The Constant Source

March 5, 1967
Plainfield
EMC Theme

The Constant Source

This morning I am affirming a few variations on the theme suggested by the reading, “The Church and the World.” The opening sentences of that reading fit my condition, “The Church has long been my world – not the building, but the concept and the people.”

“I was born into it; nurtured within it; got my outlook on life from it; found it the constant source of meaning in a shifting, confusing culture; decided to spend my whole life with it and for it.”

Those of you who were able to attend the hostess meetings during the past two weeks know that I believe the programs and services of this society deserve your pledge. Following this service, and continuing until 9 tonight, our Fund Campaign Organization will have canvassers available to discuss your pledge, if you choose. Otherwise the regular pattern of home canvassing will be followed. We are counting on your cooperation. One problem we wish to avoid is shellout falter.

Now my purpose in speaking of organized religion in general and Unitarian Universalism in particular as the “Constant Source of meaning in a shifting, confusing culture” is not to ring tedious changes on the alleged superiority of our religion. The death this week of Henry Luce, the publisher, reminded me of an anecdote told about Mrs. Claire Booth Luce and the late Pope John XXIII. Mrs. Luce is a well-publicized convert to Roman Catholicism. When she had an audience with Pope John, she was so talkative and enthusiastic about her conversion that the Pope interrupted her gently, saying, but Mrs. Luce, I am a Catholic.” (NR 10/16/65)

If you are a convinced Unitarian, you do not need a hard sell from me. If you are unconvinced, or partially convinced, persuasion must come as a result of your own insight, your own evaluation of what is true and lasting in religion.

Neither do I think thoughtful people need to be harangued about the proposed programs, services, and commitments. There has been the opportunity for information. Those who have questions may still seek answers. The alternatives to financial support are not numerous for the fulfillment of goals in this 1st Unitarian Society of Plainfield. I was amused by an item written by one Nathaniel Low, “a receipt to keep one’s self warm a whole winter with a single billet of wood”:

“A receipt to keep one’s self warm a whole winter with a single billet of wood: Take a billet of wood of a competent size. Fling it out of the garret window into the yard and then run down the stairs as hard as you ever can drive, and when you have got it, run up with the same measure for speed; and thus keep throwing down and fetching up, til the exercise shall have sufficiently heated you. This renew as often as Occasion shall require.” (from the “Village Other.”)

Most substitutes for financial support are no more persistently effective than Mr. Low’s “receipt.”

The Constant Source is not a flow of easy answers to tough questions. The Constant Source is the possession of attitudes that have served our tradition well. These are attitudes to be used, experienced and passed on to our successors in family life, church leadership, and community stance.

We are part of the totality of a universe energized by forces or a force, of such immeasurable creativity that always, religious language fails to measure up to the impact of the religious experience itself. This experience we seek to cultivate and try to understand. One way to be in touch with this Constant Source is to be open to the poetry, art, music, drama, theology and moral insistencies that men and women have created as expressions of this mystery of the origins, relatedness, and destiny of life. Such is the worship experiences we seek.

We know too that the Constant Source is never so near as when we are involved in the process of making the ideal real, of transforming the theoretical into the practical; of changing the actual circumstances of social life in order to test whether or not our goals have authentic identity with that which may be happening hourly, daily on the streets of the towns and cities of this strange space vehicle we call Earth.

Sometimes the Constant Source that inspires ethical living sends us alone to where the action is; sometimes it binds us together here as we seek to act in love and for truth and justice.

The Constant Source is at hand when gripped by inner anxieties, grasped by uncertainty and fear, grabbed by horrible threats to our personal stability, we reach out for the touch of strong, friendly hands, for the perceptive mind, and the affectionate response. When a religious society is at its best, it is a “ministering community,” a Constant Source of inquiry, reverence for personality, service where needed and understanding of the human dilemma.

Writing about the “Organization Man,” William H. Whyte, Jr., had words for the relationship of the person to society:

“What are the terms of the struggle? ....

“No one likes to be played checkers with, and the man The Organization needs most is precisely the man who is most sensitive on this point. To control one’s destiny and not to be controlled by it; to know which way the path will fork and to make the turning oneself; to have some index of achievement that no one can dispute – concrete and tangible for all to see, not dependent on the attitudes of others. It is an independence he will never have in full measure but he must forever see it.” (p. 166-67, NY, Simon and Shuster, 1956)

Thoreau:

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music he hears,
However measured or far away.”

In times such as these, where there is difficulty in maintaining independence of mind, when it is not easy to resist conformist pressures in every area of life from styles of clothing to the ethics of war and peace, we need the Constant Source of our heritage and present affirmation of the right and duty one has to march to the beat of a different drum, if it is a distant drum he hears.

There are many pious comforts in traditional assurances about God and heaven that are not found here. Here no one can instruct you in required creeds or unchanging codes of behavior. If such rigidities represent security, it is a security we disavow. There is an old European fable adopted by Chileans and Argentinians, told by Eduardo Frei (NYT Magazine, 2/19/67, in article, “A Revolution Without the Execution Wall.”)

