Introductory Words

If you missed the Cluster meeting yesterday, you missed Rev. Dr. Bill Jone's challenge to Unitarian Universalism to move beyond, in James Luther Adam's words, a religion of the successful which fails to identify correctly and to enter into combat with what St. Paul called "the principalities and powers of evil." Dr. Jone's challenge to us was to move from an integrationist and assimilationist perspective to a pluralistic perspective.

Yet what positive vision do we have of a pluralistic society? What can we point to in the world that illustrates pluralism? These will be the questions I will be grappling with as I present my current understanding of where I see U.U.ism headed as we approach the 21st Century. I doubt I have it all figured out, but I think I can contribute a useful frame which will help us move where our principles suggest we want to go.

Sermon

The conventional way to grow crops operates something like this: First the land to be used is cleared of everything that might impede the plow or tractor. This means cutting all the trees, displacing large rocks and boulders, removing all the shrubbery and perhaps setting a controlled fire to burn off everything else. Whatever is left is plowed under. The seeds are then planted and as they grow, all undesired plants which survive the tilling and the burning are destroyed with herbicides. Manufactured fertilizer is sprinkled on the little seedlings to stimulate their growth. If any insect decides to make the developing plants its dinner, it is gassed, dusted, poisoned, vacuumed, chopped up or drowned. Ideally, only the desired species of plant will survive until maturation. And the ones that do survive until harvest are programmed to be all the same, row after row after row.

There are some interesting parallels between this type of farming and traditional religious thought and practice. The Big Three conventional Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have a well developed system of belief which actively rejects the validity of the rest. The Orthodox Jews, the Christian and Muslim Fundamentalists clear their intellectual landscape of other beliefs and plant only the ideas that come out of their own tradition. Previous unorthodox views and ideas are actively rooted out. Religious authorities fill the minds and hearts of the people with the sanctioned truth for nourishment of the spirit. Invading alien ideas are exposed, critiqued, dissected, judged, and discarded. The devotee aspires to conform to the image of the ideal follower called rabbi, saint, or imam. The individual is unimportant; rather, conformance to doctrine is paramount, row after row after row. The ideal is to become completely obedient to the will of God as defined by the sect, with the goal of being harvested for the glory of God.

In the Christian world, the Protestant Reformation starting in the Sixteenth Century challenged Roman Catholicism's claim that the individual could not understand the doctrine as presented in the Bible without mediation of the Church. Born of Renaissance prosperity and international trade, the individual's ability to control his or her own intellectual destiny became more important in a fast-changing world with which the Catholic church could not adapt quickly enough to stay relevant.

Even though Unitarian Universalism is a great intellectual distance from Martin Luther who posted his famous 95 theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg on Oct. 31, 1517, our history is one long string of protests. The Puritans rejected the Church of England. The Unitarians in the early 1800's rejected the divinity of Jesus as co-equal with God and the Calvinist view of the depravity of humanity. The Universalists at the same time rejected the idea that Jesus' salvation was only for the elect, but rather proclaimed it for all. The Transcendentalist Unitarians rejected the cold cerebral intellectualism of the first generation of American Unitarians. The Free Fellowship movement of the latter half of the Nineteenth Century rejected the idea that Jesus was central to our faith and sought a universal religion that could be practiced by all people. The Humanist Unitarians of the early 1900's rejected the need for God at all, intoxicated by the advancement of knowledge through science.

With each rejection, we have both pared away at the core belief required to be a member and expanded our embrace to a larger community of people with diverse ideas. Each rejection of traditional views cut away at part of our connection with our history of faith and practice. As we have whittled down the authority of our religious tradition to give us a framework for our belief, members have been required to strive for themselves to determine how to frame their own beliefs. For some the title of the adult class of the last few weeks, "Building Your Own Theology," is a source of pride that we have freed our minds from the shackles of the past. For others the title suggests just how disconnected we are from being a religion.

March 15th through the 20th I will be attending the first Convocation of Unitarian Universalist ministers for about 15 to 20 years. And about 500 ministers are expected to be in attendance. It's a significant chunk of the settled ministers in our movement. We will be convening to examine our institutional identity and set a course beyond the year 2000. I think we will be seeing such a large turnout partially because a new vision of Unitarian Universalism is taking shape. This is not the traditional Unitarian Universalism defined by what it rejects. This is not the Unitarian Universalism of the 60's and 70's that atomized into radical individualism. A new understanding of Unitarian Universalism is bubbling up within congregations and clergy circles. Rather than having a rejecting stance, it has an affirming one.

