Waking Up

Are you all awake? As I look around, it looks like most of you are awake but are you conscious? Are you really conscious about what is going on around you? Are you making decisions and making choices consciously?

Today, I am going to invite you to be more conscious and I hope to show you how.

As Sam Harris wrote in his book Waking Up, A Guide to Spirituality without Religion, “consciousness remains notoriously difficult to understand or even to define.”

According to neuroscientist Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario, “Consciousness refers to two quite distinct things — wakefulness and awareness. But the problem for people working on consciousness is that none of us can agree on what it actually means.”

I have many academic definitions in my files, but today I want to keep it simple. I am going to describe being conscious in three phases: noticing what is going on around you, setting intention, and acting responsibly.

Let me share a story about Mahatma Gandhi. 

"One day Gandhi stepped aboard a train as it started to move, and one of his shoes slipped off and dropped on the tracks. Unable to retrieve it, he calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land close to the first. When an amazed passenger asked why he had done that, Gandhi smiled and said, "The poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track will now have a pair he can use." With the eyes of his imagination, Gandhi saw a man with bare feet, saw him coming across a lone shoe and desperately searching for the other, and saw the disappointment on his face when he didn't find it; seeing these things, Gandhi did what he could to help."  (Donald McCullough in Say Please, Say Thank You)

Gandhi was noticing what was going on around him.

So, NOTICING is about becoming wide awake, it is about waking up, waking up to what is going on round you.

So, what are you noticing? As you look around you today, what do you see? What are you sensing? Sensing is about listening deeply using all the senses; being alert to changes in our environment, in people, and in ourselves; recognizing the need to stop what we are doing to be mindfully aware of our surroundings without judgment. Conscious people see more and they exclude less.

I want to invite you to really notice what is going on around you. This is going to be the audience participation segment of this morning’s service but it will be a silent participation. In a moment, I am going to invite you to stand, not yet, in a moment. I am going to ask you to find a partner, next to you, in front of you, behind you, wherever you find a partner and if that person is sitting down, sit with them. I am going to ask you to look deeply into each other’s eyes without speaking; to notice what is going on.

So, let’s do it. Stand if you are able, find a partner, -- have you found a partner – now, without speaking, look deeply into the other’s eyes. Notice what is happening. Keep silent… Keep looking… Keep noticing. …  Okay, when you are ready, thank your partner and sit back down.

Thank you! Now, I am going to ask you some questions. Answer them inside, there is no need to speak. So, what did you notice? What did you notice in your eye-gazing partner? What did you notice happening to you?  Be curious. Learn from the experience, be fully aware of what is going on around you. Be in the moment, live in this moment.

I imagine you noticed a lot…
I hope you were practicing our first UU principle, noticing the inherent worth and dignity of the person into whose eyes you looked. I invite you to keep noticing what is going on around you.

So noticing is about sensing what is going on, using all your senses; it is about learning, being curious, and it is about being mindful, being in the present moment. But noticing is not sufficient, Gandhi was mindful of losing his shoe, but his intention was that the person finding his shoe would benefit and have a pair of shoes, and he acted responsibly.

Let me tell you about the surgeon and the burglar, a Story of Intention from Christopher Titmuss in Mindfulness for Everyday Living.

The surgeon, working in the operating room on a major operation, and the burglar, stealthily going from room to room, have something in common. Both show an extraordinary degree of mindfulness from one moment to the next. Both remain completely absorbed in their work. What separates the surgeon and the burglar is the intention — and that intention makes all the difference, even though in both cases the quality of focused attention is extraordinarily high. The burglar generates suffering that even an insurance policy cannot redress. The surgeon, on the other hand, works to relieve suffering for a patient.

Authentic mindfulness takes into consideration the intentions behind our actions. Intention matters as much as mindfulness. Together they have the power to transform our lives. Our intentions act as a governing force behind our actions. Even if we make mistakes and the results do not work out the way we want, we can take note of our intentions. If we know, deep in our heart, that our intentions are wholesome, then we should take comfort in this knowledge.

I am reminded of the saying attributed to Plato or Philo of Alexandria: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is engaged in a great struggle.” What did you see as you looked into your partner’s eyes this morning?

So, for me, SETTING INTENTION is about possibility thinking – Thinking positively; believing in possibility not obstacles, in abundance not scarcity. It is about exploring opportunities and being purposeful.

It is also about committing to action -- clearly defining intent; committing to acting responsibly.

I would like to share a poem…

Are you a Reason, a Season, or a Lifetime?
Reason, Season, or Lifetime
People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
When you figure out which one it is, you will know what to do for each person.
When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed.
They have come to assist you through a difficulty; to provide you with guidance and support; to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be.
Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done.
The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.
Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it. It is real. But only for a season.
LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person, and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.
— Author Unknown

Today, notice with intention, the people who are in your life, whether it be for a reason, a season or a lifetime.

Setting intention means clearly defining our intent and committing to action. Let me share some personal experiences.  

Let me share a personal story

While attending a spiritual retreat a few years ago, I experienced one of those rare moments of real awakening. Despite being intensely goal-driven at times, my awareness of a long-practiced habit was heightened dramatically during one of the meditative exercises, a habit of running away. 

I suddenly realized the number of significant situations I had run away from: I ran away from home; I ran away from the church that was an anchor during my formative years; I ran away from a failing marriage; I ran away from numerous jobs that had become unexciting, some might say I ran away from England. It was not always easy to leave and, in leaving somewhere, I was always heading towards another place but, all too often, without a purpose other than getting away from a bad situation.

Our lives are full of transitions but are we running away or are we running towards something?  I am not saying don’t run away but I am saying, ‘start running towards something.’ In any case, running away or running towards, we need to know why. This takes me the “big why” -- our purpose or calling.

My friend and guide Richard Leider, in his book The Power of Purpose, writes: “Purpose is fundamental to human life. Purpose gives us the will to live or to persevere. It gives us the reason to get up in the morning. Purpose gives us courage.” We all have a purpose whether we know it or not. Have you discovered your purpose? Can you describe your purpose in ten words or less?

Neale Donald Walsch, known for his Conversations with God, says, “There is no blackboard in the sky on which God has written your purpose, your mission in life. That blackboard just doesn’t exist. Your purpose is what you say it is, your mission is the mission you give yourself.”

Running towards our goals is so much better than constantly running away. Living purposefully is what gets you out of bed in the morning.

Linda Linder in her book, Waking Up, says: Telling the truth compels responsibility. Taking responsibility requires taking authentic action. When we can speak truthfully and take action our lives unfold, blossom, ignite and we “Wake up!”

So, with clear intent, we can then move to the third phase of being conscious and that is acting responsibly. This means speaking candidly, practicing integrity, and taking responsible action.

Three Kernels of Corn Parable (author unknown)

Three young men were once given three kernels of corn apiece by a wise old sage, who admonished them to go out into the world, and use the corn to bring themselves good fortune. The first young man put his three kernels of corn into a bowl of hot broth and ate them.

