the illusion of an island, their ability to conjure an inner image of an island to swim for when the going got rough, even if such an island existed only in their imagination?

The sermon

It’s Olympics time again—and I love the Olympics. I see it as a sports version of our very own Unitarian Universalist values, of the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relations; acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth; a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process; the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. All these good things, evident in the pageantry of Friday’s Opening Ceremonies. The people of Canada’s First Nations opening and blessing the event … then the 2500 athletes from around our troubled world, parading in … and I’m just realizing that one of the most fun parts of the Parade of nations is seeing what people from different lands actually wear … and then the stadium floor is cleared, transformed, and through magic of light and sound it becomes an ocean floor, whales swimming across, singing their song … then things change again, the stadium becomes a forest, Sarah McLaughlin performs her song “Ordinary Miracles”… then another change, another transformation: an immense screen coming down, taking the form of the Canadian Rockies, images of Olympic events projected on it, with skiers and snowboarders suspended from the ceiling … then later on, k. d. Lang singing Leonard Cohen’s amazing song, “Hallelujah” … and on and on. I’m just an Olympics nut. Friday night, snowing like crazy outside, snow in all our United States of America (except for the lone holdout, Hawaii), but I and the family are bundled up, watching the spectacle taking place far away in Vancouver….

And then came the lighting of the Cauldron. Four ice towers to rise and then fall into place, and at the center, a Cauldron to hold the Olympic flame. Four lighters of the Cauldron, too, which goes against the venerable tradition of just one final person to light the flame, together with its message about atomic individualism, lone rangerism. Four lighters, with a radical message about relationship, about how greatness is something we help each other get to, the power of team…. But the message got lost in the midst of a malfunction. There was a jarring pause in the profound seamless flow of the evening’s events. A problem with the hydraulic system, and in the end, only three of the four towers rose. Only three flames rushed up to light the Cauldron. One of the four lighters never got to put her torch to use. Perhaps an ironic echo of the Georgian luger who had died earlier that day, tragically, during a practice run.

The Opening Ceremonies were just not perfect. Not perfect. More than good enough, though, to get the 2010 Winter Games started. Something Canada should still feel extremely proud of.

But now let me ask you. How do you think the media treated the issue of the malfunction? What’s your best guess?

My working hypothesis is that the electronic media is essentially the human nervous system writ large. In the human body, bad news runs faster than good; neural pathways conveying threats are literally quicker—much quicker—than ones conveying positive things. It’s an evolution-based “negativity bias,” and it informs and is reinforced by a society that invariably features bad news on the front page and slips in the good news elsewhere, in easy-to-miss spots—and actually prides itself in doing this, sees this as responsibility. Sees this as realism and as virtue.

This is what Chris Chase, writing for Yahoo’s sports blog, says in his article entitled “The Ten Best Moments From Vancouver’s Opening Ceremonies”: Number 1: “The gaffe heard round the world.” “Former hockey star Wayne Gretzky, two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash and Alpine skiing legend Nancy Green were able to light their cauldrons, but speedskater Catriona Lemay Doan was left with her flame when the fourth torch failed to emerge from underneath the stadium. It was an embarrassing end to an otherwise flawless Opening Ceremony. Instead of the indelible memory of four cauldron-lighters, this ceremony will be most remembered for the cauldron that wouldn’t rise.” And that’s his number 1 best moment. It all goes downhill from there.

The media as the human nervous system writ large. Bad news running faster than good. So easy to get stuck in malfunctions, such that nothing else beyond can be seen and appreciated, and a more balanced perspective is blocked. Balance becoming impossible, negativity becoming contagious, the downward spiral taking on a life of its own—and people call it virtue.

It can happen to the Olympics, and it can also happen to congregations like ours which aspire to live Olympic-sized values, from the inherent worth and dignity of every person to the interdependent web of all existence. So much that is good going on, and yet congregations can get stuck on what church consultant and Unitarian Universalist minister Larry Peers calls “problem-saturated stories.” “A problem-saturated story,” he says, “has a dynamic of its own. Often when we are telling a problem-saturated story about our congregational situation it has a trance-like effect. The story is reinforcing. We ‘see’ only those things that reinforce the story. Whatever is contradictory to this problem-saturated story goes un-storied and is not ‘seen.’” Larry Peers goes on to say, “You can recognize the problem-saturated story when you’re in a group where someone offers an example of how difficult or awful something is in the congregation and before you know it the rest of us can’t help but chime in with more evidence for how truly bad and impossible the situation is.” All eyes and minds riveted on some malfunction, and there’s no room left for other perspectives or possibilities.

It’s the downward spiral. Rumination on the problem making you extra-vigilant for more of the problem, or other problems; extra-vigilance helping to trigger even worse things. Can’t let the problem go. Can’t get bigger than the problem, see it from a different point of view, get loose. Happens in our relationships, happens in our solitude.

And it’s more than just sociological or psychological in importance. Our situation as spiritual beings having a human experience means that our most profound religious realizations—the actual having of them—depends on an attitude of prior interest and openness. Desire for a certain kind of truth helps to bring about that truth’s existence. Philosopher William James talks about this in his magnificent article entitled “The Will To Believe.” “Do you like me or not?” he asks. “Whether you do or not depends, in countless instances, on whether I meet you half-way, am willing to assume that you must like me, and show you trust and expectation. The previous faith on my part in your liking’s existence is in such cases what makes your liking come. But if I stand aloof, and refuse to budge an inch until I have objective evidence, until you shall have done something apt … ten to one your liking never comes. […] The desire for a certain kind of truth here brings about that special truth’s existence.” What William James is saying is far more than just good advice on Valentine’s Day. If we want to live in a world in which ordinary miracles happen, hallelujah happens, forgiveness happens, healing happens, peace happens, creativity happens, our Seven Principles happen—all these things and more happening even in the midst of all the strife and all the pain—then we have to meet these possibilities half way. Got to open the door, first, to experience realities that can transform us as we cannot transform ourselves, whatever we want to call them, Goddess, God, the Tao, Buddhamind. Got to believe that the island is out there, somewhere, despite all malfunctions to the contrary. Got to keep swimming.

That’s what planting the seed of positivity is all about. A growing ability to conjure up an inner image of the island to swim for, even as the going gets rough. That’s what we’re talking about today, in this fifth installment of the Planting Seeds of Soul series. Positivity, like a flame for which everything is food, and everything helps it grow.

A story comes to mind—a remarkable example of what the human spirit is capable of. It originally comes from American doctor George Ritchie, who was in Germany during World War II, attending to wounded soldiers and people who had been imprisoned in the Nazi labor and death camps. “It’s about one of these prisoners in particular: a Polish inmate at the Wuppertal prison camp. When the Americans came to liberate the prisoners at this camp, they were struck by the health and vitality of this one man, whom they assumed had only been in the camp for a short while. Called him Wild Bill Cody. As it turns out, he had been in the camp for nearly six years, since 1939, living on starvation rations and in the most oppressive atmosphere. Surrounded by degradation, humiliation, death. Scarcely a darker time could be imagined. Then the liberators learned that he had been imprisoned in the camp immediately after he had witnessed Nazi soldiers murder his wife and children as well as many members of his community. He had seen them lined up and shot. He had plenty of reasons to hate, to be bitter and to want to seek revenge. However, he described to them that at the moment of his greatest despair, at losing all he had held most dear, he knew that he must forgive his captors (and the murderers of his family). He must forgive them completely and learn to see the divine spark that also lives in the hearts of these Nazi soldiers. And so he lived for six years in the prison camp and soon became the respected mediator between different ethnic groups that had little more affinity for one another than they did for the Germans.” This is the story, which originally comes from Dr. George Ritchie and as relayed by Warren Lee Cohen in his book which we’ve been drawing from in our sermon series, entitled Raising the Soul. Warren Lee Cohen’s closing words: “Wild Bill Cody was a source of hope for all who knew him. He spoke many languages, but most importantly he spoke the language of humanity, of forgiveness and positivity. This unusual quality not only saved his life, but it was also a source of tremendous strength for all who met him.”

This story can tell us so much about the nature of positivity. Perhaps the first thing is this: that it’s NOT a form of irresponsibility, or a way of avoiding reality—wishful thinking that prevents a person from seeing problems as they are and tackling them head on. “This,” says Susan Vaughn M.D. in her book, Half Empty Half Full: Understanding the Psychological Roots of Optimism, “has not generally proved to be the case.” There are important exceptions, she admits: “First, there are some gamblers whose belief in the illusion of control gets them into trouble and keeps them coming back for more, unable to admit that they are not really the rulers of the roulette wheel and all. There is also some evidence that teenage girls who have more illusions of control about getting pregnant may fail to use birth control with regularity.” However: “There’s more evidence going in the opposite direction: people who have an intact illusion of control are more likely to be proactive in addressing real problems.” Rats swimming furiously, looking for an island which is but an image in their brains. Wild Bill Cody, seeing into the severe reality of his situation, seeing what’s needed, and filling the need. Becoming a mediator between the different ethnic groups in the camp.

Positivity is NOT a form of irresponsibility, and neither is it a Saturday Night Live Stuart Smalley pep talk in front of a full-length mirror: “I’m going to do a terrific show today! And I’m gonna help people! Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!” Yet if you’ve ever seen Stuart Smalley on TV, or been acquainted with a real-life version of Stuart Smalley, you know that their daily affirmations amount to no more than enforced cheer and a compulsive fending off of anxiety. To others they can appear to be upbeat, but underneath it all is the sense of potentially crashing at any moment. Utter vulnerability and unsafety. Do you know what I’m talking about? But the positivity I’m referring to is different from this. It’s not a reactive defense against feeling difficult feelings. You can be positive and optimistic and yet still feel sadness when you see suffering around you, you can still feel anger, you can still feel fear—yet you don’t get stuck in any of it. Feel the feelings, talk about them—but keep on swimming to the island. Keep on taking one step at a time, moving forward, eventually moving yourself and moving others into a better place. Wild Bill Cody faced down his despair and faced down his hate, his bitterness. Touched them, knew them. Yet he also trusted that this is not all there can be, that transformation is still possible, through forgiveness. Positivity is ultimately self-trust—trust that even our most beastly feelings won’t devour us up, that we have inner resources giving us strength to move forward.

The Wild Bill Cody story has a lot to teach us. Positivity as responsibility, positivity as self-trust, and also positivity as a commitment to healing. I love how writer Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this. She says, “I keep remembering a simple idea [a friend] told me once–that all the sorrow and all the trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-’n’-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, nor merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.” That’s what Elizabeth Gilbert says. It applies as much to Wild Bill Cody as it does to you and me. Positivity helps us get out of the way of our Unitarian Universalist principles living and moving in the world. That’s what it does. In the midst of malfunctions of all types, swimming for the island.

There’s so much more that might be said. Wild Bill Cody’s amazing capacity to see the Divine Spark in his Nazi guards, which in essence was a refusal to capture them right back in the snare of his negative expectations, thus reinforcing the negative. His sheer perseverance, leading straight to being a blessing to so many people who needed it. Just his physical condition—his physical health—after six years in a horrible prison camp. All these Olympic-sized achievements, all connected to positivity. And if, after hearing all this, you are wondering how it all might apply to you, all I can say is, I feel you. I hear it. For there is a traditional view of positivity and optimism that needs to be acknowledged, countered, debunked: the view that a capacity for positivity is something a person is simply born with. A matter of fixed temperament. Wild Bill Cody was able to do what he did because of good genes, or a good upbringing. Maybe the story speaks to some people, but not to everyone. As Susan Vaughn puts it, “Asking a pessimistic person to be more optimistic is like asking a leopard to change his spots.”

This is the traditional view. Yet it’s wrong. “I believe,” says Susan Vaughn, “that optimism is the result of an internal process of illusion building. I believe we should fundamentally redefine optimism as the result of a particular series of mental machinations, psychological somersaults. These internal gymnastics are not generally something that optimists are just born knowing how to do. Optimism is not, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson on hope, ‘a thing with feathers that perches in the breast.’ Instead it is an active internal process, more akin to learning to fly. It is a verb, not a noun. And pessimism, by contrast, is not the absence of some elusive winged creature that our biological birdcage either contains or lacks. That’s good news, because if optimism is the result of inner psychological processes, then we can all become better illusion-builders with practice. So if you can’t imagine that illusive island now, don’t worry. You can learn to.”

And that’s what we turn to, right now. Planting the seed of positivity. A daily practice to add to the other four practices I’ve introduced in this sermon series. Self-knowledge, clear thinking, willpower, emotional intelligence, and now positivity.

A caveat, before I go any further. For some people, this psychological and spiritual exercise may be extremely tough to do because your emotional weather system is snow snowy and icy that it’s impossible for your ideas or efforts to get any traction. The downward depressive spiral is in full swing. All fifty states inside you are under blizzard conditions. All your highways and roads are iced over, and there are massive car pile-ups everywhere. In this case, medication is clearly merited, together with therapy. Susan Vaughn speaks to this wisely in her book. Take a look.

But if your inner emotional weather is not so severe, then jump right in. The positivity practice begins like this: with a clear resolution to encourage yourself to notice more of the positive and praiseworthy in your daily experience. To do this for at least a month, if not more, everyday. Building up this specific attention muscle over time, and seeing for yourself that optimism is, in fact, a verb and not a genetic mandate. A choice that we can make, in our human freedom. Start each day consciously making this choice, and then, at the end of the day, as part of your Review of the Day, reflecting on how things went, what patterns did you see, and so on.

Between the beginning and end of the day, there are at least two positivity things you can do: simultaneously, or you can decide to alternate between them, focusing on just one at a time.

The first is inner-focused. It’s simply to pay attention to your thoughts about yourself or the world, and when you catch yourself falling into a downward spiral of pessimism, say “thank you for that perspective” and then shift things up. For example, you encounter a “problem-saturated” story: a story with a trance-like effect, a story that hypnotizes you and makes it easy to think that it is equivalent with the truth. Say “thank you for that perspective”—and then spoil the pity party. Shift gears: ask: “What would someone else say?” If it’s a congregation-related story, the questions might be: “What would the newest or longest member of the congregation say about this situation?” “What would a child say?” or, better yet, “What would someone who disagrees with me say?”

Another opportunity to shift gears is when we catch ourselves playing the “I wish I was [fill-in-the-blank] game.” “I wish I was…” or “I wish he (or she) was …” or “I wish we were …” Doing this is not positivity, and it’s going to make you feel horrible, and you don’t have to make this choice. You don’t! So easy to do anyhow, though—the habit is firmly fixed in so many of us. So if you catch yourself doing this, shift gears. Move from “I wish I was…” to “I’m glad I’m not….” “I’m glad she’s not…” “I’m glad we’re not…” Apparently this is something even the Dalai Lama does, as he works vigilantly on his own positivity. Probably everyone here can honestly say, “I’m glad I’m not Wild Bill Cody”—glad I didn’t have to go through what he did. And the ironic thing is that not only does this NOT harden our hearts against people like Wild Bill Cody—research shows it does exactly the opposite. Our hearts open up. In affirming that we are, relatively speaking, better off, we are more likely to use our resources to help people in similar situations. Fascinating and true.

As for the second positivity action: it’s outer-focused. It involves choosing to be more aware of the efforts of others around you, appreciating them, feeling gratitude. Says writer Marcel Proust, “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, for they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Do this, and then then take things to the next level. Strive to find positive qualities in people or situations where appreciation and gratitude are not so easy. As a teacher, or a boss, or a co-worker, or a spouse or partner: feeding with your attention what is healthy and starving with a withdrawal of attention what is not. Looking for something good, no matter how challenging a person’s behavior might be. This in fact may allow you to help them work through their challenges. Not capturing them in the snare of your negative image, and thus only reinforcing the problem.

However we focus our effort—inside of ourselves, or outside—ultimately the practice is about building up the positivity muscle over time. Seeing for yourself the verb that optimism is. Choosing to learn how to sing a song entitled “Everything’s Possible” even though no one might have ever sung it to you. So much relies on this. The cessation of suffering. Getting out of our own way, as we strive to live out our seven Unitarian Universalist principles. This is an achievement that is nothing less than an Olympics of the spirit, and we set this for ourselves not every four years or two years but every day. Every day. Going to be lots of malfunctions along the way. Lots of them. But we carry on. The island is there. Keep on swimming.

1. Pouring your life into building a community that can never be truly yours–that you must one day leave behind “no strings attached” to pave the way for the next settled minister.

2. The growth of the community depending upon the size and clarity of your vision, but the wear and tear of life in community–at the very least, the intense busy-ness of it–continually threatens to contract the vision and make it smaller, fuzz it out.

3. The community looks to the minister for leadership, and yet only as more and more people see the work of ministry as theirs–only as more and more staff see the work of ministry as shared–does the community MOVE and LIVE.

4. Living always in the face of possible “explosions” and “earthquakes” (e.g. a conflict coming at you from left field, an additional urgent task, a death, something else) and yet it is critical to remain nonanxious, positive, cautiously optimistic.

5. Staying firmly grounded in your own story and your own truth, and yet (by virtue of being in a covenantal relationship with hundreds of people) you are challenged to speak to hundreds of different stories and hundreds of different truths.

5. Staying joyful, even as the work is often so serious and so filled with death, tragedy, political agendas, control and authority issues, and on and on–things that can turn a saint cynical.

How to make these tensions creative–a source of growth and life?

At the end of the day, I believe that ministry, unlike anything else, places a person directly into the stream of life. “Joy and woe woven fine, clothing for the soul divine.” To do ministry, there must be a commitment to compassion, and compassion felt fully. Trust that the universe can take whatever one’s offering happens to be, however imperfect, and turn it into some good.

Birding. As in, becoming knowledgeable about where to look for our feathered friends in a given area: cranes, rails, coots, doves, cuckoos, owls, swifts, hummingbirds, kingfishers, thrushes, thrashers, wood warblers, tanagers, and on and on—knowing your habitat and the kind of life it can support. Then this: knowing what to look for. Noticing distinguishing physical marks. Color variations, variations in size and shape, also in behavior, as in, is the bird acting alone or in a group? Is it stalking, standing still, or flitting about? Finally, this: knowing how to listen. Some birds that look similar in color and shape are distinguishable by sound only. Sound is key. All of these together, says the Audubon website—knowing where to look, what to look for, and what to listen for—add up to rewards that are well worth the efforts. Birding brings a sense of wonder, and it is just fun.

I was inspired. And it helped me see my topic for today—our diversity as Unitarian Universalists—from a unique angle. Not so much “b-i-r-d-i-n-g” as “b-u-u-r-d-i-n-g.” Our goal is to take out our binoculars and go looking for the different kinds of Unitarian Universalists that are in here, in this bird sanctuary of our congregation, or elsewhere. Carefully watching for distinguishing marks and behaviors. Listening for the varied songs we sing. Doing this because it will bring a sense of wonder at our faith tradition which aspires to do something that is so unique among the religions of the West—to be a true universalism and not a partialism. Doing this because a greater awareness of self and other helps tremendously in appreciating our differences and dealing with them more effectively. “Conflict is inevitable,” says religion writer Max Lucado, “but combat is optional.”

So here we go. Birding for Unitarian Universalists. Consider this sermon a field guide, to use as a reference. Not at all exhaustive and comprehensive, a mere thumbnail sketch, but hopefully helpful enough.

Certainly an obvious place to start is with our theological diversity. A quick test: how you instinctively respond to the following possible sermon topics may indicate the kind of theological bird you are: here we go:

God the Noun
God the Verb
God the Adjective
God the Expletive
Too Confused to Decide
Why Are You Doing This To Me?

Actually, we’re entering into tricky territory. Labeling others and labeling ourselves. As a theist of some type, for example: either supernaturalistic or naturalistic, as deist or pantheist or panentheist or transcendentalist or neo-pagan or even henotheist. Then there’s non-theism of some type: atheist, existentialist, humanist, or some versions of Buddhism. Then there’s types that resist classification as theistic or nontheistic, like agnosticism (which does not know whether or not God exists) or mysticism (which affirms direct experiences of oneness with the universe, and this may or may not disclose anything about God). All these labels! Labels labels labels! How many of you tend to feel that all such labels are confining? You experience the spiritual search as free and open-ended, and maybe you strongly identify with one today, but who knows about tomorrow? It just doesn’t have to be one or the other but not both. It just doesn’t have to be all so cut and dry. It just feels wrong when others seem to have pigeon-holed you—you feel falsified, made out into something you aren’t.

Nevertheless, even as we may prefer the both/and style in religion, labels still have positive uses. They can help to name the different and varied songs we hear in small group gatherings and in religious education classes and in the social hall and in worship. They can help us to appreciate where other people are coming from and how to speak across differences, how to translate ideas into a language that others can understand. Above all, theological labels can help us recognize our own song, clarify it, stimulate deeper self-reflection about what it is we do and do not believe. DOES agnosticism express who I am better than something else, at this time in my life? DO I find greater personal resonance with the teachings of the Buddha than with Jesus? How can these labels and categories help me get a clearer sense of what my heart years for, what my head tells me is reasonable, what my soul says is true? Maybe the story my heart, head, and soul tell will be different in the future, but the task of life is not to live in the future but to live deeply right now.

One set of theological labels that I find particularly helpful as I go birdwatching for UUs is this: “pragmatic versus metaphysical.” Now, this distinction draws on a powerful and provocative definition of Unitarian Universalism coming from the Rev. Forrest Church: “Unitarianism proclaims that we spring from a single source; Universalism, that we share a common destiny.” In other words: one source, one destiny. That’s Unitarian Universalism.

I like to expand on it a little more, though. “One source” can also mean: the oneness of all life, the interdependence of all existence; it can mean the mutual sympathy of all things, experienced first-hand if we open ourselves to it; it can mean cosmos, as opposed to chaos; it can mean meaningfulness, as opposed to meaninglessness.

As for “one destiny,” it too can be expanded upon. It can mean that what happens to some happens to all; it can mean all-embracing love; it can mean ultimate spiritual fulfillment for everyone; it can mean ultimate justice, a continuing hope that out of every tragedy the spirits of individuals shall rise to build a better world. It can mean all this.

But now the question becomes: on what basis do we affirm Unitarian Universalism? Why do we affirm “one source” and “one destiny”? Is it because the ideals of “one source” and “one destiny” are so beautiful and noble that we will work to make them live no matter what the nature of reality happens to be—even if reality turns out to be fractured, nihilistic, absurd, or even malicious? Or is it because we believe that ideals like “one source” and “one destiny” have genuine metaphysical standing, reflect the way the world really is, beyond all illusion? “Built into the human makeup,” says scholar of world religions Huston Smith, “is a longing for a ‘more’ that the world of everyday experience cannot [satisfy]. This outreach strongly suggests the existence of something that life reaches for in the way the wings of birds point to the reality of air. Sunflowers bend in the direction of light because light exists, and people seek food because food exists.” In a similar vein, do Unitarian Universalists affirm “one source” and “one destiny” because these ideals reflect a longing for something real that both transcends humanity and attracts humanity to it? Pragmatic UUs will say NO. Metaphysical UUs will say YES. There is a famous quote from UU history that talks about how the arc of the universe is long, yet it still bends towards justice, but pragmatic UUs will work for justice even if the universe has no bend to it, or even if it bends away from justice. God or the immortality of the soul or reincarnation are not on their radar screens. But it’s different for metaphysical UUs. They simply can’t make sense of Unitarian Universalism without such realities. Both, I hasten to emphasize, agree on the value of the ideals of “one source” and “one destiny”. Both work to expand them and magnify them in the world. But they come at them from very different angles, understand them in very different ways, live in very different worlds. The person sitting beside you right now, possibly living in a completely different world, even though their commitment to “one source” and “one destiny” is as solid as yours….

And that’s a little on our theological diversity. The varied kinds of bird song we hear in this place. Any of this coming home to roost for you? (I know…. couldn’t resist….). But now let’s turn the page in our field guide to a different set of things to look for. Not so much about theology as sociology. Specifically, the different ways people happen to enter into our faith community.

Here’s two of them: the “come-outer” way and the “born-inner” way. “Come-outers” are the majority among us—they grew up in non-UU faith traditions and, finding them unsatisfactory for one reason or another, left, only to discover, at some later date, the new world of Unitarian Universalism. “Born-inners,” on the other hand, were born into the faith, grew up as UUs. These are two very different kinds of feathered friends.

Take the come-outer. One of the best descriptions I’ve found of this particular UU bird is from the Rev. David Bumbaugh, who writes, “Throughout our denomination, a large proportion of our adherents are relatively recent come-outers–people who have left the religions in which they grew up and are involved in the necessary process of defining themselves in relation to their new freedom. Consequently, for many of our people, their new-found Unitarian Universalism has a decidedly negative tinge to it. Typically, new Unitarian Universalists may not be able to tell you what they believe, but they will have little difficulty expounding on what they no longer believe. Often they are Unitarian Universalists largely for negative reasons–because this religious body validates and accepts their doubts and does not demand that they meet some external standard of religious belief. Here they may redefine, question, or deny the existence of God; here they may proudly reject any metaphysical or theological explanation of existence; here they may redefine, question, or denounce as invalid such traditional religious practices as prayer or meditation; here they may question all assertions and even give vent to anti-clericalism and hostility to all forms of organized religion, including this one if they wish. Here no one will demand they embrace a view of life they cannot embrace in good conscience.” David Bumbaugh continues: “For [come-outers], Unitarian Universalism is important because it provides them a breathing space, a decompression chamber, an institution which will help them to get unhooked from the religious assumptions with which they grew up. This is part of the reason that we witness, over and over again, the phenomenon of people who join us and for a few months or years are filled with enthusiasm for the church and its program, and then gradually and without explanation drift away. The church has been useful in the process of unhitching them from the past, and when that has been accomplished, their need for our church is no longer so great. They become our ‘graduates,’ people who learned here how to be free from religious assumptions and dogmatic demands which had become painful and crippling, but who no longer feel a need for the church after that task is accomplished. They still feel warmly toward us. If they ever go to church again, it would be to a Unitarian Universalist church. They would hate to see us go out of business, for there may be other people who need us as they once needed us, and some day, driven by some other need, they may come back for a post-graduate course. But for the moment, organized religion no longer has an important role to play in their lives.” And that’s David Bumbaugh, on the come-outer. In process of defining themselves; perhaps a bit cranky and adolescent; knowing more about what they don’t believe than what they do believe; appreciating Unitarian Universalist community because it allows them breathing space to get unhooked from the past; but whether Unitarian Universalism will be in their future is another matter entirely. Maybe, maybe not.

Have you ever seen this feathered friend before? Are you this feathered friend?

Then there is the born-inner. Who here resembles this kind of feathered friend? Consider the rich description that comes from the Rev. Kendyl Gibbons: “I am,” she says, “a child of humanist parents and the product of Unitarian Universalist religious education, shaped by the philosophy of the religious educator Sophia Fahs. She advocated allowing children’s own experiences and growth to lead them naturally to discover wonder and sacredness in life, rather than imposing religious texts or ideas on them. And so I have built my theology out of my own experiences, not according to any blueprint, but rather from the material of my life’s pondered meaning. I cherish the freedom of my religious inheritance, and I have never had a moment when it has seemed likely that any self-conscious supernatural personality actually presides over the universe. Nevertheless,” continues the Rev. Gibbons, “this approach had its drawbacks. As a young Unitarian Universalist in the 1960s, I was educated about human sexuality in a relatively open fashion; human religious experience, in contrast, was a closed book. I discovered my spirituality in much the same way that my peers raised in more conservative faiths discovered their sexuality—accidentally, furtively, without guidance, moved by overwhelming inner tides, and with some sense of shame. I longed for the white organdy First Communion dresses and the menorah candles of my neighbors. I secretly memorized Louisa May Alcott’s “My Kingdom” prayer, written when she was thirteen, and sang myself to sleep with “For the Beauty of the Earth.” I was fascinated by the hidden life of nuns. I yearned for someone, anyone, to take my childish capacity for devotion seriously. But seeds planted in paper cups on the Sunday school windowsill, the dead bird discovered in the backyard, the calligraphic hymns in We Sing of Life, and the annual flower communion were the scant resources my liberal religious education offered. To my parents and teachers—almost all of whom had grown up in other religious traditions—the absence of texts, rote prayers, sacraments, holy objects, and moralistic picture books represented freedom. But without any language for my emerging sense of mystery and wonder, I came to feel the contrary: deprived of the tools with which to understand or express those experiences.” And that’s Kendyl Gibbons, on the born-inner. From the first, freedom to grow naturally, without the imposition of a single text or set of religious ideas. From the first, nurtured in inner-directedness, all questions and all thoughts welcomed. Yet, the result is often a collision with the needs and allergies of come-outer parents and adults. Come-outers welcoming the absence of more traditional religious ideas and practices because they are looking for breathing room in which to get unhooked from the past, but born-inners suffering from this same absence, often needing to leave Unitarian Universalism in order to find spiritual food. It’s so ironic. Come-outer parents anxious for their children to be born in the faith, but the parents’ need to stay at arms-length from their past unwittingly resulting in their children’s faith being stunted and shallow. Born-inners—birthright UUs!—overlooked as our congregations cater to the large majority of come-outers.

