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 elcome
to 10/10/10. I know that UUism attracts a lot of scientific and
technical types, so today’s celebration of the decimal, base 10
positional notation numerical system must have you all just over the
moon. I’ll begin today by answering the question many of you may be
asking, “who the heck is that guy?” Let me share just a little bit to
help you understand who I am and where I am coming from before I get
into the topic of my talk, regarding choosing our own religious paths.
Welcome to my triumphant return to my UU roots. I was raised going to
the UU church with my parents (who have come today, please stand up and
wave Mom and Dad!) and my brother and sister. Like many young UUs I
drifted away in my 20s (and most of my 30s!). I traveled the world, and
spent almost two years living as a novice in Theravada Buddhist
monasteries in Europe. At one point, I flirted with the idea of becoming
a UU minister, and I went to Naropa University in Boulder for three
years, spending most of that time in their Master of Divinity track,
which is the track for professional ministry. At some point I realized
that I just wasn’t hearing the call to professional ministry, so rather
than force it, I finished with a Master of Arts in Religious Studies,
the degree one would get prior to seeking a PHD in Theology. So this
morning I expect to get extra credit for covering both this month’s and
last month’s theme, because I’m living AS IF I became a UU minister.
I just returned to live in Littleton this past spring after living in
the Arkansas Valley for three years. Because my summer vocation is
farming (I farm the city! Don’t worry, if you’re curious what that
means, you’ll hear plenty about this from me in the coming months.) But
because my summer vocation is farming, I’ve missed church quite a bit. I
did have a chance to enjoy the Building your Own Theology course with
Rev. Coeyman, and gave a hand with the vegetable garden out back during
the Spring work day. And now I find myself in the pulpit talking to you.
How’s that for a whirlwind?
Now for just a bit on where I am at spiritually right now. The main
reason I moved back here was that I experienced either an epiphany or a
collapse, depending on how I choose to view it. This process is
difficult to describe, so I’ll have to trot out two movie references to
describe it, which have the potential downside of not really working if
folks haven’t seen the movie, and have the potential upside of
explaining what I mean to those who do understand, while hopefully not
alienating those who don’t. So I’ll start with a reference from a 10
year old movie for you younguns: I took Morpheus’ red pill, and began to
see and understand the Matrix. And now a 70-year old movie that everyone
has to have seen: like Dorothy and Toto, I started paying attention to
the man behind the curtain, even though I‘ve been exhorted to not pay
attention to him.
One of the features of this epiphany/collapse for me has been a ruthless
examination of the ideal of freedom: existential freedom, economic
freedom, and political freedom, and what freedom means in the context of
the historic transition our society is going through now. Suffice it
say, I have rejected much of what claims to be freedom, much of what
I’ve been taught freedom is. It has been a long and painful but
enlightening journey to arrive at my current worldview. Many of you
could possibly be offended if I just gave soundbites of my current views
without being able to show you the evidence that backs them. My views
are controversial at best, downright divisive at worst, yet I am meeting
many more people in the big city who share at least some of them. I even
had the delightful experience of meeting someone who was more extreme
than me the other night! I do welcome conversation on these topics.
But for this morning I will try my best to tone it down (in case you
couldn’t hear it, that was a sigh of relief from my Mom) and just
confine myself to a statement that would be radically controversial in
most of the other church pulpits in America on a Sunday morning, but
might only provoke mild controversy here in this church.
So here’s that statement, which is the theme of the rest of my
remarks.
You decide for yourself what you believe about God, and what
that belief means for your spiritual, religious and practical life.
Even if you decide to choose from any of the traditional religious
formulations regarding who or what God is or isn’t, including atheism,
even if you believe that God gave you “free will” to reject Him at your
own peril,
even if you are raised in a tradition which specifically
tells you who or what God is, and you never deliberately choose to leave
that tradition, by omission you are making a personal choice, you are
making up your own mind about God by deciding to accept someone else’s
definition. You are choosing the benefits that result from not resisting
the pressure of your tribe.
Like I mentioned earlier, this is a good place to share this idea,
because UU history is all about rejecting the dominant paradigm. I will
now offer my hyper-simplified version Unitarian Universalism. Two rebel
bands of outsiders and heretics decided life would be better together
than apart, and after a rocky and perilous courtship, they tied the knot
in 1961, and have had nothing but joy and confusion since. This makes
Unitarian Universalism a textbook example of a syncretistic religion, it
is a deliberate combination of two formerly discrete elements.
So when I was at Naropa, we had a class in inter-religious dialogue. An
open and respectful dialogue between traditions is desperately needed in
our world today, and one of the leading proponents of this dialogue,
Diana Eck has already come up in at least one of Rev. Coeyman’s sermons.
