Among the Living Dead

"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."
-- Bertrand Russell

Meditation: a poem by Lucille Clifton entitled “the raising of lazarus”

the dead shall rise again
whoever say
dust must be dust
don’t see the trees
smell rain
remember Africa
everything that goes
can come
stand up
even the dead shall rise

Reading: by Walker Percy from The Moviegoer (1961, p. 83)

For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead.

It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death. There is little to do but groan and make an excuse and slip away as quickly as one can. At such times it seems that the conversation is spoken by automatons who have no choice in what they say. I hear myself or someone else saying things like: "In my opinion the Russian people are a great people, but--" or "Yes, what you say about the hypocrisy of the North is unquestionably true. However--" and I think to myself: this is death. Lately it is all I can do to carry on such everyday conversations, because my cheek has developed a tendency to twitch of its own accord.” 

Reading: by Craig Derksen and Darren Hudson Hick from an essay entitled “Your Zombie and You – Identity, Emotion, and the Undead” (from Zombies Are Us: Essays on the Humanity of the Walking Dead, 2011, edited by Cory J. Rushton and Christopher M. Moreman, p. 11)

Philosophy often deals in what are called “thought experiments” – imagined scenarios that help us to illuminate and test our theories and intuitions – and philosophers have regularly found inspiration for thought experiments in film an literary fiction. Given the sheer volume of fiction devoted to them, then, it is perhaps surprising that zombies have so far been largely overlooked as a source of philosophical discussion. It may be thought that zombies – fanciful movie monsters – have little or nothing to teach us, and that such discussion could only be non-serious at best. As we hope to show here, however, zombies have a great deal to teach us – about our emotions, and about ourselves.

Reading: by Marie Howe a poem entitled “My Dead Friends”

I have begun,
when I'm weary and can't decide an answer to a bewildering question

to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.

Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?

They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,

to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy's ashes were —
it's green in there, a green vase,

and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy's already gone through the frightening door,

whatever he says I'll do.

Among the Living Dead

A Sermon Delivered on October 28, 2012

By

The Rev. Axel H. Gehrmann

On a memorable Friday night a few years ago, Elaine and I joined our teenage kids, and a bunch of their friends, at the Savoy 16 movie theater on the opening night of a new movie. It was called “Zombieland.”

“Zombieland” is a horror/comedy spoof of gory zombie movies, that got remarkably good reviews. The Rotten Tomatoes movie website offers a nice encapsulation of the plot: a cowardly shut in named Columbus (played by Jesse Eisenberg) is forced to join up with a seasoned zombie slayer named Tallahassee (played by Woody Harrelson) in order to survive the zombie apocalypse. As Tallahassee sets out on a mission to find the last Twinkie on Earth, the duo meets up with two young girls who have resorted to some rather unorthodox methods to survive amidst the chaos. The four of them become reluctant partners in the battle against the undead.

“Why was there a zombie apocalypse?” you may wonder. Well, according to Wikipedia, within a quick two months a mutated strain of mad cow disease had turned most humans on earth into cannibal zombies. If you are bitten by a zombie, you yourself will become a zombie.

Now, while the movie “Zombieland” might not be everyone’s cup of tea – I don’t recommend it to those of you who have a limited tolerance for gratuitous blood and gore – on that October evening three years ago, in a movie theater packed with laughing teenagers, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In the past few years, it seems, zombies have become a growing presence in popular culture. In brushing up on zombie scholarship in preparation for this sermon, I discovered that within the last three years the Urbana Library acquired 193 new titles – that’s books, movies and music – about zombies. Most of these are fiction. A few books offer a funny perspective on history, for instance “A Zombie’s History of the United States – From the Massacre at Plymouth Rock to the CIA’s Secret War on the Undead,” or self –help, for instance, “Now You’re a Zombie – A Handbook for the Newly Undead.”

* * *

Zombie is a word we use to describe people who are dead, and yet strangely alive. Or people who are alive, and yet strangely dead.

In his novel, The Moviegoer, Walker Percy describes the experience of being among people who seem to be dead. The protagonist of the story, a young man named Binx,  talks about those polite social interactions, in which we may often find ourselves. In the midst of the casual small-talk and banter, he gets the distinct sense that those around him aren’t really there. Though physically present, their souls seem to be missing. They sound like automatons, their voices hollow. The conversation is little more than a series of sound-bites tossed back and forth, devoid of relevance or meaning.

