Guest Sermon: Does Religion Ruin Everything?

"In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides."
-- Heinrich Heine

A Worship Committee Service led by Chris Hannauer

Opening Words

From the hymnal, #651, “The Body Is Humankind”

I am a single cell in a body of seven billion cells.  The body is humankind.
I am a single cell.  My needs are individual but they are not unique.
I am interlocked with other human beings in the consequences of our actions, thoughts, and feelings.
I will work for human unity and human peace; for a moral order in harmony with the order of the universe.
Together we share the quest for a society of the whole equal to our needs.
A society in which we need not live beneath our moral capacity, and in which justice has a life of its own.
We are single cells in a body of seven billion cells.  The body is humankind.

Silent Lighting of Candles of Joy and Concern

This is the part of the service where we pause for a moment to consider the events, large and small, happy and sad, that are affecting us or those we love.  It is a time to remember that none of us need walk through this life alone, that this community will rejoice with us and support us through all of life’s vicissitudes.  I invite you now to think about those in your life who may be struggling, or may be experiencing great joy, and if you are so moved, to come forward and silently light a candle.

Meditation

From “On the Death of a Soldier” by James Graham

until God’s envoy makes his case, and answers
all our questions, do not kill. Work against death.
Watch over life.  Assume there is no other.

Offertory

This is the part of the service where we have the chance to offer a token (or even more than a token) of our support for this religious community.  It is also your opportunity to support the broader community in which we live, for half of the undesignated cash and all designated checks will go this month to the Prairie Rivers Network.

Readings

From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a comic science fiction novel by the late Douglas Adams.  This passage describes a wondrous creature called a Babel fish which, when inserted into one’s ear, enables one to understand any spoken language.

The Babel fish…is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe.  It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it.  It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with.  It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them.  The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language.  The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it?  It could not have evolved by chance.  It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t.  QED.”

“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

“Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.

“Church Going” by Philip Larkin
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, ignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutered frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Sermon: Does Religion Ruin Everything?

A few months ago I was having lunch with a pair of work friends in the vending room of the Illini Union.  Perhaps because we were talking about the new Pope, the conversation took a turn towards the religious.  Both of my companions were good Catholics, so this wasn’t particularly surprising, and we are good enough friends that it didn’t make me uncomfortable.  I can’t remember exactly what led to this comment, but one of my friends turned to me and said “You believe in God, don’t you Chris?”  Instantly and without thought my stock answer for this question came to my lips.  As I’d done many times before in my life, I would give an apologetic little smile and say “I’m agnostic,” at which point the conversation would continue along its original, intended course, the existence of the Deity not having been challenged outright.  Instead, though, I was surprised to find myself gently shaking my head and saying “No, not really”.   I could see that my friend was surprised, too, and the ensuing hour became an unexpected and wonderful debate about whether it made sense to believe in God in this day and age.
So what happened?  Why did I suddenly decide to “out” myself as an atheist after years of believing and blithely assuring people that I hadn’t decided the issue yet?   The answer is found in the book that inspired this sermon (and “inspired” is the exact word I want): god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by the late Christopher Hitchens.  It was a book that I’d picked up almost by chance about a year ago.  Hitchens had recently died, and the usual flood of post-mortem tributes had reminded me that I’d always meant to read something by him.  I had an unused Amazon credit, and, somewhat on impulse, used it to buy his last book, Mortality, written between the time he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and his death in late 2011.  It was a good enough book (though sadly rather short), that I thought I’d try something else of his.  He was of course a famous atheist, so god is not Great seemed an obvious next step.  I got it from the library and opened it expecting little more than an amusing analysis of the follies and foibles of organized religion.  What I got, though, was an incandescent screed, a passionate argument suffused with righteous moral outrage about the suffering that the world has endured at the hands of the religious and their dogmas.  I was unprepared for just how pissed off Hitchens was at the whole idea of religion (please forgive the vulgarity, but it’s the only term that comes close to describing it accurately).  After I had finished it I read it again, sort of, this time listening to the audio book so that I could hear it rendered in Hitchens’ own voice.  Very impressive, I thought to myself, and moved on to the next Stephen King Dark Tower book sitting by my bedside.  But then, a few weeks later, something odd happened.  As I was getting dressed one morning, NPR was detailing the latest sectarian killing in Iraq and I suddenly found myself possessed of an emotion that I’d never felt in this context before: anger.  Real anger.  I’d expected to feel the usual twinge of despair at the news, of sadness, of “it’s a shame those people over there can’t get along.”  Instead I was fuming, fuming because dozens of people had just been horribly killed over literally nothing, over disagreements about fictional stories.  My thoughts ran ahead: Every teenager who blows himself up, every woman who is stoned to death, every girl who has her sexual organs mutilated, it’s all for nothing.  The pounding words of today’s anthem expressed my feelings:

I won't believe in heaven and hell. No saints, no sinners, no

Devil as well. No pearly gates, no thorny crown. You're always

Letting us humans down. The wars you bring, the babes you

Drown. Those lost at sea and never found, and it's the same the

Whole world 'round. The hurt I see helps to compound that

Father, Son and Holy Ghost is just somebody's unholy hoax,

And if you're up there you'd perceive that my heart's here upon

My sleeve.  If there's one thing I don't believe in

It's you....

