For the Time – Being

January 1, 1984
Lakeland

The calendar informs us that this is a new year, 1984. We pin up the new calendars. We think back and look forward. There will be holidays and birthdays. Yet these dates are what humans impose on this strange experience of time. Einstein stated that time is relative, but few of [us] understand the science of physics sufficiently to know exactly what that means.

We sense, however, that beyond calendars and clocks, time is not only the accumulation of wrinkles and pain in the joints, but also an experience of the joyous and the sad, the hopeful and the gloomy, the exciting and the boring, the living and the dying.

W.H. Auden in his Christmas oratorio, “For The Time Being,” has the narrator say in the closing (read p. 21)

For the moment, reflect not on having, not on doing, but on Being. Reflect, I and Thou, on a world where, as Auden wrote, “everything became a You and nothing was an It.”

As we sing #48, the words of Ecclesiastes, to Pete Seeger’s music, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” think of Being in the experiences of living described so gently but so fully. (song 48)

The late Rene Dubos, scientist, Pulitzer Prize winner for his book SO HUMAN AN ANIMAL, wrote in another book, A GOD WITHIN, (read p. 10-11)

Who are you? Who am I? What is the depth of being, the reach of self that is you, that is “I,” waiting to be released? Who hides in you? Can we, for the time being, cut away the labels that society and ourselves have tagged us (scientist, teacher, homemaker, physician, lawyer, manager, minister, carpenter, technician, ...). When I was young, I had a friend who was old and wise, even though unlettered. When we met, his greeting was never “How are you” or “How are you doing” but “How you be?” Beneath the layers of roles and goals, how you be? Trust the Being that is hidden in the unsculptured self.

That is too simply stated, for it is the most arduous task of human Being. The late Abraham Maslow, in his TOWARD A PSYCHOLOGY OF BEING, has a chapter, “The Need to Know and the Fear of Knowing,” and begins (read p. 57)

To be completely honest with oneself is the very best effort a human being can make, yet it is a painful experience. We animate creatures are pain-avoiding as much as we can.

A cat does not jump on a hot stove more than once, or even a cold one after the first experience of pain. But the fear of knowing when we need to know can breed more prolonged distress. The modern poet, Elder Olson, has a quatrain, “Dark Day”:

“Sick, battered, and defeated, home I came
And sat and stared with envy at the clock
For which days dark or bright are all the same,
And every moment is mere tick or tock”

Was not the poet suggesting the cost of the denial of Being?

To be for the first time, for the time of our lives, requires that we recognize and accept that we have been afraid, but that our self-esteem will be enhanced, not destroyed, by self-knowledge. The Adam and Eve myth that taught that the Tree of Knowledge was dangerous failed to emphasize that lack of knowledge, particularly of self, was more destructive. When I audit my buried journal of rascal emotions, look at them squarely, admit that “they’re a fine kettle of fish” and forgive myself, then I have at least begun the process of “being.”

Let us sing together #22, “All The Thoughts That We Have Had, this is what we are”

offertory

“For The Time Being” has other dimensions. Wallace Stevens, in his poem, “The Man With the Blue Guitar” (p. 165)

“Things as they are, are changed in the Blue Guitar.” Wallace Stevens, like most good poets, does not say 1,2,3, exactly what he means. We read into the imagery that which resonates in our search for meaning. It occurred to me as I thought upon these lines that almost always we can substitute the word “change” for the word “time.” Calendar, clock, sundial, in all human experience, time is change. Every moment changes and extends our personal history. We do not always let change penetrate into our being. We resist. Nevertheless, change is Being, too. As the poet suggests, “But play, you must, a time beyond us, yet ourselves.” Every moment of change calls us to BE, even though change is the inevitable chord on life’s blue guitar.

There is still another dimension of being suggested by Erich Fromm (p. 88-89), TO HAVE OR TO BE.

This blue light can symbolize the highest quality of Being. Not what we retain, but what we give out. If I understand Maslow, this quality is the apex of self-actualization. By giving out, I do not mean the checks we write for worthy causes, essential as these are to the implementation of ideals. The blue light is basic confidence that we can reach out beyond egocentricity to share our love and care, authentically to be generous and accepting of others. To ignore or overcome our wounded vanity. To be aware and self-actualized in our Being sufficient not to be threatened by differences or fearful of disagreements. To let such a light shine not only illuminates a little bit of outer darkness but also glows in our Being.

In that spirit, let us sing #169. (“Life Is The Greatest Gift Of All”)

Just about here, I began to wonder if I had departed from the world as it is. This world where we fear the shadow of war, where we doubt there is enough humane power to remedy the catalog of miseries. So, [in] a differing note I want to share these lines from one of my favorite poets, John Ciardi, and his poem “New Year’s Eve” (written in the 60s). (read p. 61)

Ciardi sounds cynical and world-weary, does he not? But was his New Year’s Eve strikingly different than last night? Bitter about war, cynical about the military, jaundiced about government. But perhaps because I have read these lines many times, I sense his dogged hope that maybe we, the human species, will come to ourselves and not self-destruct. “Let in all mercies,” it won’t be quite a flood for a long day. Acknowledgment, acceptance, realism, even disgust, are in his lines. These feelings in more or less degrees we share if we are aware. To be in this time is [to] face the sad and fearful events even when they cut sharply like an unaccustomed frosty wind in Florida. But who can live without hope?

For the time – Being – to be in a fuller sense calls us to respond to:

Who are you?
Who hides in you?

To recognize the Need to Know and the Fear of Knowing
To let the light of our being shine in the world
To embrace change for time is change
To try to live so that everyone is a Thou and no one an It
Such are the ways of Being – in Time

T.S. Eliot, with poetic compression and comprehension, sums up:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

Our closing hymn, #105 (“All Hail The Pageant Of The Year”)

The Cost And Value Of Religion

December 4, 1983
Lakeland
Port Charlotte

“Why not abolish religion?” asks John Bartlow Martin. The reality is that no one is going to abolish religion, ever. One can quibble with the definition that “men invented religion millenia ago because they found the human condition intolerable, and because being frail, frightened mortals, they needed assurance that they were immortal, and all this is still the case.” Mr. Martin seizes upon fear as the cause of religion, and immortality as its solace. Such a definition singles out only one color and form of the multi-hued kaleidoscope that is called religion. While Mr. Martin may be writing tongue-in-cheek and being deliberately provocative, if he is at all serious, I’m reminded of the observation “to get people to believe only part of the story is one definition of a propagandist.” [CJW note: 1st casualty, p. 197]

There is much more to the story, and if Mr. Martin does not know it, then he could be reminded of a note the late Groucho Marx send to humorist S. J. Perelman after the latter had published a book. Wrote Groucho, “From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.” To Mr. Martin, it may be suggested that he read the whole story of religion.

Religion, although fear has been one persisting cause, is much more than that. People have experienced not only fear, but wonder in confronting the forces and mysteries of creation. However one labels oneself, can the experience of life in this universe be anything but awesome? Early religions deified the unexplainable forces – the gods of wind, ocean, volcanoes, mountains, water, and the creating abundance which gave people corn, fruit, and wine. Symbolic rituals were created, not only to placate these gods, but also to relate to them, to become one with the god, or gods. Such mystic embrace is more profound than fear. Being grasped by the experience of the All-In-All or the God beyond all the named gods and goddesses is so overwhelming that expressions of that experience never quite communicate the indescribable wonder, harmony, and beauty of the mystery. The philosopher Hegel believed that churches were needed to objectify the subjective feelings of awe that all persons feel. [CJW note: ... the Minds of Men, p. 228]

Furthermore, and just as vital, the columnist ignores the reality that most religions place upon its believers a code of human values – how must I behave to my family, neighbors, and the strangers beyond the gates. These are the expectations of ethical behavior that religion places upon us. Religion places expectations of ethical behavior upon its adherents.

I’ve forgotten which philosopher wrote, “History is the true demonstration of religion.” There has been much good as well as evil demonstrated by religion in history.

Would the world be a better place to live if there had been no Moses, liberator and law-giver, who placed an indelible stamp on one of the world’s great religions?

Would the world be a kinder place if Jesus had never lived and taught men and women that the Kingdom of God was in their midst, and could be realized by love, justice, and forgiveness?

Would the world be a healthier place if the gentle Buddha had not imprinted a humane ethic and gentleness on a culture?

The list of human saviors is long – Confucius, Lao Tze, Francis of Assisi, countless unknown and unsung men and women motivated by their religion who labored to make human living better.

Irrespective of how many of us would quarrel with creeds and are unmoved by the rituals and ceremonies of others, these beliefs and observances have sustained millions in their living struggles with disasters and tragedies. Would they have been happier without such resources and consolations?

Is the price of religion too high when it inspired some of the great artists, sculptors and composers?

Michelangelo’s superb sculptures, particularly his Moses and [his] David; his monumental creation in the Sistine Chapel.

Bach’s cantatas and fugues. Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Mozart’s Requiem Mass, to name only a few. All these remain as fine enduring values in the human heritage.

