The Day of Awakening

"Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day."
-- Nietzsche

Meditation: a poem by Rebecca Parker entitled “Winter Solstice” 

Perhaps

for a moment

the typewriters will stop clicking,

the wheels stop rolling

the computers desist from computing,

and a hush will fall over the city.

For an instant, in the stillness,

the chiming of the celestial spheres will be heard

as earth hangs poised

in the crystalline darkness, and then

gracefully

tilts.

Let there be a season

when holiness is heard, and

the splendor of living is revealed.

Stunned to stillness by beauty

we remember who we are and why we are here.

There are inexplicable mysteries.

We are not alone.

In the universe there moves a Wild One

whose gestures alter earth’s axis

toward love.

In the immense darkness

everything spins with joy.

The cosmos enfolds us.

We are caught in a web of stars,

cradled in a swaying embrace,

rocked by the holy night,

babes of the universe.

Let this be the time

we wake to life,

like spring wakes, in the moment

of winter solstice.

Reading: by Jack Kornfield from After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path (p. 3)

What is it that draws a person to spiritual life? From as far back as we can remember, we can each sense a mystery in being alive. When we are present with an infant in the first moments after birth, or when the death of a loved one brushes close to us, the mystery becomes tangible. It is there when we witness a radiant sunset or find a moment’s stillness in the flowing seasons of our days. Connecting to the sacred is perhaps our deepest need and longing.

Awakening calls to us in a thousand ways. …There is a pull to wholeness, to being fully alive, even when we have forgotten. The Hindus tell us that the child in the womb sings, “Do not let me forget who I am,” but that the song after birth becomes, “Oh, I have forgotten already.”

Reading: by the psychologist Rubin Naiman from Healing Night: The Science and Spirit of Sleeping, Dreaming, and Awakening (p. 120)

Like dawn, awakening is simultaneously a time of night and day, and, paradoxically, a time of neither night nor day… it is characterized by a kind of fuzzy awareness, as if one eye is fluttering to peer out at the world, while the other remains closed and turned inward. 

…By nature, awakening is much like a birth. It delivers us, disoriented and languid, through a narrow passage from one world to another world. It invites us to begin sensing and moving, but ever so slowly. A gradual awakening carries us through a lush coastal zone of consciousness that holds immense... potential. 

Reading: by Timothy Steels, a poem entitled “Toward the Winter Solstice”

Although the roof is just a story high,

It dizzies me a little to look down.

I lariat-twirl the rope of Christmas lights

And cast it to the weeping birch's crown;

A dowel into which I've screwed a hook

Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine

The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs

Will accent the tree's elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause

And call up commendations or critiques.

I make adjustments. Though a potpourri

Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,

We all are conscious of the time of year;

We all enjoy its colorful displays

And keep some festival that mitigates

The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

Some say that L.A. doesn't suit the Yule,

But UPS vans now like magi make

Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves

Are gaily resurrected in their wake;

The desert lifts a full moon from the east

And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,

And valets at chic restaurants will soon

Be tending flocks of cars and SUV's.

And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk

The fan palms scattered all across town stand

More calmly prominent, and this place seems

A vast oasis in the Holy Land.

This house might be a caravansary,

The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead

Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces

And ceintures of green, yellow , blue, and red.

Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem

Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;

It's comforting to look up from this roof

And feel that, while all changes, nothing's lost,

To recollect that in antiquity

The winter solstice fell in Capricorn

And that, in the Orion Nebula,

From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

The Day of Awakening

A Sermon Delivered on December 21, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

My nephew Nick and his wife Katie had a baby this year. Their first child, Soren, was born on August 14, in Portland, Oregon. The birth announcement they sent out has a few pictures of him that I love to look at: a tiny newborn child, peacefully asleep in his mother’s embrace, or snoozing on this father’s forearm. 

It seems to me the image of a newborn baby conveys the miracle of life like few other human experiences. Something about it draws us in. Something fascinating, miraculous, and hard to resist. 

Within weeks of the baby’s birth, my brother and his wife sold their east coast apartment in Queens, and bought a west coast house in Portland, just fifteen miles away from the home of their son and daughter-in-law, and most importantly, their first grandchild. 

And truth be told, the Gehrmann family here in Urbana is not immune. Elaine’s excitement is evident in the cute Christmas presents she thoughtfully selected for young Soren – the little doll, the picture book, the plastic toy. And though my role is relatively minor in the season’s gift-exchange – I wrapped the presents, and put the package in the mail – I realized after the fact, for me these simple acts meant a lot. And the small box I dropped in the mail – though the postal scale said it was only a few ounces - for me it was much heavier, it was packed with emotional weight and significance. As I pulled away from the post office, I felt both surprisingly exhausted and strangely elated.

* * *

Last week I was talking on the phone with my brother, who was once again gushing about the miracle and wonder of this child. A few days earlier they had had their first experience of being overnight baby sitters. Though still somewhat sleep-deprived from the experience - he and his wife took turns throughout the night attending to their grandson’s needs – my brother was still agog and aglow.  

And I was reminded how watching a baby sleep has a remarkably calming effect. I don’t know why. Maybe it reminds me of when our kids were infants, and what a challenge it was to get them to sleep. When they were tired during the day or at all hours of the night, they cried and were cranky. And so I would work hard to calm them down, hugging them, jiggling them, singing to them. When they finally fell asleep, I was ready for a nap, too. 

“Sleep like a baby.” That means to sleep peacefully and protected, without a worry in the world. 

Scientists still don’t fully understand all the functions of sleep, but we do know that virtually every living creature needs it. We humans have evolved to sleep at night, when it is dark, quiet and generally safe. But cats, for instance, who are nighttime hunters, sleep for most of the day and are active at night. House cats can sleep more than 20 hours a day, with a series of short naps and lengthy snoozes. Birds sleep for very short periods, and only lightly. If birds slept as deeply as we do, they would fall off their perches. 

