Of Time and the Nebulous
Someday, they say,
stars will stop
gelling—the
hydrogen and
helium gone.
Someday, each
star will call it
a day & go to bits.
Someday the day
will be as dark as
night, the hydrogen,
the helium snuffed.
Someday, in, oh, say,
ten billion billion years,
time will eddy & stop.
Someday deep will
call to deep with
nothing here at all.
Someday here will be
empty like there,
in, oh, say ten billion
billion years . . .
So off we go to
corral the OK.
Off we go to
fish for the net.
Off we go, a link
in the unchained.
Off we go to someday.
A Softer Focus
Photo Credit: Angie McMonigal Photography
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
– Kurt Vonnegut
In college, we had this mantra among our swim team: hard core. As the phrase might imply, to be hard core meant maintaining physical and emotional strength in spite of pain and setbacks – whether it was enduring the grueling three-hour long training sessions, withstanding the mental challenges involved with competing at the collegiate level, or surviving the social dramas and angst of college life. Hard core was a compliment in the highest regard, synonymous with strength, resilience, competence, confidence, and independence. To be hard core was to be respected and admired.
And so, for many reasons, I was hard back then (though probably not as hard core as I would have liked to be). I saw things in black and white. Questions had one “right” answer. Success (and, consequently, happiness) had a path that must be followed without deviation. There was little room for doubts, mistakes or uncertainty, and almost no room for acceptance, tolerance, and patience.
And, although being hard core as an athlete may have been helpful, I have found that it isn’t all that valuable to me as a person.
Being hard just doesn’t make much sense to me anymore.
I am learning that life isn’t a series of Either/Or conclusions, but a multitude of Both/And possibilities. It is possible to be soft and strong, to be vulnerable and confident, to be patient and resilient. It is possible to swim around in the doubts without drowning; to say “I don’t know” without being unintelligent; to say “I’m sorry” without being weak; to change my mind without being erratic and unreliable; to be generous without being abused; and to be merciful without being manipulated.
So these days I’m taking a softer focus. I’m looking for beauty in the complexities and differences, appreciating our multi-hued world instead of straining to create a monochromatic one. I’m enjoying the mysteries and unknowns, becoming more comfortable with the questions that have no easy answers. I’m saying “I don’t know” and “I’m sorry” more often and more sincerely. And, impatient as I am, I’m even trying to find joy in the waiting.
The thing is, in many ways, it is easier to be hard. It is easier to see things in black and white, to look for absolutes, and to live in an either/or world. It is challenging and confusing living in the softer world, where few things are fixed and certain and there are infinite shades of gray, along with reds and oranges and purples and pinks. It can be terrifying to live with an overflowing heart without a hard protective shell.
And, in many ways, it is hard work to stay soft. Idealist thoughts of perfection must fly out the window, along with regrets and should-have-been’s. The soft focus is more permeable, letting in the bad with the good and heightening emotional sensitivities. It can be clumsy and awkward walking on shaky soft ground. There are missteps, stumbles, and falls. There are wrong turns and false starts.
Fortunately, with this softer way, the falls are cushioned and it is easier to get back up, to turn around, to try again.
So I’m using a softer focus these days, resolving to keep a softer focus despite any personal or societal pressures to be harder, sharper, tougher.
There is no doubt that I am softer now – softer, in fact, than I ever thought I could be.
And, you know what?
I think that I just might be stronger than ever because of it.
Both. And.
This post originally appeared on the author’s website.
How Unitarian Universalists Do Church
I suppose everybody has a favorite founding document for a religion or a nation. Mine is “Farewell at Delfshaven,” a sermon given by Rev. John Robinson to a group of his Separatist congregation who were taking ship for the Western Hemisphere. Part of the sermon goes like this:
I Charge you before God and his blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.
The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw. Whatever part of His will our God has revealed to Calvin, they (Lutherans) will rather die than embrace it; and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery much to be lamented.
For though they were precious shining lights in their time, yet God has not revealed his whole will to them. And were they now living, they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light, as they had received.
The way Unitarian Universalists “do church” comes directly from the protestant movements that eventually led to the English Civil War and the decision by some of the radicals that it was perfectly acceptable to God that they supplant the aristocracy and remove their king’s head. . . Radical. It isn’t surprising that the royalty of the day weren’t particularly keen on keeping those sorts around. And perhaps it isn’t surprising that these most protesting of Protestants eventually set up theocracies and felt justified in clearing the land of its native inhabitants.