But there is another aspect of religion where Mr. Martin is quite correct. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the [Salem witch trials] were bloody adventures. His listing of Africa, Ireland, Lebanon, India, Egypt as scenes of religious violence is on the mark. The list of religious horrors could be infinitely lengthened beyond his short list.

According to the accounts, Joshua, Moses’ successor, led a cruel genocidal invasion of the land of Canaan. At Jericho, Joshua and his army killed all the inhabitants except the harlot, Rahab, and her relatives. The towns and cities of Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, Deber, were destroyed and all their inhabitants massacred. The Bible reads, “Joshua left none remaining and he completely destroyed everything that breathed, as Yahveh, the God of Israel, had commanded.” This, in the name of God and religion.

An historian remarks that “the later Roman Empire was given financial stability in the end by Constantine, who robbed the Pagan temples in the name of his conversion to Christianity.” (Thomas, p. 182)

[Theodosius], a later successor to Constantine, and famed as a Christian emperor and lawgiver, issued a decree in 380, “... let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will of Heaven we shall decide to inflict.”

Catholics cannot be singled out for such cruel acts. I spoke a few weeks ago [about] how Martin Luther urged on the princes to slaughter the peasants. As a religious person, Luther argued one was subject to the law of love and the highest spiritual ideals, while as a citizen of the state one had to obey the laws and follow the customs that fell short of the ideals. Of Luther, R.H. Tawney concluded, “the logic of his religious premises ... riveted on the social thought of Protestantism a dualism which, as its implications developed, emptied religion of its social content and society of its soul.” (Ozment, p. 264).

So one can fairly say that if history is the true demonstration of religion, then one can say with Lord Acton, “history not a web woven with innocent hands.”

However, to conclude that John Bartlow Martin was both wrong and correct when he suggests that religion be abolished is to miss the central point. Socrates (?) commented, “when you know all the answers you haven’t asked all the questions.” Why has religion been both a blessing and a curse?

A substantial part of the answer to that question is [that] religion is a curse when it has unlimited power. Again, I turn to the wisdom of Lord Acton, “among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and most active.” Goethe commented, “the man of action is essentially conscienceless.” A contemporary of Acton used to say that a leader of a party, however virtuous his private conduct, could not, in his political positions, exercise the common virtues of the honest man. Truth, justice, and moral intrepidity came into play only when they were of service to the party. Acton’s most famous quote is “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Because Joshua had power, he corrupted the laws and example of Moses and led ruthless invasions of the Canaanites, who had not wronged him.

Because Constantine and Justinian had absolute power, they squelched dissent cruelly. [1] Because Martin Luther conceded all power to the princes, thousands of peasants were slaughtered. Defending some policies of the Roman Catholic church, Lord Acton, writing Bishop Creighton, noted, “My dogma is not the special wickedness of my own special superiors, but the general wickedness of men in authority – of Luther and Zwingli, and Calvin, and Cranmer, and Knox, of Mary Stuart and Henry VIII, of Philip II and Elizabeth, of Cromwell and Louis XIV ....”

Absolute power is a curse and terrible burden to the human family. The examples are too numerous to dispute that. But the reverse, lack of power, is no blessing either. Lord Acton, (again) “When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached and Bellarmine lectured, but Machiavelli reigned.”

It occurred to me to John B. Martin could have substituted governments, monarchies, or nations [in] every place he used “religion.” The article would be equally true and equally distorted.

Yet, we know that there is no escaping power in the human venture. Power is the gear box of human society. Except in rare instances, without police power and the power of the law courts, we would not be protected from injuries of all varieties. Without the power of governments, social life would be anarchy. But those necessary powers have a built-in temptations to reach for more power. The philosopher Hobbes observed, “Man seeks power in order to secure his own preservation, but that being a precarious affair, he must acquire more power to secure that which he has already won.”

The answer lies in a multi-plicity of social forces, all of which have power, but none with absolute power. Is it not true that in countries like our own where religious pluralism prevails, there is relative harmony between the many religions? Because of religious freedom, no one is coerced to be a church member unless he or she chooses. Would any of you want it any other way?

In our time, however, because of religious freedom, the dangers of a totalitarian religion are remote as long as we remain alert.

The distribution of power is just as necessary in the other social interchanges of which we are a part. Looking back historically, as well as in my own experience, the nation’s manufacturing, commerce, and trade are better, fairer, and more open because of the labor union movement. The unions, many times with suffering and sacrifice, forced management to share some power. And we are better off because of it.

We are governed by a nation where power is shared by the three powers: Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court. Many times we are dissatisfied with the action or non-action of these branches, but would you seek a dictator because all political decisions are not what you wished for and worked for?

The responsibility is ours for a multiplicity of powers, whether in religion or the state.

The novelist E.M. Forster has a character named Fielding say, “There is a truth in religion that has not yet been sung?” But the only way that such will be discovered or created is to maintain the opportunity for that truth to be heard. That is possible only when power is distributed.

Let me conclude with a reminder of what James Luther Adams wrote:

“The faith of a church or a nation is an adequate faith only when it inspires and enables people to give of their time and energy to shape the various institutions – social, economic, and political – of the common life.... The creation of justice in community requires the organization of power.”



[1] Editor’s note: in an earlier section, the Edict of Theodosius had been erroneously attributed to Justinian. Justinian is mentioned again here, but it is retained as it is not obviously an error or mischaracterization.

Abundance In Our World

November 27, 1983
Lakeland
Thanksgiving Sunday

When the colonists gathered at Plymouth on an autumn day in 1621 to give thanks to the God they worshiped and to feast with their families and Indian friends, a colonial tradition was born which both renewed and re-shaped a harvest festival which is older than recorded history .... We owe much to the Pilgrims at Plymouth.

When the historic compact was signed in the cabin of the Mayflower, new vitality was added to emerging dreams of government by free persons disciplined by self-imposed laws. A climax, but not the conclusion or achievement that goal was reached in the American Revolution when the grandest human goals were stated plainly: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Much remained to be accomplished when the Revolution was won – slavery, the right of all to vote, free public education. ... There are many important goals still before us.

There is much to be done, but we should not fail to return thanks for the many ways the Pilgrim tradition has enriched our public morality, freed us and put on us the pressure of Pilgrim example to discipline ourselves.

Celebrating harvest home is an ancient festival of abundance. I would like to remind you of abundance, as it is in our world. Furthermore, the Mayflower Compact signers agreed to a mutual covenant of law and order before they settled on the south shore of Massachusetts Bay. Even as the Pilgrims faced an abundant future to be purchased at great price, and undertook their daring adventure supported by a mutual compact, so we in this world face a great potential which can be achieved only by daring involvements and more universal compacts.

“Theology of Abundance” is intended to indicate the ... manner the peoples of the earth have celebrated harvest with reverence. The wonders of growing things that nourish our bodies and are pleasant to our tastes have always gripped human imagination. The events of pre-history which we can infer from tribal memories, folk songs and remnants of ancient ritual, not to speak of the clearer records of history, all confirm the intensity of feeling that human beings sense about seedtime, growth, and harvest. We survive because of growing things that are the bounty of the good earth. Root, vegetable, grain, fruit sustain us.

But the origins of celebration of harvest home are not only in our Judeo-Christian cultural roots, but also in the heritage of the American Indians who were so cruelly despoiled and deceived by the European invaders. The late A. Hyatt Verrill, scholar of the culture of American Indians, observed in his book THE REAL AMERICANS, “In the eastern states, the Algonquin tribes, such as Delawares, Shawnees, Iroquois, Mohicans, Massachusetts and others held a great autumnal feast. [CJW note: hundreds of years before the Pilgrims landed.] The Indians gathered to give thanks to the Great Spirit and lesser deities for abundant crops, good hunting, and fishing. Dances were held .... Drums of a special form were thumped ... a new fire symbolic of a fresh start in life was kindled and there was a great feast with venison, roasted ears, wild turkeys, squash, pumpkin, pudding.”

Thus, Earth’s abundance might echo the Indian prayer, too -

“We give thanks for the corn and beans and squashes that give us life; ... we give thanks to the Great Spirit, who is all goodness and who directs all things for the good of his children.”

Addendum
[Editor’s note: the following addendum is printed on paper that appears to have come from a much earlier sermon, probably dating to the 1950s]

Let me conclude with a brief poem that appeared a couple years ago in the New York Herald Tribune, written up by Sam Bradley, entitled “Pilgrims, Pilgrims Yet.”

“They came as strangers, pilgrims of the earth,
to a wilderness of untried strengths, a West
for bolder covenants. And their unrest
is still in us. Each humbled line of birth,
rebel or not, yet far-ventures worth
of everyman. And our God-speeds attest
a perpetuity of trust, a quest
not halted by a dowsing at the hearth.

“A stranger’s hand? A promised world at hand?
Draconian rules to pass? If we undo
old mistimed power, tradition misapplied,
ours, fasces of new power! But to command
our sheaf of stars, we must somehow subdue
Our waylost fear and our waylaying pride.”