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the sleep cycle of a newborn babe is very different from our own. Adults like to sleep eight hours solid, but babies sleep two or three hours at a time, wake up, eat, and then sleep some more, up to 18 hours of 24, equally divided between day and night. (Sleep: What Every Parent Needs to Know, Rachel Moon, p. xxi)

* * *

 At this time of year when the nights are long and dark, I envy babies and house cats their many hours of sleep. And I imagine past times and places before electricity illumed our cities and streets and homes, when longer hours of winter and dark were inextricably linked to longer hours of sleep. 

So, for instance, according to a civil servant who in 1844 examined economic activity in rural France, people all over the country, as soon as the weather turned cold, shut themselves away and practiced the forgotten art of doing nothing at all for months on end. From Flanders to Provence the fields were deserted; the towns and villages silent. 

As the civil servant wrote: “These vigorous men will now spend their days in bed, packing their bodies tightly together in order to stay warm and to eat less food.”

And in the year 1900 the British Medical Journal noted how the peasants in the Pskov region of northwestern Russia cope with their winter weather. The Journal says: 

“At the first fall of snow the whole family gathers round the stove, lies down, ceases to wrestle with the problems of human existence, and quietly goes to sleep. Once a day every one wakes up to eat a piece of hard bread. ... The members of the family take it in turn to watch and keep the fire alight. After six months of this reposeful existence the family wakes up, shakes itself... [and] …goes out to see if the grass is growing.” (“The Big Sleep” by Graham Robb, The New York Times, Nov. 25, 2007)

* * *

For the past six months the days have gradually been growing shorter, and the nights longer, and the sun’s path across the sky has slipped lower and lower. Those of us who are attuned to the changes of sunlight may have felt their own circadian rhythms shift with the season. Scientists say that women tend to be more sensitive to these things than men. But I think it is safe to say none of us are unaffected.

Today marks the turning point of this trend. The solstice is the shortest day, the day on which the sun’s descent is halted and reversed. 

Today, as mythology reaching back to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Babylon and Rome put it, today we celebrate the birth of a new sun. Some of the ancient symbols and stories surrounding the solstice have been passed down from generation to generation, and are still with us today. At the time of Jesus, the Roman emperor was considered the son of the god Sol Invictus, the sun god. And so it is not surprising that similar associations found their way into Christian thought. 

As theologians Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker write, in the minds of early Christians the sun in the sky and the Son of God were connected. The Day of the Lord, every week, was Sunday. The gospels associated Jesus with light, he was “the light of the world.” Early Christians “prayed in the direction of the sun, the east, which symbolized the “day of birth.” Churches… faced east, the direction of paradise, and baptisteries were often designed to have the newly baptized exit toward the east.” The fourth century bishop Basil the Great compared the sun to the Holy Spirit:

“It seems to everyone who enjoys the sun’s warmth that he is the only one receiving it, but the sun’s radiance lights up the whole earth and sea and dissolves together with the sky. In the same way the Spirit seems unique to everyone in whom [God] abides, but all of [God’s] grace pours down on everyone…” (Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, p. 173)

* * *

On the solstice a new sun is born. A new year emerges. It is the dawn of a new day to which we have yet to awaken.

Waking up isn’t as easy as it sounds, Rubin Naiman says. In our efficient world of time management, packed schedules, and shrill alarm clocks we often experience waking up as a sudden jolt. Using a mechanical metaphor we may imagine ourselves “rapidly rebooted or switched back on.” But this is not necessarily the best way to start a day. It is no coincidence that “sacred traditions around the world encourage a more measured, prayerful, and mindful approach to morning,” he says.

On some level we know that awakening is a gradual process. That’s why, when we are dragged out of bed early and expected to be alert, we might say, “I’m not awake yet,” or “I’m still asleep.”

As Naiman sees it, our need to awaken gently is often “misunderstood, disregarded and even disparaged.” The fuzzy awareness we have at dawn, no longer asleep and yet not quite awake, is often called “grogginess” – a word reminiscent of an English rum drink. The implication is that if we are feeling groggy, we should snap out of it, and speed up the process of awakening – maybe with an extra-strong cup of coffee.

If we want to explore the spiritual possibilities of awakening in earnest, Naiman says, we should be attentive to the intricate and subtle process of how we slowly come to our senses. He says,

“Too many of us awaken in a manner similar to the way we were born. It is less a natural childbirth, more of a forceps delivery. Or a caesarian section. Less an emergence and more an emergency. If the process of awakening is the birth of our day, then morning is its early childhood, a critical developmental phase in the life of each new day.  How we awaken, how we posture toward morning establishes a powerful psychospiritual trajectory for the remainder of the day. We can ignite and launch ourselves like a rocket ship – a rude awakening. Or, inspired by dawn’s new light, [we can arise gently, mindful of a new day] vibrant with sacred possibility – a good morning.” (p. 122-123)

“A good morning gradually orients us through newness,” he says. “It casts a fresh light on everything and everyone emerging from night. Although most things may appear unchanged, we sense that they have been subtly remade by the night. And we are new as well.” 

Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes this process as reflected in myth:

“If you could lay your eyes upon the most fire-hardened, most cruel and pitying person alive… at the moment of waking you would see in them for a moment the untainted child spirit, the pure innocent. In sleep we are once again brought back to a state of sweetness. In sleep we are remade. We are reassembled from the inside out, fresh and new as innocents.” (p.126)

* * *

In the Buddhist tradition, a story is told of when Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment. His unusual degree of spiritual awareness was evident to people who met him, and they didn’t quite know what to make of it. They asked him: What are you? A god? A saint? A guru? A wizard? An avatar? An angel? Gautama simply replied “I am awake.” That’s what the word “Buddha” means: awakened one.

What does it mean to be awake? The Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das describes it like this: it means to awaken from “ignorance and delusion, confusion and suffering.” It means to awaken “to an authentically greater life of truth, clarity, freedom, peace, and deathless bliss…: a full awareness of who and what one is and one’s true place in the world.”