The Manifest Destiny philosophy inherent in traditional Western thinking is crumbling as we meet the limits of nature. When the first white settlers came, they saw a land to be conquered and subdued to make it fit for European Civilization. This philosophy no longer functions (if it really ever did) when all frontiers are gone. We in Florida live on one of the last closing frontiers. As the fish and timber stocks have been depleted and the water quantity and quality threatened, we are quickly realizing we can no longer be exploiters but must begin to be conservers.

The transition to a philosophy of stewardship from one of exploitation has been advanced by our expanded appreciation of natural systems. Disastrous experiments with introducing exotic plants like the Brazilian Pepper and the Melaleuca tree for human purposes here in Florida have taught us a great deal about balance in the natural world. The thriving ecosystem requires an enormous variety of plant, insect, bird, and animal life. Removing one species or introducing another can destabilize and destroy the equilibrium which allows all to stay in balance. It is diversity which supports the system's growth and creativity.

One of the great advances in understanding during the 20th Century has been in the area of understanding systems. All systems strive for some kind of equilibrium for them to function. A way to understand how this process of balancing operates is to consider how an amplifier works. One of the first things I learned in designing electrical circuits in college was the importance of correctly biasing an amplifier. An amplifier takes a small vibration and makes it a bigger vibration as it passes through the circuit. A vibration moves back and forth around a central value. If you hold a rubber band between your fingers and pluck it it will vibrate up and down from its rest position, or in engineering jargon, its bias point. As a vibration passes through an amplifier, it gets bigger. But all amplifiers are limited in how much they can amplify before they distort and stop working. The key to good design is to keep the vibration centered in the middle of the amplifier's range and to control the factor of amplification to prevent the larger vibrations from exceeding their range.

A healthy ecosystem has an equilibrium, too. Birth, growth, consumption, excretion, procreation, and death each help and hurt the total system, but the whole thrives and grows. A little extra rain, period of cold, an abundance of one species or the decline of another, or the introduction of extra waste all have effects, but the resiliency of the whole is maintained. Complex checks and balances become engaged which bring the system back into equilibrium - IF the system is not over-stressed beyond its range. As an amplifier takes a small signal and makes it bigger, a healthy ecosystem takes a little life and creates more abundant life of greater variety.

How different is this view of nature than that of our ancestors who sought to tame it, subdue it and control it. Our original motivation to mess with this system was to coax more production from the same area of land. Ancient cultures planted only one or two crops, not the varied yet limited harvest of fruits and vegetables the ecosystem already offered.

Traditional religion, like our ancestors, saw the individual not as a whole and unique person but more as a wild plot of land which must be disciplined and controlled. The unproductive plants must be removed, the predators and parasites killed and the swamps drained. Idle hands are the devil's playmate. Anger and dependence are dangerous except in the service of God. Any mental energy not used for God's greater glory is wasted.

What I see evolving in Unitarian Universalism is an inner and outer philosophy of ecology - interdependence, if you will. The most engaging U.U. principle for many is "Respect for the interdependent web of existence." The 7th principle shows the way before us. U.U.'s are no longer seeing our species as God's supervisor of the planet. U.U.'s are beginning to see themselves as participants in the ecosystem rather than its masters. And some are suggesting that there may be times when our needs and wants are not of primary importance to the ecology. Our task is not to make the world into something from a vision or a sacred text, but rather to co-create with the ecosystem.

This systemic thinking is expressed in our vision of world community. U.U.'s are moving away from viewing the world as an instrument to meet our developed world's needs while undeveloped countries serve our desires. We have long cherished a vision of all life-affirming cultures cooperating together to share the world's resources in a sustainable way so future generations can enjoy and grow on this blue-green planet.

We U.U.'s are often criticized for being a bastion of secular individualism. "You can believe anything you want and be a U.U.", so the old saw proclaims. Well, I don't think this ever was the case, given the homogeneity of our congregations. As U.U.'s are moving to a more ecological understanding of the world, we are also appreciating the need for diversity in our congregations. A monoculture of one inherited belief system limits our appreciation for the insight and understanding carried in the hearts and minds of those who do not look, speak and think as we do.