A friend of his steps up to him and starts talking about a celebrated novel she just read. She gushes about her grown children, the joys of having an empty nest, the latest philosophy class she is taking, and how happy her marriage is. Binx politely listens to all she has to say, but inwardly he wonders, “why does she talk as if she were dead?”

What makes The Moviegoer, such an intriguing novel is not that Binx is surrounded by people who seem dead, detached from life, but rather that in the tone of the narrator’s voice, it becomes clear to the reader that Binx himself is detached. Living within his own world of daydreams and movie trivia, he himself is the one who seems unable to engage with others. He is the one who is not fully alive.

* * *

The rise of zombies in American popular imagination can be traced back to George Romero’s movie “Night of the Living Dead,” which was released in 1968, and was followed by a series of sequels, spoofs and imitations.

According to David Flint, it was not a coincidence that Romero’s image of the zombie – the person slowly shuffling along with arms outstretched  - caught on. In 1968 we were ready for some new monsters.

In his book Zombie Holocaust – How the Living Dead Devoured Pop Culture, Flint writes,

“1968 was, after all, the year of revolution – student uprisings in Paris and anti-war protests in the USA and UK as ascendant youth culture began to sweep away old attitudes. The spate of political assassinations in America (both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were murdered in 1968), the brutal Vietnam War being beamed into homes across the world… made the old monsters seem dated… The zombie rose to prominence during these turbulent years because zombies – at least Romero’s zombies – represented modern fears. A truly 20^th century horror figure, the zombie… spoke directly to audiences who felt civilization was collapsing around them.” (p. 7)

* * *

Before zombies became famous as movie monsters, the notion of zombies existed in West African traditions. Zombies could be a wide variety of monsters. Bratty children were sometimes called zombies, or they might be frightened into behaving by threats of zombies under the bed. Spirits of the dead, people transformed into animals, and tiny fairy folk, all might be called zombies.

Some say the term “zombie” comes from the West African word zumbi, which means fetish, or the word nzambi, which means spirit or god. (from “Race, Colonialism, and the Evolution of the ‘Zombie’” by Cory Rushton and Christopher Moreman)

Zombies entered the Western imagination by way of Haiti. In the 1500s, when Haiti was under the control of the Spanish Crown, the island was the hub of Caribbean slave trade. Thousands of West African men and women were brought to the shores of today’s Haiti, to provide slave labor in the “New World.”

Initially the Catholic Church tried to convert the Africans to Christianity. But despite slave laws that required forced baptism, doctrinal education, and outlawed African religious practices, many of the slaves maintained their traditional beliefs, rituals and practices. To avoid persecution, their observances were conducted in secret, or were blended with existing Catholic practices.

The religion of Vodou began when slaves of wide-ranging African background were brought together in Haiti. Members of many different tribes and cultures were forced to find common ground. Vodou was a fusion of the traditions of a people who were at once forced to accept, and yet collectively rejected, a colonial religion of oppression while they struggled to retain some sense of African identity and culture, some connection to their gods and their ancestors.

Around 1800, the slaves in Haiti rose up against their captors. The Haitian revolution was successful. Slavery was abolished, and the Haitian republic was founded. This was the first and only successful slave uprising in history that led to the creation of a new state. Today Haiti is ostensibly a Catholic country. And yet many of Haiti’s Catholics still observe some forms of voodoo practice.

In their book Race, Oppression and the Zombie, Christopher Moreman and Cory Rushton offer a critical perspective on the way most Americans have come to understand voodoo. They write,

“Voodoo, which we might take as a term of derision, ought to be taken not to refer to the Haitian religion but rather applies to negative and racist constructions. Far from being the object of Hollywood horror, this perversion of Haitian religion, long proffered by fearful American slave-holders and Christian clergy alike, still appears today: evangelist Pat Robertson explained, in response to the massive earthquake that hit Haiti in January, 2010, that the island nation’s independence, and subsequent misery and poverty, were set in motion when the Haitian people “swore a pact to the Devil” during their successful revolution of 1791-1804.” (p. 2)