It’s a challenge. These two different kinds of birds sing very different songs, at odds with each other. One threatens to overwhelm the other, in fact, and this is NOT diversity. It’s the OPPOSITE of diversity.

But there is a way forward. It happens when the come outer bird takes the next step in its development and follows the phoenix path, becomes what David Bumbaugh calls “born again.” Not in a Christian evangelical sense. But simply in terms of finding oneself in a different place regarding one’s religious past and therefore one’s religious future. Says David Bumbaugh, “Some Unitarian Universalists, having gone through the experience of being unhooked from old, personally destructive religious forms, discover that the experience of freedom is not the end of the journey. Freedom from dogma, freedom from creeds and traditions, freedom from past ways of thinking and looking at the world is not the answer to any ultimate question. Rather, freedom poses the most terrifying of all questions: Now that you are rid of past loyalties, of past commitments, of past concepts, how will you use your freedom? ‘Freedom from’ always casts us into the dilemma of ‘freedom for what?’ To what will you be loyal? By what will you be defined? By what star will you steer? The born-again Unitarian Universalists,“ he says, “are those who have broken the mold of the past, have transcended their rejections, and now reach toward the affirmation of life and the ‘something more’ which underlies all the various forms and rituals, dogmas and assumptions of religion.”

It’s the burning, transforming issue: by what star will you steer? Freedom for what? In this, the future of Unitarian Universalist churches and congregations rests. Taking the phoenix path. More and more come-outers learning to answer in positive ways, which ultimately represents a needed working-through of allergies born of old resentments and possibly old misunderstandings. More and more come-outers doing this, as a way of honoring their own personal and spiritual growth, as well as honoring the growth needs of born-inners together with the needs of people who come into our midst who grew up unchurched, who don’t really have formed prejudices yet (either positive or negative), who want to know what’s up with this God thing and thing Bible thing, who hunger for an experience of the sacred and are open wide, tabula rasa. What about them, and so many other varieties of UU birds that I haven’t had time to mention? We’ve got to keep our diversity healthy. Its ultimate purpose is to be an exciting and enriching environment in which each of us can come into a positive sense of our purpose in this world. Transcending rejections, reaching towards affirmations that make sense, grow our souls, grip our souls, send us into the world as servants and healers and creators and teachers. One source, one destiny. All-embracing love, whether it is but human love that we work hard to magnify, or the love of God. Justice, no matter how the universe bends. Amidst all our difference, amidst all our times of discord, let there be a larger harmony of song we build towards, a harmony of hope, that out of every tragedy the spirits of individuals shall rise to build a better world. Whatever else we find, as we go birding for Unitarian Universalists, let us find at least this.

2. Every puzzle piece is important in a basic sense.

3. Depending on what you are working on at any given time, only certain pieces are going to get your attention, and the others will remain in a heap.

4. Everything we need is already within our possession–the only challenge is finding the right combinations of pieces–pieces finding their right fit. Sometimes the piece is right before you, but you don’t see where it goes. So many times we try to fit the wrong piece to another–but this is progress too.

5. The pieces that remain in a heap: sometimes they hide the pieces you need. So, you sift through the heap and get glimpses of stuff that looks interesting but is not necessary at the moment.

6. There’s never enough time in one life to fit all the puzzle pieces together.

7. It is an absurd puzzle that cannot be put together completely.

8. You work and work with pieces that have the right basic coloration but they don’t fit together. Yet you can’t completely ignore them, since when you find the piece you’re actually looking for, the others instantly are in play.

9. Be sure the table you are working on is big enough.

10. You can look at the pieces too intensely and lose perspective. Sometimes your eyes need to be soft; other times they need to be hard. An extra pair of eyes is often immensely helpful.

11. The process is sometimes fast, sometimes slow.

12. Sometimes you find puzzle pieces that don’t belong to this life.

13. Doesn’t matter how many times you’ve searched for a certain piece and not found it. Keep looking–it’s there.

And so it is. Beauty only when we embrace the beast. And for religious liberals, this point has particular poignancy, since for too long, our movement has been suspicious towards emotion, often wanting to recast religion and the religious life as a hyperlogical sort of thing, presuming that only when you become free of emotion, spiritual sanity and truth will come—but it won’t come. Can’t possibly come. Cutting-edge neuroscience tells us that reason and emotion operate in the very same brain centers, so for one to conquer the other is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. In cases where people’s brains have been damaged—through a stroke, or a tumor, or a blow to the head—and they can no longer feel anything, even though reason and logic remain intact, what happens is that their lives fall apart. They can no longer make even the simplest decisions or set goals for themselves.

Just in pure neurological terms: no beast, no beauty. But also in practical terms. Here, I’m thinking of an article in the UU World magazine from 2009, by my colleague the Rev. Christine Robinson, entitled “Imagineers of Soul,” and I’ll quote her at length. She writes, “Four out of five Unitarian Universalists came to Unitarian Universalism after a childhood spent in other faith communities. We left those communities because we no longer believed what they taught, and we often left wounded and bewildered by our experiences. If we were led to feel that our inability to believe what we were taught was due to a flaw in our nature, we brought with us a burden of shame. […] And because of that deep, shaming message, many Unitarian Universalists experience their rejection of what others believe—and, often, what they themselves used to believe—as not simple or freeing but as complex, angry, brittle, and defensive.

“But we don’t need to pretend to believe what we cannot believe in order to reclaim our spirituality. We Unitarian Universalists mostly have what twentieth century American theologian Martin Marty has called ‘wintry spirituality’: Our religious experience is of doubt, shades of gray, and absence. Although there are plenty of wintry spirits in conventional religious communities, what is celebrated and held up as ‘real spirituality’ is the summery, ‘What a friend I have in Jesus’ sort of spirituality, which comes in many theological variations but which is always celebrating the clear presence of spiritual ideals.

“There are summery Humanists who can hold on to the glories of the human spirit and its potential for unlimited growth even while watching the evening news. There are summery Transcendentalists who have never for a moment doubted that their lives were a part of a Great Plan. There are many among us who live in quiet faith that God is with them. But most UUs are doubters, clearer about what they don’t believe, aware that the ideals or beliefs they hold could be wrong, and experiencing God’s presence or surety of their ideals only in fleeting moments.

“Many people come to our congregations thinking that, since they don’t have an unending conversation with their friend Jesus, they must have no spiritual life at all—a painful thought. They come to us to see if here, by any chance, someone will point them to experiences of depth and wonder and meaningfulness, sans dogma; if something will bring tears to their eyes and strangely warm their hearts. They are hoping to be introduced to a spirituality for agnostics, theists, Transcendentalists, pagans, or liberal Christians that is not dependent on unending sunny days of the soul.

“Once here, they need some help in discerning how their wintry spirituality can feed them. Since they are unlikely to have had soul-shaking spiritual experiences, they need ways to discover the more subtle movings of the Spirit of Life. They need someone to elicit their story about the time the world stood still for them, or how one day, out of nowhere, on a bus, they were released from anxiety and freed to move ahead in their life, to hear those kinds of stories and say, ‘Wow, that sounds wonderful,’ and ‘Yeah, it went away; it does that, you know.’ They need to learn the rich history of wintery believers and faithful skeptics. They will be grateful and they will be able to say to themselves, ‘There’s not something wrong with me after all,’ and they will be healed of their shame.

“Until the healing happens, though, if there is one thing a person who has been shamed knows how to do, it is to shame others in return. That’s how it happens that, amongst Unitarian Universalists, the tools of scorn and shame are so often used to scare off any hints of spirituality.

“At a meeting of the worship committee, one member ventures the thought that she’d be a better worship leader if the group would spend some time talking about the spiritual aspects of worship. ‘I don’t know why you’d want THAT!’ someone says, his voice tinged with scorn. That was the end of that topic. He knew not what he did, and if he’d been called on it, he would have protested that he was just speaking the truth: He can’t imagine why anybody would want to talk about spirituality. If it had been a debate team or a science lab, this rational argument would have done no harm; it might even have provoked those who disagreed to work harder, but in a spiritual community, scorn is deadly.

“Our faith, our thinking about our faith, and our conversations with others about faith don’t do well around belligerent language, close questioning, and scorn. Very few people are willing to talk about their spiritual lives if they think they will be ridiculed or misunderstood.

“Imagine what may be going through a fellow church member’s mind: If I think you are going to laugh at me, ridicule me, or try to prove me wrong, I’m not going to say that when the congregation really gets to singing and clapping with the musicians, that’s when I feel the spirit move through the room. I’m certainly not going to tell you about that one precious time, when I was scraping the bottom of my barrel, I felt, for an infinitely sweet half hour, held in the palm of God’s hand, and that sometimes my longing for a repeat of that amazing few moments is so strong that I could just weep. I just can’t bring myself to say that aloud. I’ll just shut up and wait, if I don’t wander away, for someone to imagineer a place where it’s safe to speak about my tender, precious spiritual life.

“A shame-ridden people deal with pain by flaming every intimation of spirit.” And that’s it. That’s what I read in the Rev. Christine Robinson’s UU World article. Does it speak to your experience? She puts her finger on the shame that many of us can carry into this place because we were no good for the religion of our childhood, or it was no good for us, or because our wintry kind of spirituality seems so different from the sort that society celebrates and holds up as the real deal, or because we have a summery kind of spirituality that keeps on bumping up against obstacles in this home for the human spirit. The beauty of free religion trying to happen in our midst—the free flow of the Spirit of Life, trying to happen—but unless the four out of five of us (and in fact I would say the five out of five of us) learn how to face the shame, befriend it, work with it intelligently, then we will act it out against each other. We will hurt each other. We won’t be able to live up to our “speak the truth in love” principle. “If there is one thing a person who has been shamed knows how to do, it is to shame others in return.” Unconsciously, reflexively communicating belligerence, close questioning, scorn. We say with our lips that this environment is undogmatic and open, but because we are not seriously dealing with the emotional dimensions of our life together—don’t have emotional intelligence on an institutional level—the practical result is that we develop spiritual spores. We wall the unloved and unappreciated parts of our tender, precious spiritual lives away. Put ourselves on ice. But this is a survival strategy, and not a way of life. There can never be free religion, when emotionally we are unfree. Never. I don’t care how many advanced degrees there are in the room, what the collective IQ is in this place. Beauty, only when we together embrace the beast.

The promise applies to us collectively, and it applies to us personally. The anger in us, the gladness, the fear, the laughter, the sorrow, the shame all give us our sense of solidity in the world, our history, our integrity. Like nerve endings, they connect us to ourselves, and they connect us to the world. Through them, we know truly who we are, warts and all, and what we want. Says Sam Keen, “Until we pause to register how something feels, we have not digested our experience—we don’t know what it means. As long as I am only sensing a world around me, I have not taken a position in the middle of my own experience as a unique person with a particular set of memories and hopes.” The one life that is ours is wild and precious to the degree that it is Technicolor with emotion and we know how to hold all that dazzling, intimidating, burning Technicolor in the palm of our hands. We know how to tolerate it, think with it, relate to other people and to the world through it. Through the beast, beauty.

I want to say a little more about emotional intelligence—what’s involved—and then introduce our spiritual exercise for this month. Just as a bit of background: today’s sermon is the fourth in our “Planting Seeds of Soul” series, which draws from Warren Lee Cohen’s book entitled, Raising the Soul: Practical Exercises for Personal Development. In October, we planted the seed of self-knowledge; in November, it was the seed of clear thinking; and in December, it was willpower. All of them aim towards a certain quality of living I am calling soulfulness, characterized by self-awareness and enjoyment and perspective and non-anxiousness and compassion. Doing justice to the inner self so we can do justice in the outer world. That’s what the sermon series is all about.

But now: emotional intelligence. What exactly is it?

The phrase was originally coined by Yale psychologist Peter Salovey in the early 1990s to describe such things as awareness of one’s own feelings and the capacity to regulate them in a way that enhances living. Both give rise to yet a third important aspect of emotional intelligence: empathy for the feelings of others.

Take self-awareness. It’s about understanding how it is that, even as feelings are central to who we are, we can nevertheless be woefully unaware of them. Our emotions have Technicolor range and complexity, and yet so very often we experience them only in grays, or only greens and never reds. It’s a strange picture we get of our inner life. But why? Says Sam Keen, “No matter how wise and loving our parents, they could not have kept us innocent and spontaneous. Every child must explore, test limits, disobey in order to develop and independent personality.” And so we are forced out of the Garden of Eden forever. We grow up, the pain of growing up becomes unbearable, and we develop survival strategies to help us endure. We become experts in stopping the natural flow of emotion when we sense that it’s about to take us to a place that we’ve been taught is unlovable and unacceptable. We feel fear, which threatens to disrupt the “good soldier” survival strategy we’ve worked so hard to develop, and we stop the flow. We feel joy, which threatens to disrupt the “don’t expect too much out of life” survival strategy, the “get-with-the-life-is-miserable-and-then-you-die-gameplan” strategy, and we stop the flow. That’s right—sometimes the beast we face is joy. Sometimes the beast is enthusiasm, playfulness, generosity, gentleness. And so we stop it. We snuff it out. Each of us has a unique way of doing this. Finding something else to worry about. Workaholism. Drinking. We’ve already talked about how, when others threaten to uncover our spiritual shame, we can take on a scornful tone with them. Make fun of them, to stop the flow. But through self-awareness, we develop a mindfulness discipline where we watch exactly how we do this, and exactly when. We become students of ourselves, students of our own experience.

Besides self-awareness, there is a self-management aspect to emotional intelligence. How we hold all that Technicolor in our hands. And this is significantly impacted by the kind of beliefs we have about our emotions. Fill in the following blanks:

“I think of my grief or fear or despair as _____.”
“What my grief or fear or despair says about me is _____.”
“If I were to fully experience my grief or fear or despair, I would _____.”
“What I’d most like to do with my grief or fear or despair is _____.”

Don’t know about you, but I find it easy to fill in the blanks with negative stuff. Negative beliefs, that make it so hard to relax into the flow of emotion, trust it, have faith that ultimately it’s going to be all right. “Dealing with any [unpleasant] emotion,” says Sam Keen, “is like running the rapids in the Grand Canyon. In the turbulent Colorado River the greatest danger is getting thrown out of the boat and getting caught in a whirlpool or roller that sucks you down. If you struggle prematurely to get to the surface, you will likely drown. But if you go deeper, the action of the water will spit you out twenty feet downstream on the surface.” That’s what Sam Keen says. The only way out is through. And it’s so hard, since the emotions we’ve learned to stop have become truly scary. We’ve walled them off, and over time, they’ve become like poltergeists. What we repress festers. So easily they possess us, Exorcist-style. But to befriend such emotions, we’ve got to believe that friendship with them is both possible and desirable. In turn, belief paves the way for breathing into the unpleasant emotion, smiling at it with our hearts, building up tolerance so you can just hold it in your hand for a while, learn from it, allow the energy it represents to transform and become something different. Shame, turning into anger, anger turning into sadness and grief, sadness and grief turning into empathy for our parents and teachers and fellow congregants and others, empathy turning into compassion for a world in which Buddhism’s First Noble Truth is indisputable: how the suffering of birth, old age, sickness and death is unavoidable. Life, with all its changes, is suffering. And yet, through suffering, there is a path. There is a path running to enlightenment. Through the beast, beauty.

That’s emotional intelligence. And now, it’s time to present this month’s planting seeds of soul exercise. If you choose to join me in practicing it, please don’t forget about the others. Practice them as well. The system I am presenting is comprehensive and meant to develop our full personhood, our thinking-willing-feeling self. It’s an issue of balance.

Four basic steps.

Step one: Establish a baseline for your work on your emotions. Discover what you truly believe about them by completing the fill-in-the-blank questions I mentioned a moment ago. How might you adjust your beliefs or replace them so that you become more able to trust the flow of emotion even when it takes you into difficult places?

That’s step one. Step two is developing the parameters of a personal mindfulness discipline, where you become a student of your experience, a scientist who simply observes the flow of emotion without judgment or criticism. In developing the parameters, decide on a time every day during which you can set up your psychic laboratory and give your feelings the most concentrated attention you can without detriment to your daily responsibilities. Besides this, set the intention that you will be looking for two things in particular: the emotions which come easily for you, and the ones that you stop the instant they surface. How do you stop them? What strategies do you use?

Step one, step two, and now step three. During the actual time of the exercise, allow feelings to come in, and just observe. Watch your emotion as you would a bird alighting on a tree. Don’t scare it away with any sudden movements. If you feel jarred by the emotion, if it threatens to overpower you, soothe yourself with deep breathing. Breathe in and say, “I acknowledge this emotion and I breathe into it.” Then breathe out and say, “I acknowledge this emotion and I breathe it out.” Breathe in, breathe out. Smile as you breathe. Relax. Trust. Allow the whirlpool that has sucked you down to spit you back out. Let the emotion flow.

Finally, step four. This one has to do with times when you are outside the laboratory: here at church, or at work, or at home. When you sense that you’ve just stopped an emotion—when you’ve automatically scared away the bird in the tree—acknowledge that you just did that, acknowledge that this was part of survival growing up, and be thankful for that, but that was then and this is now. Now is a different time. So find appropriate opportunities to express the neglected emotion. Look for them. See what that’s like. Conversely, when an emotion flows freely, when it’s like a whole flock of birds descending upon the tree, as in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, take a deep breath. Try to consciously live with it for longer than usual. Someone in the social hall says something about spirituality (or politics, or anything else, really) that immediately strikes you as ridiculous, and you feel the irritation surging up, the aching desire to express scorn. Take a deep breath and press pause. Hold the feeling in your hands. I know it’s hard. I so know it. But if you do, the bird will change shape. The bird is mythological, magical. Perhaps you will see the shame that’s there, or something else. The bird is trying to tell you a story … about you. It’s coming home to roost. It’s your one wild, precious life singing to you, a songbird.

Beauty, only when we embrace the beast. Let’s plant the seed.

Consider this one, coming from William James, pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who struggled with self-trust. As a young man William James was in the grip of the free will-determinism controversy: are humans mere machines, predetermined in everything they do, or is freedom of the will a reality? This ancient question only amplified the chronic instability that he experienced in his family of origin; it gnawed at him, tore at him; and then, after a series of health issues and the death of a beloved, free-spirited cousin, the bottom fell out. “Whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general depression of spirits about my prospects,” he wrote, “I went one evening into a dressing room in the twilight to procure some article that was there, when suddenly there fell upon me without warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. Simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin … who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment, drawn over them enclosing his entire figure. He sat there like a sort of sculptured Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. This image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other. That shape am I, I felt, potentially. Nothing that I possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour for it should strike for me as it struck for him.” James continues, “After this the universe was changed for me altogether, I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before, and that I have never felt since. It was like a revelation; and though the immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. It gradually faded, but for months I was unable to go out into the dark alone. In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember wondering how other people could live, how I myself had ever lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life.” That’s William James’ horrible vision. Self-trust destroyed. Fear of his own existence, of his own body and mind potentially working against him, potentially becoming inert, mummified, non-human, green. The pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life, revealed. Self-trust completely stripped away, together with knowledge of how possibly to live.

Yet the story does not end there. Around fifteen years after the horrible vision of the green-skinned patient in the asylum, in 1884, William James would stand before Harvard Divinity students, Unitarian ministers-in-training all, and present a lecture entitled “The Dilemma of Determinism,” defending freedom of the will against determinism, commending self-trust, pointing out, among many other things, that the very existence of regret—the feeling we get when we do something which we wish we hadn’t—suggests that deep within we know we are not puppets whose strings are pulled by forces beyond us. Freedom is a reality we know deep within, said James, even if our intellects may be tangled up by the complexities of philosophical debate or paralyzed by the lack of indisputable evidence to decide the matter once and for all. Something happened to William James that gave him his life back. Something happened that gave him a voice, got him up there to speak before our Harvard spiritual ancestors, made him the pioneering psychologist and philosopher that we know him as today.

It was something he read, several weeks after the horrible vision. An essay by French philosopher Charles Renouvier, in which he defines free will as “the sustaining of a thought because I chose to when I might have had other thoughts”—in which he says that to recognize this capacity is itself a free act. This is what James seized on. This is what turned things around. In his journal he would write, “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will. For the remainder of the year, I will abstain from the mere speculation and [the brooding] in which my nature takes most delight and voluntarily cultivate the feeling of moral freedom, by reading books favorable to it, as well as by acting.” Inspired by Charles Renouvier, William James planted a seed of soul, and he carefully cultivated it, and it grew into self-trust, and this self-trust taught him how to live.

That’s what we’re talking about today, in this third installment of the “Planting Seeds of Soul” series: building self-trust by encouraging and increasing the feeling of being free, of being able to summon inner forces to act. As meditation teacher Warren Lee Cohen puts it, “By building accomplishment onto accomplishment, you can cultivate this very capacity to do anything that you set your mind to, creating a new kind of ‘muscle’ in your soul.” That’s the goal.

And the achievement of this can’t be overestimated. To be able to say no when it would be easier to go along; to be able to say yes when it would be easier to stay safe; to be able to replace an unhealthy habit with one that is healthier; to be able to adjust the course one is on: without some sense of control over our lives, we fall into despair. Freedom undeveloped and unfulfilled festers. To ourselves, we become as fearsome and strange as the figure of William James’ horrible vision.

We’ve just got to have a sense of our freedom. Jonathan Haidt talks about this in our study book from last year, The Happiness Hypothesis. He cites a classic psychological study in which benefits were given to residents “on two floors of a nursing home—plants in their rooms, and a movie screening one night a week. But on one floor, these benefits came with a sense of control. The residents were allowed to choose which plants they wanted, and they were responsible for watering them. They were also allowed to choose as a group which night would be movie night. On the other floor, the same benefits were simply doled out: the nurses chose the plants and watered them; the nurses decided which night was movie night. This small arrangement had big results: On the floor with increased control, residents were happier, more active, and more alert (as rated by the nurses, not just the residents), and these benefits were still visible eighteen months later. Most amazingly, at the eighteen-month follow-up, residents of the floor given control had better health and half as many deaths (15 percent to 30 percent).” Jonathan Haidt’s conclusion? “Changing an institution’s environment to increase the sense of control among its workers, students, patients, or other users was one of the most effective possible ways to increase their sense of engagement, energy, and happiness.”

Even the smallest arrangements in the direction of expanding control have big results. Jonathan Haidt cites yet another classic study, in which people were exposed to loud bursts of random noise. “Subjects in one group were told they could terminate the noise by pressing a button, but they were asked not to do it unless absolutely necessary. None of them ended up pressing the button, yet the belief that they had some form of control made the noise less distressing. Later in the experiment, when they were given difficult puzzles to work on, they were far more persistent than the other subjects, who were exposed to the loud bursts of noise without any sense of control.” There’s just a Hanukkah subtext to all of this. Take from people a sense of control, and it is as if you have stormed their temple, ruined their religion of the spirit, banished them to the mountains; but give it back to them, or help them to rediscover it for themselves, even in the smallest ways, and the temple is restored, the temple is rededicated, and at the center of it all is the miracle of willpower, the miracle oil in the lamp, lighting up the dark.

It’s why town hall meetings and congregational meetings matter. Why volunteerism matters, and financial generosity. Each is an opportunity for people to increase their sense of engagement and energy, and here too science reveals big results. Studies show that if you participate regularly in congregational life, chances are you will be healthier and happier and live longer. Plant the willpower seed, and good things grow. It can happen institutionally, and it can happen personally. Practice the soul exercises I’m sharing with you on a monthly basis. Make a Happiness Pledge, or continue working on the one you committed to this past April, as I am: my pledge is refraining from eating beef and poultry and pork for all sorts of sustainability reasons—feeling good about this change in my diet, feeling better, although I have to admit, I fell off the wagon pretty badly during Thanksgiving, thanks to our music director Don Milton III and the amazingly deliciously tempting turkey he cooked…. But perfectionism is not the point. It never is. It just paralyzes the will, but what we want is to strengthen it, plant the seed and help it grow. What counts is effort. Show up, and keep on showing up. With every exercise of will, to increase the feeling of being free, of being able to summon inner forces to act.

Even and especially when we’re not really sure what it is we ultimately want, or what’s ultimately best. As Barbara Sher says in her fantastic book I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, “many of us get stopped. Every time we resolve to change our lives, every time we go to pick up the baton and get into the race [to pursue our unique destiny and potential], something happens. For some mysterious reason our determination melts. We look at the baton and think ‘This race isn’t it.’ And we put down the baton, uneasy because time is slipping away, frightened that we’ll never find ‘it.’”

Determination melts. Willpower drains away. We become the green-skinned horrible vision. And it IS horrible, this sense of personal powerlessness which translates into doing nothing, because in this way we lose all sorts of precious opportunities. We lose our way. “Action,” says Barbara Sher, “is absolutely essential for people who don’t know what they want.” “I can give you four good reasons,” she says, and they are:

#1: Action helps you think. “By exposing you to real-life experiences and seeing how they feel to you, action will help you do much better thinking than you could ever hope to do sitting still and weighing all the theoretical factors. Even action in the wrong direction is informative.”

Reason #2: Action raises your self-esteem. “Most inaction,” says Barbara Sher, “isn’t solely about indecision—it’s because of fear. But every time you want to do something that scares you, and you dare to do it, your self-esteem goes up a few degrees. When you’re fearful but you step forward anyway, you do yourself a great service.”

Action helps you think, it raises your self-esteem, and now, reason #3: it brings good luck into your life. “Try it,” says Barbara Sher. “Set a goal, any goal, and start doing everything you can to achieve it. I guarantee you, your life will change. You might not get where you thought you were going, but you could easily wind up somewhere better. You’ll get breaks you never could have planned for because you never knew they existed.”

Finally, reason #4: Action builds self-trust. “Sometimes,” she says, “your wishes or your timing look a bit odd, but if they feel right, stick with them. You can trust your animal instincts. The animal inside us knows how fast to move and how much we can carry. And it tells us things that don’t always make sense—at first.” Like Jessie in our story from earlier—our forty-five-year-old lady in a straight skirt and sensible shoes—sometimes, to get to the point where you can make the big practical change in your life in Atlanta, Georgia, you have to go to Bear Grease, Minnesota first, and you have to race sled dogs. You just have to.

And there’s the four good reasons for action even when we’re not really sure what it is we ultimately want, or what’s ultimately best. It’s the quote from Goethe, exactly: “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

And now it’s time to introduce this month’s soul-raising exercise.

It’s extremely simple—deceptively so. Choose a simple task that you will do each and every day at exactly the same time, like turning a ring once around your finger at noon, or shifting a set of keys from one pocket to another right in the middle of your sermon. As meditation teacher Warren Cohen says, “The task is better if it serves no obvious or current purpose in your life—in other words, you do the task in and of itself, out of a certain dedication just to doing it.” This guarantees that the complete focus is on doing what William James did: voluntarily cultivating the feeling of freedom, without reference to anything beyond it.

Four basic steps:

Step one: Choose the task and the time you will do it every day. It’s best if the task is simple and can be done without making you look too weird. (NOT, for example, doing the American Bat Face on your daily MARTA trip… You all remember the American Bat Face, right?) Choose a good task and create a plan in which you do it along with the other two exercises—you don’t want to forget about the review of the day and the clear thinking assignment. Remember, each exercise complements and balances the others; practicing any one of them requires practicing them all.

That’s step one—step two is: do it, and keep track of how it goes, in your journal or with friends, or both. Be sure to celebrate your successes. If you forget, do the task as soon as you remember. It’s never too late.

Step one, step two, and now step three: As you get more proficient at performing one task, add another. “Work your way up to three simple tasks per day, each of which you aim to do at its own specific time. Try spreading them out through the day and thus also learning about which parts of the day are better times for you to engage your will and which pose the most challenges” (Warren Lee Cohen).

Finally, step four, which comes into play after some practice, and you notice a subtle feeling of inner confidence developing. When this happens, direct your attention to the feeling of freedom; try to become aware of where it is centered in your body; direct this feeling to well up into your head and then pour down, down your spinal cord. Let your confidence enliven the rest of your body. Light up like a miracle Hanukkah lamp.

It’s about rededicating the temple of yourself. Rebuilding, restoring, making things whole. Believing in freedom to be free. Going to Bear Grease, Minnesota to figure out what to do here in Atlanta, Georgia. Turning the ring once around your finger at noon, clapping three times at 3 o’clock, practicing faithfully whatever small task you end up choosing, following the increasing feeling of will force into the vibrant larger life that waits for you.

Can you relate? It’s Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. Busy all day long, but nothing really gets done, because it’s hard to maintain undivided attention on the task at hand. Hard to focus on just one thing at a time and not allow ourselves to be distracted by additional problems that inevitably pop up along the way.

And if it’s this way with the things in our outer world, how is it with the inner world of our thoughts?