The second thought, I can do better than that, and he planted his three kernels of corn. Within a few months, he had three stalks of corn. He took the ears of corn from the stalks, boiled them, and had enough corn for three meals.

The third man said to himself, I can do better than that!
He also planted his three kernels of corn, but when his three stalks of corn produced, he stripped one of the stalks and replanted all of the seeds in it, gave the second stalk of corn to a sweet maiden, and ate the third.

His one full stalk's worth of replanted corn kernels gave him 200 stalks of corn! And the kernels of these he continued to replant, setting aside only a bare minimum to eat. He eventually planted a hundred acres of corn. With his fortune, he not only won the hand of the sweet maiden but purchased the land owned by the sweet maiden's father.

And he never hungered again. I think he became a conscious capitalist!

Acting responsibly is an opportunity for us all. We can act responsibly first for ourselves; remember, the airline requirement to put your mask on first before you help others.

We can then act responsibly for those we are in relationship with, for the people we care about, and for the causes we care about.

So, I invite you to combine the consciousness practices we have explored this morning
NOTICING, SETTING INTENTION, ACTING RESPONSIBILY -- all the time

I believe this reflects our 7th UU Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

So, at least for today, I invite you to:

Notice what is going on around you, listen deeply with all your senses

Clearly set intentions for your actions, get clear about your purpose

And act responsibly by speaking with candor, practicing integrity, and taking responsible action.

May it be so.

Waking Up, a sermon delivered by Paul G. Ward at 1stUUPB on June 14, 2015

Measure a Year

There are 525,600 minutes in a year. That answer is right for most calendar years.  A leap year (with February 29 tacked on) has 527,040 minutes. But the time it actually takes the Earth to travel once around the Sun is about 525,948.76 minutes. (That translates to 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.)  So what?  For me this is the opposite of what comes to my mind when I think of measuring a year.  Try doing research for a sermon tilted “Measure A Year.”  If your research on measuring what matters most you find yourself sifting through measuring performance, investments, marketing, digital measurement plans, wealth, who’s the skinniest, the smartest, the most attractive, and many other self indulgent measurements. 525,600 is a lot of minutes to do something more meaningful with. What have you done with your minutes this past church  year, or today for that matter? How do you measure a year in your life?

A popular song from the musical RENT, Seasons of Love, is probably one of my favorite songs ever because it tells many truths about life, especially how to measure a year in life. Jonathan Larson offers many possible ways to measure a year, but the most remarkable one he mainly focused on was measuring a year in love. Measure your life in love.

 Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
 Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
 Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
 How do you measure, measure a year?
 In daylights, in sunsets
 In midnights, in cups of coffee
 In inches, in miles
 In laughter, in strife
 In five hundred twenty-five thousand
 Six hundred minutes
 How do you measure
 A year in the life?
 How about Love?
 Measure In love
 Seasons of Love
 
 Five hundred twenty-five thousand
 Six hundred minutes
 Five hundred twenty-five thousand
 Journeys to plan
 Five hundred twenty-five thousand
 Six hundred minutes
 How do you measure
 The life of a woman or a man?
 In truths that she learned
 Or in times that he cried
 In bridges he burned
 Or the way that she died!
 It's time now
 To sing out
 Though the story never ends
 Let's celebrate
 Remember a year in the life of friends
 Remember the  love!
 Share love, give love, spread love

Ultimately, this song is asking how we use our time; our talents; our treasure. How do we find purpose and meaning in our life?  Everywhere we look, people are all trying to sum up a year in the easiest way possible. There are plenty of different ways to go about summarizing. One way is to go over everything horrible that happened. That might be the easiest path and the likely path for many to take. But what do we get out of that approach? Other than an extremely depressing list that could give any sane human being nightmares, not much really.  Or, if you’re going for the more optimistic approach, you go look at only the good things that happened. While this one’s a bit trickier, it’s much more gratifying. This method can give you a more positive outlook on life, but it may not give you a realistic one. That is why you will see a particular picture on the cover of the order of service that reminds us of the mountain highs and the valleys low.  It's realistic and while it may not be the most interesting way to measure it, is the most important.

In some ways, the song's lyrics parallel words in the New Testament: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.”  It is calling us to bear fruit; called to invest our lives in those around us. And we are asked how we will measure our fruit. Yes, on a supermarket scale, but not this time. (That was a joke!) No we will measure our fruit by turning back and asking if those we encountered are better off as a result of time, care, and faith. Can I get an Amen, Chorus?

But life can be long and difficult at times. It is hard to invest in others all the time. It's hard to invest in others all the time. In the passage I just mentioned we are given a hint of how to be consistent in bearing fruit. “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”  To use another metaphor, bearing fruit is not an individual sport. It’s a team sport. A player on a team needs to listen to the coach, do what they say; not just to get playing time, but to be a better player, to help the team win. To produce fruit we must remain in the vine.
 
525,600 minutes!  525,600 journeys to plan. 525,600 minutes.
How can you measure the life of a woman or man?

We may be best served by focusing on the little things, versus the big things. Everywhere I’ve looked, people are focusing on celebrities and politicians, and what happened in their lives. Instead of focusing on what effected millions of people, why not take a closer look at what happened to just one person? Someone made a friend. Someone got married, and someone else got divorced. A tiny child started kindergarten, and a not-so-tiny child started college. A person was hurt, and a person was healed. Children died in city streets, and a child was born. The poet Mary Oliver tells us that instruction for living a life are to pay attention, be astonished and to tell about it.  I’m not going too deep here as Paul Ward will deliver the sermon next Sunday titled “Waking Up” that will have everything to do with paying attention.

Besides the fact that lyrics of Seasons of Love just kicks my butt emotionally, it made me think of two things…how do I really measure a year, and is it  the right measure?  And second, the things I do measure do not hit the heart (in email, in voicemails, in hours commuting, in meetings, in conference calls, in Powerpoint decks, in airport security lines, in mantras recited to keep from freaking out in overcrowded places, in tweets, Facebook posts, on my smart phone, on my laptop).  Do these mesh with what I really like to measure (nights slept under the stars, days of silence, time, time with the divine and nurturing my spirit, time with my family, time with you in this congregation, time in the pub? Yes, ministers drink beer. Moments such as these will give you the energy and forward thrust to create the kind of life that you want to measure with the right metrics.  Time keeps rolling on … how are you measuring a year in your life?

Let me remind everyone that we measure this time of our year because historically Unitarians and Universalists left their homes in June and flocked to the sea for cooler air and summer revivals. The most famous being the Universalist revivals led by Quillen Shinn in Maine throughout the 19th century. And so we continue that tradition by slowing down, taking stock, and gearing up for a September return when we believe our next church year begins. I return to the question I asked a few minutes ago. What have we done with our minutes this past church year?

