Perhaps the best thing about being
a Unitarian Universalist is that when we learn new things we are encouraged
to update our point of view. By definition, ours is a non-doctrinal faith.
In fact, the term "doctrinaire liberal" is an oxymoron -- in religion
anyway, one cannot be dogmatic and liberal at the same time. If orthodoxy
(which means, literally, "right teaching") promulgates a single,
authorized set of answers, we celebrate instead the open mind. We trust
our own thoughts and experiences as potentially as illuminating as the thoughts
and experiences of those who came before us. Not that our answers will therefore
be superior. We simply hold that no single book, no revelation, ancient
or modern, contains the whole truth. Since for us revelation is not sealed,
Unitarian Universalists are free to range broadly in search for answers
to age old questions. Religious liberalism does not require fidelity to
the latest fashion, only to remaining open to new sources of inspiration.
A few years ago my then associate minister -- now president of our denomination
-- John Buehrens and I wrote an introduction to Unitarianism, based on the
five sources of our faith as listed on the back of your Sunday bulletin.
As it says their, from our denomination's covenant of purposes and principles,
"The living tradition we share draws from many sources:
* Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in
all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness
to the forces that create and uphold life;
*Words and deeds of prophetic women women and men which challenge us to
confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the
transforming power of love;
*Wisdomfrom the world's religion which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual
life;
*Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by
loving our neighbors as ourselves;
*Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and
the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
This June Beacon Press is publishing a revised edition, with two new chapters
and a preface by Robert Fulguhm. With spring -- at least actuarially --
right around the corner, this morning I shall share with you some of my
thoughts concerning the new, sixth source of our faith -- the teachings
of earth-centered religious traditions, which remind us that the creation
itself manifests the sacred and should therefore be tended gently and revered.
Though it elicited considerable debate before being added to our "Purposes
and Principles" by the General Assembly in 1995, this sixth source
holds a long-established place in our theological tradition. The most revered
19th century Unitarians, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Henry
David Thoreau, wouldn't have blinked at this addition to our covenant. Transcendentalists
were liberal in both their openness to new ways of thinking and their respect
for those who had broken past codes, melding old insights into their venture
to formulate new ones. In addition, nature shaped their theological vision,
drawing them out of narrow academic chambers to contemplate a broader text
for contemplation. A respect for the interdependent web of being of which
we are all a part
may best describe what Emerson, Fuller and Thoreau held most sacred. Even
as the Bible celebrates "the earth and the fullness thereof,"
for their own experience of the Holy our Transcendentalist forbears looked
first to the creation.
. Recently, my family and I took a white-water rafting trip down the Middle
Fork of the Salmon River. The Middle Fork runs 100 miles and is entirely
contained within the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area. Named
after my father this 2.2 million acre preserve is the largest wilderness
area in the continental United States. Having long considered being born
in Idaho an accident (I am uncomfortable around guns and horses), I was
surprised by the power of this homecoming. I looked through my father's
eyes and discovered the beauty of things he worked to save, our wild and
scenic rivers, our precious wilderness. What saved me is that the mountains,
rapids and heavens made me smaller, so small that I began to notice things
far bigger than my own little concerns. I was a part of, not apart from,
the ground of our being. Its power was real, my own derivative and unimportant.
In the ultimate sense, books didn't matter. Churches didn't matter. I heard
the cosmos sing and watched nature dance. This was religion.
On my father's tombstone in Boise we placed the following words from one
of his speeches: "I never knew a person who felt self-important in
the morning after spending the night in the open on an Idaho mountainside
under a star-studded summer sky." A lapsed Catholic and secular humanist,
my father may have been unchurched, but he was not unacquainted with the
one thing churches hope to offer, a chance to walk on holy ground. In his
case, native Americans had walked the ground dedicated in his name long
before him. Their paintings decorate, even illuminate, the walls of caves.
Their gods were present there, then and now. Anyone looking for the holy
land might best begin with the earth that sustains us.
The earth as touchstone of the sacred, indeed as holy ground, comes before
Judaism and Christianity, before the other world religions, before all the
philosophers of humanism. One sure proof of authentic religious experience
is the combination of humility and awe. Our encounter with nature inspires
both. Though earth-centered traditions run the gamut from simple to complex,
from tribal to universal, each taps a power that no book or creed can begin
to approximate, the power of the creation. This is true even of the simplest
faith -- man, woman, fire, food, sun, rain, star. Early animists felt the
earth and all its powers, thunder, lightening, floods, volcanoes, to be
alive, even divine. Their awe ran the gamut from awesome to awful -- from
wondrous to terrifying.