The careful, deliberate, reasoned search for truth is a cornerstone of our free faith. Says the father of Unitarianism in America, William Ellery Channing, “Without … inward spiritual freedom outward liberty is of little worth. What [does it matter] that I am crushed by no foreign yoke if, through ignorance and vice, through selfishness and fear, I want the command of my own mind? The worst tyrants are those which establish themselves in our own breast. The man who wants force of principle and purpose is a slave, however free the air he breathes. The mind, after all, is our only possession, or, in other words, we possess all through its energy and enlargement.” That’s what the father of Unitarianism says. A capacity to be principled and purposeful in our thinking is simply basic to our way of faith. Without it, as we sail on OUR passenger ship, we’re lost. We can’t reliably read the signs of the times, nor discover what to do next. As Channing says, we fall prey to “a narrow, dark, confused intellect, which sees everything as through a mist, gives to everything the color of its own feelings, confines itself to what coincides with its wishes, contents itself with superficial views, and thus perpetually falls into errors….” This is not free faith. This is not who we are.

This morning, we tend to our most intimate relationship: the one we have with our thoughts. What are some of the tyrants that can establish themselves in us and muddle our thinking? And how might we develop our thinking so that it can be clearer? Today’s sermon is the second installment of the “Planting Seeds of Soul” series, so remember what I said last month about “wax on/wax off.” We’re going to learn our second “wax on/wax off” exercise today, to raise Unitarian Universalist soul in this place. That’s the goal.

But first: tyrants. One that comes immediately to mind is fallacious reasoning, or patterns of thinking that are bad according to logical standards but nevertheless make an impression on people who don’t know any better. Here’s an example of what I mean. I opened my Atlanta Journal-Constitution from yesterday and read that Georgia Congressman Nathan Deal “wants the president to prove he is an American citizen.” The article clarifies: “In June 2008, Obama’s campaign office released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate … that shows he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug, 4, 1961. Government officials in Hawaii have verified that the document is official. Yet Deal and others say they still have doubts.”

In any introductory level logic class, you’d learn that this is an textbook example of an ad hominem fallacy in formation, which tries to discredit a person’s policies and viewpoints not by presenting genuine evidence against them but by attacking the person, rendering his or her character so disgusting that no matter how good the policies are, no matter how penetrating the viewpoint, no one’s paying attention, no one’s listening. This is what the Birther movement hopes for, as it continues to nurture doubts about Obama’s citizenship status even in the face of an official birth certificate….

It’s just been one ad hominem attack after another. Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, joking about the similarity of Barack Obama’s name to that of the terrorist Osama bin Laden—and using the machinery of his organization to spread the joke around until it becomes no joke. Tea Party participants, carrying signs that feature Obama’s face with a Hitler mustache. A Thomas Sowell article, where he says, “Recent videos of American children in school singing songs of praise for Barack Obama were a little much, especially for those of us old enough to remember pictures of children singing the praises of dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao.” Do you see the steady building pattern of character assassination here? And too many Americans are completely persuaded by it, too many Americans vulnerable. The tyrant of fallacious reasoning, securing a place in our minds, and we don’t know any better. Not as a Democrat, but as an American, does this concern me, for how can I think about what President Obama is trying to do when psychological strings are being pulled and I can’t think straight? It’s horrible for democracy.

It’s definitely been horrible for reasoned debate about health care reform. Ad hominem fallacies one after another, together with others kind of fallacies. How about this one. I spotted it in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution just a few days ago: “Opponents Rally Against Health Care Bill”: 35 year-old David Seward, saying, “I think health care is expensive, but I like it and I’m scared to death of the government running it … I’m worried about the bureaucracy of the federal government getting involved.” This is what he says, and besides his completely ignoring the fact that government-run Medicare is a great success, do you see the underlying false dichotomy? It’s either big government or small government, and no other alternatives are possible…. Yet the issue is not so much big government vs. small government as the right amount of government really needed to solve the problem, to cut through the greed and the waste of the third-party payer medical-industrial complex. Big government vs. small government doesn’t tell the whole truth about how to solve this problem.

I could go on and on—all the kinds of fallacious thinking that have muddied up the debate around health care reform. Rep. Candace Miller from Michigan, commenting on yesterday’s passage of the health care bill in the House, saying, “We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, `this is making me sick,’” adding that Democrats are intent on passing “a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding” bill. Sounds like a classic slippery-slope argument to me, one that says that if government takes action to reform the health care system, if it sets a public option side-by-side with multiple private options and enables some REAL competition to take place, then all of a sudden, down the slippery-slope slide we go, and all sorts of horrible, fateful consequences are sure to follow. A classic appeal to fear. I don’t care what political party you belong to. I don’t care which president is in the White House. To me, manipulative language—Republican or Democratic—doesn’t help to create a great country. “Civil institutions,” said William Ellery Channing, “are to be estimated by the free and pure minds to which they give birth.” But our institutions are not being civil, and our minds must struggle against great odds to be free and pure. What would Channing say, if he could see what we see today?

This leads us to a second inner tyrant to become aware of. Besides the tyrant of fallacious reasoning, there is the tyrant of hyperconnectedness in our interactive, digital world. Here, we become experts in skimming and scanning as we flit from Facebook to text message to email to video game—and this can leave our ability to bring a full attention to one thing at a time severely underdeveloped. It can make us unfit to think great thoughts.

Marilee Sprenger talks about this in her wonderful article entitled “Focusing the Digital Brain.” “Let’s look,” she says, “at what happens in the brain of Emily, an average teenager, as she thinks she is focusing on a homework assignment. Emily sits in front of her laptop. Her iPod is playing music by Coldplay. She has three windows open on her computer screen: her Web browser through America Online, MSN Messenger for sending instant messages and e-mail, and her word processing program. Her homework is to write about five causes of the U.S. Civil War.

As Emily is putting her heading on her paper, her cell phone rings. She quickly picks up her phone and a picture of her friend Ivy appears on the screen. ‘Hi Ivy, what’s up?’

‘You’re not going to believe who texted me,’ Ivy says. Emily squeals as she hears the name of someone Ivy is interested in dating. Just then Emily’s computer flashes, ‘You’ve got mail!’ The executive part of her brain drops the conversation with Ivy as she reads a new e-mail from another classmate asking for the homework assignment. Emily answers the e-mail as Ivy rambles on, but she realizes she should get back to work. ‘I’ll text you later, Ivy. I have to get some work done.’

Emily shifts her attention back to the word processing screen. Let’s see, where was I? Her brain must let the snippets of social conversation drop out of her working memory. Attending to the assignment causes Emily’s brain to retrieve long-term memories of her readings and lectures on the Civil War. As she begins to think about the differences between the North and the South before the Civil War, her mind drifts to picturing Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.

Refocusing takes several seconds as she remembers what Mr. Montgomery told them in class about slavery. Emily types ‘causes of the Civil War’ into Google. Immediately, 12,900,000 hits come up. She clicks on the first link, realizes it doesn’t have any information she is looking for, and tries the next Web site.

Immersed in her search, she is startled by a jangle from her Blackberry. Emily sees Jackson’s text message ‘What r u doing?’ Jackson is Emily’s new love interest, so her brain floods with pleasurable chemicals as she types her reply—these chemicals make it hard to return to homework.

So it goes among the net generation. Multitasking? Not many tasks are getting done.”

Now, I quote Marilee Sprenger at length not to pick on the net generation—after all, I openly confess that I myself have a serious case of Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. In fact, whatever generation we happen to be in—whatever degree of proficiency is ours in up-to-date communication technologies—it seems that the general tenor of the times is rush and gush. Continuous partial attention. How are we going to do the deeply spiritual work of thinking clearly when we have a limited capacity for patience to follow a chain of thoughts from beginning to end—to resist interruption—to focus on one thing and allow it to unfold its secrets?

“[H]onesty of mind,” says William Ellery Channing, “bears an exact proportion to the patience, steadiness, and resolution with which we inquire.” And that’s exactly what we turn to now. Developing this patience, this steadiness, this resolution. How?

Our wax-on/wax off spiritual exercise for this month—for those of you who choose to practice it with me—is “about learning how to cultivate interest in even the most mundane object and by maintaining your undivided attention on it to increase your ability to focus on anything. This is a step in learning how to give your attention freely and completely, whatever and whenever you should choose.” (Warren Lee Cohen).

Four steps:

Step one: Choose a simple, human-made object—an object manufactured rather than one found in nature, like a cup, or a pencil, a pin, a pair of chopsticks. Warren Lee Cohen, the source of this and all the other exercises, says that the less interesting your object appears at first, the more powerful the effects of deliberately focusing on it.

Also be clear on how many objects you’ll focus on over the course of the upcoming month, and for how long each session will be. I’d recommend one object per week, for around 5 to 10 minutes, at the same time every day. Make the decision, and lay out your plan clearly in your journal. Warren Lee Cohen tells the story of a man who spent 20 years contemplating the same pair of wooden chopsticks. Each and every day, he was able to find something new and interesting to think about; and clearly, it wasn’t the chopsticks that were changing—it was him, the quality of attention he was bringing to them. If he can contemplate the same pair of chopsticks for 20 years, surely we can contemplate the same object for a week, at 10 minutes a pop….

That’s step one. Step two is when you’re actually ready to do the exercise. Situate yourself in a comfortable place, and prepare yourself for the exercise by relaxing your body, calming your mind, just like an athlete stretching before a workout, or a musician tuning up an instrument.

Step three is to place before your mind this object that you have chosen to contemplate. This object that, initially, appears boring: A cup, a pencil, a pin. Train your thinking exclusively on this object in a clear and factual way. Focus on one fact and then link it to the next—in step by step fashion, follow your thinking as you deepen your understanding and interest in this simple, ordinary, human-made thing.

For example, say you choose to focus on a pencil. (Thoreau would like that—he was a pencil maker, you know…) You might start by describe how the pencil appears and of what materials it’s made. Then you might go on to describe how these materials were processed to get them into this form—to think through all the stages of manufacture. Then you might go on to consider how the object is used. Then you might think about who invented it, and how its invention is connected with the invention of other similar things. And so on—inquire with patience, steadiness, and resolution….

Notice that in this approach, you just jump right in. But there are alternative approaches to keep in mind. Do the one that works best for you. One alternative is to do a little research about your object first, before you start thinking about it. Another alternative is to do no research in advance but to develop questions naturally through the course of your own thought processes and then, when the time feels right, seek out answers through research. Enriched by that, return to the object and keep on thinking about it, keep on going deeper.

Finally, there’s step four. When your five or ten minutes is done, review the general direction of your thinking. What was the initial fact that grabbed your attention? Where did you go from there?

And this is the exercise. Do it along with the “review of the day” that I introduced last month. “Even if you cannot slow down the pace of your life,” says Warren Lee Cohen, “you can create regular moments of slowness or concentration each day. These can then become seeds, essential reminders of the qualities you would like to cultivate more in life.” That’s right. We’re planting seeds of soul. They look small—focusing on a boring-looking object for 10 minutes seems small—but if we do the exercises faithfully, the results will be big. Will strengthen our minds against manipulation. Will counteract Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder and counterbalance the continuous partial attention of the digital brain. “The mind, after all, is our only possession,” says William Ellery Channing; “we possess all through its energy and enlargement.” So let us energize and enlarge it. Make Channing proud!

We borrow all this, as we begin pursuing our own way. Not an axe, but an angle of vision, the bent of a genius, a way of making the familiar strange, a manner of questioning. The first chapter of Walden is entitled “Economy,” but characteristically, Thoreau invites us to use this word not in its conventional sense of wealth creation or fiscal frugality. He wants us to go straight to the ancient Greek origin of the word—oikonomia—which means caring for the household, a holistic way of living in which your use of life resources is in alignment with vital values of freedom and sustainability and beauty. “I am convinced,” he says, “both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely.” “Economy,” he says, “is synonymous with philosophy.” This is how he uses the term in the first chapter of what has become, in the 155 years since it was published, sacred scripture for Unitarian Universalists today.

Economy is about how you maintain yourself on this earth. Could be a joyful pastime, but what Thoreau discovers as he travels through his own native village of Concord is people experiencing something very different. Just listen to some of his observations:

“Most men … through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. […] The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat each ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”

Or this: “The childish and savage taste of men and women for new [clothing] patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires to-day. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable.”

Or this: “As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements;’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. […] Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end…. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”

Or this: “One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bone with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle.”

Or this: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.”

All are observations Thoreau makes as he travels through his native village of Concord. One after another indicates not joyful pastime, but hardship of some kind or other, and perhaps they echo observations you yourself have made, as you’ve traveled through your own village of Atlanta or elsewhere. The rush and gush of our days; time crunch in an era of so-called time-saving devices; “no time to be anything but a machine.” Or how our culture aims at creating more wants in us (rather than focusing on genuine needs)—churns out expert consumers who are fine-tuned to fashion trends but are blind to more important trends of intellect and heart and soul. How communication technologies today are far more powerful than any of the dreams of yesterday and yet still we can question the value of what is being communicated: obnoxious opinions of know-nothing demagogues; undigested data without pattern or context or meaning—“as if the main object were to talk fast and not talk sensibly.” Or people around us, not paying attention to the evidence of their experience, unconsciously in the grip of beliefs that they have never personally questioned or tested: Thoreau’s farmer condemning vegetarianism even as the vital oxen who unfailingly plough his fields are themselves… vegetarian. Finally, all the do-gooders in our world, unconsciously in the grip of the belief that they themselves are not embroiled in the injustice that they try to ease, that they are strong while others are weak—and so through their do-gooding, they administer band-aids and aspirin, never realizing that far more is needed, radical change needed, the kind of change we need today, for example, in health care. Hardship, in the economy of our time as well as in Thoreau’s, and so no wonder the first chapter of Walden is full of sharp social critique and satire, pages howling with anger and pain. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he cries. “From the desperate city you go to the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.” In other words, to bolster your courage, you’ll have to rely on the example of furry little animals, because human examples are simply hard to come by. “I have traveled a good deal in Concord,” says Thoreau, “and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.”

There has got to be a better way. A better way of maintaining ourselves upon this earth. In fact, that’s the core of the problem right there. People don’t think that alternatives exist. “They honestly think that there is no choice left. But,” says Thoreau, “alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices.” “Man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.” “What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” All of these, golden lines of hope. Alternatives do exist, and we can find them. But we must put ourselves out there, in some liminal, in-between space, where creative solutions can find us. Let that be our self-culture practice. We have to borrow Thoreau’s genius, which is a very crooked one, and risk being misunderstood by our family and our peers, risk harm to our reputation. Shift the nature of our business, towards trying to hear what the wind is saying.

This is what led Thoreau to borrow an axe and begin his social experiment of one at Walden Pond. To see if his humanity could be recovered from the machine-like schedule of his days. To escape the tyranny of a consumeristic culture, and peel away all artificial wants to get down to essential needs. To discover what is worth communicating—to write out his heart and soul. To test his beliefs and see which ones actually reflect and extend his real experience. Not to be a reactive do-gooder, but to better understand the evils and problems of our world—distinguish roots from branches—and attack the roots, take his axe and chop at that. “It would be of some advantage,” he says, “to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods are used to obtain them. […] For the improvements of the ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.” Thoreau goes to Walden to return to essentials, and to sanity. He is a Transcendentalist.

Now I will tell you plainly that the first time I picked up Walden, I had no idea what this guy was talking about. I was in the eighth grade, and I had heard that the book was a classic. Being a student in the gifted and talented program at my school—being a future member of my high school’s I. Q. Booster Club—how could I not want to check it out? I found it in paperback, there on a dark dusty wooden shelf, wedged in tightly among other classics. The cover was not promising—had a weird-looking guy on it with a neck beard. Did he just forget to shave his neck? What’s up with that? I flipped through the pages: tiny print, no picture. Uuugh. Then I started to read. Sentences that had way too many phrases and commas in them, each like long tangled thread. References to Greek and Roman mythology, world religions, science; allusions to stuff I could only vaguely sense. Now, I know that Thoreau is like a contemporary Unitarian Universalist preacher in that he builds the nest of his thought from many sources of insight and wisdom; now, I know that he loved puns and paradox and wordplay, enough to drive his friend and mentor Emerson crazy; now, I know he believed that “in writing, conversation should be folded many times thick.” Now, I know—but then, not at all. Walden was indigestible. I struggled with it for a time, and then gave up.

Now I am in a different place in my life. Perhaps more mature; perhaps more able to navigate his conversation folded many times thick. Definitely hungering for an alternative to the quiet desperation that is contemporary life. And voluntary simplicity as a spiritual discipline sounds very good to me. To what degree does our genuine happiness and wellbeing depend on the clothing we wear, the shelter we possess, the food we eat, the work we do. Is there a way to “get one’s living honestly, with freedom left to pursue one’s proper pursuits”? “The more you have,” says Thoreau, “the poorer you are.” We don’t own our things; our things (or our debts) own us. Simplicity preserves an ability to journey freely through life; but a richness of things weighs us down, puts the cart before the horse, distorts and distracts, “cooks us a la mode.”

At times Thoreau is tongue-in-cheek hilarious as he figures out how to live his voluntary poverty principle. “I had three pieces of limestone on my desk,” he says, “but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.”

Or this story: “A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best,” Thoreau concludes,” to avoid the beginnings of evil.”

And can you imagine being his friend? “I sometimes try my acquaintances,” he says, “by such tests as this;–who could wear a patch … over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon.” Is he right? Is this true? Are we so completely enslaved to keeping up appearances, when in reality all that matters is the inner person, the goodness of a heart, the clarity of a mind, the depth of a spirit?

Applying the voluntary simplicity principle in a consumeristic culture like ours seems hardly possible. Yet I wonder at the effects of at least trying. Reminds me of another story that Thoreau tells, about his axe: “One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I staid there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.” That’s the story. We are the snake in its torpid state. Yet there is a spring of springs that can arouse us, and raise us up to a higher and more ethereal life.

Above all, this higher life is one of trust. “I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do,” he says. “Nature is well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well night incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do: and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith is we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert….” Perhaps the root of all evil is none other than this—our pride—and to it, we must take the axe of voluntary simplicity. Greater than anything we can do or any thing we can own is the world’s graciousness, its simple things; we can trust that life is worth living, no matter what.

This is what the first chapter of Walden is all about. Describes nothing less than a hero journey in the economy of life, picks up huge themes like suffering, the quest for healing, discovery, renewal. Thoreau’s unique angle of vision on all this is what we borrow, as we begin. I’ll close with a poem by Norah Pollard that puts it all in perfect and precise cameo:

I knew a woman who washed her hair and bathed
her body and put on the nightgown she’d worn
as a bride and lay down with a .38 in her right hand.
Before she did the thing, she went over her life.
She started at the beginning and recalled everything—
all the shame, sorrow, regret and loss.
This took her a long time into the night
and a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief—
until sleep captured her and bore her down.

She dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree.
She dreamed of cows. She dreamed she stood
under the tree and the brown and white cows
came slowly up from the pond and stood near her.
Some butted her gently and they licked her bare arms
with their great coarse drooling tongues. Their eyes, wet as
shining water, regarded her. They came closer and began to
press their warm flanks against her, and as they pressed
an almost unendurable joy came over her and
lifted her like a warm wind and she could fly.
She flew over the tree and she flew over the field and
she flew with the cows.

When the woman woke, she rose and went to the mirror.
She looked a long time at her living self.
Then she went down to the kitchen which the sun had made all
yellow, and she made tea. She drank it at the table, slowly,
all the while touching her arms where the cows had licked.

Enter Mr. Miyagi. Daniel initially knows him as the eccentric maintenance man at the apartment complex he and his mom are living in, but as the bullying at school gets worse, Daniel learns that there’s more to him than meets the eye. He’s a karate expert in his own right. Learned it from his Dad, but not as a way of spreading hurt in the world. Karate is a discipline of the spirit—a way of beauty and strength. “Fighting always last answer to problem,” he tells Daniel. The crucial issue is attitude—that’s what’s wrong with the bullies from school. He says, “No such thing as bad student, only bad teacher.”

Soon after that, Mr. Miyagi goes with Daniel to the Cobra Kai Dojo—goes right into the lion’s den, this fragile looking elderly man who is, like, two feet shorter than John Kreese. John Kreese just towers over him, exudes brutality. But Mr. Miyagi calmly stands his ground. Let’s solve things at the karate tournament coming up. Allow Daniel to train for it. No more bullying. Resolve things then.

It’s the kind of movie that makes you get up and cheer (even if the soundtrack is soooo 1980s). Daniel trains night and day with Mr. Miyagi, to hone his karate skills. He also learns more about his mysterious mentor—the fact that he was a World War II hero, the fact that his wife died in childbirth while she was at a Japanese internment camp. This is a man with courage and integrity. And in the end, at the karate tournament, when Daniel wins, he wins with courage and integrity. That’s what karate is really all about.

Now, to move us closer to our focus for today, consider how Mr. Miyagi trained Daniel in karate. If you know the movie, a phrase should spring instantly to mind: “wax on, wax off.” He says to Daniel, “I promise teach karate. That’s my part. You promise learn. I say, you do, no questions. That’s your part. Deal?” And of course, Daniel is all ready to go. “It’s a deal,” he says enthusiastically, with visions of advanced karate moves dancing in his head. So you can understand how confused he is when Mr. Miyagi then says, “First wash all the cars, then wax. Wax on right hand. Wax off left hand. Breathe in through nose, out through mouth. Don’t forget to breathe. Very important. Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off.” And then he leaves Daniel to the task. Daniel has just promised Mr. Miyagi to do what he says, no questions, so he jumps on it. Wax on, wax off. But after several more days of oddball tasks like this—sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence—Daniel has had enough. How is any of this relevant to learning karate? How is any of this going to keep him alive when he fights those Cobra Kai bullies at the upcoming karate tournament? He thinks Mr. Miyagi is just using him. Says, “Four days I’ve been busting my butt, I haven’t learned a thing.”

But Daniel has. He just doesn’t know it yet. Mr. Miyagi has been planting seeds all along, seeds of karate skills, and now he’s going to open Daniel’s eyes. “Not everything is as it seems,” he says, and then he asks him to make the motions of “wax on, wax off.” Daniel proceeds to do exactly that—makes perfect half circles in the air. Then Mr. Miyagi does something completely unexpected: he throws a chest punch at him, and before Daniel even realizes what is happening, one of his circling hands has intercepted the punch and deflected it effortlessly. All along, without his conscious knowledge, his body has been absorbing the karate lessons perfectly. Sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence have trained him in moves that effortlessly deflect all kinds of punches and kicks. Finally Daniel understands. He’s well on his way.

Not everything is as it seems. And this opens the way to our topic today: planting seeds of soul. How the seeds may not seem like much, at first glance, but if they are allowed to grow, the results are amazing.

As in Daniel’s situation, there’s urgency around this. We face bullies, too, which cause harm and hurt. Educator and spiritual activist Parker Palmer says it well, in his classic book, Let Your Life Speak. He says, “We arrive in this world with birthright gifts—then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but fit us into slots.” Parker Palmer goes on to say, “In families, in schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self towards images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism or sexism [or homophobia] our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self in order to gain the approval of others.” That’s Parker Palmer. Cobra Kai bullies of one form or another surround us. Our true selves, like Daniel in the movie, are fighting for their lives. And if we lose touch with them—if we give them up in exchange for living other people’s values—then life turns desperate. We turn brittle and bitter. We burn out. “Only when I give something that does not grow within me” says Parker Palmer, “do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.”

The situation is urgent. “The reason the earth lies shattered and in pieces is because man is disunited from himself.” Emerson said that. We must remember our true selves, re-establish the relationship, root ourselves down in the soil of our souls. Continually work at this, in the face of bullying forces that continually conspire to make us forget, to break the relationship, to pull up roots.

Enter Mr. Miyagi—or, actually, a book that came into my life this past summer, by meditation teacher Warren Lee Cohen called Raising the Soul: Practical Exercises for Personal Development. I was and am favorably struck by his approach, for four reasons. First, his use of the word “soul” fits in with our Unitarian Universalist way, in that what he has to say about it—what the exercises try to accomplish—puts the question of whether souls in a metaphysical sense exist to the side. Some of us believe, others do not, but what all of us can believe is that soulfuless as a quality of living is a far better thing than soullessness. That’s the central focus here: self-awareness, balance, perspective, non-anxiousness, also compassion—being able to deal with the inner critic and the inner chatterer with greater effectiveness. Doing justice to the inner self so we can do justice to the outer world. Soulfulness.

I like Warren Lee Cohen’s emphasis here, as well as the emphasis on safety, complementarity, and comprehensiveness. The series of seven exercises he teaches have been practiced by many people from all walks of life for many years, and they are completely safe, he says, “if performed as described. Their apparent simplicity does not detract from the power of their enduring effect when practiced steadily. They work gently over a long period of time, and will promote lasting change.” But what if you are already engaged in another contemplative or meditative practice—as quite a few of us here are? I’m thinking in particular of our wonderful Buddhist meditation group. The answer? Great—“the seven exercises are an excellent complement to any path of inner learning, and will help keep you grounded and in balance.”

As for the issue of comprehensiveness. This is the part I like best of all. As a Unitarian Universalist, I don’t want to check any aspect of myself at the door, as the price of coming in. I want to bring in my feelings, I want to bring in my will, and I want to bring in my thinking. Feeling, willing, and thinking all have to be a part of my spiritual way, for it to be right for me. Happily, the seven soul exercises that Warren Lee Cohen teaches reflect this. Just listen to their names:

Review of the Day
Clear Thinking
Intention in Action
Balance in Feeling
Positive World View
Open Mind
and
Gratitude

Especially fascinating to me is the order in which they are given. The first, Review of the Day, which is the one we will learn today, lays the foundation, and the rest follow in an intentional sequence. “Try not to skip an exercise or stay focused on any one for too long,” says Warren Lee Cohen, “as this will detract from their harmonizing, mutually enhancing effect.” It is a question of balance. Genuine soulfulness requires emotional intelligence as much as intellectual intelligence. And even if you have both, if willpower is weak, then the result is frustration. We need all three to be strong.

And now, like Mr. Miyagi said to Daniel, I say to those of you who are interested, and want to practice these soul-raising exercises over the course of this year, “I promise teach karate. That’s my part. You promise learn. I say, you do, no questions. That’s your part. Deal?”

Actually, you can ask questions. That’s OK. Another difference between what we’re doing now and the movie is that I’m going to be a fellow learner. We’re going to be planting seeds of soul together, one seed each month, for the next seven months.

And so: the first exercise: Review of the Day. Here it is, in all its “wax on, wax off” glory:

1. Create a space of 5 to 20 minutes for this exercise at the end of your day. Make it a part of your daily practice. Get into a new rhythm—try your best.

2. Situate yourself in a way that minimizes distractions and discomfort. Some people choose to walk as they do this; others stand; still others sit in a chair, or on the floor, or in bed. Find a place and a posture that suits you.

3. Relax your body—calm your mind. Think of an athlete stretching before practice or a musician tuning an instrument before playing. Warm up.

4. Begin the rewind. Starting with where you are, picture yourself going through your day backwards, as if you were witnessing things from outside, as an onlooker. Capture as many sights, sounds, smells, tastes, conversations, as you can. See how far you can get. Can you get to your first waking thoughts? Can you even get beyond this, to your dreams before you woke up? Allow knowledge of yourself to unfold.

Three pointers here, before we go on to the next and last step.

First one: What if your mind veers off on a tangent, as is so easy to do? Try to follow your thoughts back to where you left off. Track them down, thought by thought, image by image. Then continue where you left off. Of course, since we such are complicated creatures, when you find yourself veering off, in the moment you realize it, the inner critic might decide to show up and start berating you. I’ll have a lot more to say about the inner critic this year—doing these seven exercises is going to give us lots of practice in dealing with our inner gremlin, trust me. For now, just don’t allow yourself to get sucked in by the drama. Try to be patient and forgiving of your limitations. Respond to the inner critic gently. “Thank you for sharing your perspective, but now I will carry on with what I was doing.” Something like that. A good way of dealing with outer critics as well.

Second pointer: “Some people complete this exercise easily in 5-10 minutes. Others struggle to do even part of their day’s review in half an hour, or fall asleep right in the middle of things. What is most important, however, is not that this exercise is done perfectly, but that you have put effort into it, and that over time you are improving. It is the effort, the active work of soul, that fosters development. The point is to learn how to live a more meaningful life, not to be perfect, so be kind to yourself. Forgive. This is essential in any undertaking and even more important when the challenge is to develop your soul.”

And now the third pointer: “If it is very difficult for you to review your whole day, then I suggest you try to review just a part of your day, say from lunch back to breakfast, or from what happened when you returned from work or school. Again, perfection is not the point. What is the point is establishing a regular rhythm to your inner work—trying to do it every day and better still every day at the same time. Getting into a regular rhythm is key. Rhythm will strengthen your practice and will, in time, bring the best results.”