Actual voodoo practice is not about devil worship, black magic or zombies. Describing the voodoo philosophy that took shape on American soil in the 20^th century Richard Williams, a voodoo priest, writes, voodoo is the invisible power

“that created all things; it also means all visible things created by the invisible power… In Voodoo we do not separate the Creation from the Creator, nor do we separate the Creator from Creation. This is the reason why Voodooists believe there is power in trees, rocks, animals, birds; in the sea and rivers, thunder and lightening, and more importantly, in themselves. This is the philosophical translation of the word Voodoo….” (Pinn, p. 46)

Vodou practice seeks to bring the energies of the universe in harmony with human life. In his book Varieties of African American Religious Experience, Anthony Pinn writes, “the goal is to keep the natural forces in balance, to tap into these forces, and in this way to center oneself, one’s family and one’s community; in short, to live.”

* * *

Halloween, All Hallows Eve, is that day of the year, when the veil separating the world of living and world of the dead is thinnest. We find this ancient religious perspective played out in the costumes our children will wear this Wednesday night, as they go trick-or-treating, dressed up as ghosts or ghouls, as vampires or monsters of various kinds. They will walk up to houses, decorated with skeletons and jack-o-lanterns and other symbols of death… all of them meant not to instill a sense of fear in our children, but a sense of fun. The holiday observances that conjure up dreams of death, are designed to deepen our appreciation for life.

It makes a lot of sense to have a holiday like Halloween at this time of year, when the trees drop their leaves, expose their bare branches, and stand there like skeletons, with their arms and raised high. The twigs are like countless tiny fingers reaching for heaven.

Even without costumes and decorations, autumn is an annual reminder of death and decay. As we mulch the leaves in our yards, and help them along as they return to the earth, we are reminded that this is the fate of all living things. All of us, one day, will return to the earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

But the mystery and wonder of this season, the message of the natural world at this time year, is not simply that death is inevitable. The trees don’t die. They cast off their leaves and look as if dead, but they remain very much alive. Life may lead to death. But death leads to more life.

To find life, more life, everywhere – this is one of the timeless themes of religious observance.

Appearances can be deceiving. Some things that look as if they were alive, may be inwardly dead. And some things that seem dead, are still very much alive.

This is the truth Walker Percy is able to express in his story of a man who feels surrounded by dead people, and yet who himself struggles to become more fully alive.

And as Marie Howe knows, even the dead themselves, are not gone, but still with us. They stand among us, and when we ask them for advice, they shake their heads and smile. They wish us whatever leads to joy. They wish us less worry. They wish us whatever leads to more life.

However we imagine the world of the living and the world of the dead, may all the stories we tell, whether scary or sad, whether frightening or fun – may our stories help us more firmly embrace the spirit of life. And may we learn to live our lives to the fullest.

Amen.

A Warmer World

"We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understanding and our hearts."
-- William Hazlitt

Reading: by environmentalist Bill  McKibben from an article entitled “Resisting Climate Reality” (New York Review of Books, April 7, 2011)

We are at a dramatic moment in the story of global warming. We’ve known, as a society, about the climate change crisis for just over twenty years, from the day in June 1988 when the NASA scientist James Hansen testified before Congress that the planet was heating up because we were burning so much fossil fuel and hence emitting so much carbon dioxide.

By 2010—the warmest year on record, according to most of the planet’s record-keepers—the earth was getting a taste of what global warming feels like in its early stages. Nineteen nations set new all-time temperature records, itself a record; in early summer Pakistan set the new all-time high for Asia at 128 degrees. That warmth accelerated the already rapid melt of the Greenland ice sheet; in some areas the melt season lasted fifty days longer than average. Meanwhile, record heat in central Russia triggered wildfires and drought, spooking the Kremlin enough that it suspended all grain exports to the rest of the world, which helped push the price of wheat sharply higher.

Most ominously, the pace of record-breaking deluge and flood surged. Because warm air holds more water vapor than cold (the atmosphere is about 4 percent moister than forty years ago), scientists have warned that we’re increasing the possibility of greater downpours; country after country found itself on the wrong side of those odds in 2010, Pakistan most desperately. (Six months after the summer flooding there, the Red Cross reported in January that four million people were still homeless.)

