I marveled though at how everyday the decision was for this minister.  He spoke about how he almost didn’t even go.  He wanted to, but the money wasn’t there to make the travel across the country.  Then one of his congregants donated the money for Clark Olsen to travel and stand for their congregation.  It gave him the opportunity to stand witness, and to be there for the last moments of his colleague and friend’s life.  But I don’t even know the name of the congregant that made that possible.

Hearing this part of the story, the part that’s not shared in the history books, helped me to see the broader and deeper connections all our actions make in the work of justice in our world.  It transformed it from a history lesson about certain heroes and martyrs, to one about the everyday work of building community.  It certainly takes both kinds of justice work, but it reminded me that we each have a part to play.  It made the impossible seem a little more probable to my mind and my heart.  It’s not about a handful of people.  Justice is the turning toward committed action with a concerted effort.  It’s the spirit of what we often call Right Relations applied to neighborhoods, and to schools, and to court systems.  And it takes all of us, in small ways and in large ways, to bring that about.  It’s not reserved for a handful of heroes, but reliant upon our very everyday strivings.

It is with this lens that I challenge you to encounter our stories this morning.  Each succession of the civil rights struggle has echoes of its predecessors.  But each turn toward justice is developed upon the efforts of countless unnamed individuals.  Look for your place in the history and future of this work, because it truly takes all of us to make this possible.  Some of us will be called to travel our country to stand witness, and others will need to stay behind to do the work in the corners of the world in which we choose to dwell – everyday.  As you hear Alex, and Sarah and Dawn and Sean (and Jeff), listen to your heart reflected back.  What corner can you inhabit?
Each movement we talk about today grew in some ways from the movements preceding them.  Inspired by what worked before and what didn’t work, they took their turn at seeing the world we dream about realized.  Each movement has it’s own struggles, and uniqueness.  The challenges Black citizens face, rooted in the horrifying history of a slave-state are not the same as the push for BGLT rights in the face of the police beatings and rapes of the mid-twentieth century Drag Kings and Drag Queens.  But it is my personal hope that our justice movements open our eyes to the connections between us and challenge us to find compassion for one another through our differences.

11:00 am

Sunday, May 16, 2010

featuring…

The Ron Vincent Quartet

Tim Armacost, saxophone

Jay Bianchi, piano

Dean Johnson, bass

Ron Vincent, drums

with the

Choir and Soloists of the First Unitarian Church

William Peek, director

On Sunday, May 16, we are delighted to present the annual Jazz Service. Our first Jazz Service was offered in 1999, and it has since become an eagerly anticipated (almost) annual tradition.

Our choir and soloists are again privileged to be working with the Ron Vincent Quartet.

Tim Armacost, saxophone, Jay Bianchi, piano, Dean Johnson, bass, and Ron Vincent, drums, are four of New York’s leading jazz veterans.  Individually, they have worked with many legends of jazz, including Gerry Mulligan, Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Wynton Marsalis, Ravi Coltrane, and many others.  They have appeared on dozens of recordings and have performed in concert halls throughout the world.  All are active jazz educators, teaching at colleges in New York and presenting master classes and clinics throughout the United States.

The jazz service is always spiritually rewarding as well as fun!  Mark your calendars and bring a friend!

We gather once more around our sacred fire;

Much like the generations have since the dawn of humanity,

To share story and song,

We make holy this place through our commitment to gather.

From the light we carry in our hearts,

We kindle this flame as a beacon of liberal religious faith.

                                                                                    Jude Geiger

“I had never seen anyone use a lanyard or wear one, if that’s what you did with them, but that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again until I had made a boxy red and white lanyard for my mother…” the poet Billy Collins reflects in the poem we heard earlier this morning.  I’m not sure if I knew what a lanyard was as a kid, and to be quite honest, I’m still a little unclear.  But I get the creeping sense it wouldn’t be in my mom’s top 10 things she could use.  The ever practical child I was, (and continue to be guilty of to this day,) I would only craft something for my mother that she would rely on and … that I could easily explain what it was.  One early notion of “rely on” happened at a local neighborhood summer day camp when I was about 8 years old.  Armed with ice cream sticks, glue, and blue and white paint – I crafted the most necessary napkin holder – one that no mother could possibly be without – and gave it to my mother.

The sky blue lightweight but efficient piece of art was accented with an overabundance of puffy white clouds.  I don’t recall the exact rationale for the clouds, but I do believe it being sunny out had something to do with it.  It was kind of steepled with a vertical rise (going up and down) where one could place unused napkins – as appropriate to the intent of my creative genius.  I was really, really proud of my work.  My mom kept that holder out for years.  From time to time it would disappear, particularly around major holidays – my mother had a knack for decorating – and the blue and white would otherwise clash with the red and green or the purple and yellow or the orange and black of certain months that happen like clockwork in the Geiger household to this day.

I was shocked though, one year when I came home from college and saw my sky-blue-with-clouds-napkin-holder sitting right out in the open on the kitchen table.  Not only did it survive for at least a dozen years, but it also strategically migrated to the kitchen when it knew I might be around for a visit.  I was torn between being really touched at my mother’s thoughtfulness and having a dawning realization that the napkin holder’s habits might be remarkably similar to the migratory practices of that beige tie my mom gave me a decade ago – that tie that goes with nothing.  It might have been moments like those that I realized I was now an adult.

Our story this morning spoke about the toys we love that endure beyond breaking.  Somehow that napkin-holder I made defies logic with its ability to survive the decades kept together with just glue and paint; … and I fear that beige tie will last even longer.  But the Skin Horse in our story is ugly and worn from love.  Its tail’s been pulled out to string beads, its hair and fur is in patches leaving smooth bald spots behind.  Long lived, a bit tired for wear, and possibly one of the most precious and treasured things in our memory; the Skin Horse is a little like all of us. 

“When a child loves you for a long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real” said the Skin Horse.  I wonder if that’s how a lot of us feel.  Those of us with children get to see first hand sporadic moments of love mixed in with a whole bunch of moments best described simply as “wearing.”  They both come with the territory of family.  We often rub the wrong way the things in our lives that we care so much about.  Proximity, closeness causes friction – it causes conflict even as it brings out love.  Some of us are fortunate to have more fond memories than rough ones and some of us are not.