Think Giving

November 20, 1983
Lakeland

We celebrate Thanksgiving in our own ways and necessities. For many, it is joyous with abundant food and treasured customs. For others, it may be lonely with sad remembrance of things past which are no more. For others, many of the 8½ million unemployed, economic fear will be a presence among them. For the 450 million people in the world who are chronically undernourished, there will be no experience of thanks for harvest home. For the parents of the 20,000 children (at least) who die today and every day from causes related to nutrition, despair and bitterness will be the prevailing feeling, not thanks.

Somewhere I read that thankfulness derives from an old Anglo-Saxon word which meant thinkfulness. One of the thoughts that occurred to me in thinking about thinkfulness is that Thanksgiving is two words, but giving could mean more than giving thanks for our own festival meals.

Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating a (holiday) pie
He stuck in his thumb
And pulled out a plumb
And said, what a good boy am I.

I don’t know anybody here who fits that parody of complacency and self-centeredness. Yet, I would urge you to think-giving. We have an annual custom of receiving voluntary donations for UUSC “Guest at Your Table” effort to raise funds for hunger projects. From Thanksgiving until an ingathering at Christmas service, December 18, we can, if we will, set aside a daily amount for an unknown hungry child or adult. We do not have this year the little boxes to drop coins in, daily, but you can respond, if you will. Set up your own system.

If you take the gloomy side, you can ask, well, how will such contributions from the members of one small religious denomination make any difference to the hundreds of millions who are hungry. Or you can be more positive and affirm that such gifts will make a difference to some. Think-giving.

Beyond that, there is a continuing need to recognize that the world food problem requires planning and provisions by the governments of the world. The World Food Council of the United Nations, meeting recently, observed “that food abundance in some areas and scarcity in others is deepening the tensions between rich and poor, but they also felt that food and agriculture still represent a likely entry point for building bridges of mutual collaboration and resource mobilization among and between developed and developing countries.” - UUSC Hunger Liberation Manual

Think giving in another way, too. Thing giving your attention to the ABC program tonight, “The Day After.” You have read some of the pre-publicity. Some may have a tendency to shy away – not want to know what the world would be like the day after the first day of nuclear war. I read that the militant religious entrepreneur Jerry Falwell wrote 80,000 ministers urging them to preach on “The Day After” as a program instigated by nuclear freeze advocates. I didn’t receive a letter from Mr. Falwell (I don’t feel deprived or rejected). I just wish that those who believe in a nuclear freeze had the clout and the resources to plan such a program. Think giving your attention, better still, seeing it with friends and neighbors and talk about it afterwards. [CJW note: viewers’ guide].

Celebrate Thanksgiving and think-giving.

Attachment:

The closing words are the closing words of George Willison’s great book about the Pilgrims, SAINTS AND STRANGERS (p. 434-5): “The (Pilgrims) were never ones for mummery and ceremonial. They had no use for precedent and tradition, and deliberately flouted both. They were innovators, revolutionaries, never being restrained by the dead hand of the past. They were interested in the immediate scene about them and in trying to make it better, even at the cost of their lives. They had no time for ancestor worship, no taste for monuments. Rather, they had the supreme human qualities – an intelligent awareness of things about them, a sensitive desire to do something to bring them closer to their entire heart’s desire, and an absolutely indomitable spirit in pursuing their own high purposes.

“ ‘True it was,’ they had said when discussing the question of leaving Leyden to plunge into the unknown, ‘that such attempts were not to be made and undertaken without good ground and reason; not rashly or lightly as many have done for curiositie or hope of gaine, etc ... It was granted ye dangers were great, but not desperate; the difficulties were many, but not invincible. For though there were many of them likly, yet they were not certaine; it might be sundrie of ye things feared might never befalle; others by providente care and use of good means might in a measure be prevented; and of all of them through ye help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be borne or overcome....

“ ‘Yea though they should lose their lives in this action, yet they might have comforte in the same ... all great and honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages....’”

The Candide Complex

November 6, 1983
Lakeland

November 1983
Port Charlotte

The Candide Complex is a way of describing the feeling one experiences of being overwhelmed by dangers and cruel events in the world. This feeling can be a combination of despair and frustration so encompassing as to cause us to retreat from painful confrontations with powerful forces we hardly understand, let alone control.

To put what I call the Candide Complex in context, first, a few reminders about Voltaire and his most famous literary work, Candide.

Voltaire (François Marie Arouet) lived from 1694-1778. At a Jesuit college he learned to love literature and the theater. He also became a free thinker. The religious instruction of the Jesuits turned him not to faith, but skepticism. He observed the contradictions in society. His satiric thoughts and rational comments on religion and nations, his abundant literary works, his magnetic personality made him the toast of Paris. But he also made enemies because of his devastating mockeries of the high and mighty. After the death of Louis XIV, the Regent imprisoned Voltaire in the Bastille for a year because of his effronteries. He was an exile in London, 1726.

Unable to re-establish himself with the French Court, he wandered for 25 years, living in various European centers. Due to good investments, Voltaire was wealthy. In 1759, he settled in the country in Ferney (near the Swiss border). His literary output was astonishing, including not only history, plays, essays, philosophy, but also more than 20,000 of his letters have been published.

Candide, Voltaire’s most famous work, was a penetrating attack on foolish optimism. The philosopher, Leibniz, had argued that in spite of the manifold troubles and sorrows that “this is the best of all possible worlds.” Voltaire, more of a skeptic than a pessimist, tells a story that pokes fun at unthinking optimism with his delightful cast of characters.

Candide is a young, attractive man who, after being expelled from the castle because his love for Cunegonde, wanders the world attempting to discover if this really is the “best of all possible worlds,” a philosophy he was instructed in by his teacher, Dr. Pangloss.

Dr. Pangloss is an absurd character. Voltaire derived the name from the Greek – meaning “all tongue.” Dr. Pangloss is a professor of metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology, Voltaire’s way of indicating that Pangloss’ “best of all possible worlds” was abstract nonsense.

Pangloss – in the castle, addressing his pupils: [Editor’s note: what follows appears to be a theatrical variation of the text from Candide; CJW note indicates “280 Classic Theatre”]

“It is therefore demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise, since everything is made for a purpose, therefore everything is made for the best possible purpose. Consider. The nose was designed to support spectacles – and so we have spectacles. Consider. Legs were obviously developed to be covered by breeches – and so we have breeches. Stones were made to be trimmed and turned into castles – and so our noble baron has a castle. The greatest baron in the province must needs have the best possible home. And his good lady Baroness is the best of all possible Baronesses. There is no effect without a cause, my children. Every thing, everything, has its sufficient Reason. And so anyone who tells you everything is good is talking rubbish. Rubbish. Everything is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds.”

Candide experiences many sorry adventures. After leaving the castle he is drafted into the Bulgarian Army, where he experiences the horrors of war. In his travels, he is tortured by the Spanish Inquisition. He is in Lisbon (1756) when a devastating earthquake occurs. He discovers great wealth and is robbed of it. He kills men when he did not choose to do so. He finds Cunegonde and then loses her.

Cunegonde, his sweetheart, is captured, repeatedly raped and wounded by the Bulgarians. She, too, goes to Portugal where she is the mistress of two men.

Finally, Candide decides that this is not “the best of all possible worlds,” and decides to retire to a ... where he will spend the rest of his life “cultivating his own garden.” Reunited with Cunegonde, they marry. His ardor for her has cooled; she no longer is young and beautiful but older and plain. She becomes a fine cook, however, and is happy with that occupation.

Other of the characters of the story live on the farm, including Dr. Pangloss. Candide’s refuge from a world at war, religious persecution, robbery, rape, injustice, natural disaster, is the farm, where he will cultivate his own garden and have no anxiety about or participation in the world he experienced – not the best of all possible worlds, Candide thinks – very likely the worst of all possible worlds.

There are many differences in the world of Voltaire’s Candide and today. But also there are some striking similarities.

War is no kinder now than then. The threat of nuclear holocaust intensifies as the nuclear forces escalate. Harry Mes-’s warning, “These Things Shall Remain,” may be a scary prediction, but not illogical. When we see and read of Lebanon, Grenada, Central America, I’m reminded of what Frederick Wertham, a psychiatrist, observed on the T.V.-ing of war horrors. “The only way we can possible tolerate it is by turning off part of ourselves instead of television.” [CJW note: 1st casualty, p. 412]

When efforts for a sane nuclear policy and less belligerent attitudes toward hemispheric neighbors are urged on our national leaders, we are answered by very smooth responses, all of which fail to answer the question, “when will the killing stop?”

Candide experienced the Lisbon earthquake. In recent weeks, there have been earthquakes in Idaho and a severe quake in Turkey, the latter causing at least 2,000 deaths. Can this be the best of all possible worlds?

Candide was tortured by the Spanish Inquisition. In our day a religious fanatic, Khomeini, executes Baha’i dissidents in Iran. Such terrible intolerance and cruelty is a reminder of what Voltaire wrote in another work, “If God created us in his own image, we have more than returned the favor.”

Women are still abused, as was Cunegonde, and persons are swindled out of their money, as was Candide.

Elder Olson, the modern poet, has a couplet addressed to a lady who thought his poems too gloomy:

“What? Mere images more than
you can bear?
Look at the world around you,
if you dare.”