Reading: by the Australian ethicist Peter Singer from One World – The Ethics of Globalization (p. 32)

One advantage of being married to someone whose hair is a different color or length from your own is that, when a clump of hair blocks the bath outlet, it’s easy to tell whose hair it is. “Get your own hair out of the tub” is a fair and reasonable household rule. Can we, in the case of the atmosphere, trace back what share of responsibility for the blockage is due to which nations? It isn’t as easy as looking at hair color, but a few years ago researchers measured world carbon emissions from 1950 to 1986 and found that the United States, with about 5 percent of the world’s population at that time, was responsible for 30 percent of the cumulative emissions, whereas India, with 17 percent of the world’s population, was responsible for less that 2 percent of the emissions. It is as if, in a village of 20 people all using the same bathtub, one person had shed 30 percent of the hair blocking the drain hole and three people had shed virtually no hair at all. (A more accurate model would show that many more than three had shed virtually no hair at all. Indeed, many developing nations have per capita emissions even lower than India’s.) In these circumstances, one basis of deciding who pays the bill for the plumber to clear out the drain would be to divide it up proportionately to the amount of hair from each person that has built up over the period that people have been using the tub, and has caused the present blockage.

Reading: by James Thurber a fable entitled “The Hen and the Heavens” (from Fables for Our Time)

Once upon a time a little red hen was picking up stones and worms and seeds in a barnyard when something fell on her head. “The heavens are falling down!” she shouted, and she began to run, still shouting, “The heavens are falling down!” All the hens that she met and all the roosters and turkeys and ducks laughed at her, smugly, the way you laugh at one who is terrified when you aren't. “What did you say?” they chortled. “The heavens are falling down!” cried the little red hen. Finally a very pompous rooster said to her, “Don't be silly, my dear, it was only a pea that fell on your head.” And he laughed and laughed and everybody else except the little red hen laughed. Then suddenly with an awful roar great chunks of crystalized cloud and huge blocks of icy blue sky began to drop on everybody from above, and everybody was killed, the laughing rooster and the little red hen and everybody else in the barnyard, for the heavens actually were falling down.

Moral: It wouldn't surprise me a bit if they did.

A Warmer World

A Sermon Delivered on October 14, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Did you hear the news? Global warming isn’t really a problem after all. Scientists themselves say so. 

Last week there was an article in the News-Gazette that said the amount of ice at the South Pole is not decreasing, but increasing. The Associated Press reported: “Antarctic sea ice hit a record 7.51 million square miles in September… Climate change skeptics have seized on the Antarctic ice to argue that the globe isn’t warming and that scientists are ignoring the southern continent because it is not convenient.”

Ah yes, that is the question: What is convenient?

I remember watching the documentary movie “An Inconvenient Truth” at the Art Theater in downtown Champaign, when it was it was first released six years ago. Our kids were 10 and 12. I remember I was deeply shaken, especially by the photographs of glaciers taken over the course of decades, that show clearly how around the world the glaciers are growing smaller and smaller. They are melting. Droughts, hurricanes and floods are increasing in both number and intensity. If we don’t change our ways, the devastation will increase dramatically. I wondered, what kind of a world will it be that my children inherit?

And yet, as compelling as the movie was, I wonder, was it true? Are the dire predictions accurate? A year after Al Gore’s movie, another documentary was released called, “An Inconvenient Truth… Or Convenient Fiction.” The second movie makes the case that Al Gore’s warnings of global doom are overstated and misleading.

There are millions of Americans who want to believe that warnings about global warming are wrong. Even if we concede that the earth’s temperature is rising slightly - according to accepted studies, the world is 1.3 degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in year 1900 - is that really such a catastrophe?

If the temperature in this room increased by 1.3 degrees, we wouldn’t even notice. In the course of an average day in east central Illinois the temperature often rises and falls by twenty degrees or more.

It is hard to imagine that a temperature increase of 1.3 degrees over the course of a century is anything to be worried about. And heck, wouldn’t it be nice if our winters weren’t quite so bitterly cold?

Most of the scholars who are skeptical of climate change warnings don’t deny that some global warming is taking place. But they differ on the likely causes and projected consequences of current trends. 