Some of us without children might feel a sense of loss with this story.  It speaks of the cultural draw toward parenthood.  The classic tale reminds us that there’s something awesome about having children (and there usually is,) and that in some way we might feel like it makes parents into something more Real than those of us who never get to parent – even while pointing out how exhausting a job parenting can be.  Being halfway through my 30’s with no easy path to parenthood in sight, I can relate to this drive.  For me, I’ve decided to find my way into the role of our story’s Skin Horse through other forms of parenting.  I find myself “mothering” or fathering in my case to our whole congregational religious education school.  For me, it’s a really simple metaphor since I get the joy of supporting and collaborating with eighty or so children and youth every year (not to forget about 40 teachers); but it’s a connection that I feel fits really well.  My instinct for parenting toward the future just gets to look a little different than most of yours. 

As a Unitarian Universalist – I know that diversity has a real value to it.  I know that difference adds to this world.  Not having children of my own may not match with our traditional cultural values, but my religious values remind me that there’s a world to be learned from it.  How we embrace our human need to parent, to nurture is important – but it doesn’t need to look the same for all of us. 

For our mothers-yet-to-be who might be struggling with a sense of loss (and clearly this goes the same for our fathers,) struggling with a sense of lacking, or a sense of frustration at not fitting the norm of parenting – know that I’m not really sure there is any norm to parenting.  Our families here at First UU come in so many varieties from single parent, to dual home, to mother/father, to mother/mother, to adopted, to multi-racial, to single home, to multi-generational to husband/husband.  For some of us, the families are solely the ones we carefully weave together as adults.  While others only know the joy of being a big brother or big sister.  The norm here is that we barely have a norm.  I think many of us know this in our heads, but the truth of it in the middle of the night may be hard to reach our hearts.  Sometimes I believe our faith teaches us to embrace difference in others; sometimes I feel it’s more about embracing our own.  It seeks to meet us where we are and help us figure out how to hold each other up when we need holding.

I’ve been amazed at the Skin Horse’s wisdom.  When asked how does becoming real happen, he answers, “…It doesn’t happen all at once…you become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”  As some of you may know, I have been marrying quite a few couples of late.  Occasionally, one couple will choose this story to be one of their readings at their wedding.  When friends hear this, there’s usually a little exclamation of surprise.  It’s this quote that I lift up to explain why.  It’s not only a road map for how toys, parents and children get loved – but it’s solid advice for marriage.  Love needs to wear away sharp edges.  The snazzy, fine and sharp toys may look great, but they tend to be kinda hard to hug — and that’s sometimes true for people too.

It’s true for congregational life as well – not just blood relations – but this broader family we call First UU.  Take a moment and consider how easily you might break as the story goes?  Do you find yourself needing to be carefully kept ever?  Because maybe your holding on to how things once were?  That might be a way of protecting some really vital things – or it might be a way of trying to stay shiny and new when our kids are calling for something well worn and recklessly loved. 

In New York City, so much of the world around us, so much of our work world, so much of our struggle to get the right grade or into the right school or the best Pre-K program out there depicts a world of seeming and hoped for perfections that are so frustrating even when they’re achieved.  I wonder if many of us came here today to carve out a little home where we can store our toys, our treasures, our hopes and dreams by the nursery fender knowing that someday Nana will come by to pick us back up and return us to our resting place for the night – well worn and recklessly loved.  To stop, to feel the joy of the everyday, to be Real for ourselves and with each other.  For me, that’s the essence of religion and the hope of my faith.  To be grateful for those who have helped us get here today, and to give ourselves the time to be a mother of our own to the love before us.

In the course of that forty-five year friendship, naturally, we have gone through an awful lot of changes, both together and individually.  There have been career changes, marriages, divorces, various periods of separation for various amounts of time.  I lived in Chicago for five years, in Seattle for almost ten years, in Massachusetts for eleven years, in Delaware for ten years.  Richie spent a couple of years in Japan, has traveled to many countries over the years, but still lives in the same town in New Jersey where he grew up.  And through each of those years, we’d manage to see each other a couple of times per year, more often whenever possible.

During most of the rites of passage of these past forty-five years, we’ve been present in each other’s life.  Richie was at my Ordination, my sister’s wedding, my parents’ funerals.  I officiated at his wedding, I gave the eulogy at his mother’s funeral.  At one critical moment in my life, I once called him from the other side of the country at four o’clock in the morning and asked him for two thousand dollars.  And before I could even tell him why, he said, “Is nine o’clock soon enough? That’s when the bank opens.” 

There have been many times over the years when I have wondered at that chance meeting on our first day of college, and how this friendship has been a factor in my life, and what my life might have been like at several crucial crossroads if Richie had not been my friend.  I know that I have been the same for him, and I cannot imagine that we will not be friends for the rest of our lives.

Without getting too sentimental about it, the closest I can come to describing the importance of our friendship is to say that Richie is one of my “compass points” here on this earth.  My ability to know where I am at any given time in my life, both geographically and emotionally – and to know who I am and where I come from – is based, at least partly, on knowing Richard Salvatore Secare.  A guy I happened to sit next to on the first day of college.

There is no question in my mind that friendship is a spiritual issue no matter what your theology.  It is one of the real measurements of our emotional and spiritual health and well-being.  And yet, more than a few studies recently identify friendship as almost a “missing dimension” in modern lifestyle for middle-class America these days.  It’s been cited that my own generation in particular, the Boomers, are experiencing a poverty, if not a complete void, of strong and lasting friendships.

A peculiar mix of circumstances seems to have factored into my generation’s lifestyle that did not so much affect the older generation as drastically or as thoroughly.  Life has speeded up, we all know that much.  We cell phone, we text, we tweet and we twitter, we network and we Facebook, we email, and we iphone.  And for all that, still the work and time demands on middle-class and working-class families today, combined with the reality of a mobile society that takes us thousands of miles away from our hometowns for our educations and for career changes, leaves us stranded – emotionally and sometimes physically – from our early friendships, and these become harder and harder to replace as we get older.