Eck is the founder and leader of the Pluralism Project at Harvard. A
simple definition of religious pluralism is that it is an attempt to
answer “YES” to Rodney King’s famous question, “can’t we all get along?”
I thank Diana Eck for her leadership in helping create this respectful
dialogue, sometimes. Of course one of the pitfalls of lofty goals is
that we can fail to achieve them, but that doesn’t mean that we
shouldn’t try. One thing I have relearned working on this sermon is that
we tend to teach what we most need to hear ourselves.
In her book, “Encountering God” Diana Eck wrote the following:
"There are some critics who imagine that pluralism is aimed at
generating a new, syncretistic religion knit together from the most
universal or most interesting elements of world religions. Or that
pluralism is a kind of global shopping mall where each individual puts
together a basket of appealing religious ideas…A pluralist culture will
not flatten out differences, but has respect for differences and the
encounter of differences. Its aim is quite the opposite of syncretism."
[Note 1]
She attacks two specific traditions, including the religion of my birth,
Unitarian Universalism, and the Baha’is. She comes to a conclusion on
what these two traditions are doing, “joining together in a new ‘world
religion’ based on the lowest common denominator or pieced together from
several religious traditions is not the goal of pluralism. In some ways
it is the very antithesis of pluralism.” [Note 2]
Boy did that get my juices flowing! She believes in open respectful
dialogue with the traditions that she considers real by her definition,
the others are just pieced together jalopies that are based on the
lowest common denominator, they’re just shopping baskets of appealing
religious ideas. Well, to anyone who is new here this morning, and to
all of you seasoned UU’s, welcome to the shopping basket! We’ve got a
wet cleanup on aisle nine, better bring the mop bucket! Another
checkstand is opening!
As I worked on my paper on syncretism, at a university that grew out a
specific tradition, I was often told that the differences and boundaries
between traditions were essential. I talked about this issue with one of
my mentors, a gentle and loving Catholic priest named Father Tom Nelson.
I said I wasn’t sure if I was a Buddhist or a Christian, and I wasn’t
sure that it was important to decide. He told me that I needed to
decide, that if I did not set that boundary I could never really
participate in a dialogue with another tradition. There were other
moments of study and personal encounters, usually with card-carrying
members of specific traditions where this idea was reinforced. Not
necessarily the idea that we’ve got the one way and those guys are
wrong, because that would be just too dated and repressive. But the idea
that I had to choose one horse to ride in this race was encountered
again and again.
But, because I was searching hard, I also found the opposite idea
expressed, that our different traditions are just different paths up the
same mountain, and so therefore their particularities may really be just
preliminaries. Like Huston Smith’s metaphor of the tailor--- are
religions like a big pair of pants, multiple at the bottom, one at the
top? Father Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk also known as Swami
Dayananda who lived in India for 38 years, takes the ultimate unity of
traditions very seriously, he said this in an interview for a film about
his life:
"Behind all the differences in religion, which are infinite on the scale
of multiplicity, we find a common tradition, a common wisdom, which we
all share. And that’s the hope of the future, that religions will
discover their own depth. As long as they remain on their surface,
they’ll always be divided in conflict. When they discover their depth,
then we converge on the unity. I sometimes give the illustration of the
fingers and the palm of the hand; [holds out hand, palm up, starting
with the pinky and moving through the thumb, says] this is Buddhism you
see here, this is Hinduism, this is Islam, this is Judaism, and this is
Christianity. Buddhism is miles from Christianity and they’re all
divided separately. As you go deep into any religion, [follows the five
fingers of his outstretched hand with his other hand into his palm] you
converge on the center, and everything springs from that center [taps
the center of his palm] and everything is converging on that center. And
that is how we are today. " [Note 3]
So are the religions ultimately one? Or are their particularities very
important, to the point that we may be able to see redeeming qualities
in all of them, but need to hunker down in one, the sooner the better?
In my opinion, we will never know for sure. I pile this question, of
whether religions are ultimately One, in the same pile with other ones
like: Does God exist? What happens to us when we die? Is the universe
expanding or contracting? Does a soul exist independent of the body? How
many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? The
Buddha addresses this kind of question in his metaphor of the man shot
with the poisoned arrow. [Note 4] So a man is shot
with a poisoned arrow, and his friends and family want to get him to the
doctor to get it removed, and he says, wait! “'I won't have this arrow
removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior,
a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this
arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who
wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short...
until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored...
until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know whether the
bow was a long bow or a crossbow,' and on and on… The Buddha teaches
about suffering and its end, that’s it. If you’re waiting for the final
answers to questions with no final answer to start to address the fact
that you are suffering, you’re going to be waiting a long time.
I have a strong suspicion that all phenomena of any kind are ultimately
One, but I can’t say for sure from my own experience. I have read many
credible accounts of people who have claimed to have realized this state
of oneness in their lifetime, but they might just be making it up to
make themselves and me feel better, to sell books, tickets to talks and
retreat slots at Esalen.