When we are awake, Lama Surya Das says, 

“everything changes, yet nothing changes; we discover what has been there all along, obscured by our conflicting passions, emotions, illusions, and attachments. Transforming oneself transforms the world. To save one soul is to save the whole world. No one can do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that you and I can do.” (The Big Questions: How to Find Your Own Answers to Life’s Essential Mysteries, p. 129)   

* * *

To live a life of health and wholeness, we need to learn how to sleep deeply, and awaken fully. We need to pay attention, and be fully present in those moments when life’s mystery becomes tangible: the moment of an infant’s birth, or the moment when the death of a loved one brushes close by.

Awakening calls us in a thousand ways. Within each of us there is a pull toward wholeness, a longing to be fully alive, a longing we too often and too easily forget. 

But today, on this solstice day of awakening, let us remember. Along with Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs – and scientists and secular humanists – let us be conscious of the time of year, and may we enjoy its colorful displays.

May we find comfort as we look up into the starry winter night, knowing that while all things change, nothing is lost. And that, this very moment in the Orion Nebula new stars are being born.

May we be stunned to stillness by beauty, and remember who we are and why we are here.

We are caught in a web of stars, cradled in a swaying embrace,

rocked by the holy night, babes of the universe.

May this be the day 

we wake to life.

Amen. 

Partnerships Around the World

Opening Words: read by Christine Cahill (Vision Statement of the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council)

We envision a worldwide Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist community that promotes peace, justice, and liberty for all, supported by partnerships that are integral to congregational life.

Meditation: by John Daniel a poem entitled “A Prayer among Friends”

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive

with one another, we walk here

in the light of this unlikely world

that isn't ours for long.

May we spend generously

the time we are given.

May we enact our responsibilities

as thoroughly as we enjoy

our pleasures. May we see with clarity,

may we seek a vision

that serves all beings, may we honor

the mystery surpassing our sight,

and may we hold in our hands

the gift of good work

and bear it forth whole, as we

were borne forth by a power we praise

to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.

Images from our Partners

Romania: read by Libby Tyler (written by Peri Ceperley)

(Picture of minister, followed by slide show) 

Attila Molnar has been the minister of the Unitarian Church in Szekelykal for 10 years or more.  He is dedicated to preserving the Hungarian and Unitarian minority cultures in Romania and to leading a thriving, enthusiastic congregation.  To this end, he is involved in all aspects of church life,  and makes a point of walking through the village visiting his parishioners.  He is familiar with details of all the family members in most of the local Unitarian families.  He is also quite enthusiastic to see the church thrive and grow and is very involved in the current building projects financed primarily by our partner church program.

Attila is supported at home by his wife, Monika, and his two children.  Monika teaches in the local primary school, but she helps Attila organize and carry out church celebrations and festivals.  Their home is right across the road from the church, so they are never far from the activities.  

Currently, Attila is very involved in the remodeling of the chapel house of the church, an adjoining building they hope to heat and use in the winter for religious education, small services, and lodging for guests.  In all the photos Attila can be seen alongside all the other church members as they construct this building.  

Before Attila came to the Szekelykal church as a young man many years ago, the ministers had not stayed for more than a few years apiece.  The parishioners are grateful that Attila has come and made it is life work to see the church flourish.

India: read and written by Brigitte Pieke

(Picture of minister, followed by slide show)

This is Enial Lyngdoh. He is 60 years old, is married, and has a son named Mandy

who is in college at the moment.  He has always been dedicated to the Unitarians in NorthEast India. First he was a church worker, then  an assistant minister and now a minister of the of the church in Nongtalang and  their neighboring villages of Sohka and Padu.

  He wants to expand the church in Nongtalang.  I think, by building the church, he wants to do just that.

When he is talking about our partnership relations with Urbana he says literally:

It makes him feel near and dear, he has the feeling of brotherhood internationally, and that we are brothers and sisters  in our faith and that we are spreading the wings of sympathy. This means a lot to him, and he hopes that eventually this will grow his congregation.

He is also involved in the Unitarian School in Nongtalang. He does not teach there, but is very much involved in  the School Management Committee. 

Mission Statement: read responsively by Anne Sharpe

The mission of the Unitarian Universalist Partner Council is to foster and support partner relationships between UU congregations and individuals in the United States and Canada with Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist congregations, orphanages, schools and students in all other countries where partnering is sought and welcomed.  These will be mutually beneficial, responsibly sustained, and linked by joint and mutual covenants. We will:

BE a bridge that connects congregations around the world

REACH across boundaries to collaborate with old and new partners

CREATE transformational opportunities for pilgrimage and hospitality, for  learning and for service

CHALLENGE ourselves theologically and open ourselves to changed values and behaviors

ESTABLISH global community as a common commitment of liberal religion

INITIATE partnerships that promote global friendships, international awareness, human rights, and a better world; and

SUSTAIN this global vision, enlarging and renewing it as new occasions teach new duties.

Partnerships Around the World

A Sermon Delivered on December 7, 2014

By

The Rev. Axel H. Gehrmann

Be a bridge. Reach across boundaries. Sustain a global vision.

The mission of our Partner Church Council reminds me of the phrase “think globally, act locally.” It’s a motto that has been picked up by activists, educators, and environmentalists, and sometimes seems to have become a rather trite truism. But putting this simple idea into action is anything but easy. Yes, we know there is a big world out there, but more often than not, I think, we act locally and think locally.

I am reminded of an ancient story attributed to the Taoist philosopher Chuang-tzu, but which is also found in Hindu writings. It goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a frog who had lived all his life in a well. One day he was surprised to see another frog there.

“Where have you come from?” he asked.

“From the sea. That’s where I live,” said the other.

“What’s the sea like? Is it as big as my well?”

The sea frog laughed. “There is no comparison,” he said. “It’s bigger and much more beautiful.”

The well frog pretended to be interested in what his visitor had to say about the sea. But he thought, “Of all the liars I have know in my lifetime, this one is undoubtedly the greatest – and the most shameless!” 

(As retold by Anthony de Mello in Taking Flight, adapted.)