It’s amazing how different we all are when it comes to talking about experiences as general as that of “friendship.”  Not everyone has friendships that are as enduring or as valuable as my friendship with Richie Secare.  If you have only one such friendship in your lifetime, you are blessed, and I know that.  Some fortunate few can claim several over the course of their lives, and if the current research and surveys on this topic are anywhere near correct, that is a very rare thing indeed.

It isn’t that we in modern life don’t have opportunity to meet people.  On the contrary, one author claims that “today’s city dweller comes into contact with more people in one week than the seventeenth-century villager did in a lifetime.” 

When asked to keep track of those with whom they interacted during a three-month period, the average person was found to have an acquaintance pool of from 500 to 2500 people, including relatives, neighbors, service people, officials, teachers, classmates, clients and customers, tradespeople and coworkers.  Of these, how many would you guess might be considered real “friends”?  According to a great variety of studies of children and adults, the answer is between three and seven.”  (See, Among Friends by Letty Cottin Pogrebin. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. 1987. pp. 10-11.)

Between three and seven.  If you can count four or five active friendships in your life at any one time, you are somewhere around average to better-than-average compared to most people.  The interesting statistic from various surveys shows that people who suffer from loneliness tend to list the same number of active friendships as non-lonely people. 

Letty Cottin Pogrebin in her book, Among Friends, writes:

“Friendship is like sex: you always suspect that there’s some secret technique that you don’t know about…. How can I know if I’m a good friend?  How can I be better?  Do I really have good friends?  Do other people have more friends?  Closer friendships?  Different ways of being friends?”

What one discovers is that very few people are actually satisfied or feel secure with the friendships they have.  We’re sure that other people must have lives full of “perfect unions” while we must make do with the three to seven ordinary friends we have.

It isn’t so, at least according to one survey that interviewed almost 20,000 people about their friendships.  We have an idealized expectation of friendship that traps us into viewing friendship as an “asset” – something to have a lot of, like money, sex, or possessions.  And so one poll by Daniel Yankelovich showed that 70% of Americans feel that only having four or five self-described “good friends” constitutes some kind of a failure in their lives that they describe as a void.

From our first days in the schoolyard as young children we’ve been taught to fear rejection of our peer group and to worry about whether we are liked by others.  We got a message that we ought  to have lots  of friends, that the more friends we accumulated, the more “okay” we were. And we are still passing that on to our children, as well.  One educator writes that we seem more concerned today with young children’s social development that with their moral development.  An interesting observation.

This idealization of friendship becomes an immediate problem when one tries to define friendship or talk about it in the abstract.  Lillian Rubin writes in her book on the subject (Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives. Harper and Row, Publishers, New York. 1985) that,

“We have friends, we have good friends, and we have best friends….. but everyone has their own idea of what those terms mean exactly.”

When Rubin asked hundreds of people, “What is a friend?”  most people tended to give the same ideal list of qualities:  trust, honesty, respect, commitment, safety, support, generosity, loyalty, mutuality, constancy, understanding, acceptance. 

These all seem to be the minimum requirements, if you will, to be counted as a friend.  But when the question gets more concrete and particular – “What is your friendship with Jane like?”  - it’s then that the reality of relationships stands revealed.

Thus, it was entirely possible for James Thurber to say of Thornton Wilder, “The man is impossible: he is stubborn, cantankerous, rude, inconsiderate, self-centered, and almost completely void of redeeming qualities. I should know, he’s been my best friend for forty years.”

There is no perfect friendship because there are no perfect people.  All friendships have their strengths and their deficiencies.  Each friendship is imperfect, and yet precious and irreplaceable.

All kinds of thinkers and writers have tried to articulate the substance and role of friendship in our lives.  I particularly like Emerson’s notion that friendship provides two vital things: truth and tenderness.  Our friends tell us the truth, and they gift us with tender mercies.

Francis Bacon said there are three fruits of Friendship:  someone to confide in,  someone to get counsel from,  and someone to count on  to do for you what your cannot do for yourself.

Psychologist Irwin Sandler put it that we need both “buffers” and “boosters” in our lives:  “buffers to reduce the pain of negative events, and boosters to enhance the pleasure of positive events.  In other words, to heal us when we hurt, and to celebrate us when we succeed.

When I examine friendships I’ve had in my life, I can recognize moments when all of this analysis seems to fit.  I think of those “buffers” and “boosters” who have seen me through my most painful and wonderful moments.  The friend who helped me reframe and rewrite an entire chapter of my dissertation in one day so I wouldn’t have to wait an extra year for my doctorate.  The friend who, without being asked, met me at the airport when my mother died, so I wouldn’t be alone.

Like most people, I’ve been the recipient of some marvelous friendships in my life, and they remain precious to me.  But such friendships are not a constant factor in my life, if I would be honest.  There are times when it seems I have let some of the best friendships in my life slip away for long periods of time, some probably now forever.  And I’m not really sure why. 

I wonder if your experience these days is much like mine.  I live a busy life in a time-demanding profession, like so many of you, and what little extra time I find, I usually dedicate to my homelife and to my very best friend, to whom I happen to be married.  So I do not seem to make much time these days for the kinds of friendships that once sustained me.  I rely an awful lot, more than I have any right to, on past experience with friends to bind me to them. 

Like me, they seem busy with other priorities in their lives just now, and I’m hoping that our unspoken covenant is still as strong as I have assumed.  But lately, I don’t know, that is feeling less satisfactory to me, and I am frankly reconsidering some ways to make more room in my life for friendships and a more joyful balance of commitments in my work life.

I have a fear that I will still be saying that years from now when it is too late, and after all of my friendships have died of neglect.  All the research shows that middle-age men are far more wanting of friends than are middle-age women.  Friendship, of course, is a voluntary activity.  The problem is once you allow a close friendship to wither, a new friendship takes time to build.  It takes time and emotional energy.

