Giving 70%

I was talking with one of our members over the summer and she said to me, “I sometimes feel like I’m not good enough to be a Unitarian Universalist.” She explained that she likes meat too much. She explained that sometimes she buys unfairly traded coffee (in a Styrofoam cup, no less) and sometimes even throws the Styrofoam cup in the garbage. She never meditates or prays. She invests her money not always according to whether a company extends employee benefits to same-gender partners but according, sometimes, to how well its stock performs!

 

I think she feels that because we are a religion of “deeds not creeds” and those deeds are generally ethical rather than ritual, she has to behave with perfect ethical fidelity at all times or else she doesn’t deserve to be called a Unitarian Universalist. I don’t think she’s alone in feeling this way. And this is a problem. It’s not her problem; it’s our problem.

 

It’s a problem for several reasons. For one thing, it means we’re doing a bad job teaching our theology. To think that in not doing enough deeds or the right kind of deeds, you don’t really “belong” as a Unitarian Universalist is to miss the entire point of Universalism. The point of Universalism is that everyone belongs, no matter what! Universal forgiveness for all that you do and don’t do in your lifetime. Universal salvation. This doesn’t mean that all actions belong, that all behaviors are okay, but that all people belong. Whoever you are, whomever you love, wherever you are on your life journey, you are welcome here. Everyone is ultimately swept up in the loving embrace of God. That’s the radical message of Universalism.

 

The other problem with thinking that you have to be ethically perfect to be a Unitarian Universalist is that when we feel that we should be perfect at something and we’re not (because we never are) we often will throw up our hands and not try at all. I think this happens to a lot of us. There are so many problems in the world that we feel we are supposed to be attending to, so many pleasures we’re supposed to forgo for our health or the environment or social justice. So many re-attunements we’re supposed to make in the way we relate to others. So many practices we’re supposed to adopt because they’re supposed to be good for us, spiritually or otherwise. Sometimes we can get a little defensive and say, “You know what? To hell with it all!” And we stop trying.

 

And while we’re not going to go to hell for stopping trying, we will miss out on the richness and depth of the spiritual journey of Unitarian Universalism. We will miss out on the possibility of directly experiencing, of tasting the cosmic oneness that Unitarianism promises. And we’ll miss out on the chance to open our hearts to the radiant love and acceptance that Universalism promises. The power of Unitarian Universalism can only be realized and felt when we actively engage the world through the lens of our faith.

 

In Roger Gottlieb’s new book, Spirituality: What it is and Why it Matters, he takes on the question of why should we lead a spiritual life. He writes:

 

In the early 1970s, I was a somewhat hard-nosed philosophy graduate student but had also begun to study Kundalini Yoga, a practice involving dynamic postures, intense breathing, chanting, and meditation. One evening I went to a lecture by the guru of Kundalini, Yogi Bhajan, a cheerful, bearded Sikh with a booming laugh and a big belly. He offered what I would later recognize as the basics of nondenominational spirituality: make a fundamental change in your life by letting go of your ego, surrendering your attachments, doing away with greed, and manifesting kindness and compassion. When he asked for questions, I stood up and, in a slightly pretentious “I’m an academic philosopher” tone, asked him: “I see what you are saying, but tell me why I ought to do any of these things.” In other words, why should I live a spiritual life? Where were the justifications and the motivations? Undaunted by either the question or my manner, Yogi Bhajan was relaxed and clear in his response: “I am not saying you ought to, I am simply saying you will never be happy, never have real peace of mind or serenity, unless you do.”

 

And so we try to live a spiritually grounded, ethical life, not because we’ll go to hell if we don’t and not because we won’t belong here if we don’t but because we want to participate in the oneness and the love promised by our faith. And we do it imperfectly, and incompletely, and we make mistakes, and we fail, and we bring all our brokenness and pain along with us as we do it. And that’s all part of it. Grappling with that is the essence of the journey we share.