We may fairly describe our ancient ancestors' worship and fear of nature's
gods as primitive religion. You would think that an enlightenment tradition
would celebrate having graduated from so-called superstition and never look
back. For many years we did. Yet, in recent years many liberal religionists
are beginning to discover that with each gain we score in concert with scientific
demystifiers, we must protect ourselves from losing something even more
important, an intimate experience of the power and mystery of the creation.
One need not accept the tenets of ancient animism to perceive heaven in
a mustard seed or a world in a grain of sand. To do so is not to reject
rationalism, or even skepticism, which guards us from irrational delusion.
Thoughtful people can maintain an eye both critical and open. Turning for
inspiration to earth-centered spirituality is not to abandon our critical
faculties, but to open them wider, to place ourselves in a larger field
and that field under the widest canopy of stars we can imagine. Then, like
the first human, for a sacred moment we too may be terrified and filled
with awe. We too may experience raw religion.
Past president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, William F. Schultz,
speaks less often of God than of "the Holy." This is not merely
inclusive rhetoric. Answering a question asked hundreds of years ago by
Saint Lawrence -- "Whom should I adore: the Creator or the Creation?"
-- Schultz writes: "Most Western religions have answered back, 'Adore
the Creator!' and supplied an image (Zeus, Jehovah, Christ) to be adored.
But our answer is far different. Whom should we adore? The Creation, surely,
for whatever there be of the Creator will be made manifest in Her handiwork'.
Developing this insight, one distinction between Unitarian Universalism
and the major book-driven Western religions is that we tend to view the
world as a school rather than as a corrections facility. Rather than punishing
us, as sinners, by incarcerating us here, sentencing us to life and then,
at death, offering release only to those who have followed a strict set
of guidelines for rehabilitation, our faith celebrates the creation not
only as a beloved home, but also as a sacred text from which we may draw
wisdom. Earth centered traditions are therefore a natural source for Unitarian
Universalism. We may claim no inside knowledge of the creator, but are quick
to affirm, learn from and protect the creation. "The gods and goddesses
-- or, if you prefer, the most precious and profound -- are accessible to
us in the taste of honey and the touch of stone," Bill Schulz writes.
"This is why we love the earth, honor the human body, and bless the
stars. Religion is not just a matter of things Unseen. For us the Holy is
not hidden but shows its face in the blush of the world's exuberance."
Such a world-view has ethical consequences as well. It is no surprise that
earth-centered traditions place a high value on protecting the environment,
on saving the earth. This same commitment is manifest in Biblical texts
also, especially the prophets, whose words have inspired generations of
Unitarian Universalists to work for peace, justice, and on behalf of the
environment. As the prophet Isaiah warned twenty-five centuries ago, "The
earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the heavens
languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting
covenant." If the letter here differs from that of the earth-centered
traditions, the spirit is the same. Again, common values transcend constrasting
beliefs. Different sources flow into the same river, which flows into the
one cosmic sea. This is the very essence of Universalism, where all that
live are related to the one source, itself the wellspring of salvation.
Among the little band of vacationers who traveled with my family down the
Middle Fork of the Salmon river was an astronomer. On our last night together
he gave us a guided tour of the heavens. After pointing out the landmarks,
Arcturus, Mars, the Big Dipper, he reminded us that all we can see with
the naked eye -- it seemed like a thousand stars -- is only an infinitesimal
part of the universe. Not only are there more than 100 billion stars in
our galexy; there are an estimated 100 billion galexies. To bring this down
to size, if the universe were a vast beach, our sun would be no larger than
a grain sand and the earth a tiny speck of dust upon it. So there we were,
thirty humans on a beach gazing out into infinitude, experiencing both humility
and cosmic awe.
This experience confirmed my faith. No difference that divides us comes
close to all that unites us on this tiny speck of living dust on a single
grain of sand on the vast beach of the creation. We are truly kith and kin,
brothers and sisters, children of a great and magnificent mystery. Holding
hands together with my family and fellow travelers as the earth circled
our little star coursing through the heavens, I felt two things more profoundly
perhaps than ever before: we are one; and we are blessed. Copyright
AllSouls 1998