Lillian Rubin takes it a step further.  It is through our friendships, she asserts, that we develop our sense of our common humanity.  “It is our friends who provide reference outside the family against which to measure and judge ourselves; to help us during passages that require our separation and individuation; who support us as we adapt to new roles and new rules; who heal the hurts and make good the deficits of other relationships in our lives….. It is with friends that we test our sense of self-in-the-world and our sense of self-yet-to-become.”

Of course, it’s a rare friendship that lasts for a lifetime, or even, in this mobile society of ours, for a decade.  Friends come and go over time; some move away, some die, friends drift apart for all kind of reasons valid and invalid.  Nor can a friendship be measured by time alone.  And, in case you haven’t noticed, men and women seem to have different styles of being friends, though generalizations always break down by exception.

Lotty Pogrebin’s book makes bold to suggest that men and women have things to learn from each other’s ways in friendship.  She quotes from studies of Americans that tend to reveal that men’s friendships are often more fun, but have less intimacy and depth than friendship between women in this society.  The same studies show that women’s friendships tend to have more honesty, and more emotional investment.

Moreover, friendship plays different roles at different stages in our lives.  We need friends in different ways depending on our time of life, our family situations, and our work situations. But one strong caveat emerges in view of the frequency with which friends tend to disappear from our lives in this culture of ours – namely, that those who think new friendships are not important, or that friends are hard to find beyond a certain age in life, are likely to find themselves very lonely indeed, before long. 

Old friends may be compass points and measures of our progress through life, but new friends are vital to a sense of well-being, always.  In old age, for example, when new lovers are rare, and new children rarer, and with family dwindling, there is still and always the possibility of a new friend.

On bright Spring Sunday in May, I suppose there are any number of deep thoughts that could enhance your spiritual life or bring you closer to God or help you find meaning and peace in your life.  The focus I want to suggest to you today is one that is accessible in the simplest of philosophies as well as the most profound of ethical teachings.  I invite you to examine the quality and status of your friendships, such as they are.  And if necessary to take some step this week to shore them up, shine them up, reclaim them, appreciate them, and strengthen them.  A worthy valentine, that, for yourself and for all those friends who, in their own time and in their individual ways, have graced your life.

Of the 35,000 genes consisting of 3.2 billion chemical bases that make up the human genome, this intriguing new observation posited that our DNA may actually be hard-wired to seek a Higher Power.

Just as some of us are genetically inclined to share certain traits and talents, and as others may be genetically inclined to inherit certain physical features, some geneticists are now suggesting the likelihood that the human inclination to believe in Divinity may in fact be dictated by our instinctive, evolutionary need to gather into communities essential for our survival. The Time article reports,

“Ask believers of any faith to describe the most important thing that drives their devotion, and they’ll tell you it’s not a thing at all, but a sense – a feeling of a higher power beyond us…But that raises a provocative question, one that’s increasingly debated in the worlds of science and religion: which came first, God or the need for God?…If some people are more spiritual than others, is it nature or nurture that has made them so? If Science has nothing to do with spirituality and it all flows from God, why do some people hear the Divine Word easily while others remain spiritually tone-deaf?”

Long before the genome studies, back in 1979 investigators at the University of Minnesota began their now-famous twins studies, testing pairs of identical twins separated at birth and raised in entirely different environments. And among the remarkable things it turns out identical twins had in common, identical twins were twice as likely as other siblings to believe as much – or as little – as their sibling did. This would suggest an internal factor stronger than environment dictates our spiritual inclinations.

Molecular biologist Dean Hamer, Chief of gene Structure at the National Cancer Institute, claims to be an Agnostic himself, and in his book, The God Gene, (Doubleday, NY, 2004) claims that human spirituality is an adaptive trait, and he says he has located one of the genes responsible, but he is quick to add that his findings “are agnostic on the existence of God. If there’s a God, there’s a God. Just knowing what brain chemicals are involved in acknowledging that is not going to change the fact,” he says.

People of course have been wrestling with the roots of faith from time immemorial, and these latest speculations from genetic science assure us that the wrestling will continue. “God has set eternity in the hearts of people,” says the Book of Ecclesiastes, “yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

How ironic and interesting that science may prove this more true than we’ve ever known in our theologies. How sad that so many people even in this modern time conceive of faith and spirituality as something threatened or at odds with scientific understanding, scientific investigation, scientific expansion of knowledge about the amazing structures and fathomless workings of life’s chemistry.

Carl Jung touched upon this when he called for a new approach to modern spiritual consciousness, a new paradigm of spirituality that encompasses the realities of the world in which we live, yet honors the wisdom and insights of the past.

Robert Wuthnow, the prominent sociologist of religion at Princeton, says that a new paradigm of spirituality for our time would be different from the kind of spirituality that many of us were raised in, growing up in traditional mainstream American churches and temples.

Wuthnow says a new paradigm of spirituality for our time “must not simply be seeker spirituality, with its emphasis on fluidity, nor should it continue to focus on dwelling spirituality with its emphasis on institutional rules and predefined doctrine.” Wuthnow, like Jung before him, sees the need for a new practice spirituality, one that incorporates all elements of our being and emphasizes how we live out our spiritual types.

I think most Unitarian Universalists are comfortable with a seeker spirituality, having rejected the Dweller spirituality common to more doctrinaire faiths. And yet many of us never seem to develop the kind of practice spirituality that would represent spiritual maturity if we ever reached it. We are proud of our UU status as “religious seekers.” But to truly challenge ourselves to go beyond the basics of religious search, we must understand the several facets of such a journey.

Two interfaith church consultants, Robert Norton and Richard Southern, in their book SoulTypes (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2004) were intrigued enough by the Genome Studies that they suggest there are four basic observable “SoulTypes” that characterize our individual spiritual personalities, and which partly explain why no one approach will ever completely serve the needs of everyone on their spiritual journeys. They use as their typology the words Jesus used in the Gospel of Mark (12:28-29). When he was asked which of the Commandments was the greatest and he said: “Love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength; and the second is like unto it: love your neighbor as yourself.”