In such a world, not the best possible, is not everyone faced with Candide’s temptation, “cultivate your own garden”? Do your job, feed your family, tend the flowers, mow the grass, fix the faucets, turn off part of yourself when you turn on the television. Solve your personal problems. “Cultivate your own garden.” After all, what can you do to change the collision course of the nuclear powers? Your voice is not heard, “your thoughts are not my thoughts,” say the powers that be. So cultivate your own garden.

When I was young, there was a song,

“We’ll build a sweet little nest
Somewhere in the West
And let the rest of the world go by.”

The image is charming, restful, and idyllic. But how? How ... let the rest of the world go by? Years ago, when the effects of atomic bombs were seen, a writer noted “there’s no place to hide.” Even if there were a place to hide, is that where human life is fulfilled?

The pages of religious history have records of many misbegotten, inhumane ventures. Khomeini has countless counterparts in the past. Yet there is a basic belief present even among the worst of religious events. That belief is that salvation, however defined, is more than persons finding his separate peace or individual salvation. The old religious idea was that being saved, one is obliged to lead, persuade, or co-erce others into a salvation scheme.

But for many of us, the idea is larger than that missionary zeal. If we are concerned with our own salvation, or self-realization (which I like better), then our concern has to be that the life of others must be a parallel value. The concerned is wider still, the preservation of the planet itself. The planet: cradle of our birth, sustainer of our needs, resource for us and our posterity.

We have mentors for such values. Suppose Washington, Jefferson, and Madison had chosen to cultivate their own gardens. They owned splendid plantations and could have had lives of relative ease. John Adams had a comfortable law practice in Boston. Benjamin Franklin was a prosperous editorial publisher. He could have cultivated his own garden. Lafayette was a wealthy French aristocrat. He could have had an amiable, luxury-filled life. If these had limited themselves to cultivating their own gardens, would the American colonies have evolved into the United States of America? Who can say. Fortunately, they took Franklin’s advice, “we must all hang together, or we shall hang separately.”

Suppose Lister, Pasteur, Sabin, Sack, Fleming had decided to let the rest of the world go by? Many of us would not be alive if they had not pursued the greater good in their medical laboratories.

Gandhi once put it this way: “I am part and parcel of the whole, and I cannot find [God] apart from the rest of humanity. My countrymen (and women) are my nearest neighbors. They have become so helpless, so resourceless, so inert, that I must concentrate on saving them. If I could persuade myself that I should find God in a Himalayan cave, I would proceed there immediately. But I know I cannot find God apart from humanity.” [See Bruce Southworth’s sermon on Gandhi]

Now I hope I’m not a shallow optimist like Dr. Pangloss. All of us spend most of our time cultivating our own gardens. The determined political and social activists, the persistent change-makers, are few in number. Those in political power count on that. They define the issues for us, paint the picture with patriotic pastels and most of us throw up our hands and quiet our mouths.

Persons will continue cultivating their own gardens. Yet if we lay down our garden tools, even for brief minutes and speak out, express disagreement when we disagree, attempt to judge issues on the application of human values, then there can be a difference.

I’m not arguing that we will all be on the same track, liberal or conservative. What is important is that the moments spared from cultivating our own gardens will be persistent, not spasmodic.

So when I’m tempted not to bother with writing Representatives or Senators or the President because of seeming futility, I’ll try to resist. After all, in the parable Jesus told, some seeds are devoured by birds, some are blown away with a passing breeze, some fall on rocky ground, but some seeds fall on fertile ground. Jesus could have added, perhaps, [that] the greater number [of seeds sown], the more likely there will be a harvest.

I aspire to the faith and confidence of Carl Sandburg when he wrote,

“I am credulous about
the destiny of man and
I believe more than I can ever prove.”

This is not the best of all possible worlds. But if there is to be a world at all, it must be better than it is now. It will be if those we elect will come to know that they can no longer count on our inertia, but can expect that we will be heard.

Erasmus – Christian Humanist

October 1, 1983
Lakeland

Why talk about people and times of 500 years ago? I am aware that, as illustrated in the brief readings, history captures the interest of very few persons. So perhaps I am being self-indulgent or irrelevant to use my October Sundays to speak of the Reformation. In a world where the political tensions throw menacing shadows on the prospects for survival and justice, why take time to think about the Reformation and Renaissance? Why take your time when there are vital current issues by the dozen, even though 1983 is the 500th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther?

To understand a little of the conflicts of power in times past and how the conflicts were resolved is to become more aware of confrontations in our day. To look at such men as Erasmus and Luther and others is to become sensitive to human nature in all times – strengths and frailties, courage and cowardice, bigotry and understanding, generosity and narrowness, belligerence and peacemaking, reason and passion, love and hate. When we see such qualities mixed in the same historical persons, we may come to understand that there are no super saviors. Sir Galahad without fear and without reproach was a myth. To understand this about human nature may make us less confident that the leaders have all the answers which will save this troubled world, and more assertive of our own reasons and judgments.

The Reformation and Renaissance overlapped. There had been dissidents opposing certain practices of the Holy Roman Church long before Erasmus and Luther were energizing forces. Savonarola, John Hus, John Wycliff, were warning signals that the authority of the pope and magnificence of the Church would sooner or later be questioned and challenged.

The Renaissance had been born and fostered for at least a couple centuries, before the time of Erasmus and Luther. There had been a revival of classic Greek and Roman learning. Art and sculpture again became treasured possessions of culture. The wealthy families and the Vatican competed to become patrons of the great artists – DaVinci, Michelangelo, Ghiberti, many others. Instead of a fixed focus on the afterlife, there developed a greater appreciation of the promises, rewards, and pleasure in this life, at least for the wealthy and powerful.

In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Turks, and many scholars, bearing priceless classical manuscripts and art, fled to Italy, further stimulating the revival of learning.

The Age of Exploration had begun. New geographical discoveries were stimulating inquiry, curiosity and adventure. Aztec and Peruvian gold enriched the royal coffers of Spain.

Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionized communication. Without the printing press neither Erasmus nor Luther could have been such agents of mammoth social and religious change.

Erasmus was born in Rotterdam 10/26/1466. He was the illegitimate son of a priest. Little is known about his father. The novelist Charles Reade speculated a good deal in THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH. Erasmus’ mother may have been a servant. Erasmus was always sensitive about the conditions of his birth, although he never denied his illegitimate origins.

In his early schooling, there was some influence of Renaissance Humanism. [CJW note: Brethren of the Common Life] When he was 16 he joined an Augustinian order in Steyn. Unlike Luther, who entered an Augustinian monastery to save his soul, Erasmus entered because the monastery had a fine library – he wanted good books.

Because he was illegitimate, Erasmus needed papal dispensation to enter the priesthood [CJW note: received it and was ordained in 1492]. On the basis of his devotion and literary work throughout the rest of his life, he secured dispensation from saying mass or performing other sacraments. He hated fish and, pleading truthfully, bad digestion, was dispensed from meatless days.

One of his early essays while still in the monastery was a defense of classic learning - “pagan” as it was called, answering those who insisted that the only proper learning was in the study of Christian dogma and Church history. Erasmus wrote, “You tell me we should not read Virgil because Virgil is in hell. Do you think many Christians are not in hell whose works we read? It is not for us to discuss whether the pagans before Christ were damned. But I conjecture that they are saved or no one is saved. If you want to reject everything pagan you will have to give up the alphabet and the Latin language, and all the arts and crafts.”

Erasmus was unhappy in the monastery – but how to get out? Most scholars did not have salaries from a university. They depended on patrons who would provide them with a living while their studies and writings proceeded. The prior of the monastery was able to situate Erasmus as the secretary of the Bishop of Cambrai. That Erasmus was illegitimate did not cause any difficulty for the Bishop, because he himself was one of the 36 illegitimate children of John, the Lord of Bergen.

For the rest of his life, Erasmus lived on patronage and some income from his writings. In those days, to secure these benefits, one had to write elaborate, flattering dedications to the patron – if one wanted to remain in his favor. Erasmus was no exception. His historical skills extolled his patrons in ways that, to say the least, inflated the virtues of the patrons, usually quite untruthfully. We would call it hypocrisy at best, and lies at worst. But friends apologized that Erasmus was writing what the Prince or the Cardinal ought to be, not what he was. This is a weak defense. Erasmus never had the courage of a Luther or a John Hus.

His succession of patrons made him perennially a traveler. He studied and lectured at the University of Paris. He visited England 3 times, staying 5 years (1509-14); the third visit ... he was a close friend of such distinguished Christian Humanists as Thomas More, John Fisher, John Colet.

Erasmus’ literary production [CJW note: thoughtful, rational] made him the intellectual of Europe. Over the years his influence was such that some called him the “second pope.”

Later there was a saying, “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.” Nevertheless, before his life was over he was despised by Luther and accused by the Roman Catholics of fracturing Christendom.

He spent most of his life studying and writing. He never made impassioned speeches. Because of many qualifications in his writing, it was difficult, as time went on, to discover whether he supported the Reformers or the Catholic Church.

