Living by Imagination
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When I was a boy, I had a vivid imagination. Some might have even called it overactive. Read more →
Behaving, Believing, Belonging
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It is astonishing how certain human bonds are able to transcend time and place. Early one year, my brother Chuck made contact—on the Internet, no less—with a long lost relative in Iceland. As genealogists reckon relationships, Kiddi is our second cousin once removed; in the simpler reckoning of the American South, he might be called a “kissing cousin.”
Come In and Sing!
Dómkirkjan – The National Cathedral in Reykjavík, Iceland.
The National Cathedral in Reykjavík is a modest edifice, as far as cathedrals go, and despite the fact that I’ve passed by it at least a hundred times on my visits to Iceland, I had never stepped inside—until last month.
I’m not entirely sure why. I have ventured inside dozens of other churches in the country, although most of those either had some connection to my own family or some connection to other emigrants to North America. And like many visitors to Iceland, I’ve ascended the tower of Hallgrímskirkja (which many mistakenly assume to be the cathedral) to experience its breathtaking views of the city and surrounding countryside. Still, I would have thought that historical curiosity might have led me through the cathedral doors before last month, if nothing else.
As I think about it, I suppose I had never entered the National Cathedral because the heavy wooden front doors don’t exactly say, “Come in!” I’ve never stepped inside the Parliament House next door, either—for much the same reason—notwithstanding the fact that I’m almost as passionate about politics as I am about religion. Unlike the inviting, glassed-in entryways to retail stores and restaurants, the solemn doorways to the cathedral and parliament house seem to say, “Enter cautiously but only if you have business here.” This isn’t a criticism; it’s just an observation.
On my last day in Reykjavík this year, I was walking toward the old city cemetery for my ritual visit with the ancestors, both familial and spiritual. As I turned the corner by the cathedral, I noticed the door ajar and I could hear the faint strains of organ music escaping to the street. It was Friday afternoon and, as far as I could tell, nothing formal was happening in the cathedral. So I poked my nose through the door.
Upon seeing me, the custodian rested her mop and beckoned me to come in. As I entered the nave, the music became clearer. The organist was practicing and the building was filled with The Beatles’ song “All You Need Is Love.” There were a handful of other people inside and, as time went on, I noticed we were all softly singing along with the organ. Our hearts and voices were one.
Open doors and the gospel of love: that’s most of what a spiritual community really needs to thrive. It’s mostly what individuals really need to feel welcome and valued. Nestled in a beautiful place—a shrine, whether indoors or out; surrounded by companionable souls, even though strangers; inspired by a message of love, however simple and whatever the source; moved to sing familiar songs, both sacred and secular—in such circumstances the human spirit soars, our shyness dissolves, everyday cares are transcended, and we experience ourselves as one with the interconnected web of life.
The organ loft in Dómkirkjan, the National Cathedral in Reykjavík, Iceland.
A Direction of the Heart
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Religion is something infinitely simple, ingenious. It is not knowledge, not content of feeling … it is not duty and not renunciation, it is not restriction: but in the infinite extent of the universe it is a direction of the heart.”
While I cannot agree wholeheartedly with this great existentialist poet about what religion is not, I share his sense that, whatever else it may be, religion is a direction of the heart. I mean this in a two-fold sense: any religion worth embracing will, in and of itself, contain an element of emotion which is both inspiring and satisfying. At the same time, any religion worth embracing will be sufficiently reasonable and encourage sufficient spiritual discipline so that it will serve to channel our feelings in positive ways—that is, it will offer direction to our emotions, tempering them when they are out of control and provoking them when they are sublimated in unnecessary or unhealthy ways.
Much of the history of liberal religion, in general—and Unitarian Universalism, in particular—has been devoted to crafting an approach to religion that is more rational, more reasonable, more intellectually coherent, and more congruent with empirical evidence than more traditional belief systems. I celebrate our cultivation of reasonable religion. But the life decisions we make—great or small—rarely lend themselves to purely rational processes. The value judgments we all make on a daily basis—about what we eat, who we love, what we enjoy, what work we undertake—may all lend themselves to attempts at rational explanation by social scientists but arriving at those personal judgments is anything but a purely rational exercise.
What separates the sanctuary from the laboratory, the church from the academy, the congregation from the learned society, is the richness of human feeling that goes into shaping and expressing the values we affirm and promote. And so we strive to find the balance between head and heart, to create a worldview that meets our deepest emotional needs without acquiescing to the ridiculous. A faith which represents a direction of the heart need not be grounded in simplistic sentimentalism or frivolous feeling – although sentiment and feeling will be found within it – perhaps even simplicity and a certain measure of frivolity, but it will esteem love and compassion, kindness and responsibility.
Waldemar Argow warned that, “Religion without emotion is a stunted, ineffectual thing. Religion that is all emotion is a childish and even dangerous force quite incapable of solving the problems we have to deal with. The ideal in religion is to establish the proper balance between mind and emotion, the thinking mind showing us the way we ought to go and the loving heart leading us to walk in that way.”
Asking for Wonder
For as long as I can remember, I have striven to be successful. Even in the earliest years of school, I wanted to be first in my class, whether or not I actually learned anything. As an adult, I have sometimes cherished the prestige of a position more than I have been satisfied by the work. When playing a game, I play to win – and when I repeatedly lose at a particular game, I lose my enthusiasm for it and stop playing. Now when kept in check, the desire for success is hardly a shortcoming, but when the quest for success – we might say mere success – becomes an all-consuming passion, then it is simply idolatrous. But I have grown bored with the outward measures of success. True success is the natural consequence of a job well done, a commitment honored, an endeavor brought to fruition – in short, a life lived with personal integrity. Success is an outcome, a consequence – but as a goal, in and of itself, the quest for success is rather elusive – as often as not, a complete waste of time.
Like other human institutions, spiritual communities are full of people who are driven by the desire to be successful, whether at work, in their personal lives, or even at church itself. Perhaps you are someone who nurtures such ambition. Yet it is apparent that even those who are driven to achieve the outward signs of success come to church looking for “something more.” Men and women discover that, even with the accumulation of wealth and the achievement of fame, our appetites are never fully satisfied. Public acclaim and personal comfort never quite mask the sense that there is “something more” which somehow eludes us.
In the preface to his book of Yiddish poetry, Abraham Joshua Heschel aptly summarized his own search for the holy when he wrote, “I did not ask for success, I asked for wonder; and you gave it to me.” How different our lives might be if, in place of success, we too asked for wonder!
In more traditional expressions of religion, this sense of wonder may derive from the supernatural or a magical understanding of the miraculous. In our naturalistic faith, the sense of wonder is found in the everyday and commonplace. We speak of the “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” This transcending mystery and wonder is experienced in many ways – when we gaze upon a beautiful vista, when we are caressed by the excited touch of a lover, when our ears tune in to the songs of the birds or the melodious strains of a violin, when the poems of the heart tumble from our lips, or when the golden silence of creation surrounds us in meditation or prayer.
Success is elusive for most of us, especially when we set our sights too high, but wonder surrounds us. We are bathed in the phenomena and experiences that provoke our sense of wonder and awe, if we would only take the time to pay attention. As we wend our way through life, let us ask not for success but for wonder, assured that we will receive it in abundance. The universe is simply bursting with it!
From Pens and Postage to the Digital Age
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Like many other Unitarian Universalist congregations, the church of my younger years owes its existence to the Post Office Mission, a forerunner of the present-day Church of the Larger Fellowship. Read more →