Robert Norton and Richard Southern call their four spirituality types 1) heart-centered 2) soul -centered 3) mind-centered, and 4) strength-centered. Discerning which type of spirit you are personally will partly help you determine how you can deepen as a spiritual person. It might be fun to see if you recognize yourself or anyone you know in these four types.

Take for example the Heart-Centered spirit. According to Norton and Southern, the heart-centered spirit is primarily displayed through the orientation of gratitude. They say heart-centered spirituality places priority on feelings, emotions, personal renewal, and transformation. It hungers for joyful experience in religion. The heart-centered spirit finds blessings in everyday living, counts the positives, looks for the goodness in others, the goodness in a benevolent universe, sees life as a gift, sees the beauty in life. Do you see yourself in this type? Or see anyone in your family in this portrait?

The second type is called the ‘Soul-centered” spirit. Soul-centered folks are interior personalities. They are intuitive, contemplative, and introspective by nature. They tend to view life as a sacred journey. They are mystics sometimes, meditators whenever possible. They create quiet corners of retreat for themselves, sometimes personal altars, they were the original monastics. They are often attracted to Centering Prayer or Transcendental Meditation practice, or walking Labyrinths. It is in this type of spirituality where Eastern and Western practices often meet.

The Mind-Centered soul is the third type. These souls prefer orderly thought and intellectual exploration of life’s meaning. Knowledge, words, complex ideas nourish these people, They expect intellectual substance from spiritual exploration. They are attracted to in-depth study of theological topics. They are interested in the meaning and intent of sacred writings and literature. Mind-Centered spirits love Zen Koans and the teaching Parables of the New Testament. They love studying comparative religions. Sound like anyone you know?

And the fourth type of soul we might identify is the Strength-Centered spirit. The Strength-Centered soul sees life as the opportunity to build a better society, to serve others, beginning with a personal commitment. Serving others in this context might take the form of support, advocacy, or direct action on an ethical issue, or it might be manifest in compassion for the less fortunate. It is motivated by a strong sense of idealism, wants to participate in meaningful issues. Formal belief systems are less important to the Strength-centered type than the vision of a transformed world. Actions speak louder than words in the religion of Strength-Centered souls. Walking the walk is more important to them than talking the talk. Strength-Centered souls are long-term committed souls, in it for the long-haul.

Now, put all these soul types in one room, multiply by 250 or so, and you begin to see the challenge of being a Unitarian Universalist community. Heart-centered types trying to make sense of Mind-Centered souls. Strength-Centered types trying to be patient with the meditations of Soul-Centered types! Yikes! And you wonder why we sometimes have a hard time hearing one another or keeping everyone happy all the time!

The challenging mission of the congregation is to accommodate as best we can many different soul-types, many different spiritual orientations. Whatever your personal soul-type happens to be, I hope you will find opportunity to grow your soul here, to bring your passions and your faith quests here to share with our community. There is no one right way to be in this place, no one single way to view things or to view priorities for our congregational agenda, no one single way to think or to feel what you believe in this place. Unitarian Universalism is a 500 year-old way of practicing a life of the spirit. A way that is grounded on the basic principles of Freedom, Reason, Tolerance, and Love. We think that creates a broad enough space here for all soul-types to grow, for faith, hope, and love to bloom here; for goodness and mercy to thrive here. If you are new among us, there is room and welcome for you here. Whether you are Heart-Centered, Soul-Centered, Mind-Centered, or Strength-Centered – or a mix of all four – we need what you bring us. We are all of us souls in process here.

Amen.

Indeed, the very title, “Unitarian” was first applied to us by the Trinitarian majority in Sixteenth Century Europe as an identification of our original heresy in questioning the Trinity of God. In time, the term Unitarian came to be synonymous with the word “heretic” and indeed covered a wide range of heretical offenses, whether or not related to the dogma of the Trinity.

The word “Universalist” referred to the heresy of believing in Universal Salvation, that is, the notion that Christ died to save all people, not just an elect few. So untrustworthy were the Universalists seen to be, that in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for more than sixty years Universalists were not allowed to serve jury duty. The reasoning was that anyone who did not believe in eternal damnation could not be trusted to mete out proper punishment to offenders of the civil order either.

So we Unitarian Universalists know from our institutional history what it means to be labeled and libeled as heretics. And we say with some pride that in over 400 years as an organized religious movement, that there has never been a heresy trial in any Unitarian or Universalist church. No one has ever been expelled or driven out or shunned from a Unitarian Universalist church for exercising the freedom of thought and the freedom of individual belief that we hold as everyone’s God-given right.

Perhaps this is the reason the Unitarian Universalist church has sometimes been called “a haven for heretics.” This is meant to be a slur upon our tradition; we claim it as a salute to free thought and the open-minded pursuit of truth that has ever been the hallmark of our religious community.

Exactly when my personal interest in heretics began, I’m not certain. I suspect it began with an incident when I was a student in a Jesuit college when someone in my theology class called me a heretic. I was, as the courtroom lawyers like to say, shocked and appalled.

We had been arguing some fine point of Catholic theology at the time, and I was certain that I stood on firm doctrinal ground, but when that word was flung at me – HERETIC! – I was stunned, amused, and highly insulted all at the same time. Somehow the word doesn’t seem to fit in the twentieth century. Does anyone actually think in such archaic terms anymore, I wondered.

Visions of Joan of Arc tied to the stake, of Inquisitional judges in Spanish dungeons, of accusatorial fingers pointing at the witches of Salem, all danced before my eyes. HERETIC! I had never thought of myself in such grandiose terms.

The incident started me thinking: just what is a heretic, and what is so dangerous about heretics? Who are these marginal and eccentric types who have been labeled heretics down through the centuries? I thought it might be interesting to learn about some of the great heretics of history and take a look at exactly what these dangerous people said and did that earned them such nefarious reputations. After all, if I was going to be called a heretic, I wanted to know just what kind of company I would be keeping.

Actually, heresy is a much overlooked and much maligned topic in theological studies. While serious students of theology spend a fair amount of time learning how to defend the faith against the most common kinds of heretical attack, it is usually taken for granted that heresy is always a bad thing, something negative, something to be avoided at all cost as being an offense against God.