 

Yom Kippur just ended last night, the day on the Jewish calendar when one acknowledges missing the mark and commits to turning, returning to one’s higher self. It’s a day of fasting and intense prayer. In some ways it’s a somber day of reckoning, being brutally honest with oneself and God about ethical, relational, and spiritual failures over the last year. Many people wear white, the color of a funeral shroud, to face their mortality head on and view their lives in the harsh light of their inevitable death. But in some Hasidic communities it’s also a day of ecstatic dance and celebration. Because the day attests to our capacity to change. It’s an opportunity to turn back to God. It’s a crack in fate; a brief window during which to alter one’s course and change one’s destiny.

 

Of course they know and we know that in truth, we have this window every day. We have the opportunity, every day, to return to what is most holy to us. We’re never going to be perfect beings, finished with the process. But we have to keep trying. And the trying itself is an art form. It requires almost a martial arts balance of relaxed calm with committed intensity. Because if you’re too relaxed about it, then you’re not really trying. There’s no engagement with the spiritual life at all. But if you’re too intense about it, you risk getting burnt out and frustrated and then giving up altogether. You have to find that sweet spot in the middle where you’re genuinely trying, but not too hard.

 

There is an ancient Tai Chi principle that speaks to this; that with any tai chi move that you’re working on, first estimate what your full ability is in terms of length of practice and strength and flexibility. Then push to only 70% of that ability. This is really counterintuitive in this culture. We’re all raised to think, especially in sports and business, that whatever you do, you should give 110%! No pain, no gain. But the theory is that if you hold yourself back to 70% and retain some of your energy, your capacity will actually grow quickly so that pretty soon that 70% will be bigger than the 110% that you would have started with. Whatever you apply it to – you’ll write more books, you’ll mediate deeper and longer, you’ll run faster, you’ll go on more dates, you’ll have more love to give to your kids.

 

I first heard this 70% rule at a retreat I attended over the summer and at first I was really skeptical. I thought, but what about commitment? What about passion? What about throwing yourself into something? But the more I thought about it, the more I became completely sold. I thought about the people I most admire – the people who do the most to transform our world, or who seem most spiritually attuned, or the greatest artists. They all exhibit a sense of restraint. I’m thinking of leaders like Rev. Martin Luther King Junior, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and President Obama. I’m thinking of actors like Meryl Streep and Spencer Tracy. I’m thinking of singers from Sarah Vaughn to Placido Domingo to Eminem to Paul Simon. They all retain some of their energy inside and that pent-up energy makes them powerful.

 

I think we could all access this kind of power if we lived our spiritual lives, which is to say our daily lives, with a kind of measured intensity. This means that we give no more than 70% but also that we give no less. It means that each and every one of us sets our intention to try really quite hard to fulfill our sacred responsibilities: to make ethical decisions with our buying power, to engage in daily spiritual practice, to act compassionately toward our partner, our child, our friend, our colleague, our neighbor, our stranger, even when we don’t feel like it, to tell the truth, and to give up some of our own comforts for the sake of others. 70% of what you could possibly do.

 

If it sounds like I’m both absolving you and challenging you at the same time, that’s exactly my intention. In some ways you probably feel like you could scale back to 70%, in other ways, you probably need to step up. And there are a million ways to step up, including immediately after this service at our Faith in Action Expo downstairs. You will find a dozen opportunities to serve this congregation and the wider world and bring your faith more actively into your every day life.

 

So let’s draft off of the energy of the Jewish High Holidays, in our Unitarian Universalist way, and seize this day – this moment – to return to our highest selves. To return incrementally. To return incompletely. To begin the return. To know that our trajectory will be always approaching perfection and never reaching it. This is simply the nature of being human.

 

They say that if you could stop an airplane mid-flight, just freeze it in the air, you would never find it pointing straight at its destination. It would always be pointing a bit to the left or a bit to the right or a bit up or a bit down. The airplane navigates, not by flying straight, but through thousands of tiny mid-course corrections, always re-aligning with the target. Little turns all the time and the plane arrives, usually, where it’s supposed to.

 

For us too, these constant micro-turns are really our best shot at living a spiritual life. If we take an incremental approach, the whole endeavor is going to go better. With this mindset you would never say, “I’m not good enough to be a Unitarian Universalist.” You would say, “I did okay today and I’m planning to do just a little better tomorrow.” And that’s enough to slowly open our hearts and build the land of which we dream.