The earth’s climate changes. It has changed in the past, and it will continue to change in the future. In the course of this planet’s history, that stretches back billions of years, there have been times when it was warm enough at the North and South Poles, for palm trees to thrive. And during the earth’s cold spells, the present-day locations of the cities Chicago and Berlin were covered by a sheet of ice more than a half mile thick. Humans survived the ice age, so we can surely survive a heat wave. “No need to worry,” is what more and more Americans say.

Back in 2006, when Al Gore’s movie was released, 79% of Americans believed in the fact of global warming. By 2010 only 59% of American believed global warming is taking place. And when Americans were asked in 2011 to list their three most pressing environmental worries, global warming was low on the list. It was behind “overpopulation.” In 2011 global warming was a pressing worry for only 27% of respondents.

* * *

It is an odd and unsettling fact that the issue of global warming has been slipping further and further out of our national consciousness. Over the past two years, the number of news article on climate concerns has declined by 40%.

Part of the problem is that in this country global warming has become a matter of partisan politics. According to Pew Research report, 75% of staunch conservatives believe there is no solid evidence of global warming. And 75% of Democrats believe there is indeed strong evidence of climate change. Global warming has become a political hot potato no one wants to touch. Our elected leaders avoid talking about it.

Americans produce twice the amount of emission per capita than Europeans do. We like bigger houses, and like to drive bigger cars. We value personal freedom, and are skeptical of government regulation. So any kind of action to address global warming will confront deeply held beliefs and cherished life-style choices. 

* * *

But even as our concern about global warming is declining, the temperatures themselves are rising. This past May was the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere. It was the 327^th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20^th century average. This past June 3,215 high-temperature records were either tied or broken in the U.S.. 

As environmentalist Bill McKibben writes, “Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history.” (“Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012)

Significant changes have taken place in the course of the last century. The ice sheet covering the North Pole is shrinking, as is the ice surrounding Greenland. The earth’s sea level now is eight inches higher than it was in 1900.

It is true, that the coverage of sea ice in Antarctica, around the South Pole, reached a 33-year high last month. And as some climate skeptics like to point out, the “Antarctic ice is growing in leaps and bounds at exactly the moment the Arctic ice is shrinking.”

And yet this snap shot of ice increase and decline is misleading, since it happens in the depth of the southern winter, and the height of the northern summer. 

If we look at annual averages, rather then seasonal fluctuations, we see the rate of ice increasing in the south is nowhere near the rate of ice melting in the north. Looking at the shifting ice patterns over a period of several years, we see that the ice in the north is melting 25 times as faster than it is increasing in the south. (New York Times Blog, Oct. 3, 2012, “Running the Numbers on Antarctic Sea Ice,” by Justin Gills)

* * *

It is hard imagine that our human actions could have such consequences. The simple facts of heating a home, driving a car, turning on a light switch - all of our daily routines that use fossil fuel – it is hard to imagine that they could change the climate of the planet.

And yet it makes sense. About 85% percent of the world’s energy production is from fossil fuels: oil, coal and natural gas. In burning these fossil fuels, we release carbon dioxide, and other “greenhouse gases” into the air, which cause the sun’s heat to be captured in the atmosphere.

And we are using up these fossil fuels at a rate about a million times faster than nature saved them for us.

Because of human industrial development over the last two centuries, there are now more greenhouse gases in our atmosphere than at any time in the last half-million years. Within the last century the carbon dioxide level has increased by over 30%.

* * *

In this country we have a disproportionate amount of power to affect the future of the world’s climate. We are the world leaders in terms of burning fossil fuels. We are stragglers when it comes to altering our behavior. It is easy for us to look the other way, to deny that there is a problem. Or – perhaps on the liberal side of the political spectrum - it is easy to throw up our hands in despair.

But neither denial or despair are helpful responses. Both denial and despair keep us firmly on the track we are traveling today. 

But we have other options. We can recognize the facts our best scientists have provided us. And we can change our energy production and consumption habits.

As geologist Richard Alley writes, “The amount of energy that Earth makes available, sustainably, dwarfs the amounts we now use, and dwarfs demand for the foreseeable future. Sunshine from just the desert floors of Arizona would power the United States, and from the Sahara could power the rest of the world’s people, with huge amounts left over. The technologies required are not science fiction – in fact, they already exist or soon will, and some of them are decades or centuries old.” (Earth – The Operator’s Manual, p. 5)

Bill McKibben offers Germany as an example of an industrialized nation that has taken significant steps towards embracing sustainable energy. He writes, “on one sunny Saturday in late May, that northern-latitude nation generated nearly half its power from solar panels within its borders. That's a small miracle – and it demonstrates that we have the technology to solve our problems. But we lack the will.”