Yet these radicals—known to us nowadays as Pilgrims, Puritans, and Separatists—were up some positive things as well, such as what we call democracy. And the best of their thought is exemplified by these last words that Rev. Robinson said to members of his congregation as they sailed to England to join another group of dissenters and board the Mayflower.
These parishioners settled in what they called Plymouth, Massachusetts to build what is today a Unitarian Universalist church, which indicates that the beliefs that Rev. Robinson preached, plus about four-hundred years, equals Unitarian Universalism. The deepest beliefs of those religious seekers are the DNA of Unitarian Universalism (for good and ill).
Notice some things about this little sermon: yes, there’s the usual unfortunate bashing of other denominations—in this case Lutherans and Calvinists—but Rev. Robinson was saying two very radical, and I think positive, things.
The first is: “follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ.” This is still an expectation in the Unitarian Universalist movement: we don’t ordain ministers and then think those ministers are somehow levitating or holy. We don’t think our ministers are special—we expect our ministers to walk the walk . . . all the time, but a minister is just like the rest of us folks.
The other radical thing that Rev. Robinson preached is the very core of the tradition: that truth continues to be revealed. Or, more radically, that we human beings continue to find more and more truth, and we must continue to modify our beliefs according to these new truths.
The Separatists did not “do church” as did most of the Christian groups of the time (and still today). Roman Catholicism had developed along the lines of the political systems of the day: emperors, kings, men in charge. Some protestant groups—Lutherans and Anglicans for example—created state religions. These groups saw themselves—dangerously as Rev. Robinson pointed out—as founded on eternal truths. This justified building hierarchies. Top down.
The Separatists, however, believed in the individual discovery (or revelation) of truth. Therefore, they could not accept hierarchy within the congregation. Each member of the congregation was on a separate path toward truth, and as likely as any other member (including clergy) to find it.
As a corollary, the churches the “pilgrims,” and eventually Puritans, set up in Massachusetts were all individual as well. Each congregation discovered truth for itself. This is one reason the Separatist movement eventually fractured into Trinitarian and Unitarian congregations.
Still today, each congregation in the Unitarian Universalist Association is on its own, to choose leaders, to find their own way toward truth. And the “power,” whatever that is, lies within the congregation, not the association of congregations.
Not an ideal way to run a collection of congregations, a “denomination,” of course, but a great way to encourage freedom of conscience and thought.
Yes, the radical protestant movements of Europe were “precious shining lights in their time,” but nowadays, the belief systems they were founded on are for the most part relics of the past, products of minds “who yet saw not all things.” And, as Rev. Robinson said, “This is a misery much to be lamented.” I, for example, as a minister, don’t use the terms “God” or “Christ” at all in my historically humanist congregation. The light has shown my congregation a different path.
That’s the genius of the idea Rev. Robinson preached: truth just keeps on coming.
Spiritual Practice for Skeptics
I tend to get it from both sides when I talk about spiritual practice: many of my fellow skeptics blanch at the word “spiritual.” And many Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Sufis, and what-have-yous seem to think that rationality and spiritual practice are at loggerheads. But humanists value connectedness and experience wonder just like everyone else. As far as I’m concerned, that’s spirituality.
I grew up Pentecostal. The spiritual practices taught in that tradition are daily bible reading and prayer. There is much talk of “having a prayer life.” As a kid, I assiduously read the King James Version of the bible. I completed the task when I was twelve. Admittedly, I didn’t understand much of what I read, but I credit that practice with preparing me for reading Modernist literature when I got to college. What’s a little James Joyce after you’ve read Leviticus at twelve?
Along about the time I was fourteen I began questioning praying in the manner I had been taught—petitionary prayer. I decided that it was presumptuous to ask God (if that god knows all and can do everything) for anything. On the other hand, I knew then, and I still believe, it is mentally healthy to pause, consider the needs of others, and think of ways that one might help others achieve those needs. That’s another sort of prayer entirely.
Nowadays Christians have rediscovered “contemplative prayer.” It is an interesting practice. But it wasn’t much known back in the days when I was searching.
When I was twenty-two I traveled to Boulder, Colorado to Naropa Institute. I went to study at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. I went because my poetry hero, Allen Ginsberg, was there. I discovered the serious practice of Buddhism.
At Naropa, Ginsberg and Gary Snyder both taught that meditation had to be an end in itself—the point isn’t to meditate on something to write or to be a better writer. Meditation just is. The point isn’t “enlightenment.” Rather, meditation tunes the mind.