I’m elated that the chorus from the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in West Palm has joined us. One of their minister’s, the Rev. Kevin Jones, is a dear friend of this Congregation. Our chorus guests are our partners in justice. Francis David, a 16th Century Unitarian once said, You do not have to think alike to love alike.” Our two congregations are proof of that. Though our faith and theology may take different roads we walk together for justice. We’ve participated in and supported PEACE and have made strides in bringing down all that keeps marginalized communities down and have demanded action from our leaders.
 

• This Congregation has packed thousands of meals that were delivered to families in our county who go without eating on a daily basis.
• We’ve offered many grants to community organizations to help support their mission. Those funds came directly from you.
• Some of our members can be seen at St. George’s distributing meals.
• We’ve planted fruits and vegetables as a sign to our commitment to sustainability.
• We’ve disappointed one another but are surely on the mend.
• We’ve increased our ability to grow young Unitarian Universalists in our children and youth.
• Our thrift shop brought in over $17,000 with a handful of volunteers that will support our congregation. A handful of volunteers.
• We offer scholarships not only to people wanting to go to university, but to trade schools and will offer scholarships to those seeking their GED.
• We support women’s health programs.
• We support Haitian efforts to build a well in a community without accessible water.
• We stand up for the rights of all.
• I can tell you we are stronger than we have been in a long time -- committed to loving and leadership.
• We have been transforming ourselves and the work has been intense.  But we’ve past the test.  We’re here.  We’re here.

I’d like you to rise and tell us of a success or challenge you’d like us to hold up from this past church year.
 
(Congregants rise and tell stories of successes and challenges)

We’ve mourned together, we’ve laughed together, we’ve tested one another.  Yet here we are ready to serve the community, honor our Unitarian Universalist roots of freedom, compassion, and reason.

How do we measure a year? Whether it be a church year or your year, we measure it in love. Our impact on the world and on our inner selves are the guideposts that measure the journey of the year. Paying attention, working to understand what is meaningful, nurturing the soil we stand in so we may bear fruit.

Let our 525,600 minutes be filled with love, commitment to change inside and outside of these sanctuary walls. Let our minutes be filled with partnering with others in our community because none of us can do it alone. Let us use our minutes to sit under the night sky and wonder, to stand in that protest, to walk in that march, to hold the hand of our youngest.  Let our minutes be used in developing meaning in our lives. The meaningful life involves difficult undertakings such as stress, struggle and challenges. However, while sometimes unhappy in the moment, we – connected to a larger sense of purpose and value – make positive contributions to society and to this Congregation.

Happiness without meaning is a shallow and often self-oriented life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided. The meaningful life guides us from the past through the present to the future, giving one a sense of direction. It offers ways to value good and bad alike, and gives us justifications for our aspirations.

From achieving our goals, regarding ourselves in a positive light, to a deep and rich spiritual grounding, a life of meaningfulness is considerably different than mere happiness.

May it be so.

Measure a Year, a sermon delivered by the Rev. CJ McGregor at 1stUUPB on June 7, 2015.

Memorial Day

I spoke with my brother this week who tells me that in New York, where we grew up, the warm days have begun; the breezes that carry with them the scent of flowers and sweet, soothing rain. Summer is coming, we are promised, with every leaf and birdsong that arrives with the morning light. Long hours of daylight and evenings full of gatherings and games are only days away. This is the glory of Memorial Day and its gifts are many. It holds the promise of an extra day off work or school. It marks the opening of swimming pools and gatherings around the grill for parties with family and friends. There are, of course, the requisite parades of scout troops and baseball or softball teams, local politicians and old fashioned cars, marching bands, and in some towns, the reciting of long-ago written words that may or may not mean anything to the sixth graders who memorized them. Memorial Day has come to represent the beginning of summer with a dutiful, but nominal nod to its original purpose.

Since its official inception in 1868, Memorial Day (originally called Decoration Day, for the practice of decorating the graves of soldiers with flowers in honor of their sacrifice) has become year after year, less about those who died in battle and more about the fun and mayhem of the summer months which are waiting just around the corner. The day off has become focused on the logistics of food and fun and our parades have become about determining who walks in what order. For many, Memorial Day has lost much of its seriousness and its magnitude.

“I grew up around military bases,” writes Rev. David Takahashi Morris, “I remember Memorial Day as a time when we went over to the fort for a parade and a picnic, and we kids got to climb around on tanks and little jets. A few years later, I remember playing ‘Taps’ on my trumpet, wearing my Boy Scout uniform, standing on a railing above Punchbowl Crater in Honolulu while a few hundred people listened in the military cemetery on the crater floor. It was a powerful experience, and the solemnity of it resonates for me all these years later.

Things have become complicated since then,” he continues, “Vietnam taught me to look critically at war, and later as I learned about the way in which even the ‘great’ wars were open to question, this holiday lost a lot of its luster for me, as it has for many in liberal circles. For many Americans Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf invasions, and for some even the world wars, don’t represent our country’s best values.”

Maybe Takahashi Morris is right, that things have become too complicated to celebrate Memorial Day with a clear vision and a clear conscience. Maybe we’ve become ambivalent about military service and war in general. Maybe we’ve grown skeptical and uneasy around the idea of young adults, barely adults really, dying in foreign lands for reasons not quite clear to us. Maybe we distract ourselves with sales on grills and wading pools, 2-for-1 deals at the grocery and 0% down at the big car dealership because war itself seems so far away and unreal.

Many of us have no memory, nor a full understanding of what it means to be at war, to live with its reality day in and day out as they do in other parts of the world; where the explosions and gun fire and body count are a daily reminder of how precious and fragile our lives are; where the blood stains take days to wear off the streets or the walls of buildings take years to rebuild. We United States citizens are, many of us, insulated from the gruesome truth of a soldiers’ sacrifice.

Thousands of American lives have been lost in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those countries are a world away and,unless we personally know one of the soldiers, their deaths are abstract tragedies. Not that we feel no compassion or sadness or anger at the loss of them, but we are not in the desert with them, we are not hunting for a clear enemy through treacherous mountains, we are not there in the makeshift hospital tending their wounds, we are not there in their last moments of living. We witness their sacrifice only through the technology of our time. We may watch the caskets being unloaded, we may watch the funerals, but the grisly truth of their death has been cleaned up by the time we see it, it has been distanced by video and commentary and the political posturing of both sides. David Blight tells us:

The young dead soldiers do not speak.

Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:

who has not heard them?

They have a silence that speaks for them at night

and when the clock counts.

They say: We were young. We have died.

Remember us.

They say: We have done what we could

but until it is finished it is not done.

They say: We have given our lives but

until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.

They say: Our deaths are not ours: they

are yours, they will mean what you make them.

They say: Whether our lives and our

deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we

cannot say,

it is you who must say this.

We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.

We were young, they say. We have

died; remember us.

What we have lost in the demilitarization of Memorial Day are the soldiers. We have been diverted into behaving as though this day of memory is more about hot dogs and egg salad than about remembering. Remember we must, for to do any less is a disservice not only to those who gave their lives but to what they gave their lives to protect and to support.