* * *

Global warming can seem like an overwhelming world-wide challenge. It seems because of errors and oversights that have accumulated over the last decades, we may have moved beyond the point of no return. 

But the truth of the matter is, it is not too late. Our choices today have a significant impact on the course of our future.

We can reverse our current trend. Just as we have been steadily increasing the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere over the last two centuries, we can turn that trend around.

We can cut back on our energy consumption and use of fossil fuels. Every time we choose to walk, or ride a bike, rather than drive a car around town. Every time we adjust our thermostats, to use a little less air-conditioning in the summer, setting up a fan instead, or turning down the heat in winter, putting on a sweater, or insulating drafty windows. Every time we use a little less hot water, doing the dishes or washing our clothes – we make a difference. Every time we turn of off a light, an electric appliance, or computer, we make a difference. Every time we eat an apple that was grown locally rather than shipped a thousand of miles, we make a difference. 

We can make the issue of global warming a priority for our political leaders. We can work for legislation that will provide incentives for the oil industry and the auto industry to change their practices, and take responsibility for the global consequences of burning fossil fuel.

For several years now, a group of church members has been working to educate us and our children on how to be better stewards of the earth. This has been part of what we call the “Green Sanctuary” program. Our “Green UUs” have been helping us envision and create sustainable lifestyles, both as individuals and as a religious community.

* * *

When the little red hen cried out, “The heavens are falling down!” No one wanted to believe her. The sensible and skeptical animals chortled and laughed. Who would believe such a thing – the heavens falling down? The barnyard animals realized too late, that the little red hen was right.

Luckily, we don’t need to rely on the word of a little red hen. We have the world’s scientific community and a mountain of facts that tell us something is amiss. Luckily, we have all the information we need to prevent the kind of sad fate faced by the barnyard animals.

May we have the courage and the will to take the steps we know need to be taken,

May we dare to act on truths that may seem inconvenient,

And do our part to create a better world.

Amen.

Of Practice and Perfection

"Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection..."
-- Matthew Arnold

Reading: by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14^th Dalai Lama, from Beyond Religion – Ethics for a Whole World (p. 113)

The world religions have long recognized that we humans have the capacity to change from within. But in a purely secular context, demonstrating the reality of this capacity can be challenging. A committed materialist, for instance, may argue that we are completely determined by biology, or, to use a contemporary phrase, that we are “hard-wired” in certain ways. In such a view, some people are determined by nature to be angry, while others are naturally more inclined toward kindness; some are genetically disposed to be optimistic, while others have an innate propensity for depression…

If there really were nothing we could do about our emotions, we would truly be slaves to them. However, evidence is gradually emerging from science…. to suggest that it is possible to achieve meaningful change… through conscious effort. … It seems that the recent discovery of what is called “brain plasticity” may well offer a scientific explanation for this possibility…. ...We may be able to train our emotional instincts by literally altering the physical patterns in our brain.

Reading: a folk tale, the origins of which (according to Wikipedia) reach back to the 3^rd century BCE in India

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.” The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp “Why?” Replies the scorpion: “It’s my nature…”

Reading: by Ron Padgett excerpts from "How to be Perfect"

Get some sleep.

Eat an orange every morning.

Be friendly. It will help make you happy.

Hope for everything. Expect nothing.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world…

Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm's length and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass ball collection.

Wear comfortable shoes...

Plan your day so you never have to rush…

After dinner, wash the dishes...

Don't expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want to.

Don't be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory.

Don't think that progress exists. It doesn't.

Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don't do anything to make it impossible.

Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not possible, go to another one.

If you feel tired, rest.

Don't be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel even older. Which is depressing.

Do one thing at a time.

If you burn your finger, put ice on it immediately. If you bang your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for 20 minutes. You will be surprised by the curative powers of ice and gravity...

Be good.

Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others.

Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time.

Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to drink, say, "Water, please."…

Love life.

Use exact change.

When there's shooting in the street, don't go near the window.