I have to admit, I’m fidgety. I didn’t meditate well then; I don’t meditate well now. The writing of poetry became for me a spiritual practice. That, to, focuses the mind and centers one in the moment. I have continued that practice through my life—through births, deaths, disappointments, divorce. Every day, I write. It is part of me. Some days it has been all I have had to keep me going.
I use tricks to keep my writing a priority. I blog. I work on a chapter of the Daodejing every day, polishing a translation I have been working on for a long time.
Most days, I also practice meditation in the Buddhist manner that I learned at Naropa, even though I’m still fidgety. I sit down, quiet the mind, watch the thoughts pass, and realize that they are thoughts. The Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh perhaps sums up Buddhist meditation best in his book Being Peace:
A human being is like a television set with millions of channels. If we turn the Buddha on, we are the Buddha. If we turn sorrow on, we are sorrow. If we turn a smile on, we really are the smile. We cannot let just one channel dominate us. We have the seed of everything in us, and we have to seize the situation in our hand, to recover our own sovereignty.
For me, anyway, the great Buddhist insight is that each of us has the ability to step between a thought and a reaction . . . to realize that our minds are creating stories, that these stories shape our lives, and that these stories can be slavishly followed . . . or changed.
Writing poetry and meditating have sustained me as a humanist. Sure, “spiritual” is an overused word in North American culture. But in that heap of salesmanship, there are some real gems.
Apocalypse Never (and what we can do about it)
I grew up in the Pentecostal church. When I was ten, I knew just how the world would end: “the fire next time.” Tribulations. Seven seals. The four horsemen. Rainstorms of blood and fire. And what was more, this was coming any day now: the present terrible state of the world had been precisely prophesied in the book of Revelation in the bible. All you had to do was read it yourself.
Polls indicate that roughly half of Americans are waiting for some variation on this theme. For some, it’s the Rapture; for some the Second Coming; for others the Apocalypse, but roughly half of Americans are waiting for a supernatural end to human history and the earth.
Why do people think that? There a lots of conjectures—people who feel oppressed, marginalized, or poor often hope for an immediate end to their . . . tribulations. I also suspect the fear of aging and death figures in. After all, if the world ends today, I don’t have to go through the death process. And I suspect that it also has to do with the desire of human beings to live in extraordinary times—I’m special; the end of the world is special; therefore, the world will end while I am alive.
Then there is how we deal with the fact that the end never comes. Oddly enough, it appears to be that rather than giving up on predicting the end when the end doesn’t come, believers merely begin to reinterpret and believe all the more.
Odd. Human nature. Something we need to ponder a bit.
Jakob van Hoddis was a young man in the early part of the Twentieth Century. He was a poet. And a socialist. A German Jew. And he had some mental health issues. He began to ponder the end of the world and wrote this poem, “Weltende.”
Dem Bürger fliegt vom spitzen Kopf der Hut,
In allen Lüften hallt es wie Geschrei.
Dachdecker stürzen ab und gehn entzwei
Und an den Küsten – liest man – steigt die Flut.
Der Sturm ist da, die wilden Meere hupfen
An Land, um dicke Dämme zu zerdrücken.
Die meisten Menschen haben einen Schnupfen.
Die Eisenbahnen fallen von den Brücken.
The hat flies off the pointy-headed bourgeois;
in all the winds there’s an echo, like screaming.
Roof tiles fly and break in two
and on the coasts, one reads, it’s flooding.
The storm is here, the wild sea hops
onto land to crush thick dams.
Most people have runny noses.
The trains fall from the bridges.
(author translation)
Now here’s the irony: as a German Jew, as a “degenerate” poet, and as someone with mental health issues, van Hoddis had three strikes as far as the Nazis were concerned. And, indeed, in 1942, the sanitarium where van Hoddis had gone was cleared of its patients and all were killed.
End of the world, wasn’t it? But van Hoddis shows us the irony of apocalyptic literature: it’s wish fulfillment. In the book of Revelation, the bad people, who are people who persecute Christians, get what they deserve. Justice at last reigns supreme.
As a socialist, van Hoddis wanted the upper-middle class to get its comeuppance, and so in the poem, a wind blows the hat off ones pointy head.
You can see this wish-fulfillment tendency for yourself—take a peek at any apocalypse you like, and what you’ll find is the bad guys punished. Sometimes the bad guys are those who aren’t Christian. Sometimes they are warmongers. Sometimes they are the “liberal media.” Sometimes they are the “pointy-headed bourgeois.”