His most famous work was IN PRAISE OF FOLLY.

Erasmus had visited Rome, saw the luxurious and decadent life of many cardinals and the Pope. Leaving Rome, on his way to England, he traversed the Alps, reflecting on the horseback journey the contradictions he had witnessed.

During his 5-year stay in England, he wrote IN PRAISE OF FOLLY (printed in 1511). The literary form has the goddess “Folly” ridiculing many respected human endeavors. Today, the style is clumsy but in his day, the book achieved widespread popularity. 40 editions were published in his lifetime, and who knows how many since.

Folly ridicules marriage. The philosophers are not spared. [quote from Durant] “The philosophers confound the confused and darken the obscure; they lavish time and wit upon logical and metaphysical subtleties with no result but wind; we should send them, rather than soldiers, against the Turks who would retreat in terror before such bewildering verbosity.”

Physicians and theologians are not spared. Some of the ritual mainstays of the Church, miracles and prodigies, shrines for healing, the worship of relics are [derided as] “bugbears of superstition.”

How did he get away with such devastating ridicule? Many theologians were upset. However, Pope Julius II did not bother him. [CJW note: our Dutch friend is with us again]. Julius was not interested in such things. Julius was a military pope, leading the armies of the papal states in the complex series of alliances and wars. Francis I (France), Henry VIII, and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, all wanted power over Europe. Julius also initiated the building of magnificent St. Peter’s Cathedral. For many years, the wandering Erasmus was undisturbed. [CJW note: his religious writings did not bother the popes and cardinals – their interest was in other things]

Another distinctive literary and religion contribution of Erasmus was a new Greek translation of the New Testament. Up to then, the 4th century Latin translation of Jerome, a translation known as the Vulgate, had been the standard Bible for the Church.

Going back to available ancient manuscripts, Erasmus not only offered some fresh interpretations but asserted certain parts of the Vulgate were erroneous.

Two of Erasmus’ omissions caused considerable agitation. One of the mainstays for asserting the Trinity was a passage in 1st John 5:7 which, in the Vulgate, reads the “three are one.” Erasmus translated, the “three agree.” To us, this may be trivial, but to the scholastic theologians of that day, it was a monumental and radical change.

Then too, “ecclesia” which Jerome had translated as “church,” Erasmus translated as “congregation.” To the hair-splitter of that day, this was a severe weakening of the power and authority of the Church and its episcopal system. [CJW note: Linacre: “Either this is not the gospel or we are not Christians.”]

But Erasmus never supported Luther’s Reformation. He always believed there could be reform within the Church. His pacific nature shied away from conflict. He saw the many sides to most controversial issues. Perhaps he was a coward, as Luther called him. Nothing was more difficult for Erasmus than to say a plain “Yes” or a forthright “no” in a controversy. He did hedge. He saw various sides to questions, arguments to support either of differing views. His criticisms were frequently cloaked in satire.

Nevertheless, in many ways, Erasmus was ahead of his times. Ahead of our times in some ways.

In a time when heretics were tortured and burned at the stake, Erasmus took a more enlightened course. Although under pressure to support the church’s condemnation and excommunication of Luther, he did not join in the hue and cry. He wrote, “Let us not devour each other like fish. Why upset the world over paradoxes, some unintelligible, some debatable, some unprofitable? The world is full of rage, hate, and wars. What will be the end if we employ only papal bulls and the stake. It is not great feat to burn a man. It is a great achievement to persuade him.” [Bainton, p. 178]

In contrast to the dogmas of the Church that truth is that which the Church, through the Pope, proclaims, Erasmus believed that truth appears through dialogue. His love for the classic philosophers, particularly Plato and Socrates, was apparent in his belief that truth exists but arrives through the matching of minds in rational discourse.

Many of his moves from city to city were motivated because he detested dictatorship. When a Protestant dictatorship took over Geneva, Basel, or other places, Erasmus moved to where he thought greater freedom existed.

In a period when intense nationalism was the coming order [Bainton, p. 114], Erasmus dissented. When twice invited to become a citizen of Zurich, he answered, “I wish to be a citizen of the world, not of a single city.” He said more than once, “The whole universe is my fatherland.”

He hated war and was pacifistic in a time of constant war and bloodshed. He wrote, “sweet is war to him who has had no taste of it.” He believed disputes could be settled by mediation, not bloodshed. Replying to urgings that he approve the violence of the Reformation, he wrote, “I cannot be other than what I am ... I cannot but love peace and concord. I see the obscurity in all things human. I see how much easier it is to start rather than assuage a tumult.” [Bainton, p. 176]

Erasmus believed the test of a Christian was not creed, but conduct. When he was appalled at popes making cardinals and princes of their sons and nephews, and distributing the wealth of the church to family, he reminded the Pope, “Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep,’ not ‘Feed your sheep.’” He also wrote, “You will not be damned if you do not know whether the spirit proceeding from the Father and Son has one or two beginnings, but you will not escape damnation if you do not cultivate the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, mercy, faith, modesty....” [Bainton]

As his life drew near to its end, he felt that all he had written was extinguished in the wars of the Reformation. Before he died in 1536, his influence had waned. In 1559, the one-time friend Cardinal Caraffa, by this time Pope Paul IV, placed the writings of Erasmus under the ban of the Church.

The wild events of the Reformation had demonstrated that the pen of Erasmus was not mightier than the swords of Luther, the kings, and popes.

Yet many of his ideas did not die. George Williams of Harvard, a Reformation historian, describing what he calls the “Evangelical Rationalist,” finds that the ideas of Erasmus and Servetus were not only the forerunners of Socinianism ..., but also of the Enlightenment, the intellectual basis of Unitarianism and Universalism, and of representative government. [CJW note: not that Erasmus was a Unitarian; Servetus tried to convert]

Stefan Zweig, in his biography, wrote this epitaph of Erasmus of Rotterdam: “Erasmus was forced to leave Louvain because it was too Catholic; he was forced to leave Basle because it was too Protestant. A free and independent mind, which refuses to be bound by any dogma and declines to join any party, never finds a home on earth.”

Transcendence – Unitarian Universalists Have It Too!

September 18, 1983
Lakeland

September, 1983
Port Charlotte

October, 1986
Ormond Beach

Amid the wide variety of particular beliefs among Unitarian Universalists, one question asked again and again is about the reality of God, whose “everlasting arms” will carry the troubled and despairing. Beyond all the confusions and dilemmas of this world, is there a transcendent God, who will one day answer the questions, heal the wounds, assuage the grief? Depending on whom you are talking with, the response will be “yes,” “no,” or “maybe.”

The subject today is transcendence. I will attempt definition, outline a few varieties of responses to the concept, and state why I believe that the transcendent is vital to our lives and hopes.

“Transcendent” and related words occupy more than half a page in the unabridged dictionary. Meanings include a belief that goes beyond the limits of experience, an exceeding of reality as we seem to perceive it. It would include certain feelings, intuitions, or subjective convictions which cannot be demonstrated to another. Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, reasoned that there was knowledge and meaning which we cannot perceive by observing objects, knowledge that prior to any transient conditions of human reason, observation, or testing. Thus he and millions have postulated that God is. [CJW note: Even though there is no unquestioned evidence available to our senses or reason.]

Among Unitarian Universalists, according to questionnaires, a majority, perhaps 70%, indicate that they believe in God. At the same time, about the same percentage describe themselves a Humanist. This seeming inconsistency is resolved by the indication that of those who use and do not object to the word “God,” only 3% believe that God is personal, or a person. The majority among us who use the word “God” do not believe in God as the shepherd who leads us through the valley of the shadow of death or who upholds us with everlasting arms. God is, to them, a Creative Force, the primal energy behind the universe. Or, in some cases, God is thought in social terms, the power that leads us on to make ideals real or the unconditional love which some would hold to be the highest value. There are many other variations.

Such varieties of God ideas have in common the perception that the universe is impersonal. The volcanic explosion, the hurricane, the flood, the lightning bolt will sweep away human victims. Those lucky enough to escape never quite satisfy our minds or morals that God, a personal Deity, spared them while extinguishing others who may have been better or worse persons than the survivors.

This difficulty some of us have with faith or a transcendent Divine Being who cares for persons is well illustrated by a parable told by the British philosopher, Anthony Flew (See Kaufman, p. 470). “Once upon a time, two explorers came on a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, ‘Some gardener must tend this plot.’ The other disagrees, ‘There is no gardener.’ So they pitch a tent and watch. No gardener is ever seen. ‘But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.’ So they set up a barb-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds (for they remember H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man could be smelled and touched even though he could not be seen). But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movement of wires suggests an invisible climber. The bloodhounds do not bark. Yet still the believer is not convinced. ‘But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden he loves.’ At last, the sceptic despairs, ‘But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or no gardener at all?’”

Of course, if one believes devoutly in a personal God, this parable will not shake that faith. Many believers would respond in terms of Elijah, who did not find God in the storm or wind, but in the still, small voice. In our day, this search for God has taken some along the path of inner peace and truth through mental disciplines, meditation, yoga, or obedience to some guru or other. I have no quarrel with other faith statements or spiritual search along roads I do not choose to travel. In our Unitarian Universalist diversity, anyone’s loyalty to belief statements may be open to dialogue and inquiry, but not hospitable to disparagement and scorn.