Of Practice and Perfection

A Sermon Delivered on October 7, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
The things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should be changed,
And the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

These words are from a prayer by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. The prayer has been altered and adapted over the years. But it was first written during the height of the Second World War. World War II followed only two decades after what had been called “The Great War,” which had been considered the war to end all wars, but now was simply called World War I.

I imagine Niebuhr wondered: Are we humans destined to create a world defined by violence and blood shed, or can we change our ways? Are we destined to live in conflict, or can we find a better way?

* * *

There are those who say we are hard-wired for war. We are defined by our biology, destined to act aggressively and yield to anger. We are driven by self-interest, and in order to maximize personal gain, we are willing to inflict suffering on others. It is a natural consequence of our instinct for survival. We can’t help it. It’s in our genes.

There are some who say this is just the way we are. But this perspective is not a recent insight. It is a belief that has been held for millennia, conveyed in myth, legend, and morality tales.

We are like the scorpion, who aspires to live peacefully and cooperatively, but in the end is constrained by impulses he cannot control. It would be evil and wrong for him to sting the helpful frog. It would be foolish and self-defeating, because in hurting the frog he himself would drown. And yet, that’s what he does. He can’t help it. It’s his nature.

* * *

It is our nature to sometimes do what is wrong. Even if we know better. Even if we know the consequences of our actions will catch up with us. Even if we know we ourselves will suffer.

All great religions grapple with our human capacity for both good and evil. In Christian history it took the shape of teachings on human sin. The story was told of the first man and women in the Garden of Eden. A commandment was broken. An apple was eaten. The consequence for humankind is the reality of original sin.

We are sinners. We don’t like it. But we can’t help it. It’s our nature.

We are all destined for hell fire and damnation, unless we repent and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We are sinners in the hands of an angry God. This is the way Jonathan Edwards put it, in the sermons he preached during the so-called Great Awakening in 18^th century America.

The notion that we are essentially evil, and that our deepest being is sinful, is a belief many of us hold to this day. It is a harsh view of life, but it makes sense to millions of Americans.

Which one of us hasn’t had moments when we weren’t at our best. Who among us hasn’t done things we regret. Who among us hasn’t had moments when we spoke in anger, or acted out of hurt. Who hasn’t felt guilty for a wrong committed in a moment of short-sightedness, or selfishness, or greed? Who hasn’t had moments when we have felt acutely aware of our failures and limitations?

The doctrine of Original Sin, and the belief that we are all essentially sinners, is one way to make sense of our existential experience of inadequacy and guilt. We can’t help it. It’s our nature.

Or is it?

The Dalai Lama says we have the capacity to change from within. We can change our actions. We can even change our emotions.

Does this mean we can change our deepest being? Can we change our nature?

* * *

William Ellery Channing was perhaps the most prominent Unitarian minister in the early 1800s. He considered himself a Christian, but he offered a very different perspective on sin and salvation. He disagreed sharply with Jonathan Edwards, and all his Christian colleagues who preached a gospel of fear, with fire and brimstone sermons, and threats of eternal damnation.

The crux of the Christian scriptures, according to Channing, is not that we are all sinners. The crux of Christianity is that we are all children of God. We are made in God’s image, the scriptures say. This means in our deepest being, we ourselves are holy.

Channing makes a case for his convictions in an ordination sermon he preached in 1828, entitled, “Likeness to God.” The great end of true religion, he says, is in our “growing likeness to the Supreme Being.” We are partakers of divinity. And the goal of our religious practice should be to “turn [our] aspirations to [the] perfection of the soul.”

Unlike his contemporaries who imaged a God who is all-knowing and all-powerful, but otherworldly and distant, Channing preached of a God who is present within us. Where others imagined a great gulf separating a lofty and unapproachable God from lowly and sinful humanity, Channing preached of a God we can see “in every thing from the frail flower to the everlasting stars.” “We see God around us, because [God] dwells within us. It is by a kindred vision, that we discern [God’s] wisdom in [God’s] works.”

And because we have a “kindred nature with God” we have the capacity to “be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.”

God exists within our own spiritual nature. The sacred exists within the “original and essential capacities of the mind.” It is up to us whether we choose to build upon our innate abilities. We can develop our spiritual nature. We can strengthen our moral vision. In doing so, we ourselves approach divinity.