As for the final step of the exercise:

5. Finish up in a way that feels good for you. I say this out of consideration for the kind of impact the Review of the Day exercise can have. It can help put the day to rest; give it a sense of completion; enable a sounder sleep—some people even testify that it helps ease insomnia. Above all, the Review can help us see our lives with greater perspective. While we’re living our day forward, what happens may at the time seem insignificant or completely ordinary; yet looked at again, it can shine in a whole new light, for now it is finding a place in the context of the whole day. Positive patterns emerging and becoming known. True self emerging. We may also get clearer about the things in our day that drain our energy and leave us depleted—enabling us to be in a better position the next day and the next for making better choices. In light of all this, you may choose to end the Review of the Day with an entry in your journal, to write about the insights that arise, goals for the future. Another way of ending might be to share your reflections with a friend or a spouse—if you both do this, it can lead to strengthening your relationship, and that’s great. Yet a third way of ending can simply be to say thank you—thanks to the universe, thanks to God, or just plain thanks—for the gifts of the day, or simply the opportunity to become more aware of them.

It’s all about planting seeds of soul. One seed each and every month. Earlier, Parker Palmer talked about how we can be trained away from our true selves by various bullying forces: in families, in schools, in workplaces … and then he adds to the list religious communities. (Did you notice that? I did.) It’s true. We can lose our souls even in the very places that are supposed to help us find them. But not here. Here we are growing Unitarian Universalist souls. We’re going to raise the soul here in our midst, work hard to do that. And if you take up my challenge to join me in practicing the seven exercises, remember, if and when you find yourself wondering what they have to do with justice in the larger world and justice in our souls, remember Mr. Miyagi, and Daniel, and wax on, wax off. Sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence. Not everything is as it seems. True self will rise.

The story happens in Chicago. My family and I are living on the south side, in Hyde Park, right there on the campus of the University of Chicago. We’re living up on the third floor of an apartment, perhaps 100 yards away from the corner of 57th Street and Woodlawn, which was a very busy intersection—students and professors and all kinds of people intent on going someplace, either a university building or a café, or market, or bookstore. There was a bus stop at the corner as well, so at certain times of the day, there’d often be a line of people waiting.

That’s usually when Zeno would show up. With his mysterious cat eyes, he loved to watch people in all their busy-ness. He loved to be loved, and offered himself without any hesitation or shame to people’s caresses. It was all easy as pie, there at the corner of 57th and Woodlawn—just like shooting fish in a barrel. On a daily basis, he would come down the three flights from our apartment and settle right in the middle of things: people in midstride, people waiting in line, the whole world turning. We knew that this was his regular habit because, also on practically a daily basis, we got phone calls. People leaving messages on our answering machine. “Did you know that your cat is on the corner of 57th and Woodlawn?” “In case you’ve been looking for your cat, just wanted you to know that he’s on the corner of 57th and Woodlawn.” Helpful voices all, but tinged with anxiety, as if something were wrong. It would make us laugh, because we knew Zeno was just fine. Doing what he loved to do. People watching. Loving and being loved.

It led me then—and it leads me now—to wonder about how he saw things. And not just him, but non-human animals in general. The mystery of animal sight and experience. How this moment is being experienced right now, by our beloved pets.

A fascinating answer to all this comes from Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science from the University of Illinois who is also autistic and has used her autism as a bridge to the animal world. “Normal human beings,” she says, “are blind to anything they are not paying attention to. [But] my experience with animals, and with my own perceptions, is that animals and autistic people … don’t have to be paying attention to something in order to see it. Things like jiggly chains pop out at us; they grab our attention whether we want them to or not.” That’s what Temple Grandin says. The details are riveting. Animals and autistic people can’t not see them. It’s like Mr. Monk on TV, compelled to touch each parking meter as he walks on by. It’s like my cat Zeno who couldn’t resist the sudden movement of a twirly plastic thingy. It’s like the dog who’s barking his head off, but we’re not sure at what.

It’s also like 1200 pound cows who refuse to enter into a cattle chute because they are so utterly distracted by the thing that lies there at the chute entrance: a white Styrofoam coffee cup. Cows freaking out, crowding, crushing together, as if they had come face to face with a mountain. Leading to conditions that are extremely dangerous for the human handlers. And to this as well: an entire line at a cattle-handling facility shut down. A delay that costs $200 a minute. All because of a tiny coffee cup.

It’s for exactly such reasons that Temple Grandin is often called in to do a consult. The head honchos of farms and meat packing plants, calling her in a panic because the cattle or the pigs or the chickens are acting in bizarre ways and all the resident experts can’t for the life of them figure out why—so she comes on the scene and, bam, just like that, she figures it out. To them, she’s a miracle worker; but all she says is that she just sees things the way animals see them. She sees the details that are spooking them because her autism opens her up to that; the very same details grab at her and won’t let her go as well. Seemingly wrong details, as in sparkling puddles, shiny spots on metal, little pieces of moving plastic, sharp contrasts of light and dark, slowly rotating fan blades, and so on. Details that don’t register in most people, details to which we can be utterly oblivious….

“That’s the big difference between animals and people, and also between autistic people and nonautistic people,” says Temple Grandin. “Animals and autistic people don’t see their ideas of things; they see the actual things themselves. We see the details that make up the world, while normal people blur all those details together into their general concept of the world.” We abstractify, and these abstractifications become our reality.

Two famous psychology experiments make this point plain. One comes from psychologist Daniel Simons, and it’s called Gorillas in Our Midst. People are shown a videotape of a basketball game, and they are asked to count how many passes one of the teams makes. Then, a little while into the tape, while everyone is sitting there counting passes, a woman wearing a gorilla suit walks onto the screen, stops, turns, faces the camera, and beats her fists on her chest. Fifty percent of all people involved in the experiment fail to see the gorilla. Ask them if they saw something weird, and they say, no—don’t know what you are talking about. People abstractify. They live in their abstractifications.

NASA did a study with commercial airline pilots, and the results were full-on scary. The pilots were put in a flight simulator and asked to do a bunch of routine landings. But on some of the landing approaches, the experimenters added the image of a large commercial airplane parked on the runway, something a pilot would never see in real life. One quarter of the pilots landed right on top of the airplane. They never saw it. About this, Temple Grandin says, “I’ve seen photographs of the study, and what’s interesting is that if you’re not a pilot, the parked plane is obvious. You can’t miss it, and you don’t have to be autistic, either. […] But if you are a professional, expecting to see what a professional normally would see, there’s a 25 percent chance [you’ll land right on top of it.]” People abstractify—and professionals doubly so.

Which is not to say that abstractification or professionalism are bad things. Being able to cut through the countless details of our sensory existence to get to what’s relevant is often a very good thing, and allows us to focus on the task at hand. Yet as with anything, there must be a balance. Getting lost in abstractification can get us unto trouble. The professionalized map in our heads at times can get so out of whack with the reality before us that some kind of collision is bound to happen.

There are so many ways in which this can happen. An entire philosophy of scientific change has been built upon this insight—I’m thinking in particular of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Then we could talk about group behavior and groupthink—people impossible to talk with because they are swallowed up by their slogans. Two words: partisan politics.

And then there is this: fear: shame: people who could almost be said to professionalize in these human emotions: people for whom a traumatic event has happened, and the pain is so great it becomes who they are and crowds out every other possibility. It becomes the map in our heads determining how and where we land our planes, determining everything we see. Self-fulfilling prophesy.

But I remember one day, back in Chicago; I was one of those people walking towards the corner of 57th Street and Woodlawn; I was caught up in the abstractification of some worry. And there was Zeno, sitting there on the sidewalk like he owned the spot, watching me with his eyes of mystery. All the details evident to his Zen master eyes. And right then, I felt opened up, released, connected to the moment, restored to my senses. I laughed, I kneeled down, I pet his soft hair. He leaned into me, closed his eyes in bliss. All would be well. Everything was going to be OK.

There are all sorts of reasons why we are here today, in this blessing of the animals service, and surely one of them has to do with how animals helps us cut through our human penchant for abstractification, and release us to be bigger than our mere ideas of things. Especially emotionally. How animals heal our hearts.

Listen to this amazing story that comes from a book entitled Animals as Teachers and Healers. “When I was five years old,” says Sonja Nadeau, “a dog bit me very severely and I had to have nearly 400 stitches in my face. He was my neighbor’s dog, a cranky old cuss, and he was sick. When I went near to comfort him, like I always did with sick or injured animals, he was on me instantly, tearing at my face. The next thing I remember, I was on the sofa at my friend’s house and her parents were sobbing. ‘Oh my God, her face … her face …’ I didn’t know what they were talking about, I must have been in shock, and I said, ‘What do you mean? What’s wrong with my face?’ And they thoughtlessly handed me a mirror.

“I was in the hospital for about three weeks, and the pain was terrible. Afterwards, people’s comments were terrible. I don’t think I ever really faced that time in my life—I just put it away. The fear continued to look large, even as the scar faded and became harder to see. But years later in the safety of a small group, I finally got the courage to bring it up. I talked about the accident and the scarring of my face and how this affected my self-image and my feelings of trust in the world. Our group leader, a man of Native American descent, said, ‘I think it’s time for you to go see Waluna.’

“Now Waluna was his white timber wolf. I was scared to death at the prospect, and yet somehow on that particular evening, I knew it was time. So we went out, through the gate, to Waluna’s pen, went inside. Waluna was a huge wolf with ice-blue eyes, and as she locked eyes with me, her owner released her from her lead, and then he stepped out of the pen. I was alone with this wolf.

“What Waluna did next amazed me. She came over to me and jumped up, putting both paws on my shoulders, never once breaking eye contact. Then she leaned forward and begin making tiny bites all along the faded scar line on my face. She went all along its length with these tickling little nibbles, very slowly and very gently. I knew instantly that in her own way she was mending my face. I stood, not moving a muscle, my eyes squeezed shut. I opened them when Waluna began licking the scar and licking my face. There really are no adequate words for this: I felt a tremendous healing ripple run through me. It wasn’t just my face that Waluna made okay, it was the fear that had been with me for years. In that moment, it had just melted away. The wolf’s eyes met mine again, then she jumped down and left, as simple as that.

“After that night, I finally had courage enough to look at all those fears I’d carried for so many years, and to come to peace with them. The wolf let me know that I could handle those memories, work through them, and that I would be all right.”

Bless our animal companions. Cat or wolf, dog or bird, rabbit or turtle or more, bless them for cutting through our abstractifications of heart and mind. Bless them for bringing us back to the sanity of the precious moment, here and now, and all will be well, everything is going to be all right.

But to get there, it takes … one horn to make you strong, another to make you pleasing, a third to make you wise, and a fourth to draw you out of the world. Each horn in Mitchell Chefitz’ story represents a key developmental challenge coming before us, as we learn across the lifespan and grow our souls. Let’s take a look.

Starting with the shiny horn of strength. It reminds me of a time in my own life, in the eighth grade, when the man selling horns came knocking on my door in the form of the public school teacher who led the Gifted and Talented Program I happened to be in. For the life of me, I can’t remember her name, but I will never forget what she offered: an opportunity to do some creative photography. She handed me not a horn but a camera. She said, learn how, investigate, explore. One afternoon, when everyone else at my school was in a classroom, we were outside on a field trip, just the two of us, a beautiful sunny day, visiting fascinating old buildings in the neighborhood so that I could take pictures capturing interesting angles of vision, varieties of light and shadow, stories held within silent spaces and walls. Ultimately, the pictures went into a portfolio which was to be my project for that eighth grade year, but the larger lesson was not nearly as time-bound; it has stayed with me ever since. An experience of being challenged to do something that, for me, was hard. A discovery that I was up to the task—that my “seven dollars and seven cents” was enough. And then this: a memory of a teacher who believed in me, so that I could believe in myself.

That’s the horn of strength. Developmentally speaking, it’s about establishing ego-identity and self-esteem—a sense of being a unique individual capable of willpower, mastering difficulties and making a mark upon the world. The sound this horn makes says it all. It’s a blast that rattles windows blocks away. It’s the sound of “Here I am, I am me, deal with it!”

Yet this is only the beginning of our long journey through life. “Impressive,” says the man selling horns when he hears Gabriel blast away, but he is clearly not impressed at all, and he says, “Let’s see how you do with this.” Out comes the silver trumpet, mirror bright. And Gabriel soon discovers that finesse, not force, is the way to playing this instrument. Just the slightest breath, so soft, so sweet. As for the result—completely different from that of the horn of strength: people come to hear. Friendships form. He marries and has a family. Does he play the trumpet, or does the trumpet play him?

The developmental theme here is relationship, in other words. “I am” becomes “we are.” It is no accident that Gabriel receives this horn in his adolescence, which is a time when one’s sense of individuality (won much earlier) opens up to other people. Paving the way to this is surging hormones: one moment you feel the joy of belonging, another moment you feel the pain of being an outcast. Highs and lows. And then passion, romance: does she love me, does he love me? At this time in life, the elemental power of our emotions is revealed, so no wonder that the key learning here is balance and moderation. Gabriel comes to realize, as must we, that all that’s needed to play the silver horn is the slightest breath. Too much—overkill—disrupts the delicate dance of friendship and love—and even democracy, I would add. You end up with something like the recent town hall meetings on the issue of health care reform: namecalling, ugliness. Not attractiveness. Not the dance.

With public issues that are of such momentous importance, but also private issues, relationship issues, it’s imperative that we learn how to play the silver horn. That we learn to live according to the covenants that we establish with each other. That we learn civility. That we learn how to get the work done and live with it even if we disagree.

For 30 years, Gabriel plays this horn—and then his journey through life moves into yet another developmental phase. Interestingly, it echoes something that the great psychologist Carl Jung once said: that the focus of the first half of life is establishing ourselves in the outer world: forming an ego, finding our proper vocation, creating a family, and the like. But then at mid-life comes the crisis. Perhaps we have been living someone else’s life and values and we are only now realizing it. Perhaps we have been feeling content and satisfied and yet, for unknown reasons, confusion comes upon us, disorientation, boredom, depression, disappointment in ourselves and others, or just general restlessness—and now the focus must shift to that of the inner world of meaning and spirituality. Reconnecting with ourselves and the universe at a deeper level than ever before.

Quite unexpectedly, the seller of horns returns. And this time, he offers Gabriel the golden horn of wisdom, which is strange enough to be a thing out of Alice in Wonderland. Gold on the outside, clear like glass on the inside. Light to the touch, but also heavy. Definitely a horn meant to be used, but closed at one end. Seemingly finite on the outside, but infinite on the inside. “Your task,” says the seller of horns to Gabriel and to us all, “is to paint the inside of the horn.” But the horn turns out to be endlessly capable of drinking up conventional paint. So what kind of “painting” is the seller of horns actually talking about? What kind of horn is this, anyhow?

Clearly, for Gabriel it represents a scientific puzzle. Yet it could also be an existential one, a philosophical one. In particular I’m thinking about Henry David Thoreau, a key Transcendentalist spiritual ancestor of ours, who’s been on my mind a lot lately since I’ve been preparing for this year’s First Sunday sermon series, starting in October, and he’s the focus. Did you know that for much of his life, he suffered from chronic illness, specifically, tuberculosis? This, for more than twenty years…. He was coughing up blood and having a hard time breathing when he wrote, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” He struggled with immense fatigue, and he had pain in all his joints, his muscles, everywhere, when he wrote, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” All this constitutes its own kind of puzzle. Thoreau’s hopefulness and joy and energy and incredible productivity as a writer—in the midst of his chronic illness. Why do bad things happen to good people? How to live in a world that can be so hurtful and so cruel?

We exist within mystery. Life is a riddle and a mystery. And so, the golden horn of wisdom, above all, is a challenge to our minds. If the horn of strength is about willpower, and the silver horn of attractiveness is about feeling, the golden horn of wisdom is about thinking. How to think about something that is a perfect paradox? How to relate to the mystery with all the intimacy of our thoughts?

Gabriel begins to feed his mind, to free his mind. He learns chemistry, mathematics, physics, cosmology, relativity, string theory. You and I can do that, as Unitarian Universalists, as well as draw from the wisdom of all the world’s religious traditions, in our search for truth and meaning. One thought at a time, we make our way. Yet, as the story suggests, this is not an end in itself. What this phase of our developmental journey does is open us up, ultimately, to nothing less than inspiration. Through careful, one-step-at-a-time study, we develop our minds and make them clear enough and open enough to receive all-at-once flashes of genius. Without careful preparation, though, inspiration has nothing to contain it, nothing to land on.

“With a flash and a rush he knew,” says the story about Gabriel; he sighs into the golden horn of wisdom, paints it with his soul, and the horn “proclaims much more than a sound: understanding and redemption, love and acceptance, grace and beauty.” The implication here is profound. It says that the sign of the truly educated person is not cynicism, but wonder. If you are stuck in cynicism, you are not there yet. “The most beautiful thing we can experience,” Einstein once said, “is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” Einstein, a prince of mathematical physics, used to have a sign hanging in his office at Princeton, which said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Perhaps this is why, at the end of his days, facing the circle of life and death, Gabriel was able to say with eyes wide open, “I’m ready.” “I would like to trade up.” He was full of not fear, but wonder and awe.

The old saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Life offers us one horn after another, and our learnings are cumulative. “I am” leads to “we are” which leads to “we exist within mystery” which culminates in “life is a circle.” And all are to be trusted. All these great teachers of soul. These, and the many human teachers and mentors that have walked with us and supported us along the way, here in this congregation and beyond. We have cause for great gratitude and thanks. Let the congregation say amen.

We take this to heart this morning as we consider some of the most controversial, hot-button ethical issues of our time: abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research. The narrow ridge that each of these separately and together represent. The key to crossing.

But why these three issues, and why now?

Simply this: because of current events close to home and close to heart. Just two weeks ago, on May 31, we heard the news about Dr. George Tiller, shot to death as he stood in the foyer of his church in Wichita Kansas. His women’s health clinic had long been a flash point in the battle over abortion rights because it was one of the few that performed late-term abortions. Dr. Tiller’s murder is especially ironic because just several weeks before, President Obama had delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, talking about “how we must live together as one human family” in order to address the pressing problems of our times, including “violent extremism.” He says, “The question, then, is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without … demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?” “Nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion,” says President Obama, and then, two weeks later, as if to underscore his point, Dr. Tiller is murdered. A great tragedy. My heart goes out to his family as well as to all health care workers and professionals who put it on the line every day to protect women’s health and constitutional rights. Just right across the street—the Feminist Women’s Health Center….

It’s close to home and close to heart. And then there is euthanasia. Regarding this, the current event that comes to mind happened back in late February and early March. I remember opening up my Atlanta Journal-Constitution and reading the March 1 front-page headline: “Suicide group tests society’s limits.” Here’s the first several lines of the article: “Critics charge that the Georgia-based group Final Exit Network is undermining national efforts to make assisted suicide universally accepted and legal. But supporters and members of Final Exit Network said the group merely wants to extend the right to die beyond people who are terminally ill to include those who simply believe their quality of life isn’t worth living. They believe Georgia—where four members of the group are being charged with assisted suicide after a Georgia Bureau of Investigation sting operation last week—is now the new battleground in the fight to extend this right of ‘self-deliverance’ to those whom doctors have not diagnosed as terminally ill.” These are the opening lines of the article. There had been a sting operation, in this state. Four people charged, one of whom (I learned later) is a Unitarian Universalist. In a very public way, the euthanasia issue had come home to roost.

Reading through the article a little further, I saw a quote from the controversial assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian, indicating his disagreement with what the Final Exit Network group is doing, as well as his firm belief that physician-assisted suicide should be reserved only for people judged to have no more than six months to live. And I was struck by this. A diversity of opinion about what a good death means, within the euthanasia movement as in all other movements. Of course. Diversity of perspective on when the prolongation of life goes against human dignity and is truly worse than death. Publicly the debate goes on, and it goes on privately as well, even when an aging parent has made clear his or her do-not-resuscitate request, and yet in the heat of the moment, faced with the doctor’s urgency to save life at all costs, faced with our own grief at the loss of a loved one, do we withhold antibiotics or surgery—do we say no to life-support—and allow death to take its natural course? What do we do?

It’s close to home and close to heart. Abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research as well. Last week, a congregant shared a story with me about her grand-nephew who has hemophilia. Born with it. Discovered by his parents in a horrible moment when, after his circumcision, he would not stop bleeding. From that time till now, he’s had to take a special infusion twice weekly—delivered by needle—so that his blood will clot normally. Yet there is hope that this twice-a-week needle regimen might end someday, through stem cell research. When Peter’s sister, Selena, was born, the parents had her umbilical cord frozen and handed over to a private research facility. In five years, the private researchers say, they hope to have achieved enough progress in working with the stem cells in Selena’s umbilical cord that they can be used on Peter, enabling his body to produce the blood-clotting factor on his own.

A cure like this is just the tip of the iceberg. Diabetes, blindness, Parkinson’s disease, glaucoma, AIDS, cystic fibrosis, stroke, lymphoma, infertility, cancer: all of these and more are potentially resolvable through stem cell research. No wonder some people call the stem cell “the Aladdin’s Lamp of biology.” Rub it, and a genie pops out and grants wishes. But President Bush wasn’t buying, because for him, days-old embryos are destroyed in the process, and he sees this as the taking of life. Some liberals stood with him too, although for very different reasons. Pro-choice feminists concerned about how such research might turn women’s eggs and wombs into commodities. Environmentalists wary of biotechnology and cautious about genetic tinkering. An odd-couple of conservative and liberal standing together—the result being the banning of federal funding for research into stem lines created after 2001. Only research on the 22 stem cell lines already in existence would be federally funded, but the problem here is that these lines “lack genetic diversity and were generated with early methods that produced poorer quality stem cell lines than are now available.” This last point comes from Unitarian Universalist Molly Walsh, who adds that they “also include no disease-specific lines, so scientists can’t use [them] to study diseases. [To make matters even worse,] the original lines were all isolated using a mouse-based media, and these lines would run the risk of introducing mouse viruses to humans, so they will not be usable to treat humans.” It’s true: newer and better stem cell lines could still be developed and studied, but without any federal finding, and this is the big problem. As a 2001 Chicago Tribune article puts it, “federal finding is key because it can unleash a huge army of university researchers who could greatly speed up important discoveries. Without federal money, embryonic research would proceed at a snail’s pace in privately funded labs.” In 2001, the Aladdin’s Lamp of biology was within reach, but President Bush stepped back.

But that was then, and this is now. This past March, President Obama reversed the ban on federal funding, meaning that the pace of research would step up tremendously with a focus on newer stem cell lines. “Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident,” he said, and then he promised his administration would make up for the ground lost under his predecessor. “Rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values. […] But I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly.”

So much has happened in just the past three months. Abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research coming close to home and close to heart.

We are braving the narrow ridge. And now it is time to ask, What’s the key to crossing? How to move forward?

We know what Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav says about this: Be not afraid.

In particular, there are three sources of encouragement that I would have us consider today.

The first is this: that we should not feel like failures if these controversies are hard to resolve and evince a “push-down, pop-up effect”—as in, we push down conflict over here, but over there it pops up again…. We should not feel like failures because abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research are all new faces of an ancient storyline which is this: human ingenuity engaged to ease suffering and enhance life, with the ironic result that feathers are ruffled and arguments explode over limits, over the difference between playing doctor and playing God. The storyline is ancient, and we do well to remember this in the present, as hot-off-the-press news breaks over us like a tide.

The specific myth I’m thinking of is at least 3000 years old, from ancient Greece. Prometheus, who is said to have created human beings out of clay, in the image of the Gods. Prometheus, who gifted humans with the arts of civilization, such as writing, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and science. Prometheus, who saw his children’s suffering and, out of compassion, wanted to improve their lot in life—so he gave them technologies to focus their minds and strengthen their hands, including the use of fire. He stole fire from the Gods and gave it to us. Why he had to steal it is an open question. But steal it he did, and for this, he was punished by Zeus. Chained to a rock for all eternity, where an eagle would come everyday to feed on his liver (which, because Prometheus is an immortal, would regenerate overnight, allowing the whole scene to repeat ad infinitum). It’s an ugly picture. Vicious harm coming to one who sought only to help humanity, because in doing so he transgressed limits established by the Gods. He stole.

It’s fascinating to take this myth and overlay it on the issues we’re talking about today. All sorts of resonances emerge. One in particular relates to the role of technological innovation in driving conflict. For Prometheus, it’s the arts of civilization, especially firemaking. Today, it’s the availability of modern abortion technologies that are safe and ensure women’s reproductive health; it’s aggressive end-of-life care protocols like ventilator support, resuscitation, and the feeding tube that can keep people alive long after their quality of life has diminished irreparably; it’s also powerful microscopes and lab techniques that enable work on a cellular level. What the ancient myth is trying to say is that technological innovation changes our world immeasurably—generates all sorts of new questions—and thus can’t help but spark conflict. It did for Prometheus, and it does for us, it will continue to do so in the future.

The task before us, as we walk the narrow ridge, is only to do all that can be done. Not to shoulder a burden of shame for being unable to clean up that which is inherently messy—and by that I mean the human condition. Technological innovation will shake things up. Established orders will be transgressed, in pursuit of what some people think is progress. Each side will see the other as some kind of thief, and feelings will run high. (Remember this last point in particular, when we get to a quote from Tom DeLay in a moment.)

It’s just the human condition, and we can do only all that can be done. This honesty about ourselves can be a source of encouragement for us, and now here is another source: this insight: that acknowledging the complexity of issues surrounding abortion and euthanasia and stem cell research is OK to do—that it doesn’t represent some kind of evasion or avoidance of duty, as when some politicians filibuster a bill to death, or some fundamentalists spout bumper-sticker theology, as in “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” The issues are just too complex for this. Each specific case has unique aspects that can’t be ignored as we evaluate them. There can be multiple moral principles that appear to apply equally and yet are in conflict with each other. There can even be a single moral rule we all agree on—people on all sides of the debate—and yet this single rule is interpreted and applied differently.

Take the Terri Schiavo case. For about 15 years, Terri had been in a persistent vegetative state. If you had looked at a CAT scan of her brain, you would have seen that large portions of it were gone, replaced by cerebrospinal fluid. Recovery was simply not possible. So in 2000, Florida state judge George Greer ruled that Terri would not have wanted to continue living under her circumstances because they were undignified, the quality of her life was negligible, so he ordered her feeding tube removed. That was in 2000, and after that, the controversy only increased. The tube was removed only to be replaced by virtue of a civil suit coming from Terri’s parents. They wanted her to remain alive as long as possible because they believed that all life, no matter what its quality happens to be, is sacred. On March 18, 2005, Terri’s feeding tube was once again removed. That’s when congressional leaders decided to intervene. House Majority Leader (at the time) Tom Delay called it “an act of medical terrorism” and also said, “one thing that God has brought us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America.” That’s what he said—and I wonder if this is how Zeus might have sounded, when he found out about Prometheus stealing fire—all self-righteous and pompous…. In the end, in an act that was widely hailed as unconstitutional, all but five House Republicans voted for emergency legislation throwing the Schiavo case into the federal courts, the Senate agreed, and President Bush signed it into law.

It was a mess. Feelings running high on all sides. Highly ironic, since all sides saw themselves as speaking on behalf of human dignity. The Golden Rule. Love One Another. Do No Harm. Revere Life. This is the spiritual core of morality, the center, the essence, and we are united in this. Every religion on this planet, from every age, says the same basic thing. Love One Another. How can we disagree on that?

Yet this core religious value, which unites us in the abstract: what happens when we use it to help us figure out social policy—or the politics of whether or not to remove Terri’s feeding tube? All of a sudden, we find ourselves deeply divided, because what does Human Dignity mean, exactly? How do you interpret it in terms of legislation, or rules?

Human Dignity: these two simple words hide a world of complexity. Are we talking quality of life, so when the quality is poor, one’s human dignity is violated and the right-to-die practice of euthanasia is justified? Or does human dignity mean the sanctity of life no matter what, no matter what the condition, so even if you have someone in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years you keep the feeding tube in, because life is an absolute value, life is a great mystery, like a star shining, and who are we to say exactly when the shine should end?

In other words, we’re not all reasoning from the same set of premises. We might possess a different set of facts, or a different set of errors. How about different social biases? Different takes on science, or scripture? Different emotional premises? Though we all start with the same Golden Rule, different premises will lead us to different conclusions.

Things can’t help but be complex, and communication difficult, when a reality like this is before us. That’s why President Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame is so important and yet another source of encouragement—the third and last source for our purposes here and now. How do we work through the conflicts? Not by “reducing those with differing views to caricature.” Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, for example, referring to Dr. George Tiller as “Tiller the Baby Killer,” saying “He’s guilty of Nazi stuff.” And then some liberal activists, on the other hand, taking the worst side of the pro-life camp (exemplified by people like Bill O’Reilly) and making it sound like this is the best it has to offer, and thus easily and instantly dismissing it.

Not like this. But through “fair-minded words.” “Because when we do that,” says President Obama, “when we open up our hearts and minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe, that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground. That’s when we begin to say, ‘Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any women is not made casually, it has both moral and spiritual dimensions.’”

Life is perennially messy. The ancient myth of Prometheus tells us that. Yet we must again and again strive to find out how we can live together as one human family. Stop the increasing trend towards violence and hate speech. Hold the Bill O’Reilly’s of both the right and the left accountable. Begin again in love. Discover at least the possibility of common ground, and courageously move forward. That’s how we cross the narrow ridge. That’s how.