The upshot is always that a power greater than ourselves sets everything right.
You’ve read and heard the descriptions:
And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. (Isaiah 11:6 ASV)
(By the way, the lion lying down with the lamb is not in the bible. That phrase is a conflation of two verses from Isaiah, the other being:)
The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox; and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will do no evil or harm in all My holy mountain, says the Lord. (65:25)
Now wait a minute. Wolves and lambs do not get on well together. And lions don’t eat straw. But this is the problem with apocalypse: it is in its very essence magical thinking. The very nature of our world is that lions are not vegetarian.
So, back to my question: Why is apocalypse so interesting to so many?
Because long-term solutions are not interesting.
Long-term solutions are difficult. And boring. And require committees and task forces and lots and lots of charts and graphs and talking, talking, talking.
Who wants to work on a long-term solution when we can have our cake right now: the wind blows the hats from the middle class and snakes no longer do that gross thing when they digest rats. The serpents take to eating dirt. Nice world!
Unitarian Universalists are guilty too. One of our greatest hits among our hymns is “We’ll Build a Land.” I like it too but some of the lyrics go,
We’ll build a land where we’ll bind up the broken
We’ll build a land where the captives go free
Where the oil of gladness dissolves all mourning.
Oh, we’ll build a promised land that can be.
Wait a minute! No—it CAN’T be! Gladness does dissolve mourning, yes, but you can’t bottle that and pour it on everyone’s head. Gladness and mourning have to exist side by side, and wolves and lambs are just not going to “graze together.”
That hymn is a great way to buck ourselves up, but for real . . . it ain’t happenin’.
And quick-fixes in the real world turn more often into Pol Pot’s Cambodia or Pinochet’s Chile.
Lions can’t survive on grass. And we human beings are going to fix the problems that we have created . . . or not.
I’m not a prophet, but I can make a couple of predictions that I”m fairly certain of: One, lions will never eat straw . . . and some people will always choose a quick buck over the collective good; and two, “god” will not smite these people (at least in a timely manner). What those two things add up to is this: we are on our own. If anything is going to get fixed, it is up to us to do it. (And we know that our opponents are very content to have us curl up, get angry, and stare at our navels.)
Yet accepting “apocalypse never”
liberates us to get down to the tasks at hand.
What Bowling Taught Me About Patience
Photo Credit: Angie McMonigal Photography
A couple of week’s ago, on a cold Chicago afternoon, after being cooped up for most of the week, my husband and I looked at each other and said, “Let’s go bowling.”
Now, nothing says wholesome family fun quite like putting on some smelly communal shoes and listening to drunk men swear at the football game, but after being cooped up in the house for more of the week, we were just a little bit desperate.
Matt and Jack have gone bowling together a few times, but this was the first time that Teddy had been bowling. After trying on three (three!) different pairs of shoes, convincing him that the bowling ball that looked like Darth Maul was too heavy for him (he’s just a tiny bit obsessed with Star Wars), and showing him how to put his almost-four-year-old fingers in the ball and roll it down the lane, he was ready to go.
“Self! Self!” he stubbornly said in true Teddy fashion.
He walked to the line holding the ball with both hands and I have never been more certain that a trip to the ER for a broken toe would be in our near future. (By the grace of God, he made it out of the bowling alley with all ten toes intact.)
For ten frames, Teddy grabbed his ball, stepped up to the line, and heaved the ball as hard as he could down the lane. Most of the time, he rolled the ball right into one of the bumpers and it would sloooooowwwly bounce its way down the lane. On each of his rolls, the ball moved so slowly, in fact, that I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t make it to the pins. And, more than a few times, Matt and I exchanged a look that said, “Which one of us is going to ask the surly desk attendant for help when the ball stops in the middle of the lane?” (Fortunately, we never had to answer that question, but for the record, it would have been him.)
On every one of Teddy’s turns the ball moved at a snail’s pace, barely moving down the lane until, finally, it would make it to the pins and maybe even hit down a few. As one of THE most impatient people on the planet, I found the delay to be a bit unsettling at first. Waiting for the ball to plod down the lane, I felt nervous, jittery, and antsy.
But, after a few frames, I realized that what I was feeling wasn’t actually impatience; it was fear. Fear that the ball would never make it, fear that we’d have to ask for help from the surly man at the front desk, fear that Teddy would end up in a tantrumy heap of tears.
