SERMON

Cyndy Stiehl did a fine job as our mistress of ceremonies after our pledge luncheon in February and sang a song titled: "Proud to be a U.U." by Joyce Poley. The song inspired some thoughts in me as I listened to the chorus describing an alleged U.U. method of spiritual growth. I've asked Cyndy to sing it for you again. As you hear it, reflect on the message about how we seek truth.

Proud to be UU - by Joyce Poley

Chorus:
We're never quite sure who we are, you see
Does anyone know our theology
Continue the search and we're sure to find
Another new truth - - so we can change our mind.

The UU Church has come to be
A place where I am truly free
I have no creed to hold me down
I'm free to fly or hit the ground.
No one to tell me what to know
Or how to search or where to go
I am so proud, oh yes I am - - to be - a Unitarian.

The things I see are real to me
And what I can't is not, you see
The facts of science we enshrine
No quantum leap will cloud my mind.
But look - we're waxing spiritual
With dabblings oh so mystical
I am so proud oh yes I am -- to be --- a Unitarian.

But most of all I love the songs
Though often times we think them wrong
And so we take a lot of pain
Rewriting all the words again.
The poetry of course is gone
But still, the syntax lingers on
I am so proud oh yes I am -- to be --- a Unitarian.

But now we're trying so hard you see
To figure out our identity
Our mission is becoming clear
And covenant is oh so near.
I'm proud of our diversity
But more so of our unity
I am so proud oh yes I am -- to be -- a Unitarian.

We're trying to say who we are you see
We're even discussing theology
To continue the search and we're sure to find
Another new truth - so we can know our mind.

Copyright (c) 1995 by Joyce Poley, All rights reserved.

Thank you Cyndy!

The bumper sticker "To question is the answer" was and perhaps still is very popular with Unitarian Universalists. Because we enshrine no absolute metaphysical truth or revealed message, everything seems to be up for examination. As Joyce Poley poetically puts it, "No creed to hold me down, I'm free to fly or hit the ground." One of the most cherished beliefs of U.U.'s is our belief that we each have the freedom to individually come to our own understanding of what is, of truth, of reality, of where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. To borrow the words of Francis Bacon, "If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we will be content to begin with doubts, we shall end in certainties[1]".

One of the unusual responsibilities I have as a minister is to try to prevent any one understanding to dominate and exclude minority understandings. This isn't easy. If we had a majority of Christians here, I'd be defending the Humanist points of view. If we had a majority of atheists, I'd be defending the theists. Our UU goal is to have an intellectual climate that permits the free exchange and exploration of ideas and experiences with little prejudice, so people can naturally grow from their current world view and understanding to a larger and deeper world view and understanding. Each person's growth is unique because we are all at different times in our lives, at a different place along our individual paths of awakening to greater awareness, insight and understanding and wrestling with different problems and life situations along the way. No one answer can satisfy us all. The joy of being in such a community is being able to learn from and teach each other as equals in a setting which respects our inherent worth and dignity wherever we are, helping us take the next step. As Henri Bergson put it, "…for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly[2]". This is one understanding of the meaning of our Principles, "acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations" and "A free and responsible search for truth and meaning."

Well, that's the theory at least. I think we don't often live up to its shining splendor. Changing our minds is very difficult. I may be an anomaly, but I find myself quite attached to certain points of view and find it difficult to let go of them even when I see that they are not serving me well. Sometimes these solidified aspects of mind spring up out of places that aren't even thoughts but emotional reactions. We are creatures of habit, and habits do not like to be changed.

Many of us, taking the guidance of scientific and anecdotal evidence, are attempting to change our diets to lower fats, animal proteins, sugars and cholesterol, eating more fruits and vegetables, grains and beans. For some this change may be easy, but for most of us this change is quite difficult. Most of us enjoy a steak, baked potato with butter and sour cream finished up with a slice of chocolate cake or apple pie. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. It is hard to get excited about a plate of steamed vegetables, lentil loaf and fruit salad. Lentil loaf has become a forbidden food in our home.

Growing into being a parent, one often continues to discover how deeply conditioned we are. Philomena has been pointing out to me the way I gently tease Andy as we play together. I resisted her intrusion into the way I interacted with my son until he started doing some of the same things to the kids at school with a much less affectionate response. It hasn't been until this week that I realized the source of this pattern of my behavior with Andy. I relate to him in many ways much the way I related to my younger sister who I teased mercilessly (little boys can be so cruel). Again and again, I discover myself recreating my family of origin with Philomena and Andy because it fits with my habit, my conditioning, my wiring if you will. I find changing my wiring takes awareness, takes conscious attention to the present moment and most of all patience and perseverance.

Speaking of conditioning, I was raised by parents who define the term bleeding heart liberal. I've never been quite as liberal-minded as they were (as my father has frequently pointed out over the course of my lifetime) but I know unconsciously I've adopted many of my parents' political views. Many of us are like this if we have great respect for the wisdom of our parents as I did. Now things have changed. The world in which my parents formed their political views is not the same world that exists today. Bill Clinton's "New" Democratic party isn't the party of John Kennedy or George McGovern or FDR. The era of big government is over! The attempted takeover (accomplished takeover?) of the Republican Party by the Christian Coalition has many more moderate Republicans dismayed. And what about that Pat Buchanan?

