WHAT I BELIEVE
by Forrest Church
October 8, 2006
Last Sunday, Galen delivered a brilliant and important sermon. He challenged us to rise to the promise of our own beliefs, rather than remain content to demean the beliefs of others. His definition of Unitarian Universalism is succinct and memorable. "As Unitarians, we believe all names for God point toward the same mystery. As Universalists, we believe all creation shares the same destiny." Put, as he did, even more succinctly: "One divine spirit within and around us, and one destiny before us." The contribution Galen is making and will make to our theological tradition is a significant one. It also extends the All Souls witness—going back now almost two centuries—by advancing our commitment to nurturing a deep and sustaining liberal faith.
In that same abiding spirit, this morning I too shall bring you our good news. That's what the word, gospel, means, by the way: good news. I, for one, am not ashamed of the liberal gospel. It has enriched, indeed transformed my life.
As the negative print image of every form of fundamentalism, Unitarian Universalism offers to the world an alternative religious vision. Rather than rend, we sew. We celebrate unity, twice in our very name. As for liberal, the world means "generous, flexible and free." And yet, this saving power, the power of our good news, will come alive only if we bring the same passion to our liberal faith—to our open-handed, open-hearted, open-minded faith—that others bring to theirs.
Religious experience springs from two primary sources, awe and humility. Neither awe nor humility is served by those who refuse to go beyond the letter—either of scripture or of science—to explore the spirit. Fundamentalists come in two basic varieties. Right-wing fundamentalists enshrine a tiny God on their altar. Fundamentalists of the left reject this tiny God, imagining that by so doing they have done something creative and important. Both groups are in thralldom to the same tiny God.
When people tell me proudly that they don't believe in God, I ask them to tell me a little about the God they don't believe in, for I probably don't believe in him either. God is not God's name. God is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. Call it what you will: spirit, ground of being, life itself; it remains what it always Has—in Rudolph Otto's definition of the Holy—a mysterium tremens et fascinans, an awe-inspiring mind-bending mystery.
Theology is poetry not science. During our brief span, we interpret the greatest and most mysterious masterpiece of them all, the creation itself. The creation is our book of revelation, not a bound book vouchsafed to us by some ancient guru. We rely on the oracle of our own experience, drawn from our reading of the book of nature and of human nature, including our reading of the Bible and our study of philosophy. The text of meaning is vast, its nuances many and various.
In what I call the Cathedral of the World there are millions of windows, each telling its own story of who we are, where we came from, where we are going, each illuminating life's meaning. In this respect, we are many. But we are also one, for the one Light shines through every window. No individual, however spiritually gifted, can see this Light—Truth or God, call it what you will—directly. We cannot look God in the eye any more than we can stare at the sun without going blind. This should counsel humility and mutual respect for those whose reflections on ultimate meaning differ from our own.
Gaze into the light of the heavens. There are 1.7 trillion stars for every living human being. The star to person ration is 1.7 trillion to one. That is awesome and it counsels humility. It should certainly discourage the scourge of human pride. But does it? No. Instead, we sit on this tiny, munificently fixtured rock arguing over who has the best insider information on the creator and the creation. Is it the Christian? The Buddhist? The Athiest? The Humanist? The Theist? Please! We humans trumpet our differences, even kill each other over them, while, in every way that matters, we are far more alike than we are different. We are born into the same mystery and the same sun sets on each of our horizons. Theologically speaking, we are certainly more alike in our ignorance than we differ in our knowledge. In fact, by the time we die, we will barely have gotten our minds wet. The wisest of us all will have but the faintest notion of what life was all about. This counsels humility, but it also affirms oneness. My favorite etymology speaks eloquently to this very point. Human, humane, humanitarian, humor, humility, humus. Dust to dust, the mortar of mortality binds us fast to one another. Truly we are one.
The acknowledgement of essential unity is a central pillar, the central pillar, of Unitarian Universalism. In contrast, fundamentalists, perceiving the Light shining through their own window, conclude that theirs is the only window through which it shines. They may even incite their followers to throw stones through other people's windows. Secular materialists make precisely the opposite mistake. Perceiving the bewildering variety of windows and worshippers, they conclude there is no Light. But the windows are not the Light; the windows are where the Light shines through.
As with Galen's "one source, one destiny," this metaphor too offers an easy to remember description of Unitarian Universalism. One Light (Unitarianism) shines through many windows (Universalism), illuminating human minds and hearts in many different ways.
To appreciate how enlightened this approach to religion is, consider this. If your neighbor disagrees with your personal theology, short of changing your mind—a prospect that may not delight you—you have only four options. You can convert, destroy, ignore, or respect her. Fundamentalists of the Right usually attempt conversion, but sometimes—as we know first hand from recent experience—they choose to destroy in God's name. Fundamentalists of the Left (secular materialists) tend to ignore such disagreements as irrelevant, but they too may choose destruction. One need witness only the gulags and crematoria to recognize that religious zealots alone have not cornered the market on muting the exercise of religious and political freedom by resorting to mass murder. In the United States of America and as reflected in Unitarian Universalism—a quintessentially American faith—following the principle of e pluribus unum, we embrace the fourth option: mutual respect. There is only one caveat to abridge such respect. We do not and must not permit stone throwing in the cathedral.