But for those of us who tend to be with the skeptical explorer, is there a transcendent? In the early days of TV, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen had a popular program. A witty, captivating speaker, one of his delightful remarks on one occasion was “an atheist is one who has no invisible means of support.” One could include not only atheists, but also agnostics and humanists who hold no traditional views of God, and ask, have we no invisible means of support?

There may be a few who accept the Epicurean compromise, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” But to me, this is an impoverished way to return the gift of life.

Leo Tolstoy, without doubt one of the greatest writers of the last 100 years, was an exceedingly complex man, continuously torn between conflicting emotions and despair about the meaning of life. Before he arrived at his religious beliefs, which were heresy to the Orthodox Church, he contemplated suicide many times. At that self-tortured period in his life he was fond of recalling an Oriental fable: “A man pursued by a tiger climbs down into a well. A the bottom of the well he sees the gaping jaws of a dragon. Unable to go either up or down, the poor man clings to a bush growing between the loosened stones. As his strength begins to fail, he spies two mice, one white, one black, gnawing at the branch he is hanging from. A few seconds more and he will fall. Knowing himself about to die, the man makes a supreme effort and licks two drops of honey from the leaves.” For Tolstoy, the two drops of honey represent his love for his family and his love of literature – the two compensations for the meaninglessness of life in that period of personal search.

Are the two drops of honey – love of one’s family and love of one’s vocation – a sufficient substitute for the transcendent? Undoubtedly for many, although there are more drops of honey – TV, friends, travel, aesthetics, sports, beer. There is nothing inherently evil in such drops of honey between birth and death, but they are not substitutes for the transcendent.

I suggest to you that for the skeptic explorer, as I believe I am, the transcendent is perceived in the unrealized dreams of humankind.

In the beginning I said that the transcendent is beyond or over the limits of experience. The human family has nurtured dreams of a world free and fair. But this has never been real – never been our experience.

There is the dream of peace. In the entire history of the human venture, there has not been peace. War is the strong current in the tide of human events. From ancient times until now, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Europeans, Asians, Americans – wherever you may look in previous times or now, there has never been a time when, world over, one could sit in peace under one’s fig tree with no one to make him or her afraid. Peace is a transcendent value. Yet in all the bloody centuries there have been those who have been faithful to the unachieved value of peace. Peace is a transcendent value.

There is the ideal of justice. The ancient Hebrew prophet proclaimed “let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Yet never has justice prevailed everywhere and in all times. To believe in universal justice is a transcendent hope.

Do you know the lines of Robinson Jeffers?

The Beaks of Eagles

“Humanity has multiplied, but not here; men’s hopes and thoughts
and customs have changed, their powers are enlarged,
Their powers and their follies have become fantastic,
The unstable animal has never changed so rapidly. The motor
and the plane and the great war have gone over him,
And Lenin has lived and Jehovah died: while the mother-eagle
Hunts her same hills, crying the same beautiful and lonely cry
and is never tired; dreams the same dreams,
And hears at night the rock-slides rattle and thunder in the
throats of these living mountains.
It is good for man
To try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace
and anguish, not to go down the dinosaur’s way
Until all his capacities have been explored: and it is good for
him
To know that his needs and nature are no more changed in fact
in ten thousand years than the beaks of eagles.”

Hope is transcendent over despair. As the poet reminds us, “It is good for man to try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and anguish, not to go down the dinosaur’s way.” Hope is transcendent. Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live can endure almost any how.”

Many of you know the story of Victor Frankl, the psychologist who was a prisoner at Auschwitz during World War II. In his years in the concentration camp, he saw that those [who] gave up the struggle and resigned themselves to death did die. The survivors won over the unspeakable conditions and treatment. Those who gave up felt that the future was only pain and punishment. They died. Others, against all their Auschwitz experience, believed that the Nazis would be defeated, the prisoners delivered, if they had the courage to endure. It was the transcendence of hope that saved them.

The transcendence is not the “deification of man,” a charge commonly made against humanists. We humans are not gods. We are created beings. Creativity seems continuous in what we call our universe, and destruction seems the inevitable companion of creativity. A few days ago, astronomers announced that there seems to be indications that another solar system is forming in a far-off galaxy. The creating force or forces in this universe remain a mystery. Each discovery and modification does not solve the riddle, [it] only deepens the mystery. The ultimate origins and destiny will not be made plain.

Those who have faith in God as a loving, caring parent and those of us who find no warrant that the basic mystery of the universe has us for its basic purpose and caring, can find common ground in the transcendence of hope. The hope one day that which we have never experienced will come about – universal peace, universal caring, universal justice – an I-Thou of all humanity. This common core of transcendent hope can be found in all the world’s religions. It is the common ground with all the structures of different creeds, faiths, institutions built on it. It is the common ground and transcendent hope. The priority is human responsibility, not any alleged deification of man.

Albert Einstein once said, “I am a deeply religious unbeliever.” In the sense I have been describing, a person can be the skeptical explorer of Flew’s parable and be deeply religious, if a transcendent hope for the human venture is that for which we labor and that which we cherish.

The Anxieties and Opportunities of Religious Pluralism

September 11, 1983
Lakeland

Preface: Introductory Words

Welcome to our new season of services. We are a religious community gathered to share our love for one another, to reach within ourselves to strengthen the ideals we value and to reach out in good will to all.

We live in turbulent times, but the members of the human family always have. History, myth, legend, art, and song – all disclose that war and suffering, peace and calm, pessimism and ennoblement, hope and fear, hate and love have been alternating impulses along the human network.

We face reality and dream of a kinder human family. We gather together to uplift our human heritage. There are sad songs and lively times. We will begin upbeat with Patty and Judy ....

The President of the United States has asked that today be observed as a day of mourning for the 269 men, women, and children who died when the Soviet fighter plane shot down the Korean 747 passenger plane. Who among us cannot help but grieve at such slaughter of the innocents? Amid the cascade of news reports, charges, and counter-charges, presently available, the Soviet case seems flimsy at best and vicious at worst. We mourn these victims of international fear and hate. Our hearts go out to the families who survive them.

As one who is seldom complimentary of President Reagan, I must commend him in this instance. His angry, condemnatory rhetoric has been balanced by his restrained political response so far. Historically, assassinations of lesser import than this have triggered wars.

I would mention two thoughts that have crossed my mind these past 8 or 9 days.

First, wanton killings for supposed national interests are not newcomers to the world scene. Look at many places in the world – today, Central America, Iran, Lebanon, Chad, as well as the Sea of Japan. Truly, every day can be a day of mourning for innocent victims. The deadly struggle for power, markets, oil, political domination mark the calendar every day with the need to grieve man’s inhumanity to man.

Second, this destruction of Korean flight 007 and the 269 persons aboard should strengthen the resolve some of us feel for nuclear arms control and freeze, not dilute that emphasis.

Fear will increase as the arsenal of total destruction weapons builds in the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. Fear leads to hate, and hate is the highway to destruction.

Steps on the road to world peace be the finest memorial to those we mourn today.

Sermon:

My belief is that religious pluralism creates anxieties, but that such edgy feelings are more than compensated for by the opportunities of religious pluralism.

By religious pluralism, I mean that in the world there is no one faith that is universally regarded as true; no sacraments held to be valid by everyone; no religious authority obeyed by all. In our nation, it is basic that by constitutional sanction no one must adhere to a particular religion or any religion; no particular religion should have advantages another may not have; a person professing no formal religion at all does not lose any of the rights of a citizen because of such lack of religious affiliation.

Historically, of course, this has seldom been true. One faith, one creed, imposed by a king, a pope, or a prophet many times, many places has caused cruel punishments or frequently executed those who did not confirm “one true faith.” History teems with such horrible chapters such as the Crusades and Inquisition.

In 1408, to take one particular example of many, Archbishop Arundel of England “decreed that anyone making or using an unlicensed translation of the Bible was liable to the ultimate penalty of death at the stake; ... passed by the King and Parliament in 1400. (It said) ‘Divers false and perverse people of a certain new sect who preach and teach these days openly and privily divers new doctrines and wicked and heretical and erroneous opinions and hold and exercise schools and make and write books and wickedly do instruct and inform people shall be handed over to the secular courts and, if they do not abjure, shall be burned, that such punishment may strike fear in the minds of others.’” (See Tuchman, BIBLE AND SWORD, pp. 85-86).

Much of the world has changed. Religious pluralism – the right and privilege to hold differing faiths or no faith prevails in many countries. One could point to the philosophers of the Enlightenment, some developments of the Protestant Reformation, and the leadership of the United States in establishing the constitutional right of freedom of religion as prime factors in such growing tolerance.

Then, too, Pryser points out (p. 6), “Religion, once the be-all and end-all of primitive societies, becomes special and distinct in complex societies. It becomes an institution next to other institutions, a power next to other powers, a belief next to other beliefs.