Finding meaning within: that is our focus this morning. Living amidst the ups and downs of the world richly, with a sense of something to live for and something to die for. While Rev. Keller has focused on this more generally, my focus will be on exploring our story for today from Paolo Coehlo’s great book, The Alchemist—highlighting the specific wisdom it brings to the art of living.

One insight is this: balance the amazing with the mundane, the big picture with the details. In the story, the wise man invites the boy to wander around his castle and witness all its wonders. But then he says, “As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing any oil to spill.” At first, the boy overfocuses on the drops of oil and misses out on all the wonders. Then he overfocuses on the wonders and loses the drops. Neither will do for the wise man. The secret of happiness, he says, “is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.”

Perhaps one way of thinking about this balance is in terms of alternation. For me, the drops of oil represent the nitty-gritty of our days: the tasks and responsibilities that keep us busy at work and at home, the established relationships in which our lives are grounded, the habits and patterns which give us comfort and regularity. The drops of oil are all this, as well as the perspective that results from one’s attention being narrowly focused on such things. And this is as it should be, says the story. It’s one part of the good life. But don’t get stuck. Make room in your life for the wonders of the wise man’s castle also. At times, expand your perspective into one that’s more us-centered, more community-centered, more cosmic-centered. Do a random act of kindness, expecting nothing in return. Balance times of great busy-ness with times of reflection and retreat. Step back and see your life from the perspective of history. Read a book. Go to a museum. Come to Sunday services here at UUCA. At night when you arrive home, don’t just go straight into the house—pause and look at the stars and feel awe at your existence. Step out of the daily grind and go on vacation. Go on a date with your partner or spouse. Go dancing. Go sing Kareoke. See a movie that takes you out of yourself and into the world of possibility. Try something new.

The art of living requires an alternation between these two: the drops of oil on the spoon, and the wonders of the castle. Otherwise, trouble. If we fixate on the daily and weekly tasks and responsibilities without allowing for times of retreat or play, we become unimaginative and dull. Same thing happens if established habit and pattern rule our lives and we never question the sacred cows, never try something new. The air in our balloons leaks out, and we’re sagging. Life is no fun, because we take ourselves way too seriously. Whereas we may be building up a cathedral brick-by-brick, all we can see is each individual brick, and we are disheartened. Larger wisdom says about every crisis, “This too shall pass. You are not the only one to ever have experienced this. You are not alone. One step at a time.” But if our eyes are fixated just on the drops of oil, we can’t hear that wisdom. We feel alone in every crisis. We make a mountain out of every molehill.

Conversely, if we dwell only within wonder and possibility, then we are flighty. Flaky. Commitment-phobic. A walking, talking Peter Pan syndrome. Everything has to be made new, which means that we keep wasting energy reinventing the wheel. We love to flit about in the midst of other people’s ideas and achievements, but what about our own? Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Why can’t we be more like them, we say, but when it is time for us to step up and lead, we say, Not me. “There is a time in every man’s education,” says Emerson, “when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.” This is what Emerson says, which means that if, indeed, we are stuck in wonder, then we remain abstract in our lives. Because we don’t want to get our hands dirty with details, we end up knowing more about history than making it ourselves, here-and-now. No kernel of nourishing corn comes to us, since the plot of ground which has been given to us to till requires too much discipline, too much hard work.

We’re in trouble, if it’s one or the other and not both. The drops of oil which we carefully carry, and the wonders of the wise man’s castle. Remember both, however—take care of both—and that is the secret of happiness.

It’s a question of balance. The art of living.

But now let’s turn to the other kind of balance that the story points out. It’s subtler than the one we’ve just looked at, but foundational, in fact, to everything else…..

It’s about balancing a desire to experience meaning in life with a capacity for patience. The poet John Keats calls this “negative capability,” which is when, as he puts it, “[a person] is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” Without a burning desire to know, we would never risk putting ourselves in the midst of uncertainties and Mysteries and doubts; but to the degree that our reaching is irritable, meaning evades our grasp. It’s just one of the frustrating and yet delicious paradoxes of the spiritual path.

Desire to know, and yet a capacity for patience. We see this already developed in the boy in the story, even before he encounters the wise man. Clearly he has a great desire to know the secret of happiness, otherwise he would never have left home. And so for forty days he finds himself lost in the desert, wandering, but he doesn’t give up. For two hours, he has to wait his turn to speak to the wise man, but he doesn’t get impatient. When the wise man appears, he has the audacity to say that he doesn’t have time just then to explain the secret of happiness, and then he gives the boy a truly weird assignment: to explore the wonders of his palace while, at the same time, he carries a spoon with mysterious drops of oil in it. But the boy is game: he does it. And then he does it again. And we know that in the end, meaning emerges—but only because the boy has been able to unite his great desire to know with a capacity to trust the process.

It’s a hard balance to strike. The process of our lives can take us into unexpected, strange places, ask us to do seemingly strange things. Stuff happen. And whereas we could be like the boy, just going with the flow, seeing where it takes us, often we demand far more control, and when our circumstances refuse to explain themselves to us—tell us their rhyme and reason—we pitch a fit. Or I should say, I pitch a fit. I just struggle with this at times, and maybe you struggle along with me.

Reminds me of a poem by Billy Collins, called “Introduction to Poetry.” The speaker is clearly a frustrated professor talking about his students, but the speaker could also be God, and the poems referred to our own lives……

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

How are you interpreting the poem of your life this morning? Are you like the boy in the story—in search of meaning, in a strange place, but able to wait, capable of allowing the meaning to emerge in its own good time? Or are you beating your life up with a hose, trying to torture a confession out of it?

The spiritual way is a paradoxical way. To desire meaning with all your heart, and yet not to reach for it irritably. Trusting that it is there. Loving the questions of life, so that someday, you live right into the answers….

There’s an old Italian joke that writer Elizabeth Gilbert tells about a poor man who goes to church everyday and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, “Dear saint—please, please, please … give me the grace to win the lottery.” This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated statue comes to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust, “My son—please, please, please … buy a ticket.”

Life stands before us like a big question mark, and at times we can harden our hearts, or our hearts can go faint, because we do not already have an answer in hand. We want the conclusion before we even begin; we want a guarantee up front; we want … a miracle. But what we must do instead is simply buy the ticket. Begin from wherever you are. Take the first step, and then take another. Give yourself to the rollercoaster ride of life. Place yourself in the field of uncertainty, Mystery, and doubt, and do not despair. Allow life to surprise you. Trust. This IS the secret. Right here.

And it’s hard. Listen to this poem by Sharon Olds, called “The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb.” Listen between the lines to the pride but also grief of the speaker, who is a mom, or a dad:

Whatever he needs, he has or doesn’t
have by now.
Whatever the world is going to do to him
it has started to do. With a pencil and two
Hardy Boys and a peanut butter sandwich and
grapes he is on his way, there is nothing
more we can do for him. Whatever is
stored in his heart, he can use, now.
Whatever he has laid up in his mind
he can call on. What he does not have
he can lack. The bus gets smaller and smaller, as one
folds a flag at the end of a ceremony,
onto itself, and onto itself, until
only a heavy wedge remains.
Whatever his exuberant soul
can do for him, it is doing right now.
Whatever his arrogance can do
it is doing to him. Everything
that’s been done to him, he will now do.
Everything that’s been placed in him
will come out, now, the contents of a trunk
unpacked and lined up on a bunk in the underpine light.

That’s the poem. “Whatever is / stored in his heart, he can use, now. / Whatever he has laid up in his mind / he can call on. What he does not have / he can lack. The bus gets smaller and smaller…”

But is it true that “there is nothing more that we can do for him?” Children grow away from parents and into deeper relationship with peers and mentors, teachers and confidants. This is as it should be. But that’s not all there is to their growing. In adolescence, people flicker between maturity and immaturity in the blink of an eye, and so, what is always possible for parents to do is setting reasonable and healthy boundaries, providing a container with which to continue shaping and reinforcing growth into maturity. This as well: in the midst of all the ups and downs, highs and lows of adolescence, parents can be generous with their encouragement and acceptance, no matter what. Be a true home to their children’s hearts and souls.

One day, the bus leaves. It gets smaller and smaller. But, there is a connection between child and parent that can never be severed, no matter what the relationship might have been like. Even if you move across the country, never speak, change your name. Some of us discover this only after our parents are gone, even when we ourselves have been parents for many years. We learn, with Alden Nowlan, what it means to grow up. He says, “The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.”

As a congregation, we have been on a collective journey of learning the second language of sustainability. The journey began last fall, when, at our Ingathering Service in September, we declared interdependence. Then came our Stewardship Campaign with its theme of “Creating Spiritual Community … Working for Sustainability” during which, in various ways, we took the conversation deeper, culminating on October 19^th when I asked you to let me and the Care of Earth Team know about the sustainability issues and dreams that were important for you. Out of this eventually grew the Happiness Challenges we heard about in worship from January to April of this year, as well as the Building Our Audacious Future Event last month, enabling us—given all the possibilities of all our various dreams—to arrive at four shared congregational sustainability goals, which people then voted on through their willingness to volunteer. When you think about it, this willingness to volunteer is really the only way of determining whether a goal has initial viability, or not. Given the volunteer results, we’ve got a green light for all four goals, and over the next three to six months, we’ll be getting four teams up and running, to champion the four goals. Just to get to this point is a great win for our congregation. Over the course of the entire year, one event led to the next, until today, Earth Day Sunday, we find ourselves in a place to begin the next phase of our Sustainable Living Initiative, when we actually get to work and start implementing goals. Declaring interdependence through more than just words.  

All of it has been about learning and using the language of sustainability, and it IS a second language. It takes effort to figure out and to use correctly. Sustainability is not equivalent to recycling. Sustainability is not just about the environment. What it IS about is doing whatever it takes to build communities of every size—from world community to nations to cities to congregations to neighborhoods—that last. According to the Earth Charter—a key document developed between 1995 and 2000 through the international cooperation of scientists, scholars, and religious leaders—development that is truly sustainable and is good for future generations as much as for the present generation can’t emphasize just one interest to the neglect or detriment of other interests. We’ve got to look for win-win solutions. We’ve got to think bigger and more systemically. We’ve got to look for solutions that honor the environment even as they grow the economy, create a more just world, and strengthen our individual lives. Honor all four points of the sustainability compass simultaneously—nature, economy, society, and personal wellbeing—and you have found the way. Forget about one or more of them, and you’re lost. The cat in our story from a moment ago has just eaten your children and it has just eaten you.

Thus the need for a second language, a way of standing up against all the forces that the cat represents, and scaring them off. Fragmentation is one of these forces. In the environmentalism community, such fragmentation was named back in 2004 by an article entitled “The Death of Environmentalism.” The article acknowledged the irony of environmentalism being so popular in the world and yet not much concrete progress having been made in combating global climate change despite the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars over 15 years or more. Earnest environmental lobbyists crying out, “You’re talking to me about your job and I’m talking about saving the world!” but the message nevertheless falls on deaf ears. The message of “change or else” just not working. Thus the article’s main point: how people who love the earth and want to heal it can no longer afford to be standoffish and isolate environmental issues from other issues like poverty, jobs, health insurance, war, national security, education, or spirituality. From now on, if we want our work to go to the next level of effectiveness, we must see environmental issues as interconnected to everything else. To truly address a problem like climate change, we’ve got to talk about how fighting it can lead to job creation like we’ve never seen before. To address climate change, let’s talk about brokering an alliance with auto companies so that environmental lobbyists will work to lower the costs of health care for the auto industry in exchange for higher mileage standards. Nearly 100 years ago, Sierra Club founder John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” An idea that is both beautiful and true. The point of the article was that modern environmentalism needs to hear the message as much as anyone else!  

“Problems,” Albert Einstein once said, “cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” Sustainability is fundamentally an effort to resist a fragmented view of life and to see how old problems that look like they have nothing to do with each other are actually related at a deep level. That’s why here at UUCA our sustainable living initiative incorporates more than just the zero footprint goal. It also includes a service goal, a story goal, and a happiness goal. We need them all. All together represent our commitment to building our audacious future. If you’d like to volunteer for one of these goals, please visit the Care of Earth table in the social hall after services.

At this point, I want to say a few words about our happiness goal. Earlier, you heard Manette talk about the service goal, Tom talk about the zero footprint goal, and Dana talk about the story goal. The happiness goal is basically this: we seek to celebrate and strengthen individual efforts to live sustainably. It can happen in all sorts of different ways: eating that is more mindful; sustainable living in the home; stronger neighborhoods and communities; increased physical health and wellbeing; better habits around money and shopping; healthier relationships; or an increased commitment to spirituality. Do one or all of these, and happiness of a higher sort grows in your life and in the larger world. Thus our happiness goal as a congregation: we’re going to find ways of encouraging and supporting each other in this.

Please take a look at the yellow insert in your order of service. For a while now, I’ve been asking you to think about what your year-long happiness pledge might be. It was inspiring to hear Kimberly describe hers, and in a moment, I’ll share mine. But first let’s see how the pledge sheet works.

Turn to where it says, at the top of the page, “My Personal Happiness Pledge is….” This is the main side of the sheet I want you to look at. In the box at the top, you’ll write down your basic pledge in one or two lines. Let us know who you are and your contact information. We’d also like to post people’s pledges on the UUCA website, so let us know if we have your permission to do so—see where you can check off yes or no?

When you are done, carefully tear off your pledge sheet along the dotted line, and you’ll turn it in when the baskets come around.

Now take a look at the information under the dotted line. There, you have some example possible pledges, related to several broad categories. For example, look at the category “mindful eating”: beside it you’ll see five different possible pledges…. Each one represents something you could focus on doing all year long. “Preparing and eating food with others,” for example, could turn into a monthly practice of dinner with friends, where you develop your friendships even as you experiment with some healthier food recipes. And so on. It all depends on the kind of new direction you’d like to take in your life right now.   

Underneath, see the box where it says “A copy of my happiness pledge”? Be sure to write down your happiness pledge here too, so you’ll remember it and take it home with you.

Two things to say at this point:

1. What if you don’t want to make a year-long happiness pledge? You don’t wanna…. No problem—this is only a friendly invitation. These pledges are meant to encourage and support people in their lives. For some people, pledges like this give them focus and commitment, and they work.    

2. What if you want to make a year-long happiness pledge, but you aren’t ready? You need more time to think about it, or you’d like to talk to someone first? If this is the case, after services today and also next week, the Care of Earth Team will have a table in the social hall, and you can talk with someone there, as well as turn your pledge in. Beyond next week, you can turn your pledge in to the UUCA office.

As for my own year-long happiness pledge. It has to do with “retiring” a certain jersey of mine. Here it is: [a t-shirt that says, “I love bacon.”) In other words, I’m going to go without meat and poultry for the next year. I just feel ready for this, right now in my life. I’m still going to eat fish, so I guess that means you can call me a “pescetarian.” As with Kimberly, the reasons touch on all four points of the sustainability compass. Not eating meat or poultry is better for the environment; it represents a refusal to go along with the injustices of animal agriculture on a mass scale; it’s easier on the checkbook; and I just want to get healthier and lose weight—especially if I’m going to get back to competing in skating. I’m retiring my jersey. I’ve already gone two weeks without meat and poultry, and I’m feeling great.

Now it’s your turn. When you hear the sound of the happiness challenge, begin filling out your pledge form, tear it off the larger sheet, and in a couple of minutes, the ushers will begin picking them up.

[Happiness Challenge sound--people make their pledges. Then, in a few minutes, the ushers come round to pick them up. “De Colores” is played underneath…. ]

Here’s one story about this fascinating being: Coyote is sealed up in a hollow log as punishment for some trick he played. Once again, he’s been too smart for his own good. So he’s caught in this log and he tries with all his own personal power to escape but it’s useless, he can’t move an inch, the fit is too tight. He’s stuck.

Which makes what happens next so ironic. There he is, stuck in the log with no way out, and all of a sudden he hears the sound of a woodpecker pecking away at the hollow log. And while you’d think that Coyote would be overjoyed at this possibility of release, he’s cranky instead. “What a racket!” he says to himself. “What an irritating sound,” he says. Doesn’t even occur to him that Woodpecker was going to be his salvation. He just hates all the noise. So he shouts at Woodpecker to get away. “Stop that!” Luckily, Woodpecker keeps on pecking. He can’t hear Coyote shouting from within the log. He keeps on pecking away until he’s drilled a small hole that lets in a bit of the light.

And Coyote sees the light—in more ways than one. Suddenly he’s not at all irritated by the sound. Now he wants more of it! He starts shouting again, but this time, it’s to say, “Hurry up! Get me out of here!”

But now that there’s a hole, Woodpecker can hear Coyote more clearly, and Coyote’s shouting scares him away. He just flies away. It’s only when Coyote begins to appreciate the humor of his situation and disengages from all his anger and irritation and just shuts up that Woodpecker feels safe enough to come back and start pecking at the log again, according to a pace and a rhythm that is natural for him. Coyote just shuts up. Doesn’t say another word. Just waits until enough of the log is pecked away, and he is free, and then … he laughs! 

For me, a story like this suggests some of the central themes of comic spirituality, which is what I want to talk about today. Comic spirituality is about being at home in the world amidst all its conflicts and struggles and dangers. Comic spirituality counters the temptations of the tragic point of view. Comic spirituality also says that, when life is at its worst (or when it just happens to be another round of Daylight Savings), a sense of humor saves. Laughter saves. Asbestos gelos. The person and the community and the world that laughs, lasts.

One of the things I love about Coyote stories is that they give us a behind-the-scenes look at how things came to be and how they are—which is playful. Coyote represents an unquenchable lust for being and life, and he creates and acts out of this lust, but he does not do this like the God of the Hebrew Bible, who always seems to know what he is doing and has everything in control. Coyote acts, but he is vulnerable to the surprising and unexpected consequences of his actions, so he can find himself stuck in a jam, and he’s got to figure a way out, and he does, and this results in yet another close call, leading to yet another burst of creativity, and on and on, and such is the process of the evolution of the world. Not by long-range planning—design established from the very beginning and then executed ideally without flaw—but experimentation, throwing yourself into it, seeing what happens next, facing loose ends and incongruities, experiencing breathtaking beauty and meaning but only to the degree you expose yourself to risk and therefore to pain. Shrugging shoulders at this fact of life; perhaps even laughing at the joy and absurdity of it all….

This is what Coyote stories reveal to us, as they take us behind-the-scenes of our everyday here-and-now. The heart of reality is not serious, but playful. Incongruity and pain are an integral part of the deal; sometimes it’s our fault, sometimes it’s not, and our best bet is to stay cool—to resist nurturing resentments and rage—to go with the flow, stay creative and loose. “One day,” goes another story, “Coyote was walking along. The sun was shining brightly, and Coyote felt very hot. ‘I would like a cloud,’ he said, so a cloud came and made some shade for Coyote. But he was not satisfied. ‘I want more clouds,’ he said, and more clouds came along, and the sky began to look very stormy. But Coyote was still hot. ‘How about some rain?” he said, and the clouds began to sprinkle rain. ‘More rain,’ Coyote demanded. The rain became a downpour. But now Coyote wanted a creek to put his feet in, so a creek sprang up beside him, and Coyote walked in it to cool off his feet.’ It should be deeper, said Coyote, and so the creek became a huge, swirling river, and now Coyote got more than he bargained for. He found himself swept up into the currents, rolled over and over, thrown up on the bank far away, nearly drowned. When he woke up, he saw buzzards circling him, trying to decide if he was dead, and he shooed them off. He looked around him. He had made the Columbia River. This is how that great river began.

I always think of Coyote when I sing “Bring Many Names,” #23 in the grey hymnal. There’s a verse that captures his essential spirit: “Young, growing God, eager still to know, / willing to be changed by what you started, / quick to be delighted, singing as you go: / hail and hosanna, young, growing God!”  This is the only kind of God I could ever believe in, I think. Not a God that somehow stands outside of the natural order of the universe, who intervenes supernaturally in ways that favor one person over another or one tribe over another. Not a God that is locked inside the metaphor of maleness, or the metaphor of the human. Not a God that is all-powerful, with unlimited ability to act and yet appears to remain passive and uncaring when evil in the world is truly excessive, far beyond what seems needful for people to grow strong and wise. Especially not this last part, since then, how could the heart of reality be playful? How could anyone truly feel at home in a world in which a God existed who had the power to prevent evil but held back from using it? Allowed the very worst to occur?

There is a current in contemporary theology, called process theism, that takes very seriously the idea that behind-the-scenes is a playful force like Coyote, or the “young, growing God” of our hymnal. Process theism sees God as the creativity of the universe, and there are two sides to this. One is the body of the universe, the evolving interdependent web of all existence. Process theology tells us that it is sacred: galaxies and stars, trees and animals, you and I. All of it is part of God’s growing body. The world is God’s body. That’s the first side, and here is the second. God is a consciousness over and above the universe, just as you and I have a consciousness that is over and above our own bodies. You and I feel our bodies and think about them; we hope things for them and envision goals and futures; and it’s the same thing with God. God has a conscious side to complement God’s physical side. God is both the world and the consciousness of the world. Put the two together, and this is the kind of God that process theology envisions.  

One of the immediate implications of this picture of things takes us right back to Coyote, and to comedy. God simply cannot force the universe to do whatever God wants. Therefore, things can get tangled up. Slapstick happens. Evil happens. God’s power is not unlimited. The universe has creative independence and freedom, just like your own body when it gets sick. Your mind doesn’t want it to be sick, but it is anyhow, and you have got to deal. Same thing with God. God doesn’t want the world to be sick, and yet the world has creative independence. God simply can’t enter into the world supernaturally, like a bull in a china shop, and stop this and start that. All God can do is influence the world from the inside—and I know this might sound strange, but think of how cancer patients participate in their own healing. Cancer patients visualize their immune system as strong, as powerful, as potent, and the immune system responds. Similarly, God visualizes blessing and healing for this world, and if we are open to it, we can respond and receive. Nothing supernatural here at all. God influences the world from the inside, showers continual blessing up on us, impartially, universally, and does it without us having to ask. But the world has creative independence too, and so the blessing might not be received, we might be so stuck in the log of our fears and angers and resentments that we can’t hear God’s still small voice…. The blessing might not be received. That is simply the reality and risk of freedom.

And by now you may be noticing something about comic spirituality. It’s not frivolous. It’s a way of being in the world richly, in the midst of incongruity of every kind—pain, suffering, death. It says, if the heart of reality is like Coyote, or like the God of process theism, then there’s nothing malicious behind-the-scenes for us to resent and rebel against, like some tragic existential hero. Life is an open adventure. Accidents do happen. We can get firmly stuck in logs of all kinds. But don’t forget about the woodpeckers out there, who are on their way. All we have to do is stay calm, and let them do their work to free us, so we can continue the adventure.   

And this takes us to the next theme of comic spirituality, which has to do with resisting the temptations of the tragic point of view. The temptations are great. Two quick illustrations are in order. One has to do with an observation about kite string. Ever gone kite flying, and (wind being the trickster that it is) your kite takes a nose dive, and in the process of reclaiming your kite, you tangle up the string? If you are like me, trying to untangle it can make you impatient, and then angry, and suddenly you feel like a tragic hero. The world is unfair, the world is against me, the world is doing this to me … and before you know it, you have forgotten that your best bet is to finesse things. You are pulling on the tangles way too hard, jerking and tugging them, making a bad situation worse. What was originally just tangle is now a hard knot, an unredeemable mess. 

Second illustration. Think Achilles, from ancient Greek mythology: his famous rage. Rage is the fundamental emotion that moves Achilles in the Trojan War—rage at being dishonored by the Greek general Agamemnon, so he will not fight; then rage at the Trojans who killed his close friend Patroclus, so now he will fight. Rage has him in its grip, and he is bursting with it, and not once does he question whether the Gods are on his side. He does not think: he acts. His deeds are larger-than-life and always to be remembered, but no one would call Achilles wise. The tragic mindset is not wise. Fundamentally reactive as it is, it simply cannot step back from the righteous heat of the moment and cool off; and this means it has a hard time being self-critical, or empathetic towards a different point of view, or creative. Every problem is a nail, to be solved by hammering. Our world—with all its curves and complexities and behind-the-scenes jitters—is just not a good fit for straight-arrow people like Achilles, and that’s why the traditional ending of a tragic story is not the journey that runs ever on, but the journey stopped short by the death of the hero. Tragic heroes are swept under and destroyed by the very life that they are so ill-equipped to understand and work with.

Succumb to the temptations of the tragic point of view, and the result is disaster. We never get out of the log, in one sense of another. Emotions like anger and sadness and fear sweeping us away, and out of these we react to whatever life sends us; we become so noisy we scare away savior woodpeckers for good. This is the key ingredient of the tragic mindset: stuckness in difficult emotions, endless rumination, which makes it difficult to stay loose and creative in our thinking, keeps things way too serious, causes us to feel discomfort with ambiguity and complexity, prevents us from being able to walk a mile in another’s shoes. In other words, low emotional intelligence. People finding themselves in a tangle, challenged by a diversity of valid perspectives and valid concerns, and before you know it, the tangle, which could have been finessed, has become a hard knot, another Middle East conflict. Well intentioned people wanting to fight for justice and for peace, but somehow they bring the fight to each other, and there is petty bickering and posturing and rigid political correctness and a party line; and suddenly these well-intentioned people, wanting to fight for justice and for peace, find themselves in the middle of a circular firing squad of their own creation. If you have ears to hear, then hear this.

But a comic perspective keeps things sane. It keeps us working together in world that is impure, keeps us hopeful even when the system we can’t extricate ourselves from is compromised and flawed. In this regard, I like what Chinese writer Lin Yutang has to say: “[T]he tremendous importance of humor in politics can be realized only when we picture for ourselves … a world of joking rulers. Send, for instance, five or six of the world’s best humorists to an international conference, and give them the plenipotentiary powers of autocrats, and the world will be saved. As humor necessarily goes with good sense and the reasonable spirit, plus some exceptionally subtle powers of the mind in detecting inconsistencies and follies and bad logic, and as this is the highest form of human intelligence, we may be sure that each nation will thus be represented at the conference by its sanest and soundest mind. […] Can you imagine this bunch of international diplomats starting a war or even plotting for one? The sense of humor forbids it. All people are too serious and half-insane when they declare a war against another people. They are so sure that they are right and that God is on their side. The humorists, gifted with better horse-sense, don’t think so.”

Amen to that. The temptation of the tragic point of view is ultimately a temptation to do violence and war—especially in the name of our highest and noblest ideals. But comic spirituality counters it. A sense of humor saves us. Which leads to the third and last theme of comic spirituality I want to address today: the power of laughter—unquenchable, invincible laughter. Asbestos gelos. The person and the community and the world that laughs, lasts.

Consider the experience of Captain Gerald Coffee, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. After three months in captivity, Coffee’s Vietnamese jailor ordered him to wash in a rat-infested shower room littered with rotting things and garbage all around him. As he felt the stream of cold water against his body, he was overcome with despair. There he was in a dismal hole, body broken, totally uncertain of his fate, pressure to do this, do that, hostility his daily fare, men dying every day, the fate of his crewmen unknown. That’s where he was, mind, body, spirit, as the cold water washed over his body. Then he raised his head, and saw something. There at eye level on the wall in front of him, scratched in by some other American who’d been there before him, were these words: “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!” And he couldn’t help but smile. In that crazy place, woodpecker had come for him, and he laughed out loud. He felt such gratitude for the spunk of that unknown American who was able to rise above his own dejection and pain to inscribe a line of encouragement. And Captain Gerald Coffee, there in captivity in a Vietnam prison, found strength to go on.

Sometimes laughter takes us by surprise, and we find strength to go on. Better yet, though, is a conscious intent to nourish our sense of humor regularly. Never allowing the humor tank in us to go empty. Brush your teeth every day, top off your humor tank every day. Watch John Stewart, or Bill Maher, or South Park. Read The Onion. Whatever. Whatever can puncture our self-righteous pretensions, loosen us up, bring us back down to earth, keep us energized and plucky. We laugh so that we can last.

I want to close with some humor aerobics. It’s just like regular aerobics to get the blood pumping—humor aerobics to get the sense of humor pumping. To do it, you don’t have to feel particularly happy beforehand; although by the end, you might just be laughing like crazy, and it feels so good….

Here’s the exercise. It’s one of my favorites—it’s called The American Bat Face. It’s especially good to do right before you are about to enter into a difficult conversation. Let me describe it first: 

1. Place your hand on top of your head, with the fingers pointing straight forward

2. Reach down with the middle two fingers and touch the tip of your nose—pull the nose up, flaring the nostrils

3. Flap your tongue in and out of your mouth while making a high-pitched squealing noise

4. Think to yourself repeatedly, “This is not stupid, it’s silly.”

If this feels too uncomfortable for you, you absolutely have permission not to do it. But I hope as many of you as possible will try it and see what happens. As you do it, see if you can hear Coyote laughing with you…

Ready? Let’s go on three…..