Religion ruins everything.  It was then that I realized that something had changed in me as a result of reading this book.
So today I want to share a bit of Hitch’s wisdom on this subject with you, as well as what I see as its implications for my life as a Unitarian Universalist (spoiler alert: I’ll still be on the Board of Trustees in the end).   And, while I don’t want to pull any punches with regard to what I see as the weaknesses in the case for God and/or supernaturally-based religion, I also don’t want to be deliberately insulting to people of faith.   This may be tough for me, since irony and sarcasm are two of my favorite rhetorical tools, but I’ll do my best.  Just know that it is not my intention here to belittle anybody.

god is not Great was published in 2007 and became a best-seller.  My surprise at its vitriol might have been averted had I read the subtitle more closely, or perused the chapter titles in advance.  Some of the better titles include:

• Religion Kills
• A Note on Health, to Which Religion Can Be Hazardous
• The “New” Testament Exceeds the Evil of the “Old” One
• The Koran is Borrowed from Both Jewish and Christian Myths
• Is Religion Child Abuse?

His basic thesis is summed up in the chapter entitled “The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False”:

One must state it plainly.  Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea of what was going on.  It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs).  Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think—though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one—that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.  

He spends much of the book critiquing the claims of the three major monotheisms (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), but by no means limits himself to them.  In the chapter “There Is No ‘Eastern’ Solution” he mocks Hindu gurus and claims that Buddhism played a significant role in Japanese militarism prior to World War II.  Elsewhere in the book he blames Gandhi for the bloody partition of India between its Muslim and Hindu populations, saying “…at just the moment when what India most needed was a modern secular nationalist leader, it got a fakir and guru instead.”  Even Mother Teresa comes in for a rhetorical thrashing for her vocal opposition to birth control and divorce.   Hitchens actually played the role of Devil’s Advocate in the Vatican proceedings for her canonization, obviously without success.

He is particularly effective at analyzing holy texts and demonstrating their internal inconsistencies or historical antecedents.  I learned reading this, for example, that Jesus wasn’t the only one who came back from the dead on Easter.  In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27 verses 52-53 it says that on that day “the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.”  This kind of takes the uniqueness out of Jesus’s own resurrection, doesn’t it?  He further cites the fact that the Gospels were written many years and decades after the events they purport to describe, and that some gospels were allowed in and some rejected by the very human early church fathers.  He even takes on the Koran and its claims, decrying in the process the “…’soft’ consensus among almost all the religious that, because of the supposed duty of respect that we owe the faithful, this is the very time to allow Islam to assert its claims at their own face value.  Once again, faith is helping to choke free inquiry and the emancipating consequences that it might bring.”

Hitchens’ work is driven by contempt and hostility towards ideas and structures which have long since outlived whatever utility they offered our ancient ancestors, but what I like most about his argument in this book is not the emphatic and systematic way in which he demolishes the pretensions of theistic (and non-theistic) religions.  What I like most about it is that he presents a positive alternative in humanism.  “Above all,” he says (quoting here), “we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man, and woman.  This enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people.  It is within the compass of the average person.”   There is nothing good in religion, he says, that doesn’t already exist in a humanist worldview.  There is no valid moral point that is not better expressed in the works of Shakespeare or in the art of Goya than it is in the Bronze Age ravings of the Torah, the New Testament, or the Koran.  This is a view that I can wholeheartedly support.

But then, what are the implications of my conversion experience for my life as a Unitarian-Universalist?  If I am to swallow the Hitchens line fully (would it be tacky to say “Drink the Hitchens Kool-Aid?”), how can I associate myself with any religion?  Why am I up here now and not at home humanistically mowing the lawn?  Which naturally leads to this question: Is Unitarian-Universalism even a religion?  We certainly have many of the trappings of a religion.  We have pulpits, ministers, churches, wooden pews, stained glass, and coffee.  Our beliefs proudly include “Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspire us in our ethical and spiritual life” as well as “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.”  We surround ourselves with spiritual symbols, and God still has a place, if not a prominent one, in our hymnal as you may have noticed.  If you catch him at the right time, Axel even wears vestments.  On the other hand, our list of beliefs also features “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”  I am up here delivering a sermon that, in the words of our new member welcome, would cost a minister elsewhere her job.

It seems clear that in Hitchens-land we are an amusing amalgam of people trying to have it both ways.  While he was alive he was of course often asked about liberal religions.  In one interview with the Atlantic Monthly he addressed UU-ism directly, saying “They say Unitarians believe in one God maximum….I’ve spoken at Unitarian churches very often.  It seems to me…that they don’t give me enough to disagree with.”  In the same interview he worries about our unwillingness to completely divorce ourselves from our religious past, likening our explicit respect for other, God-based religious texts to disease-carrying rats in the sewers of a city, biding their time until they can inflict another great plague on the residents above.