There are many stories that tell of the first Decoration Day. Within the annals of history there are some two dozen cities and towns that claim the origins of the tradition as their own. I share with you two such beginnings.

“This…celebration took place in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865.  During the war the city had converted the planters’ horse racing track into an open-air prison for Union soldiers, and at least 257 men had died from exposure and disease and been buried in shallow unmarked graves.  As the war ended, local blacks and a few white missionaries and teachers organized a memorial for these unnamed Union dead.  David Blight describes this huge event:

“The “First Decoration Day” … involved an estimated ten thousand people, most of them black former slaves.  During April, twenty-eight black men from one of the local churches built a suitable enclosure for the burial ground at the Race Course.  In some ten days, they constructed a fence ten feet high … and landscaped the graves into neat rows.  The wooden fence was whitewashed and an archway was built over the gate … On the arch, painted in black letters, the workmen inscribed, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

…On May 1, the procession to this special cemetery began as three thousand black schoolchildren … marched around the [graves], each with an armload of roses and singing. The children were followed by three hundred black women… The women carried baskets of flowers, wreaths, and crosses to the burial ground.  …A benevolent association of black men, next marched in, followed by large crowds of white and black citizens.  All dropped their spring blossoms on the graves in a scene recorded by a newspaper correspondent …

“the holy mounds -- the tops, the sides, and the spaces between them -- were one mass of flowers, not a speck of earth could be seen…”

“[Another] founding story has it that a teenager, Emma Hunter, and her friend, Sophie Keller, decorated Emma’s father’s grave with garden flowers. Dr. Reuben Hunter had recently died serving the Union Army. Nearby, Mrs. Elizabeth Meyer placed flowers on the grave of her son, Private Amos Meyer, who’d died at Gettysburg.

The women got to talking about their loved ones and tending each others’ graves. They agreed that next year they’d decorate all the graves. The following July 4th, the entire town showed up to honor every grave with blossoms and flags. The community drew a clear, bright festival from shared grief and loss.”

It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all. We have to go back to where it all began; back to remembering the brutality and the sacrifice; remembering that as Unitarian Universalists we believe, even when it is difficult to do so, that all life is sacred and worthy of remembering. No one deserves to be forgotten who gave their life to what they believed in and it is our duty to honor their deaths as the gifts to us they are. Like the cloud in our reading this morning, our soldiers gave something dear of themselves for us. We must rediscover a way to speak for them for they can no longer speak for themselves. We must separate our discomfort, unease and revulsion of war itself and those who send our young men and women to fight from our compassion for those who take up arms to defend their values even if they are not our values.

Memorial Day requires us to take a moment and pause in order to honor and remember all those, no matter which side of battle they fought on, who gave what Abraham Lincoln called, “the last full measure of devotion.” We are called to offer no less than our gratitude and our respect for lives ended on the battlefield regardless of whether we believed the war they fought was righteous or wrong. It is then left to us to give their deaths meaning by living a ‘new hope.’ “Let us rise up…” wrote Martin Luther King Jr. in his final speech the spring of 1968, “with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination…Let us develop a kind dangerous unselfishness…And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be.” And to remember.

May it be so.

Memorial Day, a sermon by the Rev. CJ McGregor at 1stUUPB, Sunday, May 24, 2015

Slow Violence: Commit2Respond

Naturalist Diane Ackerman narrates the fate of a Yup’ik settlement on the western coast of Alaska: “Any day now the whole village and neighboring indigenous communities could begin sinking into the melting permafrost, as if it were white quicksand.” Their options?  Well, U.S. and international laws define refugees as “fleeing violence, war or persecution;” federal disaster relief grants money to repair infrastructure in place, not to relieve personal suffering. The state?  In 1958 the Alaskan government mandated that to build a school the Yup’ik had to choose a site at “the farthest point upriver that a Bureau of Indian Affairs barge could navigate.”  Now the Yup’ik must find somewhere to go with only vague state assistance in building a new community.  Otherwise, as Ackerman writes, they will “join the realm of polar bears and narwhals in rich seams of Eskimo lore,” absorbed into towns and cities, economically disenfranchised, enduring traumatic cultural adjustment.

The winters of 2014 and 2015 brought unseasonable warmth to Alaska.  With ice forming later and melting earlier, fishing and hunting may be very lean again this year.

Ackerman’s imagery stirred to memory words from Dr. Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor: “Slow violence – a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence typically not viewed as violence at all.  It shapes our inattention to calamities that are slow and long lasting, calamities that patiently dispense their devastation while remaining outside our flickering attention spans -- and outside the purview of a spectacle-driven corporate media.”

Slow violence – climate change. 

Perhaps we do not imagine the looming future.  We’re facing intersections of ecological and climate justice -- communities shaped in “the human age” as we lurch down one of two paths: one continuing to hurtle through such intersections, the other those caught in the middle -- people, plants and animals “…who have done the least to contribute to our surging crisis, facing the most threatening consequences.” 

In bed tonight, lie very still and listen carefully.  Murmurs of slow violence creep across the night air.  Waking to this truth and engaging it is, to me, at the core of being Unitarian Universalist. 

Yes, it’s complicated and challenging.  News flickers around us about changes unfolding in Earth’s environment: Antarctic ice sheets melting, Siberian methane potholes forming, atmospheric CO2 topping 400 and on and on.  What are we slouching towards and will we survive? 

To begin to understand our world, let’s unpack slow violence.

First, climate change outsources violence on a vast scale -- temporal and geographical.  Shredding our planet’s life-sustaining envelope, it’s mitigated only through deep commitment to safeguarding Earth remote from us in both space and time.  We’re called to actively value all life forms 30, 50, 100, even 1,000 years from now.

Second, what does it mean to re-imagine humanity as a force powerful enough to transform Earth’s very strata?  Asking that question might reframe our understanding of human responsibility not only towards our own species, but the whole planet.  Climate change is a critical indicator of our alarming, often reckless morphological power.

Third, this incubus has been haunting us for over two generations as most so-called leaders run the other way. Yes, we’re called to confront the foundations of modern industrial society. Unnoticed, slow violence steers the back edges of a host of environmental crises underway: species extinctions, collapsing fisheries, soil desertification, dying coral reefs, depleted groundwater, dead zones in the ocean, and on and on. Might we find ways to reshape these facts, to begin reimagining and restoring this fragile planet?

Fourth, it is customary to speak about problems with “the environment” and economic inequality as if they were abstract issues separate from us. But these problems are deep inside us -- in how we relate to the non-human world, to each other, and how we structure institutions -- all notes threaded through our 7th Principle.

Fifth, environmental stresses sharpen as food prices rise and production falters -- added challenges given widespread hunger on a hemorrhaging Earth, much of it due to either wars or distribution systems. And current climate models are not encouraging.

And sixth, from global marketing experience, some will revolt against the same things they have revolted against in the past: injustices in the system. Roman Catholic Pope Francis recently told a meeting of Latin American landless peasants: “Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysm you are suffering.” Affected by higher temperatures, long droughts punctuated by intense rainfall, more resilient pests and plant diseases -- events tied to a one degree average temperature rise in coffee growing areas -- barren trees have put people out of work and led to many of the parentless children crossing our border with Mexico.