The vision of mixing together people of different races, nationalities, cultures, sexual orientations, and beliefs in one congregation seems like a radical idea. Fear of conflict makes imagining such a mixing very difficult. One of the problems with envisioning congregational diversity has been that we haven't had a good model in our minds of how to think about it in a way that works. Special interests fighting over tax dollars in Congress or a college campus with acrimonious competing ideologies are the likely models that come to mind when different people with different agendas share the same four walls.

I think the ecosystem model of U.U. congregations gives us an affirmative vision of congregational diversity. Yes, there are power struggles and yes, there is competition for scarce resources, yet without each part of the whole, the system can become unbalanced. In every congregation there is at least one person who resists the enthusiasm of the majority. Without that person to serve as a counterbalance, the congregation may charge off and do something dangerous and harmful. It is the free exchange of our ideas and beliefs that creates the context for creation.

If there is anything that evolution has proved, it is that life favors creation and novelty. Otherwise we'd all still be floating around as an amino acid soup. The universe is seems to be designed, when the conditions are favorable as they are on our planet, to encourage greater and greater complexity. When an ecosystem, such as a prairie, a redwood or a rainforest, experiences abundance, new species appear.

This is the promise of the Unitarian Universalist vision of diversity. If well balanced, which may take time, it can serve our inner and outer creativity. For what gets challenged when people who are different come together are the limits of our own thinking of what is possible. Meeting and getting to know people who are different can create bridges of trust and understanding that can expand our humanity.

What does this look like? My vision of it is a meadow that has not been plowed for many many years. Trees have grown up to give shade from the hot sun. Bushes of raspberries are scattered about. Grasses of many varieties sprout up. No one plant dominates nor can one insect do much damage before being eaten by a bird. No one rodent can eat too much seed before being caught by a fox. Flowers and butterflies spread across this meadow. The meadow yields an abundant variety of food which is harvested carefully to maintain the meadow's equilibrium. What is wonderful about such a meadow is that it requires little work!

And how does a minister fit into this picture? The minister is the wise ecologist who assists the system to maintain its equilibrium so no species overwhelms the others. The minister does not cut everything down and plant only her crops, his ideas. The minister nurtures the well-being of the meadow, giving it guidance so it can become more productive, more creative, caring for the balance of the ecosystem given nature's constraints. Asian fruit may not be appropriate for the Southern U.S. Oranges will not survive in New England. Kudzu must be actively warded off. Each ecosystem is unique and no formula works for all.

And everything I have said about ecology for the world, ecology for congregations, also is true for the individual. Forcing our minds to conform to an imposed belief system will not well serve our inner ecology. Introducing some new species of ideas to our inner garden may encourage the inner diversity, but not slashing and burning our inner intellectual landscape and replacing it. Our happiness, well being, and creativity will come from a rich, balanced, inner diversity of ideas and beliefs.

This ecological paradigm is what I see as the future of Unitarian Universalism. It is a very different way to view religion but one that I think will survive the monoculture religions. We live in a world crying out for attention to balancing the ecosystem's needs at all levels, global, societal and personal. We desperately need to move away from linear ultimate end thinking to a relational, systemic view. But we are certainly not the first to have come to this vision. We are only rediscovering territory which Native Americans and other subsistence peoples have known for many, many years. If you exploit your garden, you will be thrown out. If you live out of harmony with your environment, you will die. If you cherish it and protect it, you will live and prosper.

Let us cultivate our Unitarian Universalist garden in a way which enriches all of us while providing an example to the world of how people of different races, sexes and beliefs can not only live together in peace but also find fulfillment and happiness.

One way to cultivate this U.U. garden is to make a contribution as the basket passes by you this morning. This fellowship has a very small endowment and we are not subsidized by the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities nor the Unitarian Universalist Association. This congregation gets its support from the generosity of its members, friends and visitors. And today you can join them, especially if you are not a regular contributing member or friend. If you would like to become one, please let the person at the membership table in the entrance-way know.

Closing Words

We have a choice. We can be part of the solution or part of the problem. Creation is nourished by receptive contact with difference. The lamb and the lion can lie down together when they know each other as more than food. What the world needs is a safe place for the lion and the lamb to get to know each other and find common ground. May Unitarian Universalism choose to be such a place of peace-making.

Go in Peace.
Make Peace.
Be at Peace.