*

You see, there’s an important difference between “stupid” and “silly” that comedian Steve Allen’s son, Steve Allen Jr., points out. He says that “stupid” means ignorant and uneducated. But having fun and playing is not stupid—it’s “silly,” and “silly” is a word that comes from the Old English, meaning completely happy, completely blessed. Silly was a blessing you wished upon those you loved.

I wish that upon you today, and forever. Be more silly in your life, and be blessed.

I wish more people knew this. Though I agree with Rabbi Steinsaltz that good can come out of adversity—that what is ultimate is neither tragedy nor failure—still, when I am in the midst of a particular loss or sorrow, and I am with someone else in a personal conversation, the last thing I want is for that person to try to clean things up for me, tell me it’s all for the best. Don’t do that. Don’t theologize. Just acknowledge my feelings about how it hurts, how it feels unfair, how it sucks. Do that for me and do it for everyone. Just give a hug, or hold a hand. Be present. If you don’t know what to say, say THAT. Help them know that they are not alone.

But Rabbi Steinsaltz is not done with us. What if the person in the midst of adversity is not someone else, but oneself? Here’s what he says: “If I fall and bang my own knee, I have a choice. I can wallow in my own pain, or I can use the experience to stimulate my faith and prompt me to examine my life more carefully and to grow, in empathy and understanding, from my experience.” That’s what Rabbi Steinsaltz says. Each of us is responsible for making some positive sense out of the reality of our suffering. Perhaps we need to wallow for a bit—we’re only human. But then comes the time to move beyond that and go deeper. Can adversity have positive uses? Is it really true, as psychologist Jonathan Haidt says in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, that “people need adversity, setbacks, and perhaps even trauma to reach the highest levels of strength, fulfillment, and personal development”? And, what does that look like? Rabbi Steinsaltz is saying to each of us today: choose to go deeper. Choose to find the good that is hidden beneath the pain. Seek it out courageously.  

To this end, we’re going to explore the adversity story of a person named George Bailey. We know him better in December than in other months, perhaps, because he’s the main character in the Christmas movie classic It’s A Wonderful Life. Yet George Bailey is nothing less than a modern-day Job-figure, having something to say to us in every month. So much to learn from his story. Starting with an up-close look at his particular struggle. See if any of it resonates with you. I know it does with me.

When George Bailey was a teenager, a fantasy formed in his mind of being a world traveler, going to Tahiti, sailing the Emerald Sea—exploring all these exotic locations and more, far away from Bedford Falls, the boring town of his birth. As he grew older, the hopes only grew more ambitious. In the movie, when he’s 21, we see him buying luggage for his trip to Europe. He’s got his life all figured out. First he’ll go to Europe, and then he’ll go to college, and then he’s going to build things: skyscrapers hundreds of feet high, bridges a mile long. He’s going to be a millionaire.

It’s around this time that his father asks him if he’d be interested in returning home after college to run the family business, the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan Company. Hearing this, George goes quiet. Right before, he was laughing and joking raucously with everyone in the house, but when his father asked him this question point blank, George got real quiet. Said, “I couldn’t face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a stuffy little office. I want to do something big, something important with my life!”

Just imagine how George’s father hears this—what this says about how his son misunderstands him. Parents and children miss each other like this all the time. George isn’t seeing his father’s life with eyes of compassion. He’s too caught up in his own success fantasy of skyscrapers and bridges and lots of money.

But you know what happens next. Even if you’ve never seen It’s A Wonderful Life, I’ll bet you know. George begins living into one of the mysteries of the human condition, which is the reality of limits. As a member of the middle class, naturally he’s been brought up believing that people are free to control their own destinies. No limits. Just do it. The only person stopping you from climbing the success ladder … is you. This is where George is coming from. This forms the core of his youth. But now one event after another is going to expose the lie.

His father dies, and George must give up his trip to Europe so he can settle his father’s business affairs. The long road of missed opportunities and regret begins. Then, just as he’s handing off important papers to the Building and Loan’s Board of Trustees, moments before he’s out the door on the way to college, his father’s arch-enemy, Scrooge-like Henry F. Potter, makes a motion that the Building and Loan dissolve. Potter, who is wealthy beyond measure and could easily afford to give, asks, “Are we running a business or a charity ward?” Hearing this, something snaps in George and he finds himself saying to Potter: “You’re right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. […] But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter. And what’s wrong with that? […] Doesn’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers? […] Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about … they do most of the living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you’ll ever be.”

What a wonderful but ironic speech! This is the same person for whom success in life is equivalent to world travel and skyscrapers and bridges and lots of money. This is the same person who basically told his father that he and his stuffy office were small and unimportant. Yet already we are seeing some of the uses of adversity. One of the benefits is that it challenges us to get clearer about what it is we genuinely value, and we discover that true success and happiness in life can mean something very different from what we think they mean. Only in the moment of facing down Henry F. Potter does George realize in himself a genuine and deep appreciation for what it is his Dad did. Only in the heat of that challenging moment. It was a gift of adversity—although it is not necessarily a gift that makes things simpler. George now has two competing success visions warring away in his heart. One is focused on service to his community and being rooted in that community; the other is focused on an almost Peter Pan-like desire to travel and build things and make lots of money. More on this internal conflict in a bit. For now, it’s enough to acknowledge that George’s speech was a moment of great personal discovery, and inspiring for others as well. The next thing that happens is that Building and Loan Board rejects the motion to dissolve but only if George takes over his father’s job as leader. And he does, but with great ambivalence. Life keeps on throwing him curveballs. Once, he thought he had it all figured out. But now he’s more like the poet Dante, who once said about midlife, “I found myself within a dark woods / where the straight way was lost.” What else can he do, but keep moving? He gives his college funds to his younger brother, Harry, and goes to work.

Circumstances crowd out the fantasies of youth and supersede them. In the end, George finds himself where he thought he’d never be: working in his Dad’s stuffy little office, stuck in Bedford Falls. He gets to continue his father’s work of economic justice in the community, and while this is important to him, still, his heart is at war with itself. Regret upon regret pile up. He’s just a mess of contradictions. He marries a beautiful caring wife, he has wonderful children, he is loved and respected throughout Bedford Falls, but all the wild wonderful energy and humor of his youth gradually go away. He’s cranky. He’s cynical. “I want to do what I want to do,” he complains, but no one’s listening.

The bounce in his soul is gone. And it’s like this with so many people today. The adversity of conflicted selves, heavy with regret. Thinking and feeling they are failures even as they are doing great work in the world. Afraid because of the economy, even as they are surrounded by something far more reliable than money ever could be, which is family and friendship, the beloved community of a place light this, and within: the sustaining and transforming power of the Spirit of Life. As close-up to our individual lives as we are, who are we to judge them wrong, or a failure? Who are we to offer up a global judgment like this, as if we were able to transcend our myopia and see ourselves from a God’s-eye point-of-view?

The bounce is gone. And if it’s gone, how is a person going to bounce back in the face of sudden crisis and change? The problem just escalates.

Here’s what this looks like for George. What happens is that absent-minded Uncle Billy misplaces the $8000 which was supposed to have been deposited in the Building and Loan funds. George faces bankruptcy, scandal, prison…. In complete desperation, he sees no alternative but to turn to his enemy Henry F. Potter for help. Asks for a loan. And Potter, who sits in the cat bird’s seat now, says to George, “Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going out to conquer the world! You once called me a warped, frustrated, old man. What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk, crawling in here on your hands and knees, begging for help.” 

It’s horrible. I mean, the movie may be called It’s a Wonderful Life, but when it gets down to this part, I’m watching it through my fingers, like I do with the The Exorcist or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Especially the scene where George wanders onto the bridge near Bedford Falls. It’s night and snow falls in large sticky flakes. George’s face is screwed up in pain. Potter’s words ring in his mind—“you’re worth more dead than alive.” Below him—the raging torrent of a river. He’s thinking suicide. He’s thinking The End.

But is it? Despite all that has happened, can George bounce back? And we as well? For I know that George is not alone with his outrageous reversals of fortune. Some of us may be on that bridge with George right now, and the rest of us can relate. The past few years have brought reversals of fortune to us all, in some way or another. Bad things happening to good people. It can feel so unfair.  

But what happens next in the story illustrates yet another use of adversity: we learn that we are stronger than we know…..

Picture the scene. There he is, George Bailey, a man who’s lost the bounce in his soul nd it’s so flat, it can’t cope with the loss of $8000. He just can’t take it any more. He finds himself alone, beaten, standing on a snowy bridge in the night, raging river below. Suicide seems the only way. And then—splash! Someone else has taken a dive! And suddenly, instinct takes over. Takes him two seconds to grasp the situation, and he jumps right in to save that person who’s drowning. He risks his life to save another.

Now this is incredible. Adversity has broken him down completely, and yet, in the midst of direst weakness, he discovers that strength still remains. And so can we. You know, often we can find ourselves saying, as we contemplate horrible possibilities, “If such-and-such happened, I could never survive it.” Or, “If such-and-so happened, I wouldn’t know what to do.” And yet when the worst happens, and we go numb with shock, we discover a persistence within us simply to take things one step at a time, one moment at a time. Events rush and swirl past us. The broken pieces of life overwhelm, but for a time we let things be. It is enough just to keep moving, and somehow we do. Somehow we just keep going. “More and more I have come to admire resilience,” writes poet Jane Hirschfield.  “Not the simple resistance of a pillow, / whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, / but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: / finding the light newly blocked on one side, / it turns to another. / A blind intelligence, true. / But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs / all this resinous, unretractable earth.” Adversity helps us discover this same persistence in ourselves, when the worst happens, and we come to realize we are stronger than we ever thought possible. A confidence in ourselves starts to grow, and we learn that, whatever else the future may bring, we have stood in the fire before, and we can stand in the fire again. We can. We are stronger than we know.   

This is what adversity teaches. In fact, there are times when it lifts us out of ourselves completely, and we find ourselves blessed with a better dream and a healing vision of life that we realize directly, first-hand—one we never could have known otherwise. Adversity can have this use as well.

Here’s how it happens for George. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that the person he saved from drowning is none other than Clarence Oddbody, Angel Second Class. He’s an angel, and he comes to earth to give George a great supernatural gift: direct experience of what Bedford Falls would have become had he never been born.

And it’s terrible. Horrible. Without George Bailey, Bedford Falls turned out to be a hellish place. And it blows his mind. It opens it up. He was living a wonderful life without knowing it. Everything he honestly and truly needed for happiness, he already had. Even with all the bad luck circumstances that seemed, time and again, to prevent him from pursuing his youthful hopes—even though he never became a world traveler, or went to college; even though he never built a skyscraper hundreds of feet high or a bridge a mile long—even so: the worth of his life was diminished not one whit. Worthy dreams can happen, even in a stuffy small office, in boring Bedford Falls. A hero journey, right there in the everyday. Being there for people in need, again and again, even when it put him at risk. Standing up for the little guy against bullies like Henry F. Potter.

Even in Bedford Falls, greatness can happen. And George finally gets it. The big picture pulls all the pieces of his life together, grasps him in his soul, heals his conflicted and regret-filled heart. The greatness he has always longed for—he realizes that he’s already been doing it. His father as well. And now he doesn’t want to give it up. The hero adventure is right here and right now! Who needs to travel to exotic locations like Tahiti, when you can have everything you want in Bedford Falls? Clarence!” he cries, “Clarence! Help me, Clarence. Get me back. Get me back. I don’t care what happens to me. Get me back to my wife and kids. Help me, Clarence, please. Please! I want to live again! I want to live again. I want to live again.”

Change your mind, and life changes. George Bailey wants to live again, and I would have you see clearly how badly he wants it. He wants it despite the fact that, as far as he knows, he’s still out $8000. Despite the fact that coming back to life will mean facing bankruptcy, scandal, prison…. But it no longer matters. How can he give up the life that he’s always wanted, which is the life he’s always been living but only now realizes it? 

Wherever you are this morning—whatever adversity you might be facing—I invite you to consider its uses. It clarifies our values, it teaches us that we are stronger than we know, and it also makes us relentlessly hungry for a transformed vision of who we are. We do not need to be visited by an actual angel to learn how to see our lives through angel eyes. Eyes that see clearly the truth of the preciousness of friendship and community and life even if some version of bankruptcy or scandal awaits us. The preciousness of friendship and community and life… And also this: how the world needs us and doesn’t care that we might never have traveled to that exotic location, or gone to that school, or built that mile long bridge.

Tap into angel vision, and the bounce in our souls comes back.

Consider the following incident, in which two people, Sheryl and Steve, are going to a meeting here at UUCA, and Sheryl asks Steve a very simple question, “What time is it?” What follows is like an episode of Abbot and Costello, a comedy of miscommunication. Steve replies, “It’s late,” but Sheryl has the kind of personality which prefers concreteness and exactitude of detail, so she responds, “No, I mean, what time is it?” Which confuses Steve, because he thinks he IS being to the point, although given his different personality, being to the point is a matter of clear imagery and intuitive vision. So he says back to Sheryl, “It’s time to go!” but with even greater insistence than before, thinking that will do the trick. It doesn’t, and now Sheryl is getting frustrated, and she says, “Hey, read my lips, what time is it?” When Steve replies, in a miffed tone, “It’s past three,” all heck breaks loose. “Listen,” says Sheryl, “I shouldn’t have to ask a simple question four times to get an adequate answer. How MUCH past three? What time is it EXACTLY?” To which Steve replies, “You are so picky. The time EXACTLY is 3:12pm, Eastern Standard Timezone, planet earth, solar system, outer arm of the Milky Way Galaxy!”

It’s a comedy of miscommunication. Two people hearing exactly the same question—“What time is it?”—but each approaching the answer differently. One prefers down-to-earth exactitude and specificity, the other prefers evocative imagery and future-oriented metaphors which can float above the ground. Personality types are real—vital avenues of expression and experience—but we can lose sight of this undeniable reality and fail to accommodate for the masks we wear in our relationships. The result is high drama. The stuff of soap opera.

It happens at home; it happens at work; and you better believe it happens in congregations like this one. Of course, when clashes and conflicts happen in congregations, we get extremely nervous. We think something has turned terribly wrong, since isn’t religious community the one place where we’re all supposed to be singing Kumbaya together, and all is spontaneous mutual understanding and peace and harmony?

It’s an unexamined expectation that so many of us bring to a place like this, and it can’t be farther from the truth. This is a home for the human spirit, and the human spirit brings with it variety and diversity, of all kinds. Meaning that, in the course of our taking this diversity and uniting it to serve common goals and common purposes, things heat up. That’s what happens, if a congregation is working right. If it’s NOT working right, things stay cold and clammy. Sluggish. People stuck in their usual sense of who they are, and what’s possible. No risks. No enthusiasms. No one united by a transforming cause. People entirely justified in saying “it’s not worth it” and walking away. But if a congregation IS working right, it heats us up. Takes us to difficult places. Takes us deeper. Causes us to care, to discern a higher calling. Gives us something worth fighting for. Charges us full with the electric charge of the soul. There is no better symbol of how congregations that work do this than our Flaming Chalice. The flame is the heat and the fire of our life together. Things are supposed to get hot, in a place like this. No wonder conflict can happen.

It’s just a natural consequence of being in a vital spiritual community. Natural, normal, necessary, and also this: neutral in value. What matters is not so much that we can disagree and feel frustrated by eachother as how we manage these disagreements and frustrations. How we respond.

Today I want to talk about personality types as they impact congregations. Different personality types give rise to different spiritual styles—so what are the different styles? How is each a valid way of connecting with the Sacred? And, when they clash, what can we do to respond in a manner that is creative and constructive? That’s my message today.

Beginning with the basic spiritual styles. Historically, there are many sources of insight about this we could look to—astrology being one of the oldest, together with the four classic temperaments (phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic, and sanguine). We could also look to the Enneagram, as well as to Carl Jung’s system of psychological types. Of the theories I’ve studied, one of my favorites continues to be Hinduism’s system of the four yogas—thousands of years old and yet still influential and credible. Very much worth a closer look.

Now when I say “yoga,” what might immediately come to mind is certain distinctive physical postures. But the word as I’m using it—its original sense—has a far larger meaning. Literally, it means, “to bring under disciplined training,” and right there we have an inkling of what we’re getting ourselves into. Each of the four yogas incorporates activities and practices that are uniquely effective for a particular personality type, in its quest for spiritual fulfillment. We’re not talking about a casual stroll along a garden path, in other words, and the thought of this is in itself significant, for there are times when life, completely without warning, challenges us to run a sprint, or a marathon. On the spur of the moment, it can require us to lift 300 pounds of deadweight. It can throw all sorts of stuff our way, and unless we are already actively developing our spiritual muscles, how can we expect to last or cope effectively? How are we gonna run our race, or lift that weight, if we aren’t actively training for it right now? 

“Yoga” means “spiritual workout,” and the first one to consider is the Yoga of the Rational Mind. Here, the central discipline is intellectual adventure. If you are a follower of this way—if you are a Rational Mind yogi—then you seek out all the wisdom you can find: in scripture, in science, in philosophy, in history, in literature, in the arts, and on and on. The marketplace of ideas must be free, for you; scholarship is your true love; study is your cup of tea; and your core spiritual practice may very well be … underlining. You are the kind of person who’s always asking questions, doubting, challenging conventional understandings, and always game for looking into a new idea or a new way. But with a main purpose. Not to parrot the wisdom of others, but to use conscience and reason to separate the good from the bad and fashion a worldview that rings true for you, makes sense of your experience. Gives order to the complexities of life. 

The Yoga of the Rational Mind. It stresses step-by-step logical reasoning as well as conceptual clarity and linguistic precision. Rational Mind yogis are the people who would rather stand outside of heaven and talk about it than step on in. In fact, that is their heaven. Realizing through critical discussion and thought the truth that sets us free. 

That’s the first Hindu yoga, and now here is the second: the Yoga of Transcending Mind. It’s very different. People on this path are generally active types, and they tend to be impatient with the theoretical and abstract. As far as they are concerned, head knowledge distorts rather than clarifies. Language does to the world what a funhouse mirror does to reflections. Others might pride themselves on their intellectual scholarship and be right at home with that, but not Transcending Mind yogis. They want something more body-centered, practical disciplines that calm “monkey mind” down and connect them to a peace that is above and beyond all words and theories. I’m talking about a capacity of awareness that is like a calm eye over the storm of our thoughts and feelings, an eye that’s always there, always, but we have to learn how to see through it, we have to calm “monkey mind” down to do that.

If this resonates with you, then more reading and more speculating are beside the point. No more talk. Action. So, as a Transcending Mind yogi, you will practice “asanas,” or physical postures that cleanse the body and develop the mind’s ability to concentrate. You will say a “mantra” or a sacred sound over and over again, throughout your day, to keep you centered and focused. You may meditate on your breathing or focus on a visual form like a candle flame, or a picture of a saint, or a mandala. Note, again, how all of this emphasizes a form of spirituality that is body-centered, image- and sound-centered, all to the end of experiencing first-hand the reality beyond all distinctions and difference, the bliss of no-thingness. You don’t want to just talk about heaven. You want to do heaven, be heaven!

That’s the Yoga of Transcending Mind. But now let us turn to yet another spiritual style: the Yoga of Service. If this is your preferred style, by now what you might be saying to yourself is this: something like, “Good Lord! What’s up with how Rational Mind yogis are constantly challenging the status quo or living in their heads? And as for Transcending Mind yogis—why would I ever want to twist up like a pretzel or chant all day OM? Seems totally beside the point. I mean, I just want a way of being at peace while I’m trying to be a good parent, or a good employee, or a good friend, or a good citizen. Nothing fancy. I want to work within the world, not outside of it. I want to work within the system, not buck it. I want to find the sacred right here, in the ordinary.”

That’s what Service yogis say. Stability and structure are their watchwords; they’re the ones paying attention to detail and rolling up their sleeves to make our communities happen. So naturally, for them, the central discipline is everyday work done with the right intention and without any expectation for certain results. Selflessness while paying the bills or commuting to the job or doing the laundry. One of the most popular scriptures of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, says it like this: “He who does the task dictated by duty, caring nothing for the fruit of the action: he is a yogi.” This is how, in the midst of life’s wear and tear and busy-ness, the Service yogi attains peace.  

And now: the last of the four yogas: the Yoga of Love. Short and sweet: if this is your spiritual style, you are a people person. You are on a search for authenticity and uniqueness, and you want this for everyone else as well. You want to make everyone feel important and cared for, and you just want there to be harmony in the world, you peacemaker you.

People are so central to your path that, when you imagine the sacred, it must have a face. Your God is a personal God. And so your central spiritual practice is devotion. You will choose an image of God which is right for you. Perhaps an image of the Goddess like Kwan Yin, perhaps Jesus, perhaps Krishna. Some concrete image—and whatever it happens to be, you will open your total heart to him or to her. You want to fall in love. “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That is the discipline precisely. Out of this love, you will study, you will practice asanas, you will chant, you will care for the hurting, you will do the work of justice, you will fulfill your everyday duties selflessly. But the motivation is, first and last, love.

Same motivation goes, even if you don’t believe in a God per se. Fact is, the Yoga of Love, like all the yogas, cuts across theological categories like theism and atheism. If there is no such thing as a God for you, then the face of the sacred will be beloved family and friends, a hero like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. who has inspired you, people who belong to your chosen spiritual community (like UUCA), or the living earth. Out of love for these, you live fully and freely.

And there they are, the four yogas. Rational Mind, Transcending Mind, Service, Love. Four spiritual styles, for four different kinds of personalities. Each equally valid, as a way of connecting with the Spirit of Life. Keep in mind that the idea here is not that one and only one yoga will appeal to you—just that you will feel most at home in one, and make the most progress working in one, even if at times you might borrow some ideas and practices from the others.

Let’s take an even closer look. Worship preferences are extremely concrete and practical, so let’s see what each yoga might bring to this. Beginning with Rational Mind yogis, who might say, “Boy, I love intellectual-type sermons with lots of vocab words that get me thinking and give me something to talk about over lunch! I love the purity and complexity of classical music. But what’s up all the rituals, or the prayer? I don’t get it when the music for the day is drumming, or folk, or rock. I don’t like it when things feel too fuzzy and gooey and emotional and ‘spiritual.’ Makes it harder for me to focus. Makes it harder to read the song lyrics ahead of time so that I can be sure to sing only the words that make sense to me…”

As for Transcending Mind yogis, this is what they might say: “It’s just not worship if I don’t feel immersed in something larger than me. Give me spirituality, give me ‘smells and bells.’ Give me more ritual—I love getting out of my head and into the flow of an experience. Love our annual Water Communion and Moravian Love Feast and Flower Communion. Loved the Breaking Bread Ritual from this past Thanksgiving. Even something as small as getting up and greeting each other feels good. More meditation, though—I wish it lasted a lot longer than it usually does. How about five minutes? Ten minutes? And, have we ever thought about doing some chanting? Sometimes I think we could learn a thing or two from the Episcopalians down the road….”

Service yogis, for their part, might say this: “I love all the rituals too. Classical music is beautiful, but I feel more moved by drumming, or jazz, or folk, or rock. I just feel more at home in worship when we play music that’s similar to what I already listen to. As for sermons: honestly, the artsy-fartsy intellectual ones just don’t turn my crank. I like the ones that focus on life skills instead, on how to be a better partner, or parent, or citizen. Show me how! Finally—have we ever thought about regularly incorporating multimedia in our worship? I was at another church that projected the hymn lyrics on big screens in the sanctuary—they even showed a film clip from a popular movie where we would do a straight-ahead reading. At first I was skeptical, but I walked away amazed at how powerful the effect was—even more amazed at how my kids loved it….”

And then there’s what Love yogis might say: “I need a worship experience that really gets my blood flowing. Give me inspiration. I can do a sermon that is intellectual, I can do a sermon that is practical, but don’t forget to elevate it into poetry, and use lots of stories. As for clapping: I know it bumps some people out of the flow of worship, and I totally respect that, but for me it works. It makes me feel warm and good, and gets me into the flow of things. Finally, I love it when we all stand up and hold hands to close out our service!”

This is just a bare sketch of the different preferences the four yogas bring—and you can already see the potential for disagreement and conflict. Things heating up into our Flaming Chalice. While a Love yogi, for example, is perfectly comfortable with language that is evocative and poetic, a Rational Mind yogi insists on clarity. “What does ‘spirituality’ mean, anyway? Define your terms! Stop being so fuzzy and vague! How can I wrap my mind around things when I’m having a hard time perceiving a hard core there?” To this, a yogi of the Transcending Mind will say, “Come on! You’re just stirring up a tempest in a tea pot! Ultimately the sacred is a more-than-what’s-before-the-eyes-Mystery—every word and name is just like a finger pointing at the moon. So let’s not argue about our fingers. Let’s focus on the moon!” To which the Love yogi replies, “I agree where you say that ultimately the sacred is a Mystery, and all words and names for it fall short. But when you suggest that it is OK to be casual with words and names—especially traditional words and names—I can’t go there. As imperfect and fuzzy a word like God might be, I still need it. I can’t grow spiritually without it.” To which a Service yogi will say, “Would you all just get your act together and make up your minds? How are we gonna fulfill our mission in the world if all our energy is tied up in fighting?”

And that IS the central question. It brings to mind a personal story from my seminary years, when my colleagues and I were studying worship—what it’s all about, how to craft it. I found myself admitting to my class that I’d always been a bit cranky about the worships I’d experienced. Rarely had I experienced a service that satisfied me completely in all ways and didn’t leave me grumbling on the way out. There was always some element or other that struck me as pointless or irritating or not as good as what some other church was doing. To this, my worship professor at the time—the saintly Rev. David Bumbaugh—said, “Anthony, nothing can live up to your kind of standard, if you feel entitled to being satisfied completely by everything that happens in a given service. Instead, I would have you define success like this: If a worship service has touched you in at least one deep way, that is enough to have made it a success. Be positive and look for the one thing that will feed your soul; let all else pass. And know that the parts which are unimportant to you—perhaps even offensive to you—may very likely be feeding the souls of others.”

I continue to think that this is a wonderful attitude to have—one constructive way of responding to the disagreements over worship that are inevitable and will never end, given the different spiritual styles in the room. Stepping back from a sense of entitlement and stepping up to a sense of generosity and a willingness to be OK with something you might not prefer exactly because you know that it could very well be beautiful and meaningful for the person sitting right beside you.

Besides this, another thing to keep in mind as we face disagreement and conflict together is this: the idea that personality differences, while deep, are not absolute. People with different styles can learn to understand and even to sympathize with each other; people on different yoga paths can learn tremendous things from each other. It’s just like being right-handed—you’ve been using your right hand all your life to write and wave and do so many other things. But with conscious effort and patience, you can learn to shift over to using your left. It’s awkward. It takes time. But it can happen, and the result is a good thing: you’ve just multiplied your power in the world. Now you can do things with both hands, not just one. Similarly, when a given personality type learns to walk in the shoes of another personality type, what happens is greater wholeness. We grow towards greater wholeness in our lives. We become less one-sided, more compassionate, more complete.

Conflict comes with the territory. In spiritual communities like this one, it’s natural, normal, necessary, and neutral in value. What matters is how we respond. “Do not teach your children never to be angry,” someone once said. “Teach them how to be angry.” That’s what our Congregational Covenant of Healthy Relationships is all about. That’s what the Healthy Relationships Team is all about. Helping us face down the challenge of life in community as it does its proper job of heating things up, charging us full with the electric charge of the soul. We need to learn how to stand in this fire. We need to assume a stance of curiosity towards both ourselves and the other person or the situation. Not self-righteous certainty. But curiosity. “I wonder what my spiritual style is, that I would have such a negative reaction to that?” “I wonder what spiritual style she is speaking out of?” Asking questions like this. Valuing questions like this, as a necessary part of what it means to be Unitarian Universalist.  

I’ll close with a story told by Anthony de Mello, Catholic priest and psychotherapist:

In ancient India, water used to be drawn out of wells by means of the Persian wheel, a convenient device whose only drawback was the great noise it made when in operation. One day, a horseman happened to pass by a farm and demanded water for his horse. The farmer gladly put the Persian wheel in motion, but the horse, unaccustomed as it was to the noise, wouldn’t come anywhere near the well. “Can’t you stop the noise so my horse can drink?” asked the horseman. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible, sir,” said the farmer. “If your horse wishes to drink, he will have to take the water with the noise, for here [HERE], water comes only with noise.”

The story has to do with graduate school. By sheer luck, I found myself in a program that specialized in classical American philosophers like William James, John Dewey, Charles Peirce, and George Santayana. I call it luck because it was not by any genuine forethought whatsoever that I went to Texas A&M University as an undergraduate, and it was desperation borne of restlessness that drove me to change my major time after time until, with philosophy, the restlessness became curiosity and even enthusiasm. But it was an enthusiasm for everything, and I really struggled with this—particularly after I was accepted into the graduate program and found myself facing the daunting task of writing a thesis. I needed to identify a specific topic to focus on, and quick. What was it going to be?