The first time I heard this story, I identified with the sea frog. After all, I have traveled the world a fair amount. I was born in Germany, raised in America, and years ago traveled all around Western Europe. I have always thought of myself as internationally enlightened. 

But at this stage of my life, I am not so sure. Despite the fact that I have been privileged to travel a fair amount, and despite the fact that I look at the World News section of the New York Times every day, I have come to realize that the Western Europe and North America I know are in many ways very similar. Economically, politically, and culturally, we share very much in common. 

Ten years have now passed since I visited our partner congregations and met Attila Molnar and Enial Lyngdoh. Traveling to rural Transylvania and the lush green hills of eastern India was a striking experience. It was striking how different their village life was from my own experience. 

Most obvious were the economic differences. A few dollars that we casually spend here can go a very long way there. This morning you have seen some of the building projects they have been able to carry out, thanks to what we were able to send their way from our Sunday collection.

But much more surprising than that, was to realize how little I knew about life in Eastern Europe in the wake of Communism, and how little I knew about life in Eastern Asia in the wake of colonialism. I was struck by how little I knew their respective cultures and traditions, and their unique challenges and perspectives.

And it was humbling to realize that even though I had considered myself some kind of cosmopolitan world citizen, I was in fact an amazingly clumsy, bumbling tourist in unfamiliar lands. I realized I was not the frog from the sea, but rather I was the one who had lived in a small well all his life, unable to imagine the world beyond. 

* * *

The Unitarian Universalism we practice in this church is a very North American phenomenon. Our version of our faith is shaped by this country’s history, the story of European settlers inspired by dreams of religious freedom and individualism. It is one way to understand liberal religion, but not the only way.

For over twenty years now the UU Partner Church Council has reached out to congregations across the world, trying to strengthen the bonds between us and our religious cousins. The effort began in the early 1990s, after the Ceausescu regime had crumbled in Romania, and the Iron Curtain came down. After decades of international isolation under Communist rule, we were able to reach out and connect with some of the 60,000 Unitarians who lived in western Romania, ethnic Hungarians whose congregations had existed there since the birth of Unitarianism in the 16^th century.

In the early 1990’s members of our church first visited Hungary and Romania, and initiated a partnership with the congregation in Szekylykal. Later we began to build a partnership with the Unitarians in Nongtalang, who recently celebrated the 125^th  anniversary of their church.

But our larger UU partnerships are not limited to India and Transylvania. For instance, we have several partners in Africa. There have been Unitarians in Nigeria for over a century. In 1919 the Unitarian Brotherhood church was founded by people disenchanted with the churches of their upbringing, searching for a more liberal religious community. In Kenya today several Unitarian Universalist groups are growing, and have recently formed the Kenya Unitarian Universalist Council, the KUUC. In the Republic of Burundi a Unitarian church was founded, that today works closely with other emerging groups in the French speaking countries of Africa. And in Uganda a Unitarian church is focusing its efforts on building a school in Kampala.

In the Southeast Asia, the Universalist Church of the Philippines was founded in 1955, which became the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Philippines in the 1980s. We have seven partner congregations there. And recently a UU group has been formed in Hong Kong. 

In the Czech Republic there is also a Unitarian presence, going back to the church founded by Norbert Capek, the author and inventor of the Flower Communion we celebrate every year on the first Sunday of June. 

* * *

What made my visits to Szekylykal and Nongtalang such a powerful and positive experience was the kind hospitality I received in the homes of fellow Unitarians, and the far-ranging conversations we were able to carry on, despite the barriers of language and culture and customs. Despite our obvious differences, we were able to discover many similarities of perspective, and similarities of concern. Our shared religious outlook made all the difference. Our shared openness of mind and heart, our shared fondness for critical inquiry and for questioning authority, our shared desire to build a better world, starting with our own lives, and our own respective communities.  

By being granted insight into the life of their congregations and communities, I was able to see our lives in a new way. Thanks to the kindness and generosity of our friends in Szekylykal and Nongtalang, I was able to gain a much better understanding of the well within which I have lived most of my life. 

I am very familiar with this small part of the world I know. All my dreams and worries, all my assumptions and ambitions fit snugly within its walls. Thanks to our partner congregations, I am able to get a glimpse of how small my world looks from the outside. I am able to get an inkling of a much bigger and more beautiful world I seldom see. 

We don’t need to travel across the globe to see the world from outside our well. Maybe all we need to do is drive to a place like Ferguson, MO, or go for a walk on the north side of town. 

In this day and age, we are called to think globally and act locally, because we know all our lives inseparable. The same spirit of life moves all of us.

May we build bridges and reach across boundaries 

And may our global vision of justice

Begin right here, today.

Amen.

No Place Like Home

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned."
-- Maya Angelou

Meditation: by Anne Sexton a poem entitled “Welcome Morning”

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook 

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry “hello there, Anne”

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning 

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it, 

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard

dies young.

Reading: by the Christian author Frederick Buechner from The Longing for Home (p. 7)

Home sweet home. There’s no place like home. Home is where you hang your hat…  What the word home brings to mind before anything else, I believe, is a place, and in its fullest sense not just a place where you happen to be living at the time… The word home summons up a place… which you have rich and complex feelings about, …a place where you feel you belong and which in some sense belongs to you, a place where you feel that all is somehow ultimately well even if things aren’t going all that well at any given moment. To think about home eventually leads you to think back to your childhood home, the place where your life started, the place which off and on throughout your life you keep going back to if only in dreams and memories and which is apt to determine the kind of place, perhaps a place inside yourself, that you spend the rest of your life searching for even if you are not aware that you are searching. I suspect that those who as children never had such a place in actuality had instead some kind of dream of such a home, which for them played an equal crucial part.  