But, after a few frames, I realized that the ball would eventually make it to the pins even though it looked like it might stop moving at any moment. And with the fear of not making it subsiding, the waiting actually became the best part of it all. Because in the waiting, I had time to soak it all in. I could watch Teddy’s eyes light up as the ball moved down the lane, I could steal a few glances at my husband, and I watch my older son add up the scores on the screen.
Once the fear of never became the confidence of eventually, I was able to look at the waiting and the slowness in a whole new light.
And I wondered: How many other times have I mistaken fear for impatience? Fear of the never or the always. Fear of the falling and failing. Fear of dead ends and asking for help. Fear that without the end, the means just don’t matter.
And in this fast-paced, frenzy to get something or do something or hit the target, how much has gone unnoticed and how much enjoyment have I missed in the slow-moving journey?
I’ve been struggling a lot with impatience lately, wanting things to happen now, now, now. But I am realizing that this need for things to happen on my timetable is less about fulfillment and satisfaction, and far more about fear. Fear of losing control, fear that I will never make it, fear that I am somehow lacking just as I am and right where I am, fear that I won’t be satisfied until the pins are knocked down so to speak.
We tell ourselves that when the pins are knocked down, then we’ll be happy. When we get married, when we have a baby, when the kids are in school, when the kids are out of the house, when we get the job, when we get the promotion, when we are out of debt, when we buy a house, when we get an agent, when we get published, when we receive this award, when we land that sales account, when…, when…, when…then we’ll be happy. And all the while, the ball is moving slooooowwwwly down the lane and there is so much going on while it rolls if only we’d just notice.
The ball moves slowly, more slowly than we’d like, many times. And we wait and we wait and we wait, growing increasingly tired of all the waiting and more fearful that the ball might actually stop. And in all of that fear, we miss it. We miss the twinkly eyes and the emotions, the bouncing back and forth and the graceful movement to it all, the sights and sounds and people and various goings-on that are actually a really big deal if we’d just stop focusing so much on those damn pins at the end of our lane and trust that the ball will eventually get there.
After bowling for a few hours last Sunday afternoon, and watching the ball move slowly down the lane, I realized a few things. I realized that the ball will slowly, eventually, finally reach the pins; it just takes a little longer sometimes. I realized that if the ball does stop, you can always ask for help (even if you have to ask the surly man behind the desk), get a new ball, and roll again. And, most importantly, I realized that there is so much good stuff going on while we wait for whatever it is that we’re waiting for.
So take your time. Pay attention. Enjoy the journey.
And know that, even when the ball moves slower than we ever thought possible, that at least the pins are happy for few extra moments of peace.
This post originally appeared on the author’s website at www.christineorgan.com.
A Scream and a Theory: Natural Selection and the Higher Moral Order
Scientific theories do not occur in a vacuum. Like poems or paintings, theories reflect the times and characters or their authors. Darwin’s theory of natural selection, far from being a stark and cold scientific theory, was—and continues to be—an impassioned cry for equality and justice. A cry far more grounded and stirring than anything available in the religions that human beings then, and into our own time, tenaciously claim to be the only source and grounding for morality.
First, a little family history: Charles Darwin’s family was passionately involved in the abolition movement. Darwin’s grandfather, the Unitarian Josiah Wedgwood—of Wedgwood china fame—bankrolled Thomas Clarkson, the great British abolitionist. Britain, due in great part to the work of Clarkson, outlawed slavery in the dominions in 1807 and the colonies in 1833.
(A bit of historical trivia: One of the chemists working in the Wedgwood factory was Joseph Priestly, discoverer of oxygen, and a Unitarian minister. )
Charles Darwin’s father, hoping to tone down the radical reputation of the family, had Charles baptized into the Church of England. But it is an interesting fact of history that the father of the theory of natural selection . . . married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, a Unitarian, and considerably more radical, at least publicly, than Charles.
The fact remains that when the 22 Charles boarded HMS Beagle in 1831, he was a conventional Christian considering going to seminary and becoming a priest in the Church of England.
What changed?
For the full story, read Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution. When we look at Darwin’s life from the perspective of the slavery question, it looks almost inevitable that he should call religion’s bluff concerning its monopoly on morality and show a way toward a higher morality.
In 1845 Darwin wrote,
I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye. … And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty… .
Darwin knew very well that the appeal to religion as a basis for moral behavior would be one of the first objections to the theory of natural selection. Yes, I think he would have pursued his theory, even if it had meant that human beings had no moral guidepost. But I suspect that Darwin knew that the implications of natural selection point in exactly the opposite direction.