Responses to such events typically focus on authoritarianism and threats against the poor, but they’re only attempts to keep a lid on what's already boiling over. The more humane answer: find ways to turn down the heat.  To quote editorialist Bill Maxwell: “To start, we must care about one another.”

In Reclaiming Prophetic Witness, Unitarian Universalist theologian Paul Rasor writes, “…religious liberals have been influential advocates for social reform at least since … the early nineteenth century.” Given that the world we are already facing must be met head-on, we should acknowledge Rasor’s language that we are called to be influential advocates, urged to step into the public square.

Grounding this idea is Jeffrey Lockwood of the University of Wyoming in his article Less More, Please at uuworld.org: “Solutions to the world’s environmental problems may not require more of us, but less. We may be required to ask deeper questions rather than seek wider answers…but there is more of one thing that could solve many problems -- humility.”

Acknowledging our contrition, what might we do?  Let’s begin by engaging important and effective resources.

Rooted in the calling Waitstill and Martha Sharp undertook in 1939, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, or UUSC, has for 75 years been a critical component of Unitarian Universalist life. Advancing human rights and social justice around the world, partnering with those who confront unjust power structures, and mobilizing to challenge oppressive policies, UUSC envisions a world free from oppression and injustice, where all can realize their full human rights. Today is an annual UUSC advocacy and fundraising event, usually known as Justice Sunday.  But, understanding the changing world we face, Earth’s dependence on water, and recognizing the inequalities and human rights challenges communities will have to deal with as slow violence marches on, today is Climate Justice Sunday. 

On this planet, water is life.  Without it, nothing flourishes.  Even deep ecologists such as myself recognize that my beloved Florida is wholly dependent on water.  Whether standing in reverence as my garden receives a gracious drink from the sky or edging through cattail north of Brahma Island, I merge with life itself.  But climate change, by effecting regional rainfall amounts, creating heat stress events, and rearranging large-scale weather patterns, threatens waters I’ve always known like the back of my hand.

In this environment, UUSC works to advance the human right to safe, sufficient and affordable water in countries from the Americas and Africa to Asia -- and has significant ongoing efforts in Argentina, Chile and Guatemala. Their small staff is engaged in research to drafting law and policy, supporting civil society organizations in campaigns and litigation, and advocating with national and international human rights institutions. Their technical assistance in shareholder advocacy efforts has resulted in the first human-right-to-water policies at major U.S. corporations, including PepsiCo, Intel, Connecticut Water, and Proctor and Gamble. UUSC staff also played a key role in passage of legislation guaranteeing human water rights in California, and are actively engaged in dealing with massive water shutoff rates in Detroit, one of our most economically-challenged cities.

To me, given current projections, their work on this issue is just beginning.  Many climate models suggest several western states could be entering a period of extended drought events. Meanwhile we’re witnessing overuse and depletion of the Ogallala aquifer, a major source of water for wheat belt states; and Florida – my Florida! – already has more homes platted for development than it can provide water.  Meanwhile, decreasing snowfalls in the Himalayas could threaten Bangladesh, India and China – or worse, start international wars.

All of which convinces me UUSC’s commitment to responding to slow violence is critical, that it becomes more important every day, and we best help ourselves and others to become engaged in supporting this effort.  Today, on “blue bucket” Climate Justice Sunday, we must stand up for this cause.

And you need to be aware UUSC is engaged in an emerging, unprecedented coalition.  The most diverse array of Unitarian Universalist groups ever brought to one table has come together in Commit2Respond -- “People of faith and conscience taking action for Climate Justice.” Launched at the People's Climate March in New York City this past September, Commit2Respond unites a number of Unitarian Universalist organizations in multi-year work. We commit to join together to SHIFT to a lower carbon future, ADVANCE the human rights of affected communities, and GROW the climate justice movement. Together we will expand partnerships and deepen collective impact.  We recognize the role inequality plays in current crises, where marginalized communities are often first to experience the effects of climate change and environmental degradation. Yet never forget: no one will be untouched. As British social critic Raymond Williams put it: “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.” We must address our inherent challenge: to overcome cynicism and hopelessness, and to quicken many possible alternatives awaiting our creativity.

And what might we here do, personally? Well, we can further systemic changes in our communities by influencing local policy and planning. We can begin building alliances and coalitions with diverse stakeholders to help create appropriate conditions of possibility. Mindful of lurking slow violence, we can discover in both ourselves and other faith communities strength and courage to resist and begin dismantling structural elements, practices and vested interests perpetuating challenges to our water supplies. Bit by bit, relationship by relationship, we can work to put in place the building blocks of a new future, and start transforming our communities into more just and sustainable places.

We can survive what Diane Ackerman would call “understanding our rude evolutionary infancy,” growing into responsible, caring adults without losing innocence, playfulness, or a sense of wonder.  But first we must recognize that we are a very young species, blessed and cursed by our prowess.  Truly empowering this understanding requires we see with the widest vision, recognizing that every step forward is rooted in the ground beneath our feet -- that we and Earth are one, that this is our home, and that to continue to destroy this world digs a deep grave. Rather than filling our days with slow violence, plundering and stomping about Earth, we must root ourselves in commitment to UUSC’s vision of a world free from oppression and injustice, then begin to re-establish our natural place, working together to restore and hand forward a living, breathing planet -- a fuller, more diverse, more complete home amongst the stars. 

This is holy work.  It is who we are called to be.  In hope and wonder, amen and blessed be.

SLOW VIOLENCE: Commit2Respond, a sermon by Robert Keim, chaplain, UU Church In The Pines, delivered at 1stUUPPB on April 3, 2015.

Between Godliness and Godlessness

Growing up, my spiritual life had a single story. That is, my spiritual life had only a fraction of the truth or one perspective. My mother was an ultra-Catholic and my father couldn’t have cared less. So Catholicism won out in our house. The single story was dogma. Jesus was the son of God, he died for our sins, was killed, rose again, and would someday return to take me to heaven where I would live in the clouds with no worries forever and ever. If ever one of us in the family would stray from this single story my mother would say, and I quote, “That's blasphemy!”

I knew what blasphemy was before I memorized my home address. There wasn't a gray area in this single religious story. There was no chicken or egg line of thinking allowed, and there were no other possibilities, period. This made my growing extremely difficult.

At the age of 12, realizing I was gay, I had to decide and declare to myself that I would simply need to accept that I would be alone in life and would be just fine. That is what my single religious story told me. There wasn't an alternative in that single story. As I grew older and started to question, to engage all that was forbidden, and create my own religious story, I waited for God to reject me or, even worse, condemn me. I literally would look up into the sky looking for the disappointed and vengeful eye of God. I would actually physically cower as a way to possibly avoid punishment. I had to accept that I was a spiritual failure, that I was not worthy and if I was condemned, I deserved it. The culture raising me reinforced that.