Remarks: by Rev. Axel Gehrmann

Next week I will be heading home for Thanksgiving. My wife, Elaine, and I will be packing up our little Prius and driving to Washington, D. C., which is where her mother lives. But Washington, D. C., isn’t actually home for Elaine, it’s not where she is from. She is from Pittsburgh. And D. C. isn’t really home for me. I’m from Germany. Washington also isn’t really home for our son Noah, who will be driving with us, nor for our daughter Sophia, who now lives near Philadelphia, and will be taking the bus to D. C. and meet us there.  The kids consider Urbana home. And come to think of it, I’m not sure D. C. is what Elaine’s mother would consider home. She is from a small town in Pennsylvania called Ridgeway. And her husband is from Brooklyn. 

If home is the place we come from, then none of us are at home in Washington. Nevertheless, that is where we are all headed next week. And when we all get there, and when we all sit around the dining room table, I know it will nevertheless be home for us. 

It will feel like the place we belong, and that belongs to us. The dining room table will be home, shaped by our presence, but also by the memories each of us bring with us.

Home is a unique place that touches into rich and complex emotions. 

Sometimes we speak of this place as our home, our church home. The fewest of us were born here, but many have come here and remained here. Maybe we were searching for just this kind of place. Maybe not. 

I would like to welcome Tanja Hodges to the pulpit, so she can share some of her thoughts on the matter.

Reflections on Welcoming: by Tanja Hodges

So, in a move of full disclosure, I’ll tell you that I did not come to this church looking for a ‘church home’.  In fact, I came to this building looking for space to rent on a weeknight.  While touring the facility I saw a sign that said “Choir rehearsal: Saturday at 10 am.  Everybody’s welcome.”  At that point in my life I was completely ‘anti-church’ but I wanted to sing again so I decided to take a risk and show up. I did this while hoping that you all would let me sing, but not spill too much of that ‘religion stuff’ all over my perfectly good Sundays. I came to this place a devout Humanist, so perhaps you can imagine my surprise when that ‘religion stuff’ at this church became an important part of my life - just as important as the music to me.   I believe I was able to embrace a place here because I felt welcome and comfortable … almost from day one.  

Now, at this point I think I’m supposed to be talking about how all those nametags that people wear, or how the individual greeters made me feel welcome… but frankly, the nametags didn’t really move me very much and I didn’t even realize we had individual greeters in the lobby those first few years here because I never saw them – mainly because the choir arrives early for rehearsal on Sundays.  The thing that I feel I can honestly talk about that made me feel welcome wasn’t any specific organized welcoming effort, but instead something… well different.  To put it simply, what made me feel welcome was the way you treat one another, and therefore the way you treated me.  The thoughtfulness, gratitude, and engagement that each of you expresses so consistently and openly is what made me feel welcome.  

You may or may not realize it, but you have created a culture of kindness like none other I’ve ever encountered.  As a whole, this congregation is unfailingly helpful, along with being considerate and caring toward the feelings of others. For example, on an occasion or two one the pieces we have sung in choir may not have gone as well as we had intended, and on those Sundays people seem to really put effort into coming up between services and telling me –and other choir members I assume – how much they appreciate all the choir’s efforts and state that they think the piece must have taken a ton of hard work.   You all seem to live your faith in a very appreciative, caring and supportive way… that, in and of in itself, is very welcoming, in my opinion. Thanks for listening.  

Remarks: by Rev. Axel Gehrmann

Everybody is welcome here. This is what we say. This is what we believe. This is what we write on signs. This is the spirit we try to cultivate – a spirit of welcome, a culture of kindness. 

We strive to extend hospitality to all. We have nametags, and we have designated greeters, yes indeed. But hospitality is really much bigger than that. The spirit of hospitality we cherish can only be sustained if everyone joins in. 

I wonder what it would look like if hospitality wasn’t the work done by designated greeters for the sake of designated guests, but a spiritual practice shared by each and all of us.

MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Reading: by David Rynick, a member of the First Unitarian Church of Worcester, Massachusetts and also a Zen Buddhist teacher. This is from a piece entitled “The Spiritual Practice of Hospitality” (UUWorld, Summer 2007)

Practicing hospitality is not something we can appoint people to do, nor is it a set of techniques or behaviors we “use” on new people. Rather, it is an… intentional action,…  that creates the quality of relationships in our churches that will nourish newcomers and longtime members alike…

In a true encounter with another human being, we come face to face with the mystery of life. In some way, every other person, no matter how well we know them, will remain as mysterious to us as a country across the ocean we only read about in books. When we judge other people or other countries by our native standards, we miss the richness and texture of their life and wisdom. We need to learn to be good tourists—to be curious and respectful.

Too often we get stuck in the trap of believing we already know who someone else is. But whenever we encounter another human being with respect for this essential unknown, we create the possibility for something genuinely new to emerge. In every interaction, whether it is with a stranger or our longtime partner, we can be surprised by what we have not yet seen or even imagined…

It is possible to view hospitality as a duty, as something that imposes a claim on our attention from the outside. But I believe that as spiritual practice, hospitality becomes something quite different, an act of mutual [kindness] undertaken in a spirit of self-discovery…

In choosing this spiritual practice of hospitality, I live out the longing of my heart—creating a new reality for myself and the people around me. I reclaim my power to create the kind of world I want to live in. Gandhi was speaking of this kind of radical act when he said, “We must be the change we seek.”

We may have little control over conflicts in another part of the world, but we can practice truly honoring the preciousness of all human life by how we enter into relationship with each other. If we are serious about creating a more just, equitable, and compassionate world, we have to start with the room we are in.

Remarks: by Rev. Axel Gehrmann

Hospitality can take many different shapes. Each of us needs to find what works for us, what fits our particular interests, what speaks to our particular needs. 

I would like to welcome Nancy Dietrich to the pulpit, so she can share some of her thoughts on the matter.

Reflections on Welcoming: by Nancy Dietrich

My husband, Russ Rybicki, & I started attending the church about 5 years ago.  Lapsed Catholics at the time, we were looking for a community where, as social and religious liberals, we felt like we fit in, and where there were opportunities to get involved in causes we believed in and ways to get to know people in the church on a more personal level.  