Now clearly, Mr. Hitchens never spent much time actually attending UU services, regardless of the frequency with which he headlined at UU churches.  If he had I doubt very much this rat analogy would have come to mind.  And the comment points to a major weakness in his position vis-à-vis religion, namely, his refusal to seriously acknowledge that there is a vast spectrum of religious belief in the world.  His book would probably more accurately have been subtitled “How Fundamentalism Poisons Everything.”  But that wasn’t his style, and while I will push this book on my friends and acquaintances with the boring zeal of the new convert, I will still consider myself a religious person and proudly boast of my affiliation with this church.  But on what basis?  On the basis of a better, more modern definition of religion, one that we UUs are better-poised than most to embrace and to keep ourselves relevant now and in the future.

Earlier this week I was perusing the NPR web site when a random blog caught my eye with the headline “Let's Get Creative And Redefine The Meaning Of Religion.”  It was a post about the work of the late Ronald Dworkin, an American philosopher whose forthcoming book is called, amazingly, Religion Without God. (What are the odds?)  Needless to say I read the post and followed the link to the New York Review of Books website where the first chapter of this book is excerpted.  Score!  Arguing from the position that “The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude,” he seeks to find a definition of religion that is not nearly so circumscribed as Hitchens’.  Quoting:

What, then, should we count as a religious attitude?...The religious attitude accepts the full, independent reality of value. It accepts the objective truth of two central judgments about value. The first holds that human life has objective meaning or importance.  Each person has an innate and inescapable responsibility to try to make his life a successful one: that means living well, accepting ethical responsibilities to oneself as well as moral responsibilities to others, not just if we happen to think this important but because it is in itself important whether we think so or not.

The second holds that what we call “nature”—the universe as a whole and in all its parts—is not just a matter of fact but is itself sublime: something of intrinsic value and wonder. Together these two comprehensive value judgments declare inherent value in both dimensions of human life: biological and biographical. We are part of nature because we have a physical being and duration: nature is the locus and nutrient of our physical lives. We are apart from nature because we are conscious of ourselves as making a life and must make decisions that, taken together, determine what life we have made. 

This is why I can be a religious person and why religion, in particular liberal religion, is still important.  It gives us rules to follow, but rules that are based on fundamental principles, not myths.

In most of the so-called developed world, organized religion is dying.  The great churches of Europe are full of tourists but empty of worshipers.  The poem I read earlier in the service was meant to capture the sense one gets today of the absolute irrelevance of religion to modern life.  Even in the religious stronghold of the United States church attendance has been dropping as has the percentage of people who self-identify as religious.  Why is this?  Because, as Hitchens points out again and again, the dogmas and explanations offered by religion are completely inadequate to the realities of the universe as we now know them.  My friends from the beginning of the sermon are both IT guys, both scientific and rational, and both have attempted to adapt their faith to what they believe is the truth of evolution and the Big Bang.  Though I didn’t put it to them this way at the time, it seemed to me that what they were offering as justifications for their continued Catholicism was nothing that would be out of place here.  We spoke of living a good life and what that means.  To them, the goal of life was to get closer to God, and the way one did that was to live a good life, basically by observing the Golden Rule.  Contrast that to my radically different conception of the goal, which is to live a good life, basically by observing the Golden Rule.  Though I couldn’t get them to admit it, these two good Catholics are already Unitarian Universalists.

If we subscribe to the theory of evolution, then it seems logical that the forces that shape the development of animal species might also be said to operate in the realm of human society and culture.  When presented with new circumstances of life, say the impact of a huge meteor and the subsequent blocking out of the sun, some species die out and others survive.  When presented with new knowledge and alternative belief systems, some forms of social organization and control will die out and others will adapt and thrive.  I think that liberal, humanist religion is the way forward for the people of this planet, maybe the only way forward, at least as long as we plan to keep investigating the fundamental building blocks of the universe and to not burn at the stake those who dare to propose alternative explanations.  And we should expect to see ourselves change as the journey goes on, and to welcome the changes that allow us to live better lives.  One of the things about which I’ve always been most proud here is the way we display the symbols of many faiths in our sanctuary, but I also hope that the day will come when we can take these symbols down, much as we would remove a bust of Zeus or Athena.  Or, much as we have already removed some of the accoutrements of our past.  Today’s decorations, if you haven’t noticed, come from our very own collection of symbols, symbols that were once key to the identity of this church but now are consigned to a basement cabinet where we walk by them on our way to pick up our children from RE, noting them not at all.  This may be a cause for nostalgic sadness among some of us, and yet I can’t help but feel that if we don’t continually progress and discard what humanistic reasoning shows us to be without intrinsic value, we will find that more than just our stuff, our relics, are gathering dust.  Like the church in the second reading, we will find our very church home an “accoutered frowsty barn,” a place not worth stopping for.

May we have the courage of our convictions, and may we act on them and use them to push ever forward, towards a destiny that, though we cannot see it, we know to be greater than just ourselves.  Let it be our religion that saves everything. Amen.

Closing Words

“The More Loving One” by W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

Good Questions

"Those who ask questions cannot avoid answers."
-- Cameroonian Proverb

Meditation: We light our chalice on Sunday mornings “to heal and not to harm,… in the spirit of love.” Our meditation this morning asks us, what we mean when we say love. It is an excerpt from a poem by W. H. Auden, entitled “O Tell Me the Truth About Love”

Some say love’s a little boy,

And some say it’s a bird,

Some say it makes the world go round,

And some say that’s absurd,…

Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,

Or soft as eiderdown fluff?

Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?

O tell me the truth about love…

When it comes, will it come without warning

Just as I’m picking my nose?

Will it knock on my door in the morning,

Or tread in the bus on my toes?

Will it come like a change in the weather?

Will its greeting be courteous or rough?

Will it alter my life altogether?

O tell me the truth about love.

Reading: by Unitarian Universalist minister Bruce Marshall, from A Holy Curiosity 

What do I trust? What can I rely upon to help me determine what is true and what is right?  

We receive much information, many opinions. A variety of authorities would like to convince us that their way is true. But they crowd each other, and it is not clear which interpretation is correct.
       This world is a marketplace of values. People with different visions of what is right compete for our allegiance. We see the choices and can justify many options. What can I trust to help me choose that which is right? Religions are about trust. They point our way through things we cannot fully know.
       In some religions trust is centered in a sacred book, such as the Bible or the Koran. In some religions a holy person or a class of holy people interpret the unknown. Others have a code of approved beliefs: a doctrine, a creed, an agreed-upon statement that a person trusts. 
         … Our trust is not grounded in a sacred book or a holy person or a statement of belief. Rather, we are open to the many forms through which truth and right can be known. We trust this openness over any formula that claims final authority to guide all people in all times. Truth and right, we believe, are most likely to emerge in an environment that encourages us to explore our ideas and convictions. 
       This principle is fundamental to the liberal religious tradition… 

Reading: by Billy Collins, a poem entitled “Questions About Angels”

Of all the questions you might want to ask

about angels, the only one you ever hear

is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time

besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin

or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth

or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?

Do they swing like children from the hinges

of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?

Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?

What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,

their diet of unfiltered divine light?

What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall

these tall presences can look over and see hell?

If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole

in a river and would the hole float along endlessly

filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?

If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive

in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume

the appearance of the regular mailman and

whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?

No, the medieval theologians control the court.

The only question you ever hear is about

the little dance floor on the head of a pin

where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.

It is designed to make us think in millions,

billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse

into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:

one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,

a small jazz combo working in the background.

She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful

eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over

to glance at his watch because she has been dancing

forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

Good Questions

A Sermon Delivered on May 19, 2013

By 

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

If you have been reading our church newsletter attentively, or if you have been to church in the last few weeks, you know that you are about to hear a “Question Box” sermon: a sermon shaped by the questions some of you submitted, either by email or on a slip of paper dropped into this question box. (show box)

In the liberal religious tradition, we believe we are most likely to find truth in an open environment that encourages us to explore our ideas and convictions. So, while some people may think a church should provide us with definitive answers to the questions that confound us - questions like: What is God? How can we tell right from wrong? What happens after we die? - in this church we give as much attention to the questions asked, as to the answers found. 

Good questions lead us to good answers. And good questions, in and of themselves, can provide us insight and inspiration. Our questions say something about who we are, where we come from, and where we hope to go. Sometimes one person’s questions can touch on our own questions. They can help us further on our way. 

Today, ten of the questions some of you have asked will serve as inspiration for all us. (various members of the congregation read the questions in bold)

1) How do atheists fit in Unitarian Universalism? What do they bring to the table and what can they take from it? I am a firm non-believer, and although I have always felt welcome, I still feel slightly out of step. I come to UU for the community, to broaden my own horizons, and because I value the undogmatic religious education available to my daughters, but I often wonder how other UUs see atheists.

How do atheists fit in here? This is a good question. One way to get at it, is simply in terms of numbers. So lets do a quick survey of those who are here this morning. If you believe in God, please raise your hand. (wait, look) If you don’t believe in God, please raise your hand. (wait, look) If you are not sure whether or not you believe in God, please raise you hand. (wait, look) And if you don’t like to raise your hand in answer to questions like this, please raise you hand. (wait, look)

At times when I have asked these questions in the past, the congregation was split pretty evenly three ways. A third theists, a third atheists, a third agnostics. For me, this simple fact is one of the most exciting things about our faith.

I myself am undecided about this question. There are days when God strikes me as a crucial religious idea, that I deeply embrace. Other days, I hear someone talk about God, as if he were judge, jury and executioner of the universe, sitting on a throne in the sky, and I think – no way do I believe in God. But most days, I am simply not sure.

The fact that anyone with whom I talk at church may or may not believe in God creates a very broad playing field when it comes to grappling with questions of meaning and morality. It creates an openness that I think is precious and unique among the world’s religions. It is a perpetual reminder to choose our words carefully and respectfully. We don’t all agree on what God is or is not. It is very helpful to keep this in mind when exploring any religious question. For instance…

2) Are there just happy coincidences, or do things sometimes work out because of a higher power?

Whether or not we believe in God, we may believe in a “higher power.” We may believe that there are forces at work in the world, which we do not fully understand. I know there are plenty of powers I don’t understand, for instance those that govern quantum mechanics, or those that determine whether the stock market rises or falls. I don’t understand the power that creates life, and I don’t fully understand the power of love.