Some time ago I listened to Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie's TED talk about how our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Adichie warns that if we hear only a single story we risk a critical misunderstanding. When talking about being Nigerian and how the West thinks of Africans she says, “If I had not grown up in Nigeria and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves, and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner.” She goes on by telling us that “to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story." And so regarding Adichie’s experience with how the West experiences Africans and how my and our spiritual experiences are reduced to a single story, we realize that our location is not the only story or the only truth. Our view and belief or the view and belief of the other is not the only, not the correct or most logical way of thinking. Perhaps through the evolution of our stories and fluidity of our Unitarian Universalist theologies we realize that we do not own the truth and that others that make such a claim are sadly mistaken.

This understanding of the pitfalls of the single story will help us to consider an article in the New York Times written by op-ed columnist Frank Bruni. Bruni holds up Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and best-selling author who famously took a buzz saw to major world religions and whose new book is an example of an atheist evolving from his single atheistic story of godlessness to the consideration of godliness. Bruni writes, “Almost  midway through Sam Harris’s new book, Waking Up, he paints a scene that will shock many of his fans, who know him as one of the country’s most prominent and articulate atheists. He describes a walk in Jesus’ footsteps, and the way he was touched by it.” In Waking Up Harris describes when that evolution happened. It happened on “an afternoon on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, atop the mount where Jesus is believed to have preached his most famous sermon,” Harris writes. “As I gazed at the surrounding hills, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self — an ‘I’ or a ‘me’ — vanished.”  Bruni asks the questions had Harris at last found God? Is Waking Up a stop-the-presses admission — an epiphany — that he slumbered and lumbered through the darkness for too long?

Hardly. Harris is actually up to something more complicated and interesting than that. He’s asking a chicken-or-egg question too seldom raised publicly in America, where religion is such sacred and protected turf, where God is on our currency and at our inaugurals and in our pledge and, unfortunately, is being written into legislation as a way to exempt the worshipful from standards that apply to everyone else. Bruni writes, “That [chicken or the egg] question is this: Which comes first, the faith or the feeling of transcendence? ” Another way to ask that question is: Is the faith really an elaborate attempt to explain and romanticize the feeling of transcendence, rather than a bridge to it? “Mightn’t religion be piggybacking on the pre-existing condition of spirituality, a narrative constructed to explain states of consciousness that have nothing to do with any covenant or creed?” asks Bruni. 
Reflecting on the high that he felt by the Sea of Galilee, Harris writes: “If I were a Christian, I would undoubtedly have interpreted this experience in Christian terms. I might believe that I had glimpsed the oneness of God or been touched by the Holy Spirit.” But that conclusion, in his view, would have been a prejudiced, willed one, because as he writes in his book he had felt similar exaltation and rapture at his desk, or while having his teeth cleaned,” or in other circumstances where he had slowed down, tuned out distractions and focused on the moment at hand. In other words, there are many ways of flight from commonplace worries, many routes of distraction. “They include prayer, but they also include meditation, exercise, communion with music, immersion in nature” writes Harris.

If you’d like to read Harris’ book I have it here available to you. It’s a worthy read as is the book by Greg Epstein, Good Without God, also here available to you. We can surely identify with the growing number of people around the country and the globe who are increasingly comfortable claiming that they aren’t finding the comfort they desire, or as Bruni writes, “the truth that makes sense to them,” within organized religion.

Twenty percent of adults in our country fall into that category. That’s significant. Interestingly, of that 20 percent, one out of three labelled themselves atheists or agnostics. However, more of these people had a belief in a higher power. Bruni reminds us that they aren’t “looking for a church, but may want some of the virtues — emotional grounding, psychic grace — that are associated and sometimes conflated with one, and that many Americans are looking for a different kind of scripture, for prophets purged of doctrine, for guides across the vast landscape between faithlessness and piety,” and says, “In a country with freedom of worship, they deserve it.” Harris brings that to them — a guide to spirituality without religion.

Recently, however, part of Harris’ evolution to finding himself between godlessness and godliness, between faithlessness and piety, is his understanding of what a mistake it is to forget the goodness of religion and only harp on the cruelty done in the name of religion. In an interview Harris said, “You can have spiritual experience and understand the most thrilling changes in human consciousness in a context that’s secular and universal and not freighted with dogma.”  Harris, Bruni, and Epstein advocate for  “unfettered discussion, ample room for doubt and a respect for science” equal with the loyalty to any seemingly divine word.

How do we live then as Unitarian Universalists falling somewhere, everywhere, on the spectrum of spirituality and our view of organized religion? Where do we fall as the self-described nonreligious on the spectrum of godliness and godlessness? Do we believe that we can evolve, like Harris -- one of the most noted atheists of our time -- experience transcendence and slide up and down the scale, or do we really and secretly believe we own the truth?

We’re friends here. We can share that we may, as religious liberals, think that we’ve cornered the market on the truth and that the Christian sitting in front of us, the Muslim sitting next to us, or the earth-centered pagan in the next row is lost and simply need to find us, find the real truth. But it’s like a family secret — it’s gauche to talk about or claim our ownership of the truth. Instead we may outwardly reject that.

These are challenging questions and ideas for sure. The real truth is that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow. How we pay attention to the present and recognize and be open to transcendence largely determines the quality of our lives and the quality of the lives of those we serve, support, and advocate for.

Spirituality remains a great hollowness in secularism, humanism, rationalism, atheism, and all the other protective postures that reasonable people strike in the presence of unreasonable faith. We know the single story doesn’t serve us well. These postures may serve some of us well, but not in isolation and not in the place that denies the evolution of one’s own spirituality or the acceptance of another’s. Let us be open to sliding forward and backward on the spectrum, open to the fluidity of our intellectual and spiritual understanding. Let us live as authentic Unitarian Universalists working not only for freedom, reason and tolerance for others, but also for our own minds and spirits.  May it be so.

Between Godliness and Godlessness, a sermon delivered by the Rev. CJ McGregor at 1stUUPB, April 12, 2015.

Risen

Have you ever played the Telephone Game? You know, the game where a group sits in a large circle? One person starts the game by whispering a short message into the ear of the person sitting to the right of them. The message is whispered once, then the new messenger passes the message on to the next person, and so on and so on.  When the message reaches the person to the left of the person that started the game, the message is announced out loud, and then the first person announces the original message. The final message is always very different than the original message.

If you are involved in our congregational life I guarantee you’ve played the game.  For example, I might say, “I wonder if we could have the outside surfaces of the piano cleaned.” And one week later I am asked why I dislike the piano and want it removed from the sanctuary. This is very human and quite amusing to me. I mention that game because in studying scripture related to the resurrection of Jesus I feel like I’m trapped in the Telephone Game. You see the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all have different stories.  There are a few similarities but each gospel presents a different account.

I’ve decided to use the account as written in the gospel of Luke which reads: “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about it, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' "Then they remembered his words.”