My friend Maryly Crutcher, whom I met while serving on the board at Channing-Murray Foundation previously, invited me to attend. Russ & I had done a little bit of church shopping before coming here, but never really found a place that we felt like we would be comfortable becoming a part of the community. We found that here.

One part of helping to make us feel comfortable in this congregation has been the coffee hour after each of the services.  When Russ & I first started attending the church, many members of the church reached out to us at coffee hour, chatted with us, and made us feel like we belonged here.  In turn, I’ve found coffee hour to be an opportunity to reach out to others who are new to the congregation, to help make them feel welcome in the same way longstanding members of the church, who have since become friends, reached out to us.  

Another way I felt welcomed into this community was the new member potluck held at Cindy & Michael Loui’s when Russ & I first joined the church.  This is such a great outreach to the new members of the church community to get to know others in an informal, relaxed setting. It really made me feel welcomed.  

As I mentioned earlier, having opportunities to get involved with causes I believe in was also an important part of finding a church community for me.  Getting involved with the Hunger Initiative and the Social Action Committee gave me an opportunity to do this.  Being involved in both of those groups and feeling like I was making a difference was really essential in feeling welcome and feeling like I fit into this community.

My busy husband, Russ, has also felt welcomed into this congregation.  He has recently become involved in coordinating the UU Happy Hour, and enjoying socializing with other UUs in that way.  We have also enjoyed getting to know others through Circle Suppers, the annual service auction itself as well as the auction activities Russ & I have bid on and taken part in, and other social activities we’ve taken part in here.  It has really made us feel part of a community.

In summary, I really want to encourage newcomers to check out all of the small groups, committees, and other ways to really get involved in the life of the congregation.  I would also like to encourage longstanding members & friends to reach out to those with the “Hello” nametags and others whom you have not met before.  It really can make all the difference; it definitely did for me.  Thank you.  

PAUSE

Reading: by the British born professor of architecture and environmental planning Clare Cooper Marcus from House as a Mirror of Self: exploring the deeper meaning of home (p. 280) 

Home is not only a literal place but also a place of deep contentment in the innermost temple of the soul. Home is where the heart is runs the familiar saying. It has, I think, two levels of meaning. Heart or love is our connection to family and friends, to places and persons familiar and nurturing. But heart is also our innermost being, our soul. In this latter sense, home is where the heart is refers to that way of being, that place, that activity in which we are most fully and most deeply ourselves…

What I have learned… is that the human spirit is constantly in process, constantly on a journey of discovery… Without the journey, there may be stagnation, frustration, disempowerment. Thus, like it or not, we all have to leave home to find ourselves. However, the self we are seeking is not literally “out there”… it is always within. The paradox is that… we are each and every one of us always [and] never leaving home. To leave is to grow through adventure, risk taking, danger, excitement; to return is to find stability and strength at the still center of our being. Leaving home – and returning – is something we do every day and throughout our lives. 

Remarks: by Rev. Axel Gehrmann

Home is the place we come from and it is a dream of the heart. It is a reality deep within us, and it is a possibility we long to discover, which we strive to create. 

I would like to welcome Ryan Latvaitis to the pulpit, so he can share some of his thoughts on the matter.

Reflections on Welcoming: by Ryan Latvaitis

Some of you know I’m taking a class in Arabic at the U of I, where I also work.  I’ve nearly mastered the alphabet and am now working on expanding my vocabulary, and there’s a word I discovered that encapsulates some of my experience with home, and finding one’s home.  It’s الغربة, (al-ghurba) which is translated variously as longing for one’s homeland or native land, homesickness, and feeling a stranger in a strange place.  

You see, I’m an anxious person, fidgety and ill-at-ease among new people.  I have few friends, and I’ve always struggled to feel comfortable except in the most familiar of places.  Feeling at home is, thus, very important to me.  

الغربة describes well how I felt as I began to venture beyond the commute between work and home once we moved here in July of 2012.  I was searching for things to make this place pleasant, to feel connected, rooted.  One thing that helped was subscribing to the newspaper, which kept me posted on local happenings.  

One other thing helped even more.  One day in the fall of 2013 my now-fiancé Christy said that we should stop by the Unitarian Universalist Church.  I had mentioned that I missed the experience of church, but didn’t want to swallow someone else’s dogma.  We came, we saw, we liked it.  The people were open and warm, and everyone eager to get to know us.  It offered intellectual stimulation in book discussion groups, a conviction that the world can be improved through social action, and the opportunity to worship in my own way among a loving community.  The three-week UU orientation sessions Axel hosted provided a safe forum for questions about what Unitarian Universalism was.  My feelings of strangeness, of الغربة, have been diminishing since our first Sunday here.

I recall in particular one moment of this transition – of becoming not just UUs, but Urbana UUs.  I opened my mailbox to receive my first Uniter.  It felt special, like I was a member of a community.  There is something different about a physical thing than a digital thing.  Maybe in this way I’m old-fashioned, or less charitably, a luddite.  I maintain the soul savors a letter more than an email, much in the same way that being here is more satisfying than listening to the sermons online.  

We’re in a time of change in this church, and we would do well to analyze how we do things.  Yet so too we should be careful.  Buzzwords like innovation, disruption, and the popularity of tech startup culture have been adopted by wider society as marks of sophistication.  We are admonished by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook to “Move fast and break things.”  This is not advice one should follow in one’s own home.  

I urge you all to think carefully about how this church is home to you, and how it could be made better.  It is only by our labor that this wonderful place will prosper.  

Remarks: by Axel Gehrmann

Many of us come here searching for a place where we can feel connected, rooted, and accepted; a place that is open and warm.

This place of our dreams is something we are called to create. It is a radical new reality. It is the world we want to live in. Its hallmarks are acceptance, respect, and kindness. Its expressions are thoughtfulness, gratitude, and engagement.

Whether or not we call this place our religious home, the task of making this a welcoming place is a religious practice that involves all of us – regardless whether we are here today for the first time, or have been here all our lives. 