Consider how Darwin framed the discussion:
His first proposal, published in 1859 but written in 1837, was this:
Living things are all one: they are “netted together.” (Darwin avoided the question of the “crown of creation,” human beings, as best he could in his first book.)
Then, in 1871, Darwin dropped the bigger bombshell:
Humanity is all one.
And therefore, we must strive toward a higher morality than that which we have developed thus far. Darwin wrote, “The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.”
Darwin was a naturalist. He observed the “facts on the ground.” He heard the cries of a slave being beaten. He knew that slavery persisted in the United States and many parts of the world. The conclusion was plain: Religion is not sufficient to make individuals or governments behave in moral or ethical ways.
Darwin knew that, despite pretensions, Christianity—and the other human religions— more often underwrite and condone the prejudices of societies than point in the direction of a higher morality, a more good and just society. You don’t have to be Darwin in the mid-Nineteenth Century to see that!
I’m not an extremist concerning the effects of religion because, frankly, I think people will be people, no matter what the religious or political overlay . . . on an individual level, that is. The evidence is all around us: The vast majority of human beings are basically “good,” meaning most of us don’t hurt others all that often. Most of us don’t steal things . . . all that often. Most of us behave in ways that add up to going along to get along.
Most of us aren’t Jesus. Or Gandhi. Or Martin Luther King, but we’re not Stalin or John Wayne Gacy either. Most people—Christian, Muslim, or atheist—go along to get along.
That’s on an individual level. Religions get dangerous in the aggregate—when those systems begin to say who can enslave whom; who can subjugate whom; who can kill whom for what set of reasons.
Consider again what Darwin said about slavery and the treatment of slaves:
And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty… .
It is the aggregate that creates the evil, by “palliating”—by underwriting and condoning—the evil deeds.
But in the face of this fact Darwin saw, as perhaps no other human being had ever yet seen, that adaptations are adaptations, brain cells are brain cells. In humans. In primates. In animals. “We are all netted together,” Darwin wrote.
We are still on the frontier of this way of thinking. William Shakespeare long ago said, “A touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” It took Charles Darwin to tell us just how true this is. And we still don’t comprehend it: We are all netted together.
Where, then, is the uniqueness of human beings?
Consciousness. Not the sort of consciousness that tells us whether the sun is shining; not the sort of consciousness that tells us whether it is good or bad to sleep with particular people. The sort of consciousness that allows us to think about the thoughts of others—other people; other animals. This is the most complex form or consciousness. It is moral conscience.
Before Darwin the answer to the question, “why does consciousness exist?” was, “Poof! It’s magic! Set off by the divine spark . . .” After Darwin, the answer is not so neat and tidy. But the answer we have points the way toward a higher morality. Darwin put it this way: “The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.”
Charles Darwin
This is the profundity of the theory of natural selection: far from making us mere animals, as the religious often claim, natural selection calls us to see beyond the limitations of our time and place. Natural selection posits a mode of being beyond the mere going along to get along. Natural selections tells us to control our basic impulses. Not because those are animal impulses—all our impulses are animal impulses—but because the sort of animal we are can see beyond our selves.
Worthy to be Entrusted
(Today, I preached at the ordination of a new minister in my denomination, Unitarian Universalism. Her name is Rev. Lara Campbell, and I shared the pulpit with Rev. Michael Tino. Here is my half of the sermon.)
“Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message,” wrote Olympia Brown, the first woman to be ordained by a denomination—the Universalists, in 1863. And we know that she did not demand immediate results, she who worked for women’s right to vote from girlhood and finally was able to cast a ballot in 1920 at age 85.
I think of Olympia Brown, loving this faith despite the widespread discouragement she had to face in order to be ordained and the challenges she faced in ministry her whole life. I think of Egbert Ethelred Brown and Lewis McGee and so many other groundbreaking ministers of color who fought, against resistance and sabotage, for the right to lead Unitarian and Universalist congregations, who stood by this faith. And I think of all the people who still struggle to be able to devote their gifts to this faith, for a variety of reasons.
We do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message, their lives say. Their ministries say. Their legacies say. Their legacies are very much with me tonight as I preach, for the first time, wearing a stole given to me after the death of one of my mentors, Rev. Gordon McKeeman, who died in December. Gordon, a stalwart Universalist, who devoted his life to this faith, is now here with us, lending strength and companionship, reminding me that he has entrusted me with leadership, reminding us that he entrusted his life to Universalism and ministry.