Today our focus is on the phrase “he has risen!” Now before you get your coat and leave I assure you we will simply be using the text of the gospel as a story. There will be no conversions, baptisms, resurrections,  or any other supernatural tricks.  We are simply reflecting on a very popular story being told around the globe this weekend.

After the women had experienced the resurrection they of course ran to spread the news.  People then visited the tomb to see it with their own eyes and because at that time it was the law not to trust what women reported because, well, they were women.  No, Indiana wasn’t the first to have problems. Anyway the most noted followers of Jesus that rushed to the scene were Peter and another man, likely to be John.  Jesus’ followers were not dismayed, concerned, or affected by the missing body. They knew that the physical body was gone but what was left in the world and in the time they were living was Jesus’ ministry. A ministry of love, compassion, equality, generosity, and freedom.

Sounds like Unitarian Universalism to me. But I’m a heretic what do I know? All these and a multitude of other points of ministry  abide in Unitarian Universalism. We practice a living faith and agree that a religion should be fully lived, not simply believed. This is, of course, what early Christians believed, oh so many years ago.

Author Brandon Ambronsino writes, “Some 2002 years ago, or thereabouts, a child named Jesus was born to Mary and Joseph in Palestine. From age 30 to 33, this Jewish man taught a new way of approaching the Torah, seeing the Eternal One, not as a jealous vengeful God, but as a Loving, Beneficent Parent God summoning us to our own divinity. He was killed because he threatened the status quo and commanded such compelling personal power that those who would otherwise rule over the masses became afraid.” The followers who survived Jesus witnessed to his extraordinary ministry and carried on his message as best as they could, by word of mouth, written testimony and letters, calling themselves various names until the label "Christian" stuck.

For 300 years theological debates could be heard in small circles at any time, in the field, in the house, in the marketplace, outside the temple. Sometimes it was dangerous to wonder aloud and other times the gathered had secured a safe place. Who was this Jesus some name the Christ? Was he the Messiah of the Jews? Is he God? Who killed him and why? What does his gospel mean? How shall we carry out his mission?  There were no set rituals, no statement of belief, no standard of meeting.
 
Christians endeavored to live their faith through service and study of Jesus' ministry as they received it. They made their priority love of neighbor and of creation and believed this was the way to enter into the Peaceable Realm which they thought would happen in their lifetime. As politics would have it, when Christianity became more popular and compelling to the masses, the Holy Roman Emperors saw opportunities for government. Sound familiar? Enter Constantine, who believed in ruling by absolutism. By the time he became emperor, the debates about Jesus were heated, causing much strife and confusion amongst church leaders. So the Council of Nicea was called to order which created a doctrine. Gone were the days of living your faith.

The root of the word "heretic" means "to choose." So, either you professed to the Nicene creed or you were a heretic, choosing to believe differently. And with the power of government behind that way of thinking, you could be killed, tortured, imprisoned, exiled or excommunicated for your choosing to believe differently. Does that sound familiar? It marked a significant point in Christian history, because from that point forward, mainstream Christianity changed from a religion that valued first how you lived and treated one another to valuing first what you believed. Because of the mixing of church and state, it became far more important to know what to say rather than live what you believe.

Ambronsino tells us, “Ironically, this change of emphasis weakened the Christian ministry, because people could profess a creed out of fear or expedience and yet not follow through on the precepts of the faith. Blurt out what you have to say to get into the door. Remember, Christianity was compelled to change, not because of a new prophet, but because of an emperor trying to control his empire. The authority that could be wielded by religious mandate was and remains powerful. Political leaders the world over, given that opportunity, could not resist it.” We can witness its temptation in our government today with all the evil speak that's rolling off tongues. It is the work of trying to win and control the soul of a nation toward a certain mandate -- but that's another sermon.

“He Has Risen!” for us today meant something similar to early followers. Unitarian Universalists don’t necessarily believe in the miracles and supernatural stories, but we do believe in no doctrine, and that how we live and treat one another is our religion. We believe just as the followers showing up at an empty tomb that love, compassion, and freedom must be alive in our present world, not a future world to be revealed after death. Just as with early Christians ignorance, power and greed are destroying freedom of belief, the separation of church and state, and the inherent worth and dignity of each person.

“What’s radical about Easter, then, is not that Christians claim a dead man rose from the dead. What’s radical is what that means — specifically, what it meant for Rome, and, by implication, what it means for all kingdoms everywhere, including the ones we live in,” writes Ambronsino. Jesus’ resurrection marked the end of Caesar’s way of doing things. It established a new kingdom in which enemies are loved, the marginalized are given primacy of place, and the poor are blessed. In that kingdom, hierarchies are subverted, concentrated power is decentralized, and prodigal children are welcomed home. Black lives matter here, as do LGBTQ lives and the lives of the undocumented within our borders -- “Remember the stranger in your midst” is a common refrain in that kingdom.

Many with political agendas are guilty of branding their particular ideologies with the name of Jesus, both on the right and left. But there’s no denying that, at least in recent U.S. history, conservatives have been ready to marry God and government. As a result, Christianity has come to be associated less with policies aimed at helping the poor — and more with those that often serve to keep them down -- keeping everyone down.

“The gospels, philosopher John Caputo writes, invite us to imagine a new way of life where the poetics of that early ministry are transformed into political structures: “What would it be like if there really were a politics of the bodies of flesh that proliferate in the New Testament, a politics of mercy and compassion, of lifting up the weakest and most defenseless people at home, a politics of welcoming the stranger and of loving one’s enemies abroad? What would it be like if there were a politics of and for the children, who are the future; a politics not of sovereignty, of top-down power, but a politics that builds from the bottom up, where “the nothings” enjoy pride of place and a special privilege?” Caputo then asks this frightening question: “Would it not be in almost every respect the opposite of the politics that presently passes itself off under the name of Jesus?”

What would Jesus do if he showed up today, say, in Washington, D.C.? Would he turn a blind eye to racial injustices in Ferguson and elsewhere? Would he lobby to ensure that entire swaths of our population continue to feel as if they don’t belong in their cities, in their religious congregations, in their local bakeries? Would he, interested as he is in the physical bodies of all he encounters, enact policies that bar people from the health care they desperately need?

But Easter doesn’t deny our broken world. For us as Unitarian Universalists it is not about resurrection, but the rising of a faith, a tradition, a time where our faith and religion are lived and not indoctrinated. What Easter teaches is this: Even in the midst of the world you’re living in, it’s possible to actually pledge loyalty to a different one. Two thousand years later, the promise of Easter has not lost its power. The hope from the risen, then as now, invites us to live in this world as if it is somehow a different world.  A world created and influenced by all that we hold so dear.  May it be so.

Risen, a sermon delivered by the Rev. CJ McGregor at 1stUUPB on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015.

Supporting Roles

True Story.  My family is very casual with death.  As a child I learned about death at an early age and had even been to a few wakes and funerals by age 10.  Well, that was until the Aunt Shirley incident of 1979.  My great Aunt Shirley died in 1979.