I think about it in a Buddhist way, that is in the manner of his sermon
to the Kalamas, in which, he basically said, don’t accept anything on
faith, or anything because of the authority of the person telling you.
Test out any notion regarding reality and the Big Picture in your own
experience before you decide if it is true. But you still have to be
willing to test it out. So, does transcendence exist? Is it possible to
live from a state of Unconditional wholeness and integrity? It may not
be possible, but until I test it out I will not know, and this does take
a degree of faith. Maybe not faith that an old white guy with a bushy
gray beard sitting on a golden throne created the Earth in seven days,
but a species of faith nonetheless. In my opinion, making this leap was
easier when we had more people walking around who did embody this kind
of transcendent integrity. Or perhaps they are walking around, and we’re
just not seeing them because we’re busy checking our email on our phones
while waiting in line at Starbucks for some caffeine because we stayed
up late on Facebook last night.
To conclude, here’s a few of my beliefs and opinions, my choices that I
am striving to realize, your beliefs, opinions and choices are just as
valid, at least to the extent they agree with mine. Maybe these spark
something in you.
We are these monkeys who attained self-reflective consciousness, and
figured out that we could tell each other symbolic stories, and that
these stories had more import if they hooked into the already existing
furniture of our subconscious and unconscious minds. Guess who arranged
the furniture down there? Mom and Dad (and they’re here today! Wave Mom
and Dad!). So, because Mom is so key to our arrival, she dominated our
religious world for many generations… much that we know about
prehistoric religion has to do with the earth mother and fertility.
Then, at some point, an angry, petulant, jealous Sky Father pushed her
aside, and took over the symbolic stories we told each other. At some
point our rulers also realized that these stories could work wonders for
making people compliant, for getting people to self-enforce cohesion and
conformity in the tribe and eventually the nation-state, but that’s a
story for another time.
Well, we are in a unique historical position, of having access to
information about all of the world’s religions, and getting to choose
for ourselves what works for us. Let us celebrate and enjoy this reality
rather than denigrate it. In my travels I have seen that, whether folks
prefer an earth mother, or a sky father, or three sky fathers in one, or
to contemplate a limitless universe that cannot be contained by any
notion of personhood, or none of the above, whichever path they choose
to follow with an open heart, courage and faith, they all lead to human
caring and love. They all come back to the golden rule, treat others as
you would like to be treated…
I would like to conclude with a quote from a documentary called
The One Percent [Note 5}, which was
made and released in 2006, by Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson and
Johnson family fortune. As Jamie grew up, he became aware of his
enormous privilege in the midst of stark inequality, and he wondered how
democratic governance can survive in an economy where political
influence is a commodity that can be purchased, an economy where,
according to research published in 2007 by economist Edward Wolff of New
York University , the top one percent of citizens of the U.S. control
43% of the wealth, and the next 19% control 50% of the wealth, leaving
7% to be divided among the bottom 80%. These figures are based on
research done before the planned implosion of the economy by the central
banking elite in 2008, in my opinion this concentration of wealth, and
therefore political power in fewer hands has only accelerated. And, by
the way, money is also just another symbolic story that we are all
telling each other…, just another narrative, a collective myth, a
collective psychosis that we just might heal one day. It is a narrative
that benefits the few at the expense of the many, but it is ultimately
just another narrative sustained by our belief, kind of like religion.
Jamie Johnson is riding in a taxicab, talking to the driver, a black man
named Jimmie Price. As Mr. Price gets to know our narrator, Johnson
explains that he is an heir to the Johnson family fortune, which is at
least a billion dollars and growing. Mr. Price responds:
"Ok, Johnson and Johnson. Big Money. Old money, Old crooked money. Money
that come out of those moonshiners.
"I can tell you something.
You might think I’m an idiot. My family is one of the richest families
in the world. But not with money. With love, kindness, tolerance and
patience. Qualities that are worth more than money. And you can’t buy
that. They taught me to love people for who they are and not what I want
them to be. They taught me how to get along with people. They taught me
to treat people the way I want to be treated. They taught me to treat
each person for who they are, not club them together, because we’re all
different in our own way. That’s the richness I was brought up with.
"You have a choice."
Hymn: #118 “This Little Light of Mine” (standing)
Please rise in body or in spirit for our closing hymn, #118, This Little
Light of Mine
Extinguishing of Chalice (join hands across the aisles)
We extinguish this flame but not the light of truth, the warmth of
community, or the fire of commitment.
These we carry in our hearts until we are together again.
Benediction
Let us bless and keep one another.
Let kindness rule in our hearts
and compassion in our lives,
until
we meet again. Amen.
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