“A skinny dog from Chile and a fat dog from Argentina met in a mountain pass on the border between the two countries and, both having climbed nearly 12,000 feet straight up, stopped to rest.

“‘You seem to have suffered a rough trip,’ said the beautiful sleek Argentine dog, noting that the Chilean dogs ribs were visible through his sad coat.

“‘Yes,’ snapped the Chilean dog. ‘I am not nearly so well nourished as you. But I am told that in Argentina there is more than enough for all, and therefore I am headed that way.’

“‘Ah, yes,’ said the Argentine dog proudly. ‘In Argentina we have filet mignon three times a day if we like. We have great wines from Mendoza. And one can satisfy almost any craving in Buenos Aires. It is the Paris of South America. Lord, the girls in their Dior frocks and Dior shoes, their perfect coiffures, their delicious ... I’m sorry, I get carried away.’

“‘Well, I must be off,’ said the Chilean dog. ‘Adios.’

“‘Adios,’ said the Argentinian dog, as he trotted off toward Santiago.

“‘Wait a minute,’ shouted the Chilean dog after he had gone a few strides. ‘Why on earth after all you’ve told me about your country are you going to Chile? Tell me, hombre?’

“The Argentinian dog turned around, ‘I’m going to Chile to bark.’”

Here you may bark.

I am aware of varieties of critical analysis being applied to the form, value, and programs of local congregations, here and everywhere else. Who of us does not seek to improve our personal and group religion? All of us yearn for these moments when some creative, perceptive person will create from the ecclesiastical and sociological imagination a newly reformed religious structure which will be relevant and inspire reverence.

Consider Mr. Urban/Suburban America, flying the continent five days a week, carrying the inevitable briefcase – as much his authority of office and justification of salary as the mitre represents authority and justification of the bishop. Mr. Urban/Suburban America whose major living problems are postponed, not resolved, by his peripatetic journeyings.

Consider Mrs. Urban/Suburban America, his wife, that chauffeur par excellence, who may not be trapped in the split-level, but may be anxiously unstrung because of self-doubt or weary to the bone with the task of trying to instill high standards of behavior in her children and attempting to motivate them strongly to study harder for marks that will ensure acceptance at high status universities.

But Mr. and Mrs. Urban/Suburban American live with nagging fears that the children’s destiny may be little more than dazzling combinations of the kind of living about which mother and father have largely lost hope for contentment, let alone a fullness of gratitude for the gift of life.

Mr. and Mrs. Urban/Suburban America, living in a balance of financial affluence and emotional misery – stereotypes of lives which could be more productive and happy. Then there are millions in our land, ground down by poverty, prejudice and the light of hope flickers weakly for them.

Many are the critics who assert that in a world where most people are disheartened and timidly resigned to the genocidal domination of military-industrial overlordship, the Church is impossibly antiquated; antiquated because its effective role is largely limited to the basic ceremonies of the human nature cycle – matching, hatching, dispatching, rather than exerting leverage in solving the dirty, difficult problems of the world today.

I suppose if I wanted to concentrate, I could come up with a much more merciless critique of the religious society than any of you.

But as I look back on the sources of new visions and the emergence of new forms, the frequency is imposing with which inspiration began within the religious organization or structures.

The Old Testament prophets were both faithful and radical, beginning within the tradition. Jesus represented this continuity. If you read, you will note that he taught in the synagogues and made his most dramatic appeal for reform within the Temple grounds.

Savonarola, Hus, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Francis David, founder of Unitarianism in Transylvania, William Ellery Channing, Hosea Ballou, John Murray, Theodore Parker – the changes these men inaugurated were historically pivotal and the chances begin within the religious institutions. [CJW note: Most stayed within the institution of religion.]

In spite of all that could be said and is said about the inertia of church people in the face of dynamically changing society (and I have my private moments of cynical misery, believe me), nevertheless there is power in the conscience of many people in the churches when needs are clear and constructive passions abound. I have few formed notions about the shape of the future effectiveness of this Unitarian society. I do know that the religious society, whatever its faults, its disputes, its confusion about goals, its disagreements about methods, the free religious society is the place where if you have the courage, you can be a person and not just a manager, a scientist, a bureaucrat, an office-boy, a salesman, a carpenter, a teacher, artist, schoolchild, housewife, teeny-bopper, stubborn-traditionalist or passionate rebel. You can be a person.

Gabriel Fackre of Lancaster Theological School, writing in the essay, “The Crisis of the Congregation,” (VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS, p. 296), comments, “Of potentially great significance to the public sector itself is the new style of life to be found in many local congregations. At worst the clubbiness of the likeminded, but at best a genuine life together where burdens are borne and joys are shared ... something of a sign that says, ‘Here John Doe gets back his face and his name. In a world that manipulates and thingifies him, here is a community where personhood is affirmed. Let this world learn something of what it is like to make men human.’”

At our best we confront our fellow members as persons, not as stylized images; as fellow seekers not as crusaders. When we forget that may our words be as ashes, our proud convictions as the chaff which the wind drives away.

I make no assurance to you whatever that all programs you are asked to support will be equally fruitful – some seed always falls on stony ground. This I know. But I also know that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.