True hospitality is nothing other than the most straightforward expression of our firm belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Practicing real, heart-felt hospitality is the first step we need to take in our efforts to build a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.

Mahatma Gandhi firmly believed we can each be the change we seek. And I agree. We can.

We all come from different places. 

But when we come together here, 

may we make this one place where everyone is welcome. 

May this be a place where we can gather around a welcome table

to share our memories of happiness, and our dreams of love. 

May the spirit we find here inspire us to change the world.

So be it. Amen.

The Center of the Universe

"We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us."
-- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Meditation: by the British-born scholar of Easter philosophy and Zen Buddhist practitioner Alan Watts

If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death, or shall I say, death implies life, you can feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke. But you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. 

I am not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it, I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities. I am not trying to prove it. I am just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. 

So then, let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power, within one night to dream seventy-five years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure. And after several nights of seventy-five years of total pleasure each, you would say, “Well that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is going to happen to me, that I don’t know what it is going to be.” And you would dig that too, and come out of that and think “Wow, that was a close shave, wasn’t it?” Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles what you would dream. And finally you would dream where you are now. 

You would dream the dream of living the life you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have – of playing that you weren’t God. Because the nature of the Godhead, according to this idea, is to play that he is not.

So in this idea everyone is fundamentally the ultimate reality, not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the Self the deep down whatever there is. And you’re all that. Only you’re pretending that you’re not.   

Reading: by the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson from Death By Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries (p. 229-230)

Many generations of thinkers, both religious and scientific, have been led astray by anthropocentric assumptions, while others were simply led astray by ignorance. In the absence of dogma and data, it is safer to be guided by the notion that we are not special, which is generally known as the Copernican principle, named for Nicolaus Copernicus, of course, who, in the mid-1500s, put the Sun back in the middle of our solar system where it belongs. In spite of a third-century B.C. account of a Sun-centered universe, proposed by the Greek philosopher Aristarchus, the Earth-centered universe was by far the most popular view for most of the last 2,000 years. Codified by the teachings of Aristotle and Ptolemy, and later by the preaching of the Roman Catholic Church, people generally accepted Earth as the center of all motion and of the known universe. This fact was self-evident. The universe not only looked that way, but God surely made it so.

While the Copernican principle comes with no guarantees that it will forever guide us to cosmic truths, it's worked quite well so far: not only is Earth not in the center of the solar system, but the solar system is not in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy is not in the center of the universe, and it may come to pass that our universe is just one of many that comprise a multiverse. And in case you're one of those people who thinks that the edge may be a special place, we are not at the edge of anything either.

Reading: by the American author Bill Bryson from A Short History of Nearly Everything (p. 17)

As the biologist J. B. S. Haldane once famously observed: “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.”

The analogy that is usually given for explaining the curvature of space is to try to imagine someone from a universe of flat surfaces, who had never seen a sphere, being brought to Earth. No matter how far he roamed across the planet’s surface, he would never find and edge. He might eventually return to the spot where he had started, and would of course be utterly confounded to explain how that had happened. Well, we are in the same position in space as our puzzled flatlander, only we are flummoxed by a higher dimension.

Just as there is no place where you can find the edge of the universe, so there is no place where you can stand at the center and say: “This is where it all began. This is the centerpoint of it all.” We are all at the center of it all.

The Center of the Universe

A Sermon Delivered on November 16, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Where is the center of the universe? If earth isn’t the center of the universe, is the center of the universe somewhere out there in outer space, maybe where the Big Bang happened billions of years ago?

I guess not. Scientists say there is no place where you can say: This is the center. This is where it began.

This morning, I am happy to tell you, I have the privilege of sharing with you a truth even the most respected of the world’s scientists have not discovered: I know where the center of the universe is. And I will tell you.

Amazingly, and luckily for us, it isn’t very far away. It’s actually just 17 miles from here. My wife, Elaine, and I have driven by several times, and we didn’t even realize it.

I discovered the truth earlier this week perusing the archives of the Urbana Free Library, where I found a book that will perhaps now become world famous, once the news of this discovery spreads. The book is entitled “Our Village History, Philo, 1875-2000: the center of the universe.” In it, I found “The Story of How Philo Became the Center of Universe,” and even photographic proof: a photo of the Philo water tower with words clearly painted on it, that say “Philo, IL – Center of the Universe.”

The story goes like this: 

“It was Thanksgiving 1969 and the Narbey Khachaturian family was in India where Professor Khachaturian was serving as consultant to the US Agency for International Development, for the advancement of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur.

Teenagers Greg and Jon were attending the American International School in New Delhi and had brought a friend, Bill Stollberg, home for the holiday… The family took Bill to Bitur, a place by the Ganges River that was of significance to the Indian people.

It was so significant, in fact, that there was a small shrine-like area that sheltered a plaque that read “Bitur – The Center of Universe.”

“Oh, that is not true,” the boys told their friend. “PHILO is the center of the universe.”

[And so it was, the residents of Philo agreed… in the mid- 1980s] the Philo Village Board voted to have this geographical news painted on the water tower…. [And] in 1992, the Philo Woman’s Club had shirts and caps made with the Center of the Universe Declaration.”

* * *

Though clearly meant as a joke, the story of the Khachaturians does point to a profound and perhaps universal human perception: We each live in the center of our own personal universe.  

Our universe is made up of the places we have been, and the people in our lives we care about. We are surrounded, first and foremost, by friends and family members closest to us. Beyond them, in concentric circles around us, are our casual acquaintances: the colleagues and neighbors we see every week. And beyond them are fellow citizens in our city, whose names we don’t know, but who we see on the street or in the grocery store. And then there are strangers across the country and around the world who we have never met, who we don’t much care about. Most of the time we forget they even exist.

We are each in the center of our own universe, each most concerned with what affects us directly – the events of our lives that make us happy or sad, personal accomplishments or personal losses. When a project we have long been working on is successfully completed, when a family member is in the hospital, or when a friend of ours dies.