The laws of science and logic help us grasp some of the forces that govern cause and effect. What we can’t explain, we call a coincidence or random events. And yet these, too, must be driven by some power – whether higher or lower, or all around us.

This question reminds us of the mysterious powers that surround us, and leads to further questions. For instance….

3) Why do bad things happen to good people? What constitutes bad?

Why do bad things happen to good people? This is another very good question. The rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book about his struggles with this very question, after he learned that his three-year-old son, Aaron, was diagnosed with a rare congenital disease that caused premature aging, and would kill Aaron by the time he was a teenager. Clearly his innocent three-year-old child didn’t deserve this illness and suffering.

The death of Kushner’s son led him to reflect deeply on the meaning of suffering. Looking for answers, he read the Book of Job, in the Jewish scriptures, which tells the story of a righteous man who is severely afflicted – his children are killed, his material wealth and physical health are taken from him, and even his closest friends condemn him, because they believe he surely must have done something to bring this divine punishment upon himself. So Job gets angry at God and demands an explanation. But God says, who are you to demand answers from me? What do you know about running a universe – creating heaven and earth and all the stars? You have no idea of the extent of all I do, and why. Job quickly sees God’s point. He is humbled and apologizes for questioning God. And in the end Job’s health, wealth and happiness are restored.

Interestingly, Kushner’s book is not entitled “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?” It is called, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” That’s an important distinction. It is not a question of “why do bad things sometimes happen to some good people?” But rather a statement: “bad things happen to all of us.” The question then becomes, when bad things happen to you, what are you going to do about it?

Even if we are powerless to avoid the suffering we will each invariably encounter in the course of our lives, we always have a choice in terms of how we respond to that suffering. Will we collapse, or will we persevere? Will we despair, or will we hold on to hope? Will we let our hearts harden, or will our pain open our hearts, and deepen our compassion for the suffering of others? Kushner chose to respond by writing a book that has provided comfort and inspiration to thousands of readers.

Even the most difficult experiences can teach us something important about life. This is not to say that we should seek out suffering. But it challenges us look beyond our immediate experience, and see beyond the bad, to the possibility of a greater good.

So, in the long run, and in the big picture, what constitutes bad? The answer surely depends on our point of view. Are we looking from our particular human point? Or from God’s point of view – however we might conceive of God? Another question that leads to further questions. For instance…

4) - What does the other U in UU mean to you? [What does it mean to be a Unitarian Universalist?]

Good question. As many of you know, historically, Unitarianism has been more interested in human potential rather than divine power. So, for instance, when studying the life of Jesus, Unitarians tend to focus on his humanity rather than his divinity. If we live our lives ethically, compassionately and kindly, we can all be just like Jesus.

Universalism has more to do with how we imagine God. Unlike those who believe in a higher power who is a harsh judge, and will send the majority of us to hellfire after death, Universalists believe in a loving God who embraces all people, who excludes no one. A God who is not in the business of damnation, but rather universal salvation.

At the risk of sounding too simplistic, I might say that Unitarianism focuses on human powers of reason, whereas Universalism focuses on divine love. One speaks more to the head, the other speaks more to the heart. To be healthy and whole, we need both.

Remembering our religious history can help us better understand who we are today. And it can inform questions we may have about the future. For instance…

5) Two hundred years ago, a significant number of our Unitarian congregations were formed as a result of splits from what were then Congregational churches.  Fifty plus years ago the Congregational denomination, via a merger, became the United Church of Christ, the UCC.  About the same time, the Unitarians and Universalists merged to become [the Unitarian Universalist Association], the UUA. Since those mergers, the UCC membership numbers are down by almost 50% to approximately one million today.  The UUA membership numbers have remained static at approximately 200,000.  In recent years, the UUA president and the UCC president have decided to be seen together, work together and occasionally speak together on common themes. Both the UCC and the UUA are "liberal" denominations. Should the UUA and the UCC explore possibilities for a merger?

Now there’s a good question. Seven years ago, the presidents of the UUA and the UCC met. In February of last year, they met again, this time joined by several senior denominational leaders. In recent years the two denominations have collaborated on social action initiatives. We also developed the human sexuality curriculum “Our Whole Lives,” together. 

But while UCC is a liberal religious denomination, it is clearly Christian. If the two were to merge, the joint denomination would need to embrace the many non-Christian perspectives of UUism – among them atheists, pagans, Hindus and Jews, and many more. And the non-Christians among us would need to accept a higher degree of explicitly Christian language and theology.

How we would ever reach agreement on such a momentous organizational step raises further questions. For instance…

6) What is our polity, and why does it matter?

Another good question. What is our polity? “Polity” is a word that doesn’t often come up in casual conversation. But it is worth thinking about. Polity, the dictionary says, is how a group organizes or governs itself.

We practice “congregational polity.” “Congregational polity” is a central part of who we are, both institutionally and theologically. It goes back to our roots in sixteenth century England, and a protest against the centralized power of established churches, where popes and bishops had powers similar to princes and kings. Challenging monarchy and religious hierarchy, our forebears believed in a religious grassroots democracy, in which authority was vested in local congregations, rather than national or international religious bodies.