But as Peter Berger, the pre-eminent sociologist of religion, points out in his book The Heretical Imperative, the etymology of the word “heresy” is sharply illuminating. The word “heresy” comes from the Greek verb “hairein” which means “to choose.” Berger points out that a “hairesis” originally meant, quite simply, “the taking of a choice.” Thus, those truly deserving of the title heretic are those who have insisted on their human right to choose those beliefs upon which their lives would be ordered.

So why all the historical and hysterical hullabaloo and persecutions for heresies? The early church leaders, of course, were correct in identifying these heretics, these “choosers” as potentially subversive to Christianity. For if Christianity is the Divine Revelation of God’s Truth on earth, mere human beings have no choice but to prostrate themselves before the authority of the church and its revealed Word in the Bible. To insist on the human right of choice, as Descartes argued in behalf of Free Will, is to question the authority of Divine Revelation itself, the very premise of Christian religion. And so began, as early as the Council of Nicaea in the 4th Century, the time-honored practice of expelling and then persecuting heretics as the enemies of faith and underminers of Christian society. Choosers are always dangerous to the established order.

In the interests, therefore, of revisionist theology, and in keeping with the highest traditions of the scholarly ministry of Unitarian Universalism, I have recently invented a brand new branch of theological studies. I call this science, “Heresiology,” that is, the study of heresy from the viewpoint of the heretic. Now, please bear in mind that this is still a fledgling science, still largely theoretical and speculative, but I am pleased to present you this morning with the opening lecture notes of Heresiology 101. I trust you all have your pencils and notebooks ready.

The best and most interesting part of Heresiology is the cast of characters. The list of people branded as heretics down through history includes, after all, some of the great choosers and shakers of our world, not to mention some of the most colorful characters ever to grace the gallows. They include people whose intellect and writings and personal courage in promoting radical ideas have reshaped the course of West Civilization itself, and who in the process have made it possible for minor heretics such as we to enjoy the fruits of religious and intellectual freedom.

As I describe some of the categories of heretical though and nominate my own list of heretical champions, you will no doubt form your own list of favorite heretics.

The first principle of Heresiology to keep in mind is that, for the heretic, timing is everything. An idea which merited only a mild social rebuke in the first century might be punishable by execution in the sixteenth century. For example, take the dogma of the Trinity. Origen, a second century bishop, wrote that the notion of the Trinity was a mistaken interpretation of the New Testament. When Augustine argued him down at the Council of Nicaea, Origen was declared a heretic, but his actual punishment amounted to little more than a slandered reputation. Some fourteen hundred years later in Calvin’s Geneva, a Spanish physician and part-time theologian named Miguel Servetus paid the ultimate penalty of being burned at the stake for publishing a book in agreement with Origen. The book was called, “De Erroribus Trinitatis” (“On the Errors of the Trinity”) and all known copies of the book were thrown into the fire with Servetus. He was the first and most famous Unitarian martyr.

Or take the more famous example of Galileo, whose teaching of the correct order of the solar system affirmed the Copernican Theory and directly challenged the Biblical account that places the Earth at the center of the universe and has the Sun physically traveling East to West each day. Galileo was first censured by the Catholic authorities in Rome in 1613, again in 1622, and finally, after he was persistent enough to publish a book on the subject, Galileo was formally Condemned by a court of the Inquisition in 1632. When faced with the threat of Inquisitional exile and imprisonment, poor Galileo exercised the better part of valor and desisted in his heretical teaching, even though he knew time would bear out the accuracy of his theory. Galileo’s health broke the year following the trial, and he died five years later.

Two centuries later, however, Charles Darwin, coming forth with yet another theory challenging Biblical cosmology, could stick to his scientific guns through considerable controversy, at least without fear of becoming another burnt offering in the cause of free thought.

Which leads us to the second principle of Heresiology, (I hope you’re taking notes) heresy is by definition a threat to standing authority. Those who assume that heresy applies only to the field of pure theology are woefully misled. In fact, my study of Heresiology has turned up at least four general categories by which true heretics may be classified.

There is, first, the Pure Theological Heretic. This category includes all those people who wrestled and wrangled over purely dogmatic questions, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and what kind of dance would they do. Arius and Origen and Servetus are prime examples of Pure Theological Heretics. Luther and Calvin are heretics of this category in the eyes of the Catholic Church. (In the eyes of Protestants, of course, they are not heretics at all, but rather Founding Fathers of Great Christian Traditions. So heresy, too, is in the eye of the beholder.) Later on, of course, Luther and Calvin started burning a fair number of heretics who disagreed with them.

Philosophical Heretics comprise a second category. These heretics are traditionally the most intellectual and abstract and clever. They are the mental athletes of heresy. Prime examples include characters like Voltaire and Descartes and Spinoza and Neitzche. Their approach is coldly logical and devastatingly efficient. These thinkers simply refuse to allow the first premises of theology. Philosophical heretics are also the rarest – most of them seem to have been born between 1600 and 1900. Bertrand Russell was probably the last of the breed. The trouble with philosophical heretics is that usually they can be understood only by other philosophers.

The third category of heretic, and I suspect, the favorite category among UU’s, is the Scientific Heretic. These include the sub-category of the Discoverers, like Galileo, and the Theoreticians, like Darwin. Scientists work under the disturbing tendency to believe that the world is actually interested in facts and figures, and so, sincere scientific heretics always seem surprised when their great breakthroughs have been seen as threatening to the social order. They sometimes forget that all of science was once seen as heretical for this reason. Galileo’s solar system, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, Freud’s theory of personality were all as threatening in their day as genetic research and manipulation is in our own time. Indeed, Science has probably given us more heretics than any other human endeavor.

The last category of heretic is the Social Heretic. This is at once the largest and most potent type of heretic. Social heresy is capable of producing mass movements. The Mennonites and the Amish groups and the Shakers, with their intentional retreat from secular society, belong in this category even more than in the theological category. So do the Quakers, who had the temerity to propose that Christianity and militarism are always incompatible in principle.