This is where I confess the part that I’m not proud of. I got way ahead of myself. I allowed ambition to solve the problem for me, rather than taking the more difficult route of listening to my life and discerning my genuine interests. I had aspirations of doing a Ph. D. at Vanderbilt University—I was told it was a prestigious department, and I had stars in my eyes about this—and it just so happened that the Head of the Texas A&M Philosophy Department at the time had strong links to Vanderbilt. The brilliant plan that unfolded in my prestige-addled brain was therefore this: I would choose a topic that would require me to work with the Head (which turned out to be George Santayana’s ethical theory), and this would be my ticket into the school of my dreams.

It did not work out. I ended up hating the topic I chose, and by the time I finished that thesis, I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. As for my relationship with the Head of the Department: not good. We were just not temperamentally suited for each other. Rather than moving me forward into my career as a philosopher, it set me back. Worst of all is the 20/20 hindsight I have now, many years later, about the treasure that was right there before me, all along, which I did not claim. This treasure: the world-renowned William James scholar who also taught in my department. William James, who has turned out to be one of my absolutely favorite thinkers—and I could have done my thesis on him. The thought had actually crossed my mind, but among other things, I suspected that the world-renowned scholar was too busy for me. Yet I never even inquired to find out if this were so. I missed my chance.

How easily it can happen. Ambition can put stars in our eyes, and we lose touch with who we are. Fixation on some end goal can cause us to stop paying attention to the journey, never mind enjoying it. Fear of being turned down can keep us simply from asking. Treasure is within our grasp, but we don’t go ahead and grasp it.

Why is this?

One of the things I value about Jonathan Haidt’s book The Happiness Hypothesis is that, through its unique blend of science and spirituality, it’s helping me better understand my own human heart , as well as to become a better student of happiness. Three of its insights—all from chapter five—come to mind.

The first is this: how it’s natural to care about such things as prestige. Desire for Vanderbilts of every kind reflect a deep impulse shaped by millions of years of natural selection, directed towards winning at the game of life; and it involves impressing others, gaining their admiration, and rising in relative rank. We all feel tempted to do this even when greater authentic happiness can be found elsewhere. Political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli recognized this hundreds of years ago when he said, “the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.”

Conspicuous consumption is an obvious example of this—the zero-sum game of “keeping up with the Joneses” that anchors the very real phenomenon of middle-class poverty—but I am particularly struck by the results of a recent experiment a group of economists set up using a beverage called SoBe Adrenaline Rush—a beverage that claims to increase mental acuity. The story here is told by Ori and Rom Brafman in their recent book, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior: “To test acuity, the researchers developed a thirty-minute word jumble challenge that was administered to three groups of students. The first group, a control group, took the test without drinking any SoBe. The second group was told about the intelligence-enhancing properties of SoBe, given the drink, and asked to watch a video while the tonic had time to take effect. These students also were required to sign an authorization form allowing the researchers to charge $2.89 to their university account…. We’ll call this second group of students the ‘fancy-schmancy SoBe’ drinkers. Finally, a third group of students was given the same spiel about SoBe but was told that the university had gotten a discount and that they would be charged eighty-nine cents for the drink. We’ll call them the ‘cheapo SoBe’ drinkers. Now, the results of the experiment were surprising. The group that drank the fancy-schmancy SoBe performed slightly better in the test than did the group that received no SoBe at all. But before we rush out to buy SoBe, with its acuity-enhancing powers, it’s important to note that the students who drank the cheapo SoBe performed significantly worse than either the fancy-schmancy group or the SoBe-free control group. Given that exactly the same SoBe beverage was served to both groups, we can only conclude that it was the value the students attributed to the SoBe that made the difference in their test scores. Strange as it may sound, fancy-schmancy SoBe made the students smarter, while cheapo SoBe hindered their performance.” And that’s the story that Ori and Rom Brafman tell. Humans are deeply susceptible to the power of prestige—so much so that we unconsciously, instinctively respond to fancy-shmancy SoBe by getting smarter and to cheapo SoBe by getting dumber. This is how vulnerable we are to the lure of prestige.

Again and again, we learn that the human heart is a complicated thing, and may we embrace this with compassion. We learn that each of us is many different selves all buzzing about like a committee—sometimes on the same page, and sometimes not. Where prestige is concerned, we can often find ourselves internally divided; and we can feel a great pull towards what is fancy-schmancy even though it may come at the expense of our true happiness.

But now, let’s turn to the second happiness insight: how people are generally inaccurate predictors of the ultimate impact of life changes, whether bad or good. In my own case, I anticipated going to Vanderbilt for my Ph.D. as a change that would bring about perfect happiness; but life would be over if I didn’t get in. This is what I predicted, and on this basis, I acted. All of us do something like this, as we face the future. Yet Jonathan Haidt asks us to consider the “adaptation principle,” which describes something we have all experienced—that people get used to conditions in their life that are constant. It becomes like wallpaper: taken for granted, just there. While people are extraordinarily sensitive to changes in conditions, after a time things settle down, and we are back to our usual state of happiness.

Jonathan Haidt explores this in an interesting way. He asks, “If I gave you ten seconds to name the very best and very worst things that could ever happen to you, you might well come up with these: winning a 20-million dollar lottery jackpot and becoming paralyzed from the neck down. Winning the lottery would bring freedom from so many cares and limitations; it would enable you to pursue your dreams, help others, and live in comfort…. Losing the use of your body, on the other hand, would bring more limitations than life in prison. You’d have to give up on nearly all your goals and dreams, forget about sex, and depend on other people for help with eating and bathroom functions. Many people think they would rather be dead than paraplegic. But they are mistaken.” They are mistaken, Jonathan Haidt says, because of the adaptation principle. “The [lottery] winner’s pleasure comes from rising in wealth, not from standing still at a high level, and after a few months the new comforts have become the new baseline of daily life. The winner takes them for granted and has no way to rise even further. Even worse: the money might damage her relationships. Friends, relatives, swindlers, and sobbing strangers swarm around lottery winners, suing them, sucking up to them, demanding a share of the wealth. […] At the other extreme, the quadriplegic takes a huge happiness loss up front. He thinks his life is over, and it hurts to give up everything he once hoped for. But like the lottery winner, his mind is sensitive more to changes than to absolute levels, so after a few months he has begun adapting to his new situation and is setting more modest goals. He discovers that physical therapy can expand his abilities. He has nowhere to go but up.”

This is the adaptation principle at work. Life changes can definitely bring pleasure or pain, but the pain or pleasure never lasts as long as you think it will, and we return to our natural and usual state of mind. I didn’t get in to Vanderbilt; OK, there was some weeping and gnashing of the teeth for a time; but then I got on with my life. My prediction about the impact of not getting in was way off base. I adapted, and moved on.

Which leads us to the next happiness insight to consider: that most environmental and demographic factors influence happiness very little. “Try to imagine yourself,” says Jonathan Haidt, “changing places with either Bob or Mary. Bob is thirty-five years old, single, white, attractive, and athletic. He earns $100,000 a year and lives in sunny California. He is highly intellectual, and he spends his free time reading and going to museums. Mary and her husband live in snowy Buffalo, New York, where they earn a combined income of $40,000. Mary is sixty-five years old, black, overweight, and plain in appearance. She is highly sociable, and she spends her free time mostly in activities related to her church. She is on dialysis for kidney problems.” Now, the question: who do you think is happier? Bob or Mary? On the surface of things, Bob, since he enjoys a string of what many would consider markers of power and privilege: he’s white, he’s male, he’s young, he lives in a beautiful climate, he’s attractive, and he’s wealthy. Yet it’s intriguing to get beneath the surface and take a look at what the research says. “White Americans are freed from many of the hassles and indignities that affect black Americans, yet, on the average, they are only very slightly happier.” “Men have more freedom and power than women, yet they are not on average any happier.” The old are generally happier than the young. “People who live in colder climates expect people who live in California to be happier, but they are wrong.” “People believe that attractive people are happier than unattractive people, but they, too, are wrong.” As for wealth—research shows that once people have sufficient money to pay for basic needs of food and shelter, the relationship between wealth and happiness grows smaller. At this point, more money definitely does not mean more happiness. Consider how it is that “as the level of wealth has doubled or tripled in the last fifty years in many industrialized nations, the levels of happiness and satisfaction in life that people report have not changed, and depression has actually become more common.” For all of this, chalk things up to the adaptation principle. All of these markers of power and privilege are life conditions that you either can’t change or which are constant for significant periods of time. And we get used to them. They become wallpaper in our lives. They disappear from our awareness. We take them for granted. 

And there they are: the three insights. (1) Natural selection attunes us to prestige even at the expense of genuine, long-lasting happiness; ( 2) people are inaccurate predictors of the impact of life changes to happiness; and (3) most environmental and demographic factors influence happiness very little. Happiness is not so simple a thing. The human heart is not so simple to figure out.

But now, putting these insights together: where does it take us, especially as we consider the new year ahead of us, with all its new possibilities?

One thing does stand out. Go back to Mary. We met her a moment ago; she and her husband live in snowy Buffalo, New York, where they earn a combined income of $40,000. By now, we know that all such factors are fairly equivalent to Bob’s, in terms of their power to influence happiness in life. This includes the fact of her being sixty-five years old, black, overweight, being plain in appearance, and being on dialysis for kidney problems. All such factors are constants in her life, and she has adapted to them.

Yet there are two advantages she has which Bob does not, which give her the clear  happiness edge, and here is the clue we are looking for. She is highly sociable, and she spends her free time mostly in activities related to her church. Research has shown both factors to have great impact on a person’s level of happiness, and part of the reason for this is that they are not so much constant conditions of life as voluntary activities that people choose to engage in. Because of this—because they take effort and attention—they aren’t susceptible to the adaptation effect.

One of the main things we can do, in other words, if we want to increase our happiness, is to invest time and energy in activities that lead to genuine gratification in some form or fashion. Sometimes, we are talking about activities which allow us to lose self-consciousness, connect with and express our strengths, and get into the flow of things. Other times, it can be activities that require some effort and yet the result is wonderful, as in exercise, or learning a new skill, or kindness and gratitude activities, or volunteer service. Such activities can make you feel vulnerable—you are putting yourself out there, after all—but once you do them, the good feelings last a long time.

In my case, what happened after the Vanderbilt disaster was this. Three kinds of activities that came together for me and ultimately helped me find myself again.

After I finished my thesis and defended it successfully, a week before I was to have graduated, I got a call from the community college across town, Blinn College. Would I like to teach a logic class? All my future plans were up in smoke, so why not? I took to that field, and like the sons in the Sufi wisdom story we heard earlier, I gave myself to daily labor, and to the round of the seasons. One class grew into three; three grew into five and a full-time permanent position; but most importantly, I discovered my passion for public speaking and teaching, and I realized that, for me, philosophy of religion was the bomb. 

I was discovering the treasure of the field, my happiness; and it was also happening at the Unitarian Universalist congregation I started going to, with Laura, once our daughter was born. I took to that field, and I gave myself to various opportunities that arose. I served as President of the Board of Trustees; I led some fundraising programs; I led some worship and taught a few religious education courses. Through volunteerism, I was discovering talents that I didn’t know I had. And, I was also making friends.

Which leads me to the third activity which helped me recover after the Vanderbilt disaster. Figure skating. Down in College Station, Texas, at the Unitarian Church, I met my future ice-dancing partner. It all came as quite a shock. Part of this has to do with the fact that, when I met Diane in 1996, I hadn’t skated since I was a boy of 13, and last I knew, serious figure skating was just for children and teenagers. Yet what I did not know was that, during my many years away from the sport, a significant adult skating program had developed, including regional, national, and international competitions. Diane knew all about it—and did I want to go skating with her? At first I resisted—one excuse after another came to mind—but Diane and then Laura kept on prodding me, and so, eventually, I went.

As it turns out, this was the final ingredient. I took to the field of teaching, I took to the field of church volunteerism, I took to the field of adult figure skating; and as I gave myself to all three activities, some kind of weird alchemy happened, and I found a clarity within me which I had never had before. I found a yearning to combine passion for public speaking and teaching and community building and leadership and artistry and spirituality all in one thing, and that thing was ministry. I would become a minister. That was the treasure in the field that I found, but only after giving myself to years of hard work, day to day and season to season.

“I prayed for twenty years,” Frederick Douglass once said, “but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” The treasure is out there, in the field, and it’s not about prestige, it’s not about the things we can’t control, it’s not about the constant conditions to which we inevitably adapt. It’s about activity, action, praying with your legs.

And this time, I did not let fear stop me from talking to the people I needed to talk to, and doing the things I needed to do. I even turned down an offer to attend fancy-schmancy Harvard Divinity School—with funding—to go to one that was better suited to my family and me. 

When one of my friends heard this, he sent me a funny postcard featuring an orangutan wearing one of those square academic caps, with the tassel on the side. And this was the caption: WHAT? You haven’t been to HARVARD?” I laughed. OK by me.

Story Before the Sermon

There once was a farmer who lay on his deathbed in despair over the fate of his lazy sons. When he was almost gone, an inspiration came to him. He called his sons to his bedside and drew them in close. “I am soon to leave this world,” he whispered. “I want you to know that I have left a treasure of gold for you. I have hidden it out in the field. Dig carefully and well and you will find it. I ask only that you share it among yourselves evenly.”

The sons begged him to tell them exactly where he had buried it, but the father breathed his last and said no more.

As soon as their father was buried, the sons took up their shovels and began to turn over the soil in their father’s field. They dug and dug until they had turned over the whole field twice. Nothing–no treasure anywhere. But they decided that since the field was so well prepared, they might as well plant some grain just as their father had done. The crop grew well for them. After the harvest they decided to dig again in hopes of finally finding the hidden treasure. Again they found nothing, and once again prepared the field for sowing. That year’s crop was even better than the one before.

This went on for years until the sons had grown accustomed to the cycles of the seasons and the rewards of working together in daily labor. By that time their disciplined farming earned them enough money to live very comfortable lives. They grew very close and content. They had everything they could ever want or need. It was then and only then, that they realized what a great treasure their father had left for them out in that field.

Not that people throughout history have somehow fallen down on the job. “In the time of the Buddha,” says philosopher John Hick, “some two and a half thousand years ago, there was as great a multiplicity of rival views as today. Is the death of the body the extinction of the person? Or does a person survive as a continuing consciousness? Or as a resurrected person? With a spiritual body? In perpetuity or for a limited period?” And on and on. From time out of mind, people have been trying hard to find the answers, and none has proven itself to be THE answer. Why, then, take up the seemingly futile task of thinking about what happens when people die?  Why talk about it this morning, when for at least the past two and a half thousand years, or more, the reality of death has maintained an impenetrable ambiguity in the face of public investigation, and in some aspects it has invited belief in life after death while, in others, it has permitted the opposite conviction? Why? I like the answer John Hick gives. He says, “We shall not be able to refrain from speculating about death until we can refrain from speculating about life; for the one is inseparable from the other. … If we wish to think realistically about life we cannot avoid also thinking about death.” True words.

So here’s what I want to do this morning. Talk about my journey to a positive belief in the reality of life after death. My effort to peer into the stairs above me, to see what I can see. Perhaps my story will speak to yours.

My journey. No mystical experiences, I’m afraid. Primarily it has involved taking a close look at the reasons for and against life after death, as well as stepping back and becoming more aware of the different paradigms which powerfully influence how people imagine the relationship between mind and brain. 

Let’s start by considering the reasons for. Some of the ones I encountered in my journey were logical in character, meaning that they centered on the definitions of key ideas and the need to preserve their integrity. Others were theological in character, presupposing as true certain basic ideas given in a particular scripture or tradition, and the arguments go from there. The ones that really impressed me, however, were the empirical arguments—the ones grounded in concrete sensory experience.

We have already heard about one class of such experiences: the near-death experience. Another has to do with apparent cases of reincarnation memories. The gold standard for research on this is Ian Stevenson, M.D., a well-respected psychiatrist from the University of Virginia who was once described as “a methodical, careful, even cautious, investigator, whose personality is on the obsessive side.” Perfect for doing exhaustive, honest research. He and his collaborators gathered cases suggestive of reincarnation from all over the world—Africa, the United States, Canada, Burma, India, South America, Lebanon, and Turkey. Each case, he says, “usually starts when a small child of two to four years of age begins talking to his parents or siblings of a life he led in another time and place. The child usually feels a considerable pull back toward the events of the life and he frequently [asks] his parents to let him return to the community where he claims that he formerly lived. If the child makes enough particular statements about the previous life, the parents (usually reluctantly) begin inquiries about their accuracy. Often, indeed usually, such attempts at verification do not occur until several years after the child has begun to speak of the previous life. If some verification results, members of the two families visit each other and ask the child whether he recognizes places, objects, and people of his supposed previous existence.” That’s what Ian Stevenson says. Together with a network of volunteers, he would try to find these spontaneous past life recall cases as soon as possible. He’d carefully question both the family of the living child and the family of the deceased to ensure that they had no contact and that no information had or would be passed between them. He’d also obtain detailed information about the deceased, including information not fully known to anyone involved—such as details of the will—so as test the child’s knowledge. Over the years, Ian Stevenson accumulated 3000 such cases, and, having honestly considered alternative hypotheses—like fraud, information gained from others, extra-sensory perception, deception on the part of the parents, and even spirit possession—he argued that reincarnation stands as the best scientific hypothesis for explaining the cases. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation—that’s the place to begin exploring Stevenson’s research for yourself. Another good overview is a book by philosopher Robert Almeder: Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After Death.

We’re talking empirical evidence for life after death. The near-death experience, reincarnation memories, as well as cases of mediumship, apparitions, and out-of-body experiences. Viewed separately, we find in each class of evidence provocative cases which strongly suggest the possibility that something survives physical death. Viewed together, viewed collectively, a pattern arises that makes it hard NOT to believe.

But I will admit: we are talking about parapsychological stuff. Stuff which strikes many people as strange. Which naturally leads us to consider some objections to life after death. It certainly did for me, in my own journey, since parapsychological research has long proven to be a magnet for criticism, even enthusiastic contempt.  

Why is that? 

One reason, I think, is the National Enquirer effect. By that I mean a kind of guilt by association. Since they are controversial, and controversy attracts attention, accounts of near death experience, or reincarnation memories, or other parapsychological phenomena pop up now and again in National Enquirer-like sources, and we may think, Huh, parapsychology must lack credibility since the National Enquirer lacks credibility, is sheer sensationalism and entertainment and fluff. Nothing to it. However, to this I would say that it’s simply unfair to take the worst expression of something and treat it as if it were representative of the best. It’s unfair to read an article or see a special on TV that is so gullible and poorly thought out that you can drive a truck through it—and then think that you have, by this, successfully debunked all the quality research on the related phenomenon that’s out there—like Ian Stevenson’s research, or the Lancet NDE study from 2001. 

It’s unfair—but nevertheless, we can fall for it. We can succumb to the National Enquirer effect. And then there is this reason for objecting to parapsychological evidence for life after death: the shadow of fraud. It’s happened. During spiritualism’s heyday in the 19^th century, there was widespread fraud, especially as the movement was taken over by showmanship and riches were to be had. As for the 20^th century, there have been a few documented cases of evidence tampering in lab-based parapsychological experiments. Fraud has happened; and the shadow this throws can tend to spoil even evidence and experimental results that, in truth, are perfectly valid. To this, I would say four things: First, evidence tampering is something that researchers in all scientific fields have been tempted to do, or have done, for purposes of getting tenure, or preserving prestige, or other causes. It’s a problem every field deals with. Second point: some of the people who are most zealous about uncovering fraud are parapsychologists themselves. When they find it, they let everybody know. Transparency. They understand, more than anyone else, that the phenomena they study are extraordinary—and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence that, to be taken seriously, must be as immune as possible to the charge of fraud. This, in fact, leads to my third point: because of the intense scrutiny it has labored under in the 20^th century, parapsychological research has developed methodology and controls that are perhaps far better than you see in other branches of science. Given the level of criticism, parapsychology has had to run as tight a ship as possible, for it even to survive. Finally, there is this, my fourth point: whereas it is admittedly true that even the best cases for survival are not fraud-proof—since one can always conjure up ways in which the case might be tainted—still, there is the silent inexorable witness of evidence that continues to pop up in widely differing contexts, over time, examined by many different researchers. The silent inexorable witness that makes the probability of fraud remote, and in fact turns the suspicion back on the skeptic, and can lead one to wonder what it is that causes some skeptics to disbelieve no matter what; or to insist on standards of evidence, that, if adopted, would render any empirical science impossible; or simply to be more interested in ridiculing and name-calling than rational dialogue.

We’re talking about objections to the possibility of life after death. Besides the National Enquirer-effect and the shadow of fraud, there’s this: the idea that the origin of belief in life after death is wish fulfillment. People believing because it’s just something they want to believe in. “Such a theory,” says philosopher John Hick, “is attractive to an age schooled in the exposure of motives by modern psychology. But nevertheless [this theory is not in accord] with early man’s thoughts. For the most general primitive attitude to the dead of which we have evidence was not one of envy, but more of fear or pity. The dead were not usually thought of as having passed on to a higher and happier life but rather as having lapsed into an altogether less desirable state of mere half-existence. […] The early greek conception of the after-life, expressed in the Iliad and the Odyssey, centered upon the psyche or soul, which scholar Erwin Rohde described as ‘the body’s shadow image’ or ‘a feebler double of the man.’ At death this descends into erebus or hades where, while still recognizable and still bearing its earthly name, it persists as a depleted, joyless entity, a mere bloodless shadow of its former embodied self.” That’s what John Hick says, and he concludes: “Thus the ‘pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die’ view of the origin of humanity’s conviction of an after-life is not supported by the evidences of anthropology. On the contrary, ‘for the vast majority of mankind, the idea that the soul gains by passing out of this world is very rare indeed.’” The question for us thus becomes—how did belief in an afterlife take hold upon humanity, if not out of wish fulfillment? Perhaps for some of the positive reasons we’ve considered here today. Definitely, John Hick’s point prevents us from summarily dismissing the ancient conviction in life after death—psychologizing it away.

There’s lots of possible objections to consider, and reason requires that we take a fair look. Here and now, there is one more I want to consider—perhaps the objection that, above all, drives criticism and even contempt towards belief in life after death. It’s this: that life after death is simply impossible. So impossible that even to bring it up is to be ridiculous. Impossible in a way that some thought rocks falling to earth from the skies was impossible. “I would more easily believe that two Yankee professors would lie,” said famous Unitarian Thomas Jefferson,” than stones would fall from heaven.” He was referring to what we now call … meteorites.

The key objection to life after death is that it is simply impossible. Why impossible? Because, after all, mind is dependent on the brain. How can you have thinking without a brain to support it? How to even imagine what that might be like? To even consider this—what’s the matter with you? 

This was the objection—there like the proverbial elephant in the middle of the living room—that I encountered pretty much everywhere in academia. There in the graduate school of philosophy I went to. There in the Unitarian Universalist seminary I went to. You just didn’t question the assumption. You just didn’t. 

Which is why I count one of the sweetest moments in my personal journey the time I discovered the work of William James, American philosopher of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. In particular, his short work from 1898 entitled: Human Immortality. In his elegant prose he acknowledges that the “old notion of a life hereafter” has lost “its power to draw belief,” especially in “scientifically cultivated circles.” “One hears,” he says, “not only physiologists, but numbers of laymen who read the popular science books and magazines, saying all about us, How can we believe in life hereafter when Science has once for all attained to proving, beyond possibility of escape, that our inner life is a function of that famous material, the so-called ‘gray matter’ of our cerebral convolutions? How can the function possibly persist after its organ has undergone decay?”

But it is as a scientist that James asked me and asks all of us to take a closer look at the admittedly intimate relationship between mind and brain. Certainly one way of describing it is in term of “production,” as in the brain producing the mind as a tea kettle produces steam and an electric circuit produces light. Take away the tea kettle, and there’s no steam. Take away the electric circuit, and the light goes away. The brain dies, and there’s no more mind, nothing left. But—is this the only way to describe the relationship? William James says no. There is another way, of equal explanatory power: what he calls “transmission.” As in, the brain transmits a stream of consciousness, or a soul, or a spirit—whatever language you want to use—in the same way that a television set transmits ultra high frequency electromagnetic waves, transforms them into the programs we see and hear on our TV screens. Damage the TV, and the programs no longer come through all right. Turn the TV off, or unplug it, or smash it to smithereens, and nothing comes through at all. It looks exactly like death—but this does not mean that the ultra high frequency electromagnetic waves are gone too. They are just no longer capable of being received and translated. In some form and fashion, they are still there. Same goes for the mind, upon death of the body.

Now, William James proposed this alternate paradigm of mind-brain relations in 1898, so clearly his analogy in setting forth the transmission idea did not involve TV sets. He talked about sunlight shining through a glass prism, or air moving through organ pipes, as determined by organ keys. But my mind went immediately to the television set. It helped me to see instantly that the transmission paradigm of the mind-brain relationship made just as much sense as the production paradigm—that, in fact, what we have here are two radically different ways of understanding what it means to be human. Each one adequate to the facts. But one makes life after death impossible, while the other makes it … possible.

And here is where things stand. My personal journey to a reasoned belief in life after death. A careful consideration of the best evidence I can find. Taking a look at the objections and evaluating their persuasive force as fairly as possible. Stepping back and becoming aware of the different paradigms which make all the difference to how we envision the relationship between mind and brain. In the end, I freely admit that my belief, however reasoned I hope it to be, may not change anyone else’s mind. In fact I expect this, understanding the power of paradigms—how it can be so difficult to communicate across paradigms and hope to be understood. Yet this I know: that we do not have to think alike to love alike. It is why we are Unitarian Universalists, what it means to be Unitarian Universalists. And I know this too: that taking a reasoned position on something cannot possibly require anyone to have discovered an argument that demolishes all opposing views. Such a requirement is absurd. Not only is it egregiously false to the history of ideas, it’s also destructive to one’s own life. To hold off from believing something which is of vital significance to your heart and spirit until you have convinced everyone else is to make yourself a hostage to others, to paralyze your own growth. The exercise of reason is just not fundamentally about other people—your ability to convince other people. It’s about integrity, and self-respect. It’s about doing justice to the voice of reason and conscience within that honors doubt and won’t settle for unthinking faith. It’s about convincing yourself. Being able to give yourself to the belief without a sense of shame or dishonor. Reason, rightly used, prepares the way.

**

Reading before the sermon                                             

Our reading today is a reflection on the Near Death Experience, or NDE (for short). Because of modern advances in resuscitation technology, the past fifty or so years have seen an influx of accounts of remarkable experiences by some people who have been clinically dead and yet have been brought back. Their hearts had stopped beating; their lungs had stopped working; and thus, starved of blood and oxygen, their brains had shut down. One evidence of this is doctors shining a light into their pupils and nothing happening, no reflexive response to the light. The eye reflex is mediated by the brain stem, and that’s the area that keeps us alive; if that doesn’t work, it means that the brain itself has stopped working. 

Now, how we interpret NDEs depends on a prior belief regarding the nature of the relationship between the mind and the brain. Clearly, the state of our minds is closely related to our brains. But how, exactly, does the relationship work? 

One very common belief is that the brain produces the mind. There can be no minds without brains, and when the brain dies, the mind ceases to exist. Let’s call this the production theory of mind-brain relations. The brain produces the mind like an electrical generator produces electricity. Just as electricity ceases to exist when the generator breaks down or is turned off, so the mind fades away to nothingness when the brain dies.

If one believes this theory of mind-brain relations, then what neuroscientist Michael Persinger says about NDEs will ring true. He says that the best way to interpret NDEs is to see them as a “last gasp” of the brain’s functioning, triggered by a potent cocktail of drugs, a lack of oxygen, and perhaps even a fear of dying. The dying brain no longer perceives anything in the external world; all it is perceiving (for example: being outside of one’s body, the presence of dead loved ones, the tunnel, the bright light) are fantasies created in the mind and nothing more.

Yet does this hold up to the evidence?

A good place to start would be to explore the 13-year study of NDEs published in 2001 by the highly respected international medical journal, The Lancet. For now, I would simply have you consider the following report, which comes from Madelaine Lawrence, R.N., Ph. D., Director of Nursing Research at Hartford Hospital. She mentions the case of one patient who described floating up over her body and viewing the resuscitation effort being done on her. She then felt herself being pulled up through several floors of the hospital that seemed to dissolve as she moved through them until she found herself above the roof. There, she paused to enjoy the view of the night skyline of the city when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a red object. It was a shoe. She was struck by the oddness of this discovery, but only for a moment, as she felt herself “sucked up into a black hole” into the rest of her NDE. Afterwards, when she returned to her body, this patient told her experience to a nurse, who told the story to a medical resident, who laughed. However, the resident took his skepticism right upstairs to the janitor and convinced him to get a ladder. They checked the gutter on the roof, and the red shoe was there, just as the patient’s story had said it would be.

From Michael Sabom’s research we hear of other such cases, where NDE’ers came to know things in ways that are hard to explain. Michael Sabom, a cardiologist, wondered about the degree to which exposure to TV medical shows influences the reports of NDE’rs. What they show on TV, he points out, is very different from what actually happens in a real ambulance or emergency room; so if the accounts that NDE’ers give of their resuscitation experiences resemble TV, then it’s likely that their experiences were nothing more than hallucinatory.