To make it more personal and specific, I am a believer, as were my parents, in public schools. I went to public schools for my education in Newark, Delaware. I attended public universities. In each public institution I received an excellent education, as good as if not superior to any private school I could have attended. I believe every child should have the opportunity to get the best education possible to allow them to grow in a way that maximizes their potential. So as the debate rages on about declining quality of public education and the methods of best educating children, especially in the inner cities, I find it difficult to look at the issue objectively. I find it most difficult when I look at Andy and feel my desire for him versus what I believe to be good public policy.

Where most of us have the most resistance to changing our minds is in the realm of theology. Those who reason themselves into the atheist corner resist fervently seductive stories of personal experience of divinity. Devout theists who feel Jesus walking and talking with them ignore scholarly studies of the contractions and errors in the Bible and the illogical and unreasonable nature of their belief. The agnostics are stuck in the middle, not feeling at home in either camp. Having embraced both the atheist position and the theist position at different times in my life, I find myself in yet another camp which assumes, to refer to last week's discourse, "something else is going on" but doesn't depend on "something else to fix it," keeping my feet firmly planted in both the theist and the atheist camps as they are both part of the bigger picture.

So changing one's mind is difficult. I don't think I have to prove this to you. I can't promise you The One True Answer. I do not presume to know what the right direction is for you in your life. U.U.ism places our faith in the individual and makes individuals responsible for their own spiritual growth--which can be dangerous. If you hold your own tiller and steer your own ship, you take on the risk of running into a storm or a wreck on a rock. It is scary to take charge of one's own life and listen to one's inner voice without knowing what will be heard next. UUism requires courage.

You'll be happy to know, though, that changing your mind is no easier in a more traditional Christian church that believes it has the right answers for you. The problem in the traditional and dogma-bound church is often not so much conforming to the rules and doctrines of faith once the decision to convert is made, but rather to hold to them. Trying to temper the mind against temptations and deviations of thought can be just as challenging as operating without right answers. Doubt becomes a fearsome enemy. Having the right interpretation of the sacred text becomes paramount and a source of bitter division from within a church. This is why we have tens of thousands of different Christian sects in this country.

Wherever one worships, changing the mind is difficult. Which may lead some to throw up their hands and give up. No matter what faith one embraces, one can use that faith as brick and mortar to wall out new thoughts and ideas, new perceptions and experiences, and protect the mind from change. I'm always amazed at the way the fundamentalists warp the message of Jesus to support capitalism, segregation, and rugged individualism. Jesus was not very friendly to the high and mighty. The Biblical Jesus is a threat to any large religious institution. The communists blew their chance to co-opt the church and recover an original socialist, Jesus of Nazareth.

Even more dangerous is to believe you have arrived at the final answers and understandings. Certainty can easily lead to intolerance and oppression of those who do not agree or submit. We can certainly make up our mind and take action based on our convictions but there is a difference in UUism. Every truth we embrace is our best understanding for today in which we have great confidence. But we are open to changing our mind in the future if we are shown the error of our ways. We do not build walls, which allows us in this place of openness to be tolerant of differing views. It allows us the space for acceptance of interfaith dialogue--even with fundamentalists--understanding that we can learn from everyone and perhaps even be changed for the better. Dialogue is a creative process which can yield insights for each without the conversion of either.

Ultimately, having the right answers is not THE answer. This is one of the great mysteries of life. We are constantly searching for answers to our questions and concerns, yet when we do get those answers there are new questions which arise. The great mystic Meister Eckhart frames it well for us in these words:

We ought not to let ourselves be satisfied with the God we thought of, for when the thought slips our mind, that God slips with it. What we want is rather the reality of God, exalted far above any thought or creature.

The reality of God, of what is, of where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going, cannot ultimately be found in the limitations of the mind. The only way to discover this (and perhaps prove me wrong) is to seek ultimate truth in the mind, changing the mind with each new provisional truth found. It is in this process of changing the mind that one begins to uncover the mind's transitory nature, its impermanence. As Hermann Hesse writes:

Mind invented contradictions, invented names; it called some things beautiful, some ugly, some good, some bad. One part of life was called love, another murder. How young, foolish, comical this mind was. One of its inventions was time. A subtle invention, a refined instrument for torturing the self even more keenly and making the world multiplex and difficult. For then man was separated from all he craved only by time, by time alone, this crazy invention! It was one of the props, one of the crutches that you had to let go, that one above all, if you wanted to be free[3].

This, I think, is the coded message in the last line of Joyce Poley's song:

We're trying to say who we are you see
We're even discussing theology
To continue the search and we're sure to find
Another new truth - so we can know our mind.

CLOSING WORDS

I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me.
That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly,
and my blood is part of the sea.
There is not any of me that is alone and absolute except my mind,
and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself,
it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.
(D.H. Lawrence)

Go in peace, make peace, be at peace.

Copyright (c) 1996 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.