Margaret Sanger was a Social Heretic of the first rank when she championed the Planned Parenthood movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and the long line of proponents of the Women’s Movement worldwide are certainly Social Heretics challenging the standing order of patriarchy. The Latin American Christian proponents of Liberation Theology are likewise Social Heretics, as were Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Berrigan brothers and Benjamin Spock and Joan Baez during the heyday of social heresies in this country in the 1960’s and 70’s. We cheered them or booed them to the extent that they challenged or threatened our social orthodoxy and security.

One person’s heretic is another person’s hero, and this is perhaps the most important lesson to be gleaned from Heresiology. For the prophet and the iconoclast bear this in common: they disturb our inertia. They give voice to our doubts. They refuse to revere our intellectual comfort and our moral complacency.

The plight of the heretic today is what it has ever been. Amid the ashes of history’s heretics you will find scattered the relics and bones of some of humankind’s greatest saints and prophets. There amid the banned books and forbidden writings you will discover some of humanity’s noblest thoughts, most creative ideas, most poetic preaching. There among the banished, the outcast, the shunned, and the condemned – you will find shadows of heroes and footprints of giants. Galileo and King, Bonhoeffer and Sanger, Stanton and Berrigan, Gandhi and Socrates and Jesus of Nazareth – all of them at one time or another jailed by civil authorities for their heresies challenging the standing theological, philosophical, scientific, or social paradigms of their day, some of them actually put to death for their beliefs. Heretics all.

The fact of the matter is that the history of human advancement has been written in no small degree by a relative handful of rebels, men and women who at crucial points in history have been seized by a particular and personal vision of truth, and who then had the tenacity and courage to insist on their human right to choose.

Most of us, thank goodness, will never be called upon to perform great acts of courage or witness in the name of truth as we know it. The great majority of us hold our heretical impulses in less dramatic style; most of us take our place in the great supporting cast of history. But we should never forget that what freedoms we have – to think and believe and worship as we would – are freedoms hard won for us.

I close with these words from a poem by a Unitarian colleague, the Rev. Carl Nelson, from his book Eternity Can Wait (Rib Mountain Publications, Wausau, Wisconsin, 1987):

There are many well-paved roads in life -

smooth and easily traveled -

and multitudes may throng upon them.

Yet for every road we walk upon,

Some seeming fool

has struggled though a wilderness…

And freedom,

the woof of my society,

was woven by heretics

and bought with the blood of rebels.

I am thankful for the fools

who left the helping push of multitudes

and struggled on a solitary way.

I am thankful for the heretics

who have suffered censure, rebuke, and slander

to find their own paths,

and to light their own lights.

But for these fools,

I would still be but a brute,

dimly conscious in the dark of primeval forests.

On Friday evening, a slightly smaller gathering of 60 of us broke bread for a Good Friday Communion service.  This vespers was traditional, sublime and somber.  It relived a tradition of this congregation’s that goes back for about a century give or take.  Communion silver was polished and set, the altar cloth was prepared and a team of deacons gathered to lead the service with Rev. Patrick and I.

Easter morning, I was sitting on the chancel with Patrick looking out at all of the gathered’s Easter finery marveling at how many join us for this service – close to 300 this year.  I was mentally preparing for the service to begin when our latest guest walked up the aisle and sat in about the 4th row of pews in the front and center just off to the left….  Now I knew the 6 foot tall (counting ears of course) Easter Bunny was coming; but I thought she was going straight to the children’s party downstairs.  She wasn’t able to make it last year for my first Easter at First UU, so I wasn’t aware she typically chose to join us upstairs.  You see, in the first few years of ministry at a congregation, there are so many wonderful facts like this that get left unmentioned because everyone else kind of knows, so people assume I must too.  So you can imagine my … joy… at seeing her decide to worship with us for our traditional Easter service.  With my very formal Catholic upbringing, this was rather unexpected.  Yet another of the many things that I’m fond of about this congregation.  We certainly know how to keep it real, keep it family friendly…and a little bit fun.

Our guest reminded me of my childhood expectant Easters.  I more or less got the religious meaning of the holiday at the time as a kid but to be very honest I was equally focused on the candy.  I wanted the fun of the egg hunts and the sugar induced coma of the sweet-tarts.  A deeper appreciation of Holy Week would come later, but I do recall the period of “great waiting” that was the hallmark of this time.

That’s the sugar-coated stories I remember.  But both the Jewish story of Passover and the Christian story of Easter are coated in blood, not sweetness.  They culminate in hope but they are rooted in pain and sorrow.  They speak directly to an all too uncomfortable fact of the lives of so many people on this earth.  In the U.S. we are very fortunate to not have to live daily under the realized threat of military violence, so it may be difficult to imagine a justness to the repercussions detailed in scripture.  But enjoying the privilege of relative safety, with the notable and rare tragic exceptions like here in NYC 8.5 years ago, I will personally withhold judgment.  I can’t imagine living under the yoke Exodus speaks of that God brought the Jewish people out from under.  Ex 12:12-15 reads, “It is the Passover of the Lord. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. 14 This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.”  Verse 51 goes on to conclude, “51 That very day the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, company by company.”  The act of sacrifice and covenant culminated with protection for those who were violently oppressed and brutal punishment for those who were guilty of their abuses.  But what then?  Years of oppression over!  Sacrifice followed by hope!  The day comes, and liberation comes, only to be followed by 40 years of wandering in the desert.  Why?!  Promises were kept, but through a series of mistakes, that some would simply call sins on the part of the people, salvation turned into trial.  Doubt arose even after miracle.  Fear of what might be, led the people to hold onto what they could touch, rather than what they carried in their hearts.  And that doubt led to the people once again needing to look toward another day when they would once more enter the promise land.  

Faith and doubt are the counterpoints on the scales of liberation in the Jewish story.  It’s the human story too, I feel.  We hold onto the hopes of a way through whatever crisis, stress, or fear that plagues us.  Whether its emotional, or financial; our health, or our heart.  We wait for the news, we wait for the resolution and then the day comes.  Sometimes it’s the way through we hoped for, or the message that the promise land is out of reach, for a time or maybe it seems that it’ll be out of reach always.