Seeds of the sacred rest within us. It is within our power to help them unfold. Or as Channing puts it, “God becomes a real being to us, in proportion to [God’s] own nature unfolded within us.”

* * *

Channing is firmly grounded in the Western liberal Christian tradition. But his understanding of religious practice and the divine dimension of human nature is in some ways remarkably similar to the Buddhist perspective.

Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg writes, “for those who aspire to the freedom from suffering taught by the Buddha, the primary [source] of abiding faith is our own buddha nature.”

Buddhist teachings arise out of the experience of being human, she says, and thus they emphasize the importance of having faith in oneself, and one’s true capacities.

As human beings, we often have a clear sense of our own limitations and short-comings, what some would call our sinfulness. But according to Buddhist teachings, “whatever we might be conditioned to believe, the teachings say that beneath our small, constricted… identity lies the innate capacity for awareness and love that is buddha nature.”

Buddhist scriptures describe buddha nature before it is awakened as “flowers before their petals have opened, a kernel of wheat that has not yet had its husk removed…”

“Our potential for love and awareness… is present regardless of our particular conditioning or background or traumas or fears - it is not destroyed, no matter what we have gone through or will go through,” Sharon Salzberg says. “Although some people are completely out of touch with that capacity - they can’t find it, or don’t trust it - it is always there.”

* * *

For the Buddhist an essential tool to help us awaken to our buddha nature, is the practice of meditation or mindfulness. Meditation allows us to relax, and experience a sense of clarity and spaciousness.

As Buddhist nun Pema Chodron describes it, through practice we can experience moments of being fully present, right here and now, moments that feel simple direct and uncluttered. “It feels like stepping out of a fantasy world and discovering the simple truth,” she says.

And yet, she says, there is no guarantee that meditation will create that experience. “We can practice for years without penetrating our hearts and minds. We can use meditation to reinforce our false beliefs.” We can use meditation as a kind of escape, as a way to withdraw from the world, and insulate ourselves from others.

We can approach religious practice as a way to fix ourselves, but that is also a mistake. “Trying to fix ourselves is not helpful,” Chodron says, “it implies struggle and self-denigration… Trying to change ourselves doesn’t work in the long run because we are resisting our own energy… Lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves [- as we are -] as the source of wisdom and compassion.”

As Lao Tzu put it, “true perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself.”

Or as the eighth-century teacher Shantideva put it, we are “very much like a blind person who finds a jewel buried in a heap of garbage. Right here in what we’d like to throw away, in what we find repulsive and frightening, we discover the warmth and clarity [our buddha nature].”

* * *

I agree with the Dalai Lama and with William Ellery Channing. I believe we have the capacity to change from within. We have the capacity to help our true nature unfold more fully. But it does require effort. Religious practice requires time and attention. We need to take time – every day – to remind ourselves of our buddha nature, the divine dimension, which exists within us and around us.

I am not a Buddhist. I am not convinced that meditation is the right path for me. I am not a Christian. I am not convinced that embracing Jesus is my path to salvation, and I am not sure about how to imagine God.

I am a Unitarian Universalist. I agree with the Unitarian educator Sophia Fahs, who said, there is no special “religious knowledge” that needs to be found in a particular church or temple or synagogue. If we fully accept that all nature is one and that the spiritual and material are intermingled and interdependent… then all life, all existence, is appropriate subject matter for religious investigation. Then any moment, any experience of our lives can become an avenue of religious practice.

Instead of wondering about “religious things” we need to think about ordinary things until insights and feelings are found which have a religious quality.

I would like to close with Sophia Fahs’ understanding of the religious way. She writes:

“The religious way is the deep way, the way with a growing perspective and an expanding view.  It is the way that dips into the heart of things, into personal feelings, yearnings and hostilities that so often must be buried and despised and left misunderstood.  The religious way is the way that sees what physical eyes alone fail to see, the intangibles at the heart of every phenomenon.  The religious way is the way that touches universal relationships; that goes high, wide and deep, that expands the feelings of kinship.  And if God symbolizes or means these larger relationships, the religious way means finding God; but the word itself is not too important.”

May we have the serenity, the courage, and the wisdom,
To live in a religious way.

Amen.