So for instance, the UUA is not a denominational body that has the power to tell us how to do our church business. It is simply an association of congregations just like our’s – the Unitarian Universalist Association.

We believe that in our congregational meetings every member has the right and the responsibility to shape the work of our religious community. Each of us is endowed with the powers once reserved for priests and prophets. A well-conducted democratic process, for us, is an almost sacred ritual. If we had sacraments, the practice of a vibrant and thoughtful congregational meeting would be one of them.

The discipline of congregational polity is what allows us to transcend our individual differences, deepen our common convictions, and engage in collective action. Which issues we should act upon, and how we should go about it, of course, is a different question…

7) Here's my question for submission:  What is the obligation (if any) of faith communities to take a collective stance on moral/social justice issues vs. respecting the individual's position on these issues? 

  Coming from a Catholic background, growing up I was used to edicts coming from the top down, some I agreed with (preferential option for the poor), many others I didn't (status of women; birth control; celibate male priests; the hierarchy, etc.) which has led me to the UU faith which, from a hierarchy standpoint, is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Personally, I think it's important for groups to take a stance on important issues (like our congregation has on becoming a welcoming community).  But....that's also why I left the Catholic church--they (at least the leadership) have taken a stand on many issues that I don't personally agree with.  So I find it a dilemma. 

Yes, as a religious community we are called to address issues of meaning and morality, both in the lives of our members, and society at large. As Dr. King put it so well: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We ourselves are the ones who freely choose which issues to address. We are the ones who shape our vision of a more just society.  Collectively we know more, and collectively we can do more than any single one of us alone. Our differences of opinion and understanding are not merely tolerated but celebrated. Our respectful and critical conversations help us clarify and deepen our individual convictions, even as we agree to join together for a common cause. For example… 

8) Where is the justice in determining who qualifies as a true full member of one or the other gender and may live in the full sun?

This is one of those questions that hardly needs an answer, because the question already says so much. The question is actually a statement. It says the gender stereotypes that are perpetuated in our society are a source of serious injustice for all those who don’t fit neatly into conventional gender boxes. And that needs to change.

Fourteen years ago we voted to become a congregation that is explicitly welcoming to bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people. As we educated ourselves on the complexity of gender issues, we learned that people are assigned a biological sex (i.e. male, female, intersexual), but we define our own gender and what it means to us – whether we are a man, woman, or transgender.

Becoming a welcoming congregation was one example of how we collectively acted on an important social concern that involved religious, legal and moral dimensions. But of course there are many other social issues that deserve our attention, for instance….

9) Under what circumstances is it morally OK to end your own life? How will we overcome the stigma of choosing to die with dignity vs. life with the fear of or the actuality of being warehoused without dignity? The financial and emotional cost are not the same.

This is a good, but tough question. For almost two thousand years Christian thinkers have considered suicide a sin. In Christian nations it was long treated as a crime. But this perspective was challenged in the 19^th century by John Stuart Mill. He made the case that people who are terminally ill, and who ask their doctors to help them end their lives are not committing a crime, because no one is being harmed. As long as the decision is freely  made by a competent adult, based on accurate information, the state should not interfere.

Along similar lines, delegates from UU congregations across the country adopted a general resolution in 1988 that said, we “advocate the right to self-determination in dying, and the release from civil or criminal penalties of those who, under proper safeguards, act to honor the right of terminally ill patients to select the time of their own deaths.”

Bear in mind – this resolution is not binding for our congregation, or for any single one of us. But it does express the convictions of thousands of UUs who grappled with this issue in the 1980s, and felt strongly enough about it to adopt this resolution, encouraging us to act through our congregations, and to petition legislators to provide legal protection for the right to die with dignity.

Combatting gender stereotypes, promoting justice in issues of sexual orientation and identity, and advocating for death with dignity – these are just a few of the ways we as a congregation can make a real difference.  

And one final question…

10) My basic burning religious question comes from the Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” How do we obtain the wisdom???

Yes, how do we obtain wisdom? We can study the words of wise men and women, holy people or sacred books. But above and beyond that, we find wisdom by continually questioning ourselves and each other. We gain wisdom by looking critically and humbly within ourselves and around us. We gain wisdom by cultivating an open and discerning mind, and a warm and compassionate heart. 

Religion teaches us that we cannot find wisdom alone. We need each other. We need others to ask the penetrating questions we ourselves overlooked. We need others to offer possible answers we ourselves had never considered. And when life is so hard, when we almost despair, we need others to help us keep hope alive. 

May we have the wisdom to ask tough questions of ourselves and each other.

May we have the courage pursue even the most demanding answers.

And may we join together in the spirit of love, 

so that together, we can build a better world.

Amen.

The Power of Play

"The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground."
-- C. K. Chesterton

Meditation: by Dan Liberthson, a poem entitled “Child’s Play”

I play the World Series with marbles

on our vine-laced Persian carpet:

its palaces are bases,

its bowers become dugouts

where my heroes' cards wait

for their manager's hand.