“In the long run, differentiation and specialization will also produce the rudiments of religious pluralism, particularly when reading and writing become widely shared, when mobility across national boundaries increases, and when education becomes a value. The essence of pluralism ... is that people get a chance to see options between one religion and no formal religion.”

Unhappily, such tolerance and acceptance does not fully prevail everywhere. A cruel instance is the fanatic, Shiite Muslim dictatorship of Khomeini’s Iran where good, innocent people, including young women, are executed because they are of the Baha’i faith. At the present time there is no feasible way to prevent such persecution and execution in that country. We can only express horror and condemnation.

History teaches clearly that when power and insistence on one faith only are combined, persecution and execution of non-conformists will happen inevitably and the human spirit maimed.

Secondly, pluralism is an inseparable ingredient in Unitarian Universalist religion. The first response we commonly make to an inquiry is that there is no creed which one must believe, no dogma which must be taught, no religious authority to which one must submit. Of our ministers, Conrad Wright, notes, “the minister in a liberal church is not there to hold the keys of the Kingdom by admitting to the Lord’s table only those found worthy, as in churches that seriously accept a sacramental theology. Nor is he there to instruct the people in truths that the ordained clergy are peculiarly competent to expound, as in many confessional churches. He or she is there to live and learn and grow with the congregation.”

The premise of “no creed” leads logically, and in our midst, naturally, to individual freedom of belief. Consequently, among us there are varieties in the ways experience is interpreted – religiously, politically, culturally.

For example, we are willing, or unwilling, as the individual may decide, to use or attach meaning to the word “God.” Prayer for some may be a solace, communion with deity, or petition to deity. For others, “prayer” only raises the questions “To whom? For what?” The concern of many for more justice in the social order; or the strong feeling among many of us for nuclear freeze and disarmament, e.g., leads others to wonder, sometimes, if we gather on Sunday morning as an anti-establishment political caucus legitimized as a worship service by music and a collection.

Because we hold freedom to be a basic value and uphold the right of all among us to search for truth out of their own experience, we are vulnerable to generalizations that may be unfair, incomplete, or wide off the mark. In addition, most of the time when more orthodox persons ask about Unitarian Universalist beliefs it is in the context of what the orthodox person believes, rather than an open inquiry. Thus we seem led to speak most about what we don’t believe, rather than the principles which unite us.

I chuckled at an item this week (Wall St. Journal) that resonated, somewhat, with this difficulty of explaining a religion of inquiry based on ethical principles to someone whose mind-set tuned to particular faith words and traditions. The story is about Lord Curzon, the British aristocrat, who was Viceroy of India at the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries. The story is that Lord Curzon asked friends, “how best he could reach out to the common man. They suggested he could begin by riding a public bus. After lunch, he return[ed] flustered and upset to his club ... with his umbrella waved a bus to halt ... boarded it and ordered the driver to take him home.” Sometimes the questions asked of us are as far off reality as Lord Curzon’s assumptions about what public transportation is and does.

Nevertheless, there are anxieties among us because we do not stand on the firm foundation of the old faiths. Irrespective of the issue, religious, political, occupational, (you name it), there is a certain psychological security in conformity and anxiety in non-conformity. We have large or tiny worries about “what people think of us.” Most people measure opinions with the ruler of conformity.

Kierkegaard, the radical Christian theologian, contended that in being autonomous, one creates anxieties of sufficient pressure that many choose to make [a] leap of faith to one authoritative religion or another just to escape the burden of freedom.

Eric Fromm, the psychoanalyst, dealt cogently with this fear in his classic ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM (written a generation ago but still worth the time if one is not familiar with it).

Some of this anxiety of personal autonomy was kindled among Unitarian Universalists as a consequence of the way TIME magazine reported the 1983 General Assembly in Vancouver. As a part of many proceedings, a commission appointed to review and suggest changes in our statement of principles reported and opened the subject to debate. TIME reported that among Unitarian Universalists there was “a growing consensus toward godlessness” and mentioned “Deleted Deity” and attributed this to the impact of feminism on our movement. I’m not sure of the old adage “to be great is to be misunderstood” but I am rather certain that to be non-conformist is to be misunderstood. I surmise that the TIME newsdesk grabbed on a misunderstanding because it made a more catchy but less truthful news story.

Walter Royal Jones, Chairman of the Commission, was interviewed by a Colorado newspaper. Roy made some points (copies available) which I condense:

“God is just a word. In itself it is not particularly holy, although the concepts it represents are.

“I’m never sure what anyone means by the use of the word ‘God,’ but if what they mean is real, our voting on the definition will not change that. We want to be open to as many languages as people have.”

Autonomy creates anxiety, but this is a paltry reason to give up freedom. Yes, we advocate pluralism in religion, both within our religious community and in the world. There is no creative growth in limiting ourselves to convictions that nobody will misunderstand.

I don’t know in which of Christopher Morley’s plays the following lines are read, but I aspire to such an attitude and believe it is an authentic guide for our communication and conduct:

A Liberal’s Song

From time to time
I have laid my heart bare before you,
And you did not like it;
So I must point out to you
It is my heart, not yours.
My wrongness, perhaps,
Is dearer to me
Than your rightness.
Yet you must not think
That when I disagree with you
I dislike you.
On the contrary:
I love you for having ideas of your own.
I know how you came to have those ideas.
And they are precious to you.
But mine are just as precious to me.

I believe only in such sharing of minds and hearts can we justify our claim to a thoughtful, concerned pluralism. We are kept alive by our I-Thou communication.

The historian Herbert Muller (FREEDOM IN THE WESTERN WORLD, p. 79) tells of an absurd but tragic historical episode which says more about our need to share convictions and ideas than chapters of a learned treatise.

Frederick II, King of Prussia in the latter part of the 18th century, was intrigued and curious about the new worlds that exploration had opened up – the Americas, the Far East, the South Pacific – disclosing cultures and religions vastly different than those of Western Europe, speaking different tongues. Frederick was curious about which was the original language – Hebrew (which he guessed), Greek, Latin, Arabic, or what not, and decided to find out. So he segregated eight infants at birth and strictly forbade anyone to speak to them. Thus sanitized from any one language, whatever they came to speak must be the original human language (or so he speculated). Of course, he never found out. All the children died.

That is a sorrowful analogy, but there are elements of truth in it – at least for us. We may not die physically, but Unitarian Universalism as a small but important part of the religious scene will survive if we maintain loyalty, not to particular words but to personal autonomy, faithful not to a faith but to human enterprise and its hopes and sharing our agreements and disagreements, not just to argue but to illumine the search for truth. Such are the opportunities [of a] Unitarian Universalist pluralistic religion.

Summer Time – When the U U Is Easy

June 5, 1983
Lakeland

From the East Shore Unitarian Church in Mentor, Ohio, comes the following: “Why Unitarian Churches Close in the Summer” by Patrick T.A. O’Neill.

1. To everything there is a season. A time to be open, and a time to be closed.
2. Unitarian ministers all drive ice cream trucks in the summer.
3. Michael Servetus was burned at the stake on the Feast of the Summer Solstice. In his memory we close for two months of mourning each summer.
4. Unitarians are the only group God can trust to be out of his sight for two months at a time.
5. All Unitarians are working on masters degrees. Taking the summer off makes sense.
6. Small Unitarian churches can’t afford air conditioning.
7. The Unitarian Ecclesiastical Calendar was originally drawn up by the Harvard Divinity Faculty. The “Harvard Calendar,” as it is known, dates back to 1825 and only has ten months. According to Harvard, this is already. [sic]
8. The summer hiatus is the Unitarians’ revolt against the Calvinists’ work ethics.
9. Actually, closing for the summer is a Universalist tradition. It was a concession made by the Unitarians at the time of merger in 1961.
10. We close for the summer to save energy. Closing is ecologically sound.
11. Unitarians are really closet Episcopalians. For two months every year we are secretly very “high church.”
12. We’ve always done it this way.
13. As Tevye says in “Fiddler On The Roof,” the reason we do it is TRADITION!

Yes, many Unitarian Universalist churches do close in the summer months. Many do not. They remain open for Sunday services. The regular minister is usually not on the scene. Frequently there are informal services or discussions led by the members. There seem to be more societies adopting some variety of year-round pattern. Here in Lakeland we cease our regular Sunday meetings in June and resume in September. In May and June our attendance dwindles as our fall-winter-spring members and friends journey north.

So it’s summertime and the U U is easy. We will have our occasional happy get-togethers, but Sunday mornings at 10:30 are a postponed discipline and sharing. Some may be able to participate in Unitarian Universalist activities on a larger scale – Suuusi at Radford, VA, or conferences at the Mountain.

Most of our ministers experience a sigh of relief that for eight or ten weeks the sermon deadline disappears. Speaking for myself, at this time of year if the Sunday sermon schedule continued, I’d yearn to be back in the foundry. The fountain of ideas is but a trickle. The underground reservoir needs to be replenished by reflection, study, playing with ideas, rediscovering who I am, re-confirming what sustains me, enjoying the pause that refreshes. Alfred North Whitehead once said that “religion is what a man (sic) is in his solitariness.” Such a definition is not complete but it is a truth of religion.