I believe the Jewish story of Passover and what follows after is a reminder that how we handle what comes before us – is what determines whether we feel like we’ve found our way home, or we’re lost in the desert that is the pit of our despair.  Sometimes we may be the source of what causes our suffering, and sometimes the suffering that befalls us would be there regardless of anything that we could do differently.  That tragic health prognosis for ourselves or our loved one, is not our fault, but at some point we need to choose whether in light of it we’ll find our way or we’ll be lost.  In this story, the God of Israel seems to be saying to us that the path ahead is possible, despite it all, if we stay true to our hearts and keep our integrity.

The Christian story is similar.  The Rev. Dr. Christopher Morse of Union Theological Seminary, who joined us for our 175th Celebration, has written that, “The cross would cast no shadow were it not for the light of resurrection morn.”  Jesus, a teacher of non-violence, compassion, forgiveness and hope suffered the cruelest corporeal punishment the Roman Empire executed.  Crucifixion was reserved for insurrectionists and highwaymen.  The saving message of building that beloved community on earth; the message of turning us back to our humanity through these virtues he extolled, is tempered by the painful reminders of worldly suffering.  The way forward must ever remember the difficult truths of our world if it can ever be followed.  Transformation, and resurrection, have no meaning if they don’t honestly accept the reality of human experience and suffering.

Some say that suffering is redemptive….  I would not be one of those people.  Suffering can be crippling, or suffering can be transcended, but any redemption that occurs through suffering is only in light of that suffering, not because of it.  The moment of resurrection in our lives, in our hearts, in our relationships brilliantly reflects back like that light of Easter morning Dr. Morse once wrote of.  We do not need to suffer to be reborn, but many of us only choose rebirth when it gets too difficult not to.  Even then, it’s not too late.

What of the week after the resurrection central to the Christian story?  A woman, Mary Magdalene, was the first to witness Jesus and begin to spread his gospel.  His other apostles, the men as it happens, were huddled hidden in a room upstairs – fearful.  In the Christian lectionary, the readings that are given this Sunday of the year, John 20:19-31 begins with these first two verses“19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews (which I would clarify were their own people), Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”  This is the microcosm of the perennial story of liberation and imprisonment.  The greatest moment of Christian salvation has occurred and the apostles of that movement are hidden away upstairs with their doors locked.  Whether you believe this story is metaphor or fact, imagine for a moment being those apostles.  You’re terrified of your own people.  You’re scared that the government – the Roman Empire – might be coming for you next because you were part of some fringe movement that was supposed to end with his execution.  We’re supposed to be free, but we lock ourselves away scared of all those people who seemed familiar and safe a moment ago.  The story tells us that liberation and resurrection has just occurred, and for the life of us, we can’t see it.  We haven’t even gotten word yet.

That’s what we see with the apostle Thomas.  The lectionary continues on in verse 24 saying, 24 Now Thomas (called the twin), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

I’ve always found this scene in the story very curious.  It seems to be suggesting that those who require proof in order to have faith are less blessed than those who have not seen and yet still believe.  Centuries of Christian interpretation can be summed up with the critical phrase, “Doubting Thomas.”  The Agnostics and Atheists among us might have cringed at some point in their lives over this imagery.  I find this scene curious because a week later, one week after the resurrection moment, the door to the room the apostles were hiding in was still locked.  They’ve all scene their risen Lord, and claim to be overjoyed in response to Jesus’ acclamation of peace.  They are saved, and are the rock of the church to come.  And yet, a week later, the door is still locked.  

It leads me to think they’re all still scared, and they don’t yet have that sense of liberation, of redemption, of freedom we’re often led to believe.  It’s very human.  They’ve been led out of Egypt and yet can’t walk out of their bedroom.  So what does this mean for us?  We’ve gotten word that the prognosis is good, or that our kids made it home from the war, or we got into the school we really wanted to, but we can’t let go of the fear of what might have been.  I remember healing from my scary car-pedestrian accident of almost a year ago.  It would take me a while to walk on my own without a cane or splint.  But even though I got the seemingly miraculous news that nothing was broken even though I was thrown 10 feet, it would be months before I would believe I could do much with my leg.  I was fine in body, considering the seriousness of the accident and the couple of weeks where I really couldn’t walk, but I locked my room-for-maneuver away up a flight of stairs that I scarcely thought I could climb back down.  More than half of that recovery was a matter of the heart not the body.  If the prognosis had been bad, any recovery that could of occurred would have been entirely a matter of the heart, not just half of it.  What are you locking away in a room up a treacherous flight of steps you can’t seem to find a way back down from?  And the teacher and prophet reminds us, “Peace be with you!”

My childhood cravings told me this time of year were coated with sugar and sweet.  They led me with great excitement to the moment of celebration, the moment of fun, the moment of beauty in all it’s finery and splendidly colored eggs.  There were giant 6 foot tall bunnies aplenty to bring a smile to my face – and I was very glad for it.  The hard work though, begins some point after that moment.  All the information is in, the facts seem set, and we now have to do something with it.  One week after, life continues on whether or not we’re ready for it.  The news can be liberating or mesmerizing or terrifying as we huddle in the corner.  When you catch yourself putting the blood on the door in the hopes of the Angel of Death passing over, or you find yourself feeling in your body like you’re truly hanging from the cross – stop.  Take a breath.  It might be all you feel you can do, so you might as well do it with intention.  Come back to that moment.  Fill the way forward with intention as often as you can.  

Some of us will doubt no matter what; others will say they are overjoyed with their lips but remain trapped in their hearts; and others will find a way to keep ourselves imprisoned in action when all signs pointed to liberation.  But like these scriptural stories, there is always another opportunity to let go, to get out, to accept or to heal if only in the heart and not the body.  Beyond or despite the facts of whatever situation we find ourselves in, what is most crucial is how we deal with the moment, and not what the moment told us.  One week after is when the difficult work begins.