Here’s how Sabom conducted his research: He asked one group of people who almost died but who didn’t have an NDE to try to describe the resuscitation procedures. Then he asked a second group of people—this time, all NDE’rs–to describe the resuscitation procedures. The results? NDE’rs often contradicted TV procedures in accurately describing what doctors, nurses, and other medical staff actually do to resuscitate people. The reports from non-NDE’ers resembled TV.

These are just two of many cases in which NDE’rs come to possess information that can’t possibly be accounted for through the production theory of mind-brain relations. If the brain produces the mind like an electrical generator produces electricity, then the only ideas we can have in our minds about reality have to come through our physical senses in contact with the world around it, or their scientific extensions (as in telescopes and cyclotrons). Clearly, though, NDE’ers are coming to know things in ways that don’t involve their physical brains and sense organs.   

Perhaps we need a different theory of mind-brain relations, one which can more accurately account for the facts—all of them, even the strange ones that come to us from research into the NDE…..

Here ends our reading for today.

The question before us this morning is thus: How to grow trust in our hearts so that, for the most important things, we can confidently know there will always be enough—no matter the state of the world, or the state of the stock market? Should things shrink down even to the size of a mouse, what can give us a sense of internal security that can endure every plummet of the Dow Jones Index and will not be shaken? 

These are fundamentally spiritual questions. Fundamentally spiritual, but also intensely practical. “Fear,” says a newspaper headline from several days ago, “may thwart financial cures.” “We aren’t dealing with a fundamental economic issue any longer,” says the article, quoting James Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital management. “We are dealing with fear. And that doesn’t respond to economic medicine.” People need words of reassurance; people need to hear an upside image; and until they do, investors are likely to be on edge. “We’ve so been traumatized over the past few weeks that every little thing that happens, we overreact.” “The opposite side of irrational exuberance is irrational pessimism, and neither one is a good path to your financial goals.” That’s what the newspaper article said. Despite a 700 billion dollar bailout of the banks, and other kinds of proactive solutions, what may nevertheless thwart these financial cures is … the mousy heart. The heart that won’t believe, the heart that can’t stop trying to control things long enough to take the leap of faith, the heart that doesn’t keep its eyes on the prize.

The question, again: how to dwell richly in our lives, how to tap into abundance, no matter what the external circumstances might be?

I believe that this is a question people have always asked, as a central part of their faith journey. How can my heart be, not mousy, but magnificent? And for a teacher like Rabbi Jesus, the best answer can’t be transmitted through words. It’s an answer you have to live into through trust, and commitment, and action. Often, during difficult times. Exactly during difficult times. You can talk about it later; but first, you have to act. 

Go back 2000 years ago. The Gospel of Mark tells the story of a time when Rabbi Jesus tried to take a little time off from his ministry and retreated, with his disciples, to a site near the Sea of Galilee. But people saw where they were going and ran there on foot ahead of them. 5000 people waiting, when they finally got there. And Rabbi Jesus, despite his fatigue, could not ignore them. Compassion welled up in his magnificent heart. He began teaching them, healing them; and it was hours later when his disciples came up to him, saying, “Rabbi, look, it’s getting late, it’s time for dinner. You need to send the people away into the surrounding villages so they can buy themselves something to eat.” But Jesus said to his disciples, “YOU give them something to eat.” In reply, they sputtered, “You want US to go and buy bread for 5000 people? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? That would cost us a fortune, and last we checked, we’re poor.” But Jesus said, “No, no, no—you’re misunderstanding me. How many loaves of bread do you already have, in hand?” They checked, and all together, the disciples had five small loaves of bread and two fish. When Jesus heard this, he immediately turned to the crowd of 5000 people and said something which simply stunned his disciples. He said, in a loud voice, “Everyone, it’s time to eat. We have more than enough to go around. There’s enough for everyone. Please sit down!” And the people did, in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed the meal and broke the loaves and divided the fish and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. Which they proceeded to do. Five loaves and two fish. Though the disciples could not help feeling in their mousy hearts that their fearless leader had gone nuts. No sane person could possibly believe that five loaves and two fish would be enough to feed 5000 people. 

But such is the difference between the mousy heart … and the heart that is magnificent. The magnificent heart knows that for what is truly important in life, there’s always more than enough to go around, and we need not fear adversity. The magnificent heart looks at a situation of apparent scarcity square in the eye and says, ‘I don’t believe it.” The magnificent heart challenges the people around him not to believe it either, and to step up, step out in faith. The magnificent heart—the heart of Rabbi Jesus—is satisfied with nothing less than a miracle.

But to this I hasten to add: not the WRONG kind of miracle. Not the supernatural kind, the out-of-thin-air kind, the someone-else-is-gonna-do-it kind. The magnificent heart expects a miracle, but not the wrong kind. When I read the gospel story, what I wonder about is how long it actually took that first person in the crowd, there at the side of the Sea of Galilee, to get what Jesus was trying to teach. I wonder how long it took for him to catch the abundance vision so fully and truly that his heart became magnificent too—and over his dead body was he gonna let the abundance vision die. And so he took personal responsibility for seeing that the vision came true. He gave what he had. He reached into his pocket and he pulled out a piece of his own precious bread and he put it right there in the basket. He chipped in.

How long did it take that first person, then the second, then the third—until the abundance vision caught like wildfire? Until mousy hearts found themselves behaving in ways that were not mousy at all? Suddenly, it’s a scene out of Stone Soup, it’s food flying out of people’s pockets and bags and satchels, faster than you can blink, all added to the communal feast. Everyone chipping in generously until it’s a done deal. Things starting with only five small loaves and two fish—but ending, despite the adversity of the situation, with enough for all, more than enough.

The miracle can happen here for us today. We can live into it, here and now. This morning, I am delighted to announce that, just a few weeks into this year’s stewardship campaign, we are more than half way to our pledge goal of 1 million dollars. People are stepping up. People are chipping in. We have, in hand, 144 pledges, totaling $520,000. So many people committed to giving 5% of their total household income, if not more, and I’m one of them. But we’re not there yet. There are about 420 more pledges we have yet to receive, so I am asking you, members and friends alike, that if you’ve still not pledged—let your hearts be magnificent. Experience abundance. Step up. Chip in. Let’s reach the pledge goal. Know that your dollars are going to something that sustains lives, changes people for the better. Pledges are the main source of income for our congregation—one of the largest Unitarian Universalist congregations in North America—so your generosity is key to ensuring that UUCA remains vital and strong and that it’s able to grow into all that it can be, able to reach towards that Sustainable Living vision I talked about earlier. 

I want the abundance miracle here at UUCA. I want it, and I hope you want it. Everyone taking the work of this place personally, making a generous financial commitment. Stepping up, chipping in, because if we don’t—if we’re counting on the WRONG kind of miracle, the supernatural kind, the out-of-thin-air kind, the someone-else-is-gonna-do-it kind—then you know what? We begin with five loaves and two fish, and we end with five loaves and two fish. That’s all. The 5000 go hungry. 5000 lives, unchanged. 5000, who will never know the miracle. And who wants to be a part of that? We are called to so much more, as a leader congregation in the world. We are called to magnificence. So let our hearts be magnificent. Let the miracle happen today. Let it happen. Amen.

Rev. Anthony David

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

Then there is this. Ms. Murray is clearly out of touch with today’s pluralistic world, which brings to people the riches of the world’s religions, science, literature, the arts, and scholarship. In the face of this, Ms. Murray cites some shallow theology and a spurious interpretation of the Bible to call people back to a narrow “One Way, One Truth” kind of religious path. For my part, I’m grateful that a prophet like Martin Luther King, Jr., ignored calls like this. MLK Jr. discovered the power of peace through the works of a Hindu saint, Gandhi; and his eyes were opened to the New Testament’s message of love when he read a spiritual classic of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita. To me, this says that a spiritual life which draws wisely from multiple religious traditions can change lives and change the world. It also says that if you want to be enriched in your home religious tradition, don’t be afraid to explore other voices and other ways. God is too big to be contained by any single tradition, and this is but evidence of God’s goodness and God’s mercy.

Rev. Anthony David

Senior Minister, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

In my life I have encountered this creation myth countless times and know it as the origin of the tradition of the Sabbath; and I thought I knew what it meant until only recently, when I learned that the Hebrew word translated as “refreshed,” vaiynafesh, literally means, and God exhaled. God exhales on the seventh day, says the myth—God breathes out and relaxes. So it must be that on the previous six days, God quickens existence and life with a creative inhale. And here we have a profound picture of the nature of the fundamental reality in which we live and move and have our being. The creative process, ongoing and never ending, in the larger world and in ourselves, has a rhythm to it. Inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale: this is fundamental reality.

And this is the reality I would have us dwell on this morning, as we reflect on the spiritual meaning of Labor Day Weekend. Since the 1880s, it has been a time for honoring the working class and advocating for improved working conditions. It also brings with it a day off from work, wonderful but also bittersweet, since Labor Day has come to represent the end of Summer and the return of Fall endeavors. Soon we will be, with all our activities, inhaling like crazy; but on Labor Day, we exhale, we enjoy.

Take a moment, now, to try an experiment. Inhale deeply. Fill your lungs with air, as far as they will go. Now—don’t stop. Keep on inhaling….

Doesn’t feel good, right? Welcome to life in modern America, where the inhale-exhale rhythm of creation is out of whack. Today there is a constant flow of intense stimuli and endless information, mediated by satellites with their global reach, cable TV with its hundreds of channels, or the Internet, with its infinite connections. And we plug in, using the portable electronic gadgets at our disposal like cell phones, I Pods, Blackberries, and laptops. We plug in, and we inhale the emails, we inhale the images, we inhale the jabber, and we can’t seem to stop even as we end up feeling manic-depressive, feeling fried, feeling exhausted, feeling like we’re trapped in Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room and can’t get out… 

And then there is this: the endless inhale of choices in our American marketplace. For me this is so well illustrated by something I once encountered at a restaurant called Macaroni Grill. “Create your own primo pasta,” the menu said. “Choose from everyday indulgences that take your pasta creation to new heights.” At this point, I’m rolling my eyeballs. The subtext, I know, is that as a consumer in a postmodern hyper-individualist society, the act of purchasing becomes nothing less than the art of declaring who I am, the art of constructing my personal identity. I am what I buy. But must this be the case when I’m hungry and I just want to eat some good Italian food? My eye scans the rest of the menu. I see five categories, each with multiple options: sauces, toppings, yummies, the actual type of pasta, and the type of side salad to accompany the dish. In all, there are 38 options to choose from, to take my pasta creation to new heights. I order a cheeseburger. 

The inhale is constant and exhausting. So many things to know, so much need in the world to meet, so many things to do, so many things to choose. And so, like Elizabeth Gilbert, we multitask like Swiss Army knives. We text while driving. To-do lists paper our walls. “I am so busy,” we say along with everyone else. It is the age of overwhelming.

But how did things get this way? What happened to throw the natural inhale-exhale rhythm of creation out of whack?

Perhaps it is the Law of Unintended Consequences in action. For surely we did not intend to fashion a world in which we must inhale without end. The original intentions were hopeful, and inspiring. Capitalism, with its intention of rewarding people for their initiative and hard work and creativity. Technology, with its intention of making life easier and raising our standard of living. But then there is that sober saying from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” Capitalism ends up in the saddle, and we see what has happened. The development of a system in which the driving goal is a never-ending MORE; in which the modus operandi is to create in people artificial needs; in which the people, bred to be needy, bred to be credit-card consumers of the MORE, find themselves on the wheel of work, working like mad, in debt like mad, running just to stand still if not to make the money to buy the things which they will have no time to enjoy because they are too busy working. This is what happens when Capitalism ends up in the saddle. And as for technology? Our “labor-saving” devices paradoxically cause us to work even harder than before, even as it arguably lowers the quality of our lives. Somehow, our technologies begin to alter our expectations for each other, so that, just as email is constantly available and instantaneous, people (we think) should be constantly available, and when we send an email, we should receive a reply immediately. The expectation is of course unreasonable, but it creeps within us nevertheless. Unfeeling, non-human technology setting the standard for flesh-and-blood. Don’t even get me started on how this is true where it comes to the work of democracy. How the nature of the television medium has shrink-wrapped political discourse into image and sound bite. Now, if a politician can’t explain his or her policies for a complex economy like ours in three sentences or less, he or she is dismissed as incompetent. 

Things in the saddle, riding humankind. Culminating, I would argue, in a myth that is diametrically opposed to the inhale-exhale creation myth of the Hebrew Bible. I’m talking about the myth of being a limitless self in a limitless world. The myth of the infinite MORE. The myth that we can keep on living unsustainably without consequences. This secular myth, so different from the ancient one, taking up a central place in our lives and shaping our conscience within. And so, even as we say to one another, “I am so busy,” we say it with pride, as if it is a desirable thing, as if we deserve a medal, as if we are demonstrating the goodness of our character. And then, when it all finally gets to us, and we can no longer bear the pain, and we’re burned out, at home in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma—we feel shame. We feel wrong, and we feel conscience-stricken. We have let the myth down. 

Perhaps these are some of the causes of the natural inhale-exhale rhythm of creation going askew. The Law of Unintended Consequences in action. The emergence of a new myth within culture and within conscience that worships the unlimited MORE. Whatever the cause, it hurts. It hurts to never stop inhaling.

In his tremendous book called Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, Wayne Muller makes this clear. How busyness and overwork become a kind of violence in which we simply cannot be our best selves. No time for rest and a renewal of perspective. No time to savor and to feel gratitude. Just living at warp speed, living in anxious survival mode. “I have sat on dozens of boards and commissions,” says Wayne Muller, “with many fine, compassionate, and generous people who are so tired, overwhelmed, and overworked that they have neither the time nor the capacity to listen to the deeper voices that speak to the essence of the problems before them. Presented with the intricate and delicate issues of poverty, public health, community well-being, and crime, our impulse, born of weariness, is to rush headlong toward doing anything that will make the problems go away. Maybe then we can finally go home and get some rest. But,” Muller continues, “without the essential nutrients of rest, wisdom, and delight embedded in the problem-solving process itself, the solution we patch together is likely to be an obstacle to genuine relief. Born of desperation, it often contains enough fundamental inaccuracy to guarantee an equally perplexing problem will emerge as soon as it is put into place. In the soil of a quick fix is the seed of a new problem, because our quiet wisdom is unavailable.” That’s what Wayne Muller says, and it leads me to think of the enormous problems facing this country and facing the next President, and I hold John McCain and I hold Barack Obama equally in the circle of my compassion. In the circle of my compassion, I hold the fine, compassionate, and generous people in this congregation and beyond. There is so much to do, so many needs to meet. And yet the more needs we try to satisfy all at one time, the faster we try to go, the more we breathe in, and in, and in: the more frantic we get, the more desperate, the more reactive, the more sloppy—and our work for justice and peace is neutralized, seeds of future problems are sown. The Tao Te Ching asks us, “Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?” How would we answer? How would this congregation answer? Each of us as families, as individuals? 

Perhaps this is why, in Judaism, regularly observing the Sabbath is no less than one of the famous 10 Commandments. It’s right up there, with “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” like don’t murder, don’t steal, honor your parents, and don’t bear false witness against your neighbor. It’s just as momentous, just as far-reaching, even if, on the surface, the command to take spiritual delight in our days and to indulge ourselves in the beauty of doing nothing seems … frivolous. And here, I have to confess that, in the past, this is exactly how this commandment had seemed to me, in comparison with the others. In the past, there would always be this voice from Sesame Street coming up to sing, “One of these things is not like the other….” Why, I always thought, had the author of the Ten Commandments put “Thou shalt not murder” on the same footing as “Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”? Until I realized that people who lack an intentional practice for rest and spiritual reflection commit a kind of murder themselves. A murder of the life force within and without. Diminishment, depletion, erosion, exhaustion—in our bodies and in the body of our earth. There is a reason why the Chinese pictograph for the word “busy” brings together two characters: one for heart, and another for killing.

The message is clear: like God in the ancient creation myth, we do well to embody the rhythm of inhale and exhale in our lives even as it commits us to doing something that is countercultural and flies in the face of our secular world. Judaism teaches this, and so do other major religions around the world. Muslims are about to enter into their holy season of Ramadan, with its fasting, prayer, and reflection to achieve goals of spiritual and physical cleansing, and this definitely resonates with the Jewish Sabbath.  

Inhale, exhale. Take a deep breath now, fill up your lungs—and release. Relax into the exhale. Be a good steward of the present moment.

So now we turn to practicing the Sabbath—what’s involved. And to this end, once again we go back to the Hebrew scriptures, where we read that “On the seventh day God finished God’s work,” and we also read, over and over again, the refrain: “And God saw that it was good.”

A close reading of that line about the seventh day—God finishing God’s work—suggests that, actually, the Sabbath is not simply a day off, a day when nothing is done. God is finishing God’s work—and this is something. Something is happening, something is being done, even into the seventh day; but the character of what is being done is special, has finality to it, has uniqueness. So what might this be? According to the ancient rabbis, God’s work of finishing has to do with menuha, which means tranquility, serenity, peace, repose. Rest, in the deepest possible sense. Renewal. This is what God creates on the seventh day, without which the Creation is incomplete and lacking. God creates the exhale, to balance out the inhale.

It means that we enter into Sabbath space and time not simply by ceasing from doing any job-related activities, or pressing pause on whatever makes us feel busy. We cease doing all such things so that we might shift our focus to the creation of something higher and something deeper, something which puts all the labor of the previous six days into perspective and completes it. Wayne Muller describes it well when he says, “It is the presence of something that arises when we consecrate a period of time to listen to what is most deeply beautiful, nourishing, or true. It is a time consecrated with our attention, our mindfulness, honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us.” That’s what Wayne Muller says. The Creation culminates in a direct sense of beauty, and nourishment, and grace, and healing, and the ultimate goodness of life. And what takes us to this is doing what God does in the creation myth: we consecrate the work of our lives, meaning that we step back and just look upon it, we attend to it, we listen, we honor, we give thanks, we appreciate.  

This is the proper work of the Sabbath. For observant Jews, the practice is to set aside the time from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown for this. To spark the imagination by lighting the Sabbath candles, to eat the Sabbath meal, to remember God and reflect on the Torah, to enter into an experience, ideally, of spaciousness. It’s not supposed to be heavy and legalistic. It’s supposed to be a time of sacred spirituality, sensuality, prayer, rest, song, delight. One of the more popular Sabbath activities, in fact, is making love. Apparently there is a tradition among some observant Jews that couples are to make love four times during the Sabbath. Once, Wayne Muller respectfully inquired about this with a friend, and the response was, “No, we make love only once. But, for the other three, we hold a deep intention.”

The proper work of the Sabbath: whatever invites the Spirit into our lives. Gardening can do that. Creative writing, or dancing. We are doing it right now, seated as we are here, in the round—not busy with our jobs, not busy with housework, not busy with committee work, but focused on work of a higher order, which is singing together, reflecting together, mourning together, rejoicing together, praying together, committing and recommitting our lives to that which deserves the loyalty of our hearts and spirits, dwelling in gratitude together. This work finishes our week, just as God’s work of creating tranquility and peace on the seventh day put the finishing touch on all that God accomplished in the previous six—and without which Creation would NOT be good, would NOT be worth living in, would not be enough, so that, presumably, God would be in the same spot so many of us today are in, trapped in the myth of the infinite MORE, and compelled to keep on creating: an eighth day, a ninth day, a tenth, an eleventh, and on and on….

But what God created on the seventh day makes the other six ENOUGH, makes them GOOD. So let it be for us. Every week, but also every day, let there be a Sabbath time where we turn away from our regular labor and pause, find a place of spiritual rest and repose, breathe in and breathe out the rhythm of creation. Be like the God of the myth, on the seventh day, and look upon the life you are creating with love, with compassion. Allow gratitude to well up within you. Let gratitude flow in your heart. God may see that it is good, but even more important is that YOU do. 

Rev. Anthony David

August 31. 2008

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

As Unitarian Universalists, we rally around a religious vision of people connecting with the Sacred in life—of being changed and transformed by this, called into acts of compassion and hope, expanding our circle of concern beyond self-interest so that we can be satisfied with nothing less than peace and justice for all. We rally around this vision of spiritual and ethical interdependency, and here at UUCA, we know that one of the essential ways of living the vision and making it real is being healthy in our relationships together: being mindful of how we communicate with and about others, seeking a peaceful and constructive resolution process when conflicts arise, celebrating the diversity within our community, building the common good. This is what we know, and rally around.  

Yet my question this morning is one of depth. The religious vision I just outlined, and its corresponding commitment to healthy relationships: how deeply rooted is it in our nature? Deep roots, or shallow? Teach a dog to fetch a newspaper, and that resonates with a basic capacity that is already deeply instilled in him—is this what Unitarian Universalism is trying to accomplish in us? Just cultivating and bringing to fuller expression potentials which are already ours in some way? Or, are we more like cats, and a capacity for fetching is just not part of who we are—and yet our religion foolishly persists in teaching us this anyhow?     

Scratch the surface of who we are, and what’s underneath?

It’s a question that has been asked with great intensity, especially since the savagery of World War II—the holocaust, the atom bomb, the willful destruction committed in Europe and Asia by otherwise civilized and scientifically enlightened people. Out of this, a dominant answer that emerged firmly rejected the “onward and upward forever” naïve optimism about human nature that so characterized nineteenth century liberal religion. In the harsh light of Nazi atrocities, or Soviet atrocities, this optimism appeared completely ridiculous. What seemed far more realistic was the grim idea that, deep down, humans are basically violent and amoral. And so, for example, a prominent scientist at the time, Konrad Lorenz, argued that aggression was a pressure within the human psyche that builds relentlessly, completely unrelated to frustrated desires and aims, without understandable and reasonable cause. The inexplicable pressure to destroy is within us, and it just builds and builds over time until it bursts through the thin veneer of human decency which religions and ethical systems like ours try so hard to shore up, but always in vain.

Then there was the thought of science writer Robert Ardrey. His 1961 book African Genesis argued what has since become known as the “killer ape” theory, which is that the ancient ancestors of humans were distinguished from other primate species by their greater aggressiveness, and that’s what drove their evolution, that’s the prime mover behind human development. It’s the famous scene in the classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, where a fight breaks out among a group of our ape ancestors, in which one bludgeons another with a zebra femur, and then that ape ancestor flings the femur triumphantly in the air, where, millennia later, it turns into an orbiting spacecraft. This is what the “killer ape” theory means: we’ve gotten to where we are today through genocide. Says Robert Ardrey, “We were born of killer apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?” This is who we truly are, says Robert Ardrey. Liberal religion tried to throw away the idea of original sin, but secular science revalidated a version of it. Scratch the surface, rub off the thin veneer of religion and ethics and civilization, and we find something horrible which is nothing less than the secret of our success—which makes it even more horrible. (Not one of our favorite things….)

And so where do we go from here, if the horrible vision is true? Another movie scene comes to mind, this time from the classic The African Queen. Surrounded by the jungle, Katherine Hepburn’s character says, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” In others words, work even harder to shore up the thin veneer of civilization, so that the jungle within us—the inexplicable pressure to do violence—is kept bottled up, pushed down. Sing hymns louder, perhaps—meditate more—repeat the Purposes and Principles regularly and often, as well as our Congregational Covenant of Healthy Relationships. Face your fate like a plucky and undaunted Katherine Hepburn, and rise above…

But this only goes so far. Putting on a brave face won’t take away the dread we’ll never be able to stop feeling about ourselves. The sense that there exists a murderous force within us, so alien to all that we hold sacred and holy, so untrue to the teachings of our greatest prophets, like Jesus and the Buddha. So alien to our hopes for peace and justice for all. So irreconcilable with the idea that people have inherent worth and dignity. No inner light within, but inner seething. Therefore we could never truly relax and trust our instincts; there would have to be constant vigilance to make sure that the thin veneer of sanity is maintained. Not freedom, but authoritarianism, would be the better way in religion and in life. Unitarian Universalism, in short, would cease to make any sense. This is what would happen.

All of what I’ve said so far is background for why the question about apes is so crucial, so momentous to our understanding of ourselves. Says Emory University professor Frans de Waal in his fascinating book Our Inner Ape, “If [apes] turn out to be better than brutes—even if only occasionally—the notion of niceness as a human invention begins to wobble. And if true pillars of morality, such as sympathy and intentional altruism can be found in other animals, we will be forced to reject veneer theory altogether.” This is what Franz de Waal says. Take a look at our closest animal kin—great apes like chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas—and see what their lives are really like. Perhaps humans can fool themselves and pull the wool over their eyes, but not apes. They are what they are, without deception, without shame. So put all the theorizing to the side. Put “killer ape” theory to the side, and just look at the evidence from the lives of our closest biological kin, with whom we share more than 97% of our DNA.    

And what do we find? A fine animal gorilla like Koko. A being who truly and deeply gets what we are doing here today. Blessing our animals companions, our pets—and Koko herself would do the same. Bless her beloved All Ball. Bless Smoky. We hold and rub and play with and talk baby talk to our cats and dogs, and so does Koko. “Koko love Ball. Soft good cat cat.” Stricken when All Ball was killed, as we are when our pets die. Sounding out a long series of high pitched hoots. Saying, “Cry, sad, frown.”

Now it is undeniable: when we look at our great ape brothers and sisters, some of the things we find are not nice warm fuzzies. Chimpanzees are notoriously brutal at times, and they are also incorrigibly tribal and xenophobic, fanatically patrolling group borders, viciously charging against strangers, fighting to the death to preserve the group’s territory if necessary. But, this said, the picture grows far more complex once you consider the larger picture: that there is amazing breadth and diversity within our biological family of great apes, and the behavior of chimpanzees cannot possibly represent the final word. Gorillas like Koko shed a very different kind of light on things. And then you have bonobos. Have you ever heard of bonobos? Bonobos make love, not war. Listen to how Frans de Waal compares them to chimpanzees: “One is a gruff-looking, ambitious character with anger-management issues. The other is an egalitarian proponent of a free-spirited lifestyle. [The chimpanzee’s] hierarchical and murderous behavior has inspired the common view of humans as ‘killer apes.’ […] I have witnessed enough bloodshed among chimpanzees to agree that they have a violent streak. But we shouldn’t ignore our other close relative, the bonobo, discovered only last century. Bonobos are a happy-go-lucky bunch with healthy sexual appetites. Peaceful by nature, they belie the notion that ours is a purely bloodthirsty lineage.” That’s what Frans de Waals says. Our human heritage, exemplified in our closest animal relatives, is mixed. Chimpanzees may be tribal and xenophobic, but bonobos, in the best United Nations way, regularly establish peaceful relations with foreigners. Our inner ape is just not one narrow thing, as “killer ape” theory suggests. What’s deep down in human nature is broad: as much love and compassion as it is murder. And our job is to choose wisely, which impulses we draw on.

Consider this story about a bonobo called Kidogo, who suffered from a heart condition. “He was feeble, lacking the normal stamina and self-confidence of a grown male bonobo. When first introduced to the colony at the Milwaukee County Zoo, Kidogo was completely confused by the keepers’ shifting commands inside the unfamiliar building. He failed to understand where to go if people urged him to move from one part of the tunnel system to another. After a while, other bonobos stepped in. They approached Kidogo, took him by the hand, and led him to where the keepers wanted him, thus showing they understood both the keepers’ intentions and Kidogo’s problem. Soon Kidogo began to rely on their help. If he felt lost, he would utter distress calls, and others would quickly come over to calm him and act as a guide.” That’s the story. The strong helping the weak. Genuine sympathy, genuine altruism, found in the sacred depths of nature, right there. Sending a message that our job as humans is not so much to follow Katherine Hepburn’s advice and “rise above” nature as it is to bring into fuller expression certain capacities it has gifted us with. To draw on the positive aspects of our inner ape so as make a better world. Hubert Humphrey once said that “the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” Now if in bonobo society we have the strong helping the weak, why not in human society, and MORE of it? Why not?

Story after story documents in bonobos—as well as in chimpanzees and gorillas—kindness and empathy, a capacity for peacemaking and reconciliation, creativity, even freedom—this latter part suggested by Koko’s capacity to tells lies and her sense of humor. Blind actors carrying out a pre-set genetic program just can’t do this sort of thing, aren’t capable of the kind of improvisation and imagination that deception and humor require. Story after story opens up our minds to the fact that “our humanness is grounded in social instincts we share with other animals.” Our inner ape is just not a killer ape. Don’t say to me, “scratch an altruist, and watch a hypocrite bleed.” That makes no sense, in light of the facts. Kindness and sympathy and altruism are not veneer-thin but deep. You can’t scratch it away. It is a gift to us from our great ape brothers and sisters. It means we don’t have to be afraid of ourselves. It means we can replace a feeling of dread with a feeling of wonder. It means that to creation, we belong. Unitarian Universalism is real. Our Covenant of Healthy Relationships is realistic. The animals bring us back to our senses. “Fine animal gorilla” teaches us to say—and gives us courage to say—“fine animal human.”  

Rev. Anthony David

August 23, 2008

UUCA