I think of these people and I think of all the bold, visionary Unitarian Universalist ministers, ordained and not ordained, right now, some of you sitting right here, who have dreams of new applications for our faith, who believe that our faith calls us to stand with those lofty ideals of equity, justice, lovingkindness, in this miraculous yet devastating world. Who imagine ministries with unusual new shapes and contexts and methods, all of which seek to bring more love into the world.
I think of ministries beginning in coffee shops—Beloved Café, envisioned by seminarians at Starr King School for the Ministry—and yoga classes—Create Meaning, out in Denver—and in the streets—Faithful Fools, which has been inventing street ministry for decades now—and AWAKE ministry in Annapolis, and the Sanctuary in Washington DC—all bold, visionary new shapes for our future. And each week, with the Church of the Larger Fellowship, we live into these new shapes as we try new ways to find each other, to care for each other, to care for our word from all across the globe.
And deep within me, I say, yes! I am so grateful that you stand by this faith! All of you! All of us! I am grateful that so many work for it and sacrifice for it! I am grateful that all of us are here today, attesting to its value, when we could be doing so many other things on a Sunday afternoon!
But then, right there with the yes, something in me whispers, but…just a little whisper that says, but.. yes, but… but I wish you, and I, didn’t have to dream our dreams alone so much of the time, wish some of our best and brightest lay and ordained ministers weren’t still fighting for support the way that Olympia Brown and others have had to fight for support. I wish each vision could be surrounded by others who supported vision and faith, that we could find ways to reach out better beyond our individual enterprises and make common cause, collaborate with one another, build something bigger than our congregations.
In this era of union-busting, I am longing for a Spiritual Union. I want spiritual collective bargaining. I love Unitarian Universalism, and I love the way that our congregations are self-determining and unique, but I believe in those old songs that I was raised on, about how “The Union makes us strong.” I take to heart those words in our hymnal from Dr. Martin Luther King, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” And I say, when do we realize that we are that garment, instead of behaving as if our purpose on the planet is to pull apart the threads?
What might we do if we embodied a place of spiritual union with one another? When I say we, I don’t mean only Unitarian Universalists, I mean all of us who believe that people are worthy to be entrusted with carrying and sharing love so deep it will not let us go? What if that name that’s been assigned to us when we wear bright yellow shirts that say Love on them, The Love People, was really our identity? What if we cast fear aside, if we dared to believe that humanity, collectively, is worthy to be entrusted with the message that there is power of love so big that it can’t be held by any one set of religious metaphors and beliefs?
And who might we entrust with our faith? Who might we trust as prophetic voices in our wider faith, a faith not bound by traditional buildings or denominational stakes in the ground? How might we live into spiritual union with the people whose leadership we need in order to challenge and take down the notion of the saved and the damned, the chosen and the unchosen, the deserving and the undeserving, which dominates the US and so many other countries as much now as it did when John Calvin’s concept of predestination, that some are born saved and some are born damned, was widely believed to be true?
Where might we find union and create more love with other people, of every faith and no faith, who dare to proclaim that all people have inherent worth and dignity? Where are the voices saying, YES, African American youth and other youth of color, you are worthy to be trusted! Youth of color, queer youth, youth in general—you are worthy to be trusted! You are the people we need to have as union stewards in our spiritual union.
Where are the voices insisting, YES, people on public assistance, you are worthy to be trusted! More spiritual union stewards, whose leadership we need. Where are those whose witness proclaims, YES, immigrants without all your legal documents in order, you are worthy to be trusted! We need you as leaders in our spiritual union.
What might we do? Who might we dare to be? We have seen some of this in our work for marriage equality, immigration rights, voting rights, in our anti-racism work, as we join other religions and organizations and people to work together, but what if we had real spiritual union?
Whatever configurations our ministries with one another and the world take, whatever architecture we use for buildings, whatever technologies we employ, our own sense of Unitarian Universalism’s worthiness must be a part of the structure. But the time for clinging to small identities is over. The world is far too small now, we are too closely connected to even imagine that we do not have neighbors on every side who care about what we care about.
It’s scary. It means letting go of so many structures and identities that we have confused with worthiness—structures of privilege, or comfort. It means swimming in the ocean rather than in the small pond which our relational faith can become. But love will save us, again and again, when we are afraid, when we are confused, when we make mistakes, when we can’t get our bearings.
We are worthy to be trusted, not because Unitarian Universalists are the chosen people. Worthy, instead, because we have devoted ourselves to faith in a force–call it truth or God, life or love–a force much bigger than we are ourselves—which will not let us go, and which will not be confined or defined.