I play both sides, home and away,

hitter and fielder—as always

no one on my team but me.

Adult shapes, fat and crooked,

bald and creased or worn thin,

edge around me,

pass through the house smiling

down as if to say dear child

you know nothing outside

your magic carpet, which

one day you'll find is only a rug

that will take you no place at all.

But I have just jumped

an impossible height, caught

Roger Maris' hot line drive to right

and brought it back over the fence.

The roar of the crowd

puts any doubt to rest:

in that moment I am blessed

and that moment is all there is.

Reading: by the psychologist Alison Gopnik from The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life (p. 71) 

When we see our children immersed in their pretend worlds we say, “Oh, she’s playing.” This is very revealing. In adult life we distinguish between useful activities, such as cooking dinner or building bridges, and activities such as reading novels and going to the movies, that are just, as we say, “fun” or “entertainment” – in other words, play. Since young children are protected from the pressures of everyday life, since they are, to be blunt, completely useless, everything they do looks like play. They aren’t out building bridges and plowing fields and they don’t make dinner or bring home a paycheck. And yet their obsessive and unstoppable pretend play… reflects the most sophisticated, important, and characteristic human abilities.

Reading:  by philosopher Alan Watts from The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (p. 117)

…What use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use—which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing—for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound. Yet what would we think of a society which had no place for music, which did not allow for dancing, or for any activity not directly involved with the practical problems of survival? Obviously, such a society would be surviving to no purpose— unless it could somehow make a delight out of the "essential tasks" of farming, building, … or cooking. But in that moment the goal of survival is forgotten. The tasks are being done for their own sake, wherupon farms begin to look like gardens, … carpenters take time to "finish" their work, and cooks become gourmets.

The Power of Play

A Sermon Delivered on May 5, 2013

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

On a cold Saturday evening this past February, my wife, Elaine, and I joined perhaps ten other church members for an evening of fun and games, at the home of Umeeta Sadarangani and Marilyn Ryan. This was a social gathering that was offered at last year’s service auction, and that was billed as an evening of Balderdash. 

Balderdash, as some of you know, is a board game that involves coming up with outlandish definitions for obscure words most of us have never heard before. So, for instance, we might all need to propose possible definitions for the word “opsablepsia” (awp-sa-blepp-see-ah),” or “flitterbick” (flitt-urr-bick). “Opsablepsia: a rare intestinal disorder,” one of us might write. Or “opsablepsia: a remote mountainous region in southern Croatia.” Along with our proposed answers, the right one would be read. Our job would be to guess the correct explanation. Only the fewest us would guess that the actual meaning of the first term is “not able to look someone in the eye.” And that the second is “a mythical flying squirrel that flies so fast no one has ever seen it.”

I had a great time that evening. And I think the others did too. Sitting around in a circle in Marilyn and Umeeta’s living room, with a few logs burning in the fireplace to keep away the winter chill, all of us intently involved in our game, each contributing imaginative answers, some of which sounded serious and some very silly. For reasons I can’t fully explain, I sometimes found myself laughing so hard, my eyes were watering and I couldn’t catch my breath.

* * *

When we engage in play, something shifts within us. We step out of the sober and straightforward attitude with which we usually approach life and enter something else. The author Diane Ackerman calls play a refuge from ordinary life, a sanctuary of the mind, where we are exempt from life customs, methods and decrees.

She writes, 

“Play always has a sacred place – some version of a playground – in which it happens. The hallowed ground is usually outlined, so that it’s clearly set off from the rest of reality. This place may be a classroom, a sports stadium, a stage, a courtroom, a coral reef, a workbench in a garage, a church or temple, a field where people clasp hands in a circle under the new moon.” (Deep Play, p. 6)

* * *

Play is a kind of activity we often associate with children. Children play games and make-believe. Like the boy who recreates a World Series baseball game on the patterns of a Persian carpet, with players and managers, and crowds of fans in the stands cheering every play. Adults look on and chuckle. The child’s play is quaint and endearing. The adults are smug and perhaps condescending. For them, the magic carpet is only a common rug, that will take you no place at all.

To the adult, play may seem impractical and useless. But as psychologists have discovered, play is actually a crucial aspect of healthy human development. Play is, by definition useless, and yet without it we cannot become fully human. Imaginative play allows us to engage the world in ways much more complex than the sober factual observations of adults.  

Alison Gopnik writes, 

“While children may be useless, they are useless on purpose. Because, as children, we don’t have to restrict our imaginings to the immediately useful, we can freely construct causal maps and exercise our ability to [be creative]. We can compute a wide range of possibilities, not just the two or three that are most likely to pay off. We can consider different ways the world might be, not just the ways the world actually is.” (p. 72)

When we are in a state of play, we can draw on powers of imagination that will allow us to think far outside the bounds of convention. The power of “make believe” can allow us to envision a world, that is invisible to the naked eye.