We each have our own distinct perspective on the universe that extends in all directions around us. And from our subjective point of view, we are in the middle of the universe. 

From an objective point of view, of course, none of us are at the center of the universe. And neither is Philo. 

* * *

From an objective point of view, Copernicus is right – the earth isn’t the center of the solar system. We are traveling around the sun, just like the other planets close by, and the countless asteroids and comets zipping through space – one of which now has a small European probe on it, which landed there successfully this week. The Rosetta spacecraft was traveling 34,400 miles per hour, and caught up with the comet 334 million miles from the sun, after a ten-year chase.

The Copernican principle says, the universe does not revolve around us. Humanity is not the measure of all things. And likewise those of us who imagine we are the crown of God’s creation are likely mistaken.

Copernicus demoted humans from the center of the universe. He is often cast as a champion of science and challenger of religion. But this simplistic story line doesn’t do justice to the subtleties of either religion or science.

In a book entitled Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion the intellectual historian Dennis Danielson says, it seems we can’t utter Copernicus’s name without at once feeling the urge to say he “dethroned” the earth or us humans. Danielson writes, 

“Almost every week new examples of the same claim appear in newspapers, on the web, and on the syllabuses of college courses – it is repeated so often, and by such respectable voices, that it has become like a perennial mold of our collective mental cupboards and a gratuitous blight on the planetary morale.”

What this intellectual cliché overlooks, however, is that for Copernicus being in the center was not necessarily good, and being removed from the center was not necessarily bad. So, for instance, a few centuries earlier,

“Thomas Aquinas, the foremost Christian philosopher of the Middle Ages, [said] that “in the universe, earth – that all the spheres encircle and that, as for place, lies in the center – is the most material [the lowliest] and coarsest of all bodies.” …[And] Dante, writing his Inferno in the early fourteenth century, placed the lowest pit of hell at the very midpoint of the earth, the dead center of the whole universe.”

Another assumption about Copernicus is that “in allegedly reducing the status of the earth, he also struck a blow against religion, particularly Abrahamic religions, which supposedly require the cosmic centrality of humankind.” But, as Danielson points out, in both Jewish and Christian teachings humans are not generally portrayed as the central masters of the universe, but rather the scriptures describe our human “smallness, weakness, and often moral incapacity against the immense greatness, goodness, and otherness of the Creator.” For instance in the Psalms it says: “When I look at your [God’s] heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them.” (8:3-4; NRSV).

Yes, it is true, Galileo got in trouble with the Roman Catholic Church for promoting the ideas Copernicus introduced. But Galileo’s offense was not that he challenged church doctrine. It was that he challenged the scientific authority of Aristotle, long accepted by the church. The conflict was not between science and religion, but between new science and old science.

* * *

Casting Copernicus and Galileo as protagonists in a long-standing battle between religion and science is really a gross simplification of both scientific research and religious thought.

For centuries, and especially since Einstein, modern science has shown us that the world is not as it seems. Time and space are relative. The objective world Newton imagined cannot explain the subatomic and astronomical universe in the midst of which we live. In a quantum world, it turns out, subjectivity is not an aberration but an essential aspect of the way the world works.  

We depend on our observations and perceptions to make sense of the world in which we live. And yet our perceptions play tricks on us. Our eyes are playing tricks on us when we think the earth is flat, because it looks flat. We know of course, it isn’t. 

Our senses are playing tricks on us, when we think the earth on which we are standing is stationary, because, of course it isn’t, it is speeding around the sun, and spinning at a dizzying rate. 

Our senses are playing tricks on us when we think the objects around us are solid: the pews on which you are sitting, the pulpit behind which I am standing – we know these objects are made out of atoms, which in turn are made up of particles that whirl around huge empty spaces. (Do you remember the sermon Pam Blosser delivered a few months ago? She said, “there is a common analogy about the structure of an atom. Imagine with me now that the nucleus of an atom is like a fly in the center of a sports stadium and the electrons are tiny, tiny gnats circling the stadium…”)

The color red we perceive is simply a particular wavelength of light. And all the colors we can see are only a fraction of the light surrounding us. And yet still we cling to these illusions our senses provide for us.

* * *

Alan Watts asks us to imagine what it would be like to awaken from this illusion. Imagine the universe is not what it seems. 

Imagine that the life we are living is a dream. A dream we are making up as we go along. A dream that has twists and turns we can’t anticipate, and yet which we can influence. 

We need to wake up from our illusion, Watts says, we need to realize “that our real body is not just what’s inside the skin, but is rather our whole, total external environment as well, [we need to realize we are inseparable from the world around us] because if we don’t experience ourselves that way, we mistreat our environment.  We treat it as an enemy.  We try to beat it into submission; and when we do that, disaster follows.  We exploit the world we live in.  We don’t treat it with the love, gentleness and respect that it so richly deserves.”

My senses tell me I am THE center of the universe. My senses tell me that I am more important than anyone else, that MY health and happiness is more important than anything else, and that the people closest to me, the ones I love, are the only people who matter. But this is an illusion.

We are not more important than everyone else. Everyone else is just as important as we are. Everyone’s claim to health and happiness, to prosperity and safety, to freedom and justice, is just as valid as our own. Every single human being is at the center of the universe. 

If we were to awaken from our dream, if we were to pierce the illusions with which our senses surround us, we would realize that we are each an expression of the entire cosmos. Alan Watts says: “We are each something the whole universe is doing, the way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing.” The wave is the ocean. The ocean is the wave.

We like to think we are the single center of the universe, as if that were a good thing. But imagining ourselves and only those closest to us in the center of the universe, ends up isolating us, separating us from the rest of the world. And instead of being part of the ocean, we are just a little puddle of water, surrounded by dry land on all sides, all alone. This is an illusion.

Both science and religion tell us we are inseparable from all existence. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. When we are able to awaken from our dream, we know that this is true. 

Mindful of this truth, may our every word and deed 

be guided by a spirit of love, gentleness and respect 

for all people, and the whole world.

Amen.