We have been entrusted with a great faith, and that faith whispers, shouts and sings, You are worthy! Worthy to wear the mantle of this great faith.
A Gift, A Letter, and a Drowning Man: The Legacy of “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
There’s an old Zen story that does like this:
Once there was a great warrior. He had never been defeated, and he continued to win every confrontation into old age. He was known far and wide as the only warrior who had never suffered a defeat.
This of course was a challenge to younger warriors, and one day a young man appeared to challenge the old warrior. He, too, had never suffered defeat. His technique had become famous: he allowed his opponent to make the first move, then exploited that move and always won the day.
Despite the concern of his students, the old warrior consented to join in combat with the young man.
On the day of the battle, the young man walked up to the old warrior and spat in his face. The old man did not move. Then the young man began to hurl insults. This had no affect either. Then the young warrior began to throw dirt and stones at the old warrior. The old warrior stood, impassive.
Finally, exhausted by all his effort, the young warrior bowed to the old warrior, admitting defeat.
After the young man had left, the disciples of the old warrior gathered around him. “Teacher! I would have split that young man’s skull open! How could you allow him to hurl such insults at you?”
The old warrior replied, “Consider this: if someone offers a gift and you will not receive it, to whom does that gift belong?”
Nonviolent resistance embraces the techniques of both the old and the young Zen warrior. Like the old teacher, nonviolence does not accept the gift of violence or insults. Like the young warrior, nonviolence provokes a first response, then watches the opponent to see what the first move will be.
On April 12th, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for parading without a license. There wasn’t a great deal of reading material in the jail, but one of the people arrested with King had been allowed to keep a newspaper he had in his pocket. That newspaper contained an editorial written by eight Euro-American Alabama clergy titled “A Call for Unity.”
The editorial began with the premise that, yes, African Americans deserved equality, but—that said—that said equality should be allowed to happen slowly—in the fullness, shall we say, of time. Without hubbub and marches.
King had heard this argument many times—just calm down and let the South change, slowly but surely. He had heard it from Euro-American centrists; he had heard it from within the African American leadership itself.
King began writing a response immediately. He used the bottom of his shoe for a desk. He wrote first on the margins of the newspaper; then on toilet paper; then on scraps provided for him by an African American trusty in the jail.
What he wrote is one of the great documents in US history, up there with the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. What he wrote is an argument based on the Unitarian thought of Henry David Thoreau’s masterwork, “Civil Disobedience.”
MLK knew that violence was the nature of racism. But it is also a basic human response to threat. In his letter King says this:
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps:
collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist;
negotiation;
self purification;
and direct action.
We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.
Besides the moral high ground of nonviolence, King also knew that his cause itself stood for a higher order of morality. In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau had asserted, “If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.”
King was asking for that plank back. He saw the higher moral order, as did Thoreau and Tolstoy and Gandhi before him. Rather than getting the plank back, the Civil Rights movement got a small concession: I’ll let you hold onto my plank once in a a while, when you’re going down for the third time.
This is the unfinished business of what King started. And the continuing challenge to those who strive for a higher moral order. Still, today, I must restore the plank that I wrestled from a drowning human being. And there are many, many of those.
King’s letter is there still to remind us: “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”
And,
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Saving the music, Saving our souls
Much talk is made of gentrification, but I want to take a moment and lift up the shadow side of all the cool new coffee houses and increased property taxes – dispossession. New Orleanians who managed to return post-flood are finding themselves pushed out of the city by the incredible post-2005 rent & tax increases and city liens on properties.
Now this city is in the process of being dispossessed of it primary cultural expression – music. On Friday, January 17th, a Sound Ordinance will be brought before the City Council. One that requires lowering the decibel levels (on a tuba?!?!?! a trumpet?!?!?).
There is a pattern in this nation of white people being drawn to the soul and spirit of culturally vivacious places – and then beginning to institute laws and ordinances that strangle the life out of the culture that first attracted them.
Beloveds, let us break that pattern in New Orleans.
Bring an anti-racist analysis to the proposed sound ordinance and see how long it lasts. Same with the second line permits. Same with anything that on the surface looks “reasonable” and almost always privileges the dominant narrative, those with institutional power.
Institutional racism is persistently constructing our reality – and dehumanizing every one of us. Let us work creatively to resist the cultural genocide taking place in New Orleans and in other areas of dispossession in these United States of America.