Gopnik writes, 

“The wild, harebrained, uninhibited three-year-old may be quite unable to do something as simple as get her snowsuit on (there are so many distractions: she has to play with the imaginary tiger and make sure her imaginary friend is dressed too). But she is, in fact, exercising some of the most sophisticated and philosophically profound capacities of human nature – though admittedly that may be cold comfort to the parent who has to make it to work on time.” (p. 73)

As a psychologist, who studies human behavior and development, Gopnik explores aspects of play that are unique to humans – how play reflects our most sophisticated, important, and characteristic human abilities.

But what makes play particularly fascinating, what gives us a hint as to the depth and breadth of the meaning of play, is the fact that the habit of playing is by no means limited to humans.

I am sure any one of us who has ever had pet cats, and has spent time watching them bat ping pong balls across the kitchen floor, or sneak up on one another and then play chase all through the house – you have a clear sense that play is an activity other species enjoy, too. Or any one of us, who has thrown a tennis ball across a lawn, so an excited and playful dog could run after it, and then bring it back, dropping it on the ground at our feet, and clearly hoping we will throw it again. This is play.

* * * 

The psychologist Stuart Brown offers an example of how play has an unusual power, with the help of a series of photographs taken on a chilly November day in northern Manitoba. The photos show a wild and hungry polar bear, approaching two tethered huskies. The dogs’ collars are attached to long chains, which are bound to a spike in the ground. Unable to escape they are about to become the polar bear’s lunch.

The pictures clearly show the 1200-pound polar bear approach the dogs with an unmistakable predatory gaze. But the dogs don’t seem to grasp the danger of their situation. The female husky, in particular, approaches the bear in a play bow, wagging her tail. And then something unusual happens. The bear’s fixed behavior – the rigid instinctual routine that ends up with a meal – changes. Suddenly, the bear rises up on his hind legs, and stands over the husky. No claws extended. No fangs exposed. And the two animals launch into an incredible ballet. It’s a play ballet. 

The photos capture an improbable scene, in which the husky bears her throat to the polar bear, and the bear grabs her gently in his maw. The pictures show how these two animals roughhousing are in an altered state. A state of play. It’s a state that allows these two creatures to “explore the possible,” Stuart Brown says. They are doing something together, that neither would have done without play signals clearly conveyed and understood. It’s a marvelous example, of a process in nature that is also within all of us. (from a “TED Talk” filmed in May 2008)

* * *

Our instinct and understanding of play is not only an expression of our most sophisticated, and highly developed human traits. It is also rooted deep in our evolutionary past. It reaches back before the creation of human culture and civilization back to our animal past, which we share with huskies and polar bears. 

As we have grown to become human beings, the need to play has grown with us. As the Dutch anthropologist J. Huizinga observed, 

“The great archetypal activities of human society are all permeated with play from the start. Take language, for instance… Every metaphor is a play upon words… Or take myth. In myth [we seek] to account for the world of phenomena by grounding it in the Divine. In all the wild imaginings of mythology a fanciful spirit is playing on the border-line between jest and earnest.” (Homo Ludens, p. 4)

* * *

For Alan Watts the idea of play goes deeper than psychology, anthropology or biology. The experience of play tells us something about the universe itself. The experience of play transcends narrow conceptions of what is useful and what is useless, what is meaningful and what is meaningless, what is real and what is illusion.

In Hinduism, the spirit of play infuses all of creation. According to the Vedanta Sutra, the world itself is lila – God’s play. God created the universe as a cosmic game, as an outlet for God’s overflowing creative and imaginative energies. Like a child who grew tired of playing alone, God created the earth, and filled it plants, animals and humans. As Huston Smith puts it, “God is the Cosmic Dancer, whose routine is all creatures and all worlds. From the tireless stream of God’s energy the cosmos flows in endless graceful reenactment.” (The World’s Religions, p. 71)

A similar idea is found in Greek mythology, where all-powerful gods seem all too human. As Plato once said, “Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a [person] will be able to [gain favor of] the gods.” It is when we live our lives as play, that we emulate the divine play of the Cosmic Dancer, and we ourselves are like gods.

* * *

Diane Ackerman writes, play 

“reveals our need to seek a special brand of transcendence, with a passion that makes thrill-seeking explicable, creativity possible, and religion inevitable. Perhaps religion seems like an unlikely example of playing, but if you look at religious rites and festivals, you’ll see all the play elements, and also how deep that play can become. Religious rituals usually include dance, worship, music, and decoration. They swallow time. They are ecstatic, absorbing, rejuvenating.” (Deep Play, p. 17)

* * *

Stuart Brown can’t imagine a life without play. He can’t imagine a life without humor, or flirtation, or movies, or games, or fantasy. He can’t imagine a culture or a life, adult or otherwise, without play. The spirit of play is an essential aspect of our health and wholeness. We need to remain in touch with this spirit.

“The true object of all human life is play,” writes C. K. Chesterton. And I agree with him. “Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground,” he says. And I respectfully disagree.

The earth is our playground. And our lives, here on earth – not in heaven – should be inspired by a spirit of play. Our playground is right here – every time we gather for worship, every time we join in singing, every time we sit down in a circle, among friends – seriously silly, and fully engaged.

May the spirit of play fuel our imagination,

So that we may see, not only the world that actually is,

But can envision a better world that might be.

And may we have the courage to play our part

In creating that world.

Amen.