I remember her well.  I went to the wake and can remember standing on the stool meant to be used for kneeling to take a peek at Aunt Shirley.  I was unafraid.  I was also bored and was expected to be quiet as were my cousins around my age.  In our family we have 3 days of wakes and then a funeral.  It’s exhausting.  I think it was on the second day of wakes that the incident happened.  The visitor line had ended, we were all sitting quietly, restless and bored child and adult alike.  It was quiet and we still had an hour to go. My cousin Christy who was 12 at the time had had enough.  You see Christy craved to be the center of attention and would do most anything to get it.  Christy mounted the stool in front of the casket and in a voice not unlike Ethel Mermen began to belt out Everything’s Coming Up Roses.  Christy got attention alright.  She was snatched from the stool and escorted out of the funeral home.  I don’t think we saw Christy for 2 weeks.  Christy is 47 now and still is the center of attention.  We still laugh at the Aunt Shirley incident of 1979.
 
After a good laugh we processed the incident.  Christy is well aware of how her ego can sometimes cause chaos, cause her embarrassment, and make it hard to maintain relationships.  Christy’s ego will never let her take a supporting role.  She needs to be the star.

When we worship only at the altar of our own egos, our own self-importance, we are worshipping at a really small altar.  Sometimes, we need to know that we are not 'masters of the universe", but that we stand profoundly humble before the greater forces of the natural world and the unfolding cosmos -- and humble before one another with whom we share this earth. It is only by rooting our lives within those greater forces, and directing our sights toward those greater goals, that the so-often-absurd, always-limited, oh-so-finite lives of any of us can grow to become truly meaningful.

If we cling with all our strength to our own little lives as the center of all meaning, then we ultimately drown in a sense of our own absurdity -- or we grow tired and lose hope and give over control of our lives to some outside authority.  The point isn't to get rid of the self, but to cultivate it and develop it until it becomes a greater self.

Ego isn't a bad thing. It's just not everything. It has to grow, and become something more.  It needs to consider a supporting role.  Ghandi once wrote “I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.”  Ahimsa is referred to as nonviolence or causing no injury.  You see when in a supporting role you do bring yourself down to zero and are available, accessible, present to others.

American writer and philosopher Ken Wilber asks, "What existed before human beings had ego?" "Was it something better, holier?" Then he answers his own question:  "Prior to the ego was not angels, but apes; and prior to that, worms; and prior to that, ferns; and prior to that, dirt. The [development of the] Ego was not a Fall down from the Ground [of Being], but a major step up" toward the realization of human possibility and our greater consciousness of who we truly are.”

Spiritual growth for Unitarian Universalists has never been  about denying the self.  It's about letting the self evolve.  “I guess you could say it's about replacing the lower case self with the upper-case Self,” says Unitarian Universalist minster the Rev. Jeffrey Symynkywicz.  “Lower-case self,” he says, “ the good old little ego, is made up of fear and defenses. There is another Self inside of us, the greater self, the capital-S Self, which we neglect only at our own emotional and spiritual peril. It's what Emerson called "the Oversoul": "that the Highest dwells in us; that the sources of nature are within our own souls"...

How can we sit back in a supporting role while as Gandhi says “putting ourselves last” once in a while. What should we listen for in our minds, spirit, and in Emerson’s definition of soul?  A wise woman named Sandy Alemian-Goldberg gives us some pointers for learning how to listen:  "The soul is continually speaking to us," she writes, "but it often cannot be heard through the chattering [of the ego]. But there are a number of ways to connect... We [can] create a sacred and safe place for [us] to connect with the wisdom, truth, and love within [our] soul[s]."  And Sandy then enunciates some of the ways we can discern between the voices.

• The Ego will tell us: "You need to be perfect."
• The Soul will say: "You are perfect in this moment."
• The Ego will tell us: "You have to be right."
• The Soul will say: "Do the right thing."
• The Ego will ask: "What if..."
• The Soul will say: "So what..."
• The Ego will shrug: "It's just a silly coincidence."
• The Soul will respond: "Coincidences are guideposts."
• The Ego screams: "Show me the money!"
• The Soul whispers: "Follow your bliss. Feel the passion."
• The Ego demands: "Ignore your pain. Repress it. Stuff it way down..."
• The Soul says: "Face your fears. Hug your demons. Learn your lessons."
• The Ego says: "Don't risk a broken heart."
• The Soul says: "Love is always worth the risk..."
• The Ego warns: "Stay on the path you already know."
• The Soul says: "Follow your heart. Follow your calling. Discover your path."
• "Be like everyone else," the Ego demands.
• "Be who you are," the Soul invites.

Clearly to sit in a supporting role we need to let go and listen. Our ego and self importance is brought down to zero.  Rev Barbara Merritt once wrote: “Whether or not you believe in God, you need to realize you yourself are not God. For some it takes a lifetime to achieve that realization; for others it’s a daily discipline to remember it. This may be one way to understand what is meant by the term, “spirituality” -- the task of discovering, and then remembering, that we are not God.”

To illustrate Merritt’s point let’s consider the story of two wolves:
An elderly Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life...
He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
One wolf is evil -- he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego.
The other is good -- he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.
This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too."
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"
The old Cherokee simply replied: "The one you feed".

I would like for each person in this room to ask these questions right now.  Which wolf do I most feed?  Who am I creating with my person?  Since I awoke this morning … have I acted out of my ego or through my love and my generosity?

There are so many definitions of what Ego is to people, but mainly ego is a part of our self, it helps determine and define our personalities while on this earth.  Not our true personality, however, but the one that gives us reason to fear, loath, control, isolate and to feel insecurity, to hold back forgiveness & strike out with anger.  Ego believes there is never enough, so it must hold on to and stake claim upon.  It is like a cocoon that we build up around ourselves for all the reasons I just mentioned. Ego is small, inflexible, and judgment-based, it holds truths about us that turn us away from each other and ourselves, providing yet more reason to distrust and isolate further.  Most importantly, I believe, ego is something we are ready to leave behind. Our judgment of people and of circumstances, the way we view situations and the attitude we maintain while engaging them is critical in the decision as to which wolf inside, you will feed.
 
Albert Einstein wrote, “A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.  The delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Sometimes the best way to care for ourselves is to care for others, and vice versa. Sometimes the best way to care for others is to care for ourselves.  To me, both statements are true.   May we in our service to one another be ready.  Let us be willing to serve in a supporting role versus a role of self importance, a destructive need to be right, to be greater than, better than the people around us. Let us evolve, together. Choose the good wolf. Buddha said,” We are never separated from our enlightenment.” I believe the Journey is not about seeking out, but about discovering what is already inherent in each of us. It’s about peeling back the layers of ego that make us who we are….Or may I say, who we are not, the first key is awareness.  My Challenge to you……Be your Self
May it be so.

Supporting Roles, a sermon delivered by the Rev. CJ McGregor at 1stUUPB, March 22, 2015.