Why then do we choose to join together rather than exercise our full freedom to believe what we will in the privacy of our homes on Sunday mornings? Simply because experience has taught us that we need one another. We need guidance in recognizing our tears in one another's eyes. We need prompting to raise our moral sights. We need companions in the work of love and justice to enhance our neighborhoods and to strengthen our witness in the world. And yes, we choose to join our hands and hearts because we know how easily we slip back into mechanical habits that blunt our consciousness. We need and know we need to be reminded week in and week out how precious life is and how fragile. So very fragile. And so phosphorescent. A year can seem to last forever, to the point that we may pray for it to end; yet decades flit past in an eyeblink.
You may know my definition of religion. Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and knowing we must die. We are not so much the animal with tools or the animal with advanced language as we are the religious animal. Knowing we must one day die, we cannot help but question what life means. Unitarian Universalism doesn't offer a single set of answers to life's unanswerable questions. We seek meaning in life, not the meaning of life. But we do have a clear sense of life's purpose, I believe. The purpose of life, and its truest test as well, is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.
So, whenever a trap door swings or the roof caves in, don't ask "Why?" Why will get you nowhere. The only question worth asking is "Where do we go from here?" And part of the answer must be, "together." Together we kneel. Together we walk, holding each another's hands, holding each another up. Together we do love's work and thereby we are saved.
Which leads me to this final thought. To be at home with life we must make our peace with death. Death is one of two hinges on which life turns; without death, life as we know it could not be. Each individual is the unique combination of gametes, not a copy replicated by division. For this reason, every time a woman gives birth, she gives death. Or to put it more gently, death is our birthright, perhaps life's only guarantee. At birth, we receive a life sentence that is also a death sentence. The particulars of each will differ, some aspects being mandatory (fated by the accidents of birth), others subject to parole for good, often courageous, behavior. Yet, immortality notwithstanding, though we may receive pardon and forgiveness during the course of our lifetime, the death sentence we receive at birth cannot be lifted.
To the extent that religion is a death-defying act, offering strategies whereby we can live forever, it diminishes our reverent appreciation for life, thereby representing a failure of awe. Remember, we were immortal once. We were immortal before we became interesting. Recalling our most ancient ancestors (single-celled organisms, replicated in each succeeding generation), at one time in the history of our evolution, death did not exist for us. Death came into the picture only when we evolved into sexual beings that reproduce their kind but not themselves.
It’s not that I disbelieve in an afterlife; I simply have no experience of an afterlife and therefore have little to say concerning one. I do know this, however. First, nothing (including any imaginable afterlife) could possibly be any weirder or more amazing than life before death. Theology may begin at the tomb’s door—the specter of death prompting reflection on what life means—but surely no revelation is more compelling or worth pondering than that of a new-born infant emerging from its mother’s womb. When “doing theology” I try to remind myself that theologians are wise to close their learned tomes at times and re-open the book of nature. Theology’s heartbeat is the miracle of our own existence. This miracle encompasses both birth and death.
To this miracle, we must each do everything in our human power to awaken. Awakening is like returning after a long journey and seeing the world—our loved ones, cherished possessions, and the tasks that are ours to perform—with new eyes. Think of little things. Reaching out for the touch of a loved one's hand. Shared laughter. A letter to a lost friend. An undistracted hour of silence, alone, together with our thoughts until there are no thoughts, only the pulse of life itself. Imagine an afternoon spent free from worry about the things we have to do, or an afternoon tackling tasks we have avoided. Remember, the very ground we walk is Holy land. We may not understand any better than before who we are or why we are here. But for this fleeting moment—the one moment we can bank on—our life becomes a sacrament of praise.
The question is not where to look for God, whether on the cross or in the cosmos. It is not even whether God exists or not. The question is not why, or whether, or where, but how. It is how, when we look out our window as William Blake did when he was a boy of seven, to see the trees filled with angels.
Does that mean angels really exist? Not according to the canons of knowledge, they don't. Like God, angels are beyond proof. Once we start arguing about whether or not angels exist, we have already missed the point. I will venture this, however. When angels dance on the head of a pin, they don't concern themselves with how many can fit, as if they were crowding into a phone booth. Their full attention is devoted to the joy of the dance.
Numbering is a grown-up game. But, if we follow Jesus' counsel and become again as children, we will be able to dance in the ring of eternity. At the very least, by remembering that "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" will play for us one last time and then the earthly strains will cease, we will join the dance of life with more exuberance. How much finer it will be, when our band is struck, if we have loved the music while it lasted and enjoyed the dance.
Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.