We need time for solitary self-knowing. But it is not always easy living. The self can be confused, frightened, torn between contradictory wishes bewildered by the constant concatenation of sounds, disillusioned by the chasm separating life as it is from the life of our hopes. “The transition from consciousness to self-consciousness was one of the critical moments in human evolution.” (William Cantwell Smith). We cannot return to a pre-self conscious experience. But we can use that self-consciousness to understand ourselves an in so doing better understand others.

T.S. Eliot in his poem, “Ash Wednesday” has two lines,

“Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to be still”

It is always a bit presumptuous to read interpretations into the poet’s line, but I will – teach us to be still for in the inner silence there may come guidance in what deserves our caring and what does not.

“Teach us to be still”

Every one of us can become more fully human. Norman Cousins wrote that human uniqueness resides in our ability to create and exercise new options. He calls this a test of education. I would add that it is also an opportunity for those who have a breathing space in summer. A clipping from the Wall St. Journal (Dec. 4) speaks to most of us:

BIG PRIZES & TINY DELIGHTS
Most of us
miss out
on life’s
big prizes.
The Pulitzer.
The Nobel.
Oscars.
Tonys.
Emmys.
But we’re
all eligible
for life’s
small pleasures.
A pat
on the back.
A kiss behind the ear.
A four-pound bass.
A full moon.
An empty parking space.
A crackling fire.
A great meal.
A glorious sunset.
Hot soup.
Cold beer.
Don't fret
about
copping life’s
grand awards.
Enjoy its
tiny delights.
There are plenty
for all of us.

I remember a long time ago when I was a rather inadequate Sunday School teacher, I would cop out on preparation for the first Sunday in September by seeking answers from my bright-eyed but restless charges to the question, “What did you do this past summer?” I learned never to do that again after getting the response I should have expected: “Nothin’.” I’d never make that mistake again.

However, a scholar of world religions (W. C. Smith) noted “to study a great work of art, or a great idea, or a great poem, is to become more fully human.”

Now tastes and training differ as to what is great in art, ideas, or poetry, but I suggest to you that summer time when the U U is easy is a felicitous time to take that advice.

At the Ringling Museum Monday afternoon, when I saw the bronze casting of Michelangelo's David, molded from the original marble. I was a bit overwhelmed by the giant size of the figure, with his sling on his shoulder, towering over we humans. I’ve been thinking about that. The old legend has it that the Philistine Goliath was a giant, and David a young shepherd boy. You remember the spiritual, “Lil David was small, but Oh, My.” Why did the greatest of sculptors, working with hammer and chisel, create a giant David? Was it because David’s conviction of the rightness of his cause made the sculptor create a towering figure? Or why? I shall reflect more on that. [CJW note: there are many works of art which may help us be more fully human.]

The suggestion, also, was “to study a great idea is to become more human.” Well, ideas come and go in our minds in continuous succession, like Kodachrome slides projected by a fast-moving carousel.

I’m a fan of the NPR program “All Things Considered” and will continue to be. Yet, [in] summertime, when the U U is easy, give some time to the “One Thing Considered” - a great idea. The human family on its long, hard road has considered many great ideas – God, human nature, sin, salvation, justice, crime, government, love. Give time to consider one of these or any of the many I have not named. I am reflecting on the idea of the transcendent. Now if I were a believer in God as a super-person who was all-wise and all-good, there would be no need to think deeply about the transcendent. But as an unrepentant advocate of common-sense religion, agnostic about the God images of most people, skeptical of the claims of anyone who professes to know it all, I must deal with the idea of the transcendent [and] how it can have any meaning for me. Is transcendence the meaning at the summit for the believer, agnostic, atheist alike? [CJW notes: The authentic Universalism? “The Force be with you” - what force?]

You, too, are invited to “One Thing Considered.” Play with a great idea in your mind. How does that one great idea cohere with your experience and your ideals? Is there any support for you in your world from that one great idea? “Choose something like a star,” the poet advises.

The third suggestion is to study a great poem to become more fully human. What is a great poem for you may not be for your neighbor. What was a great poem for you in 1975 may not be in 1983. But study what is for you a great poem, now. Read it silently, read it aloud, think about the poet’s images and rhythms. A great poem, whether from the Psalms, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Milton, John Donne, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, ee cummings, Robinson Jeffers, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, speaks to [the] human condition. Not just the human condition generally but your human condition. My present intention is to concentrate on Robert Frost’s two companion drama poems, “Masque of Reason” and “Masque of Mercy” along with T.S. Eliot’s “Choruses from the Rock” and “Four Quartets.” I will try to remember that the poets and bards preceded the historians and philosophers and I trust and hope they will survive the computer age. The great poets are not just word processors – they were signers of the heart’s delights, the heart’s agonies, the heart’s hopes.

So summertime and the U U is easy – but I hope not idle; but rather by our disciplines of the mind and spirit be a time for growth in wisdom and love.

A Light Touch And A Serious Look

May 15, 1983
Lakeland

Speaking for myself, I believe that I am frequently rescued from gloom and despair by the comic, the absurd, the bizarre. If I could not joke about life, any serious look would be distempered, not tempered. For the past few weeks, I have been clipping items from various sources that appealed to my sense of the ridiculous. So, first a light touch:

[Editor’s note: the following are a series of newspaper and magazine clippings]

From a Wadsworth, Ohio, Episcopal Church newsletter: “The Vestry thanked Ernie Stein for his donation of storm windows and ceiling for the chapel as well for the hours he has spent on the ladies water closet.”
---
In one of its reviews of new restaurants, NEW YORK magazine offers this pointed critique of a dining establishment called Elephant & Castle: “The restaurant is a little uncomfortable and a little antiseptic, the kind of place in which one is automatically disinclined to smoke, drink, or entertain libidinal thoughts. It is the perfect place to take a clergyperson to lunch.”
---
Letter from a student at John Abbot College in Montreal: “To the Dean: I am hereby returning my identification card since I had deliberately lied about my date of birth. I was helped to discover this by the police. If it would be possible, I would like to get a new I.D. card.” (CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION)
---
The defunct Rock Valley Economic Development Commission, which went out of business in 1981, doesn’t know what to do with a $25,000 grant it got from the federal Economic Development Administration. “The money is still sitting in the bank,” says Suzanne Loken, former commission chairwoman. James Schrader, an official with the Chicago EDA, says his office was too understaffed to recover the money.
---
The elevator operator, tired of hearing people ask him the time of day, had a clock put in the rear of his elevator. Now everyone asks, “Is that clock right?” (SUNSHINE MAGAZINE)
---
According to an ancient Chinese tale, a man who [sic] once heard a rumor that somewhere high in the remote mountains lived a sage who had discovered the secret to immortality. The man sold all of his possessions, severed all ties, and went in quest of the sage. After years of searching, he finally was directed to the home of the famed wise man. But upon arrival he was informed that the sage was dead.
---
What’s she doing in the pew? department: The NEW YORK TIMES recently carried a report about Nancy Harvey Steorts, chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. She made a controversial decision. Had she been influenced by the White House? No. “I made the decision in church two weeks before the formal vote. Some people go to church to listen to the minister. I go to think.”
---
Want to hear some depressing news? Then you’re the kind of person they’re looking for in Iowa City. The Benevolent and Loyal Order of Pessimists (BLOOP) is holding its annual convention dinner this Friday – appropriately enough, since April 15th is sort of a BLOOPer’s holy day, being both the day income taxes are due and the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. But don’t get the idea they’re a gloomy lot. “In reality, they are generally very happy because 90% of the time they are right and 10% of the time they are pleasantly surprised,” said club spokesman David Leshtz. “They are never disappointed.”
---
Ever wonder what a governor does for a living? Children in Maria Cure’s first-grade class were asked how Gov. Jay Rockefeller earns his keep. Some of their answers:

“He tries to tell everyone what to do.”
“The governor of West Virginia judges if people are right or wrong. His name is Ronald Reagan.”
“Our governor in West Virginia is a Mr. Rockingfella. He helps people carry heavy loads.”
“He talks in a microphone about important things.”
“The governor sings good. He tells people that he wants to see them.”
“Our governor talks to people and writes to them until he is tired.”
“The governor judges beauty contests and he stays around very important people.”
“He sends you a lot of bills each month.”
---
The city clerk of Berkeley, Calif., is authorized to order all the people with bathtubs there to fill them, then pull the plugs simultaneously. Ask the Sherlock Holmes in your family to figure out why this peculiar law is on the books. Answer: to drown sewer rats.
---
From a Frank and Ernest cartoon, 2 bearded, robed men on a mountaintop. One, holding a folder, hears the other say to him, “If those are the ultimate answers to the riddle of the universe, why are they in a loose-leaf binder?”
---
Except, perhaps, for that Frank and Ernest cartoon, those light touches are not very profound. The human condition is serious, formidable, threatening. Many of us believe that the threat to human survival is real indeed. How [to] deal with the nuclear threat, the poisoning of the earth, air, waters, the contrasts between the haves and have-nots? How can one contemplate calmly the fratricidal killings in Central America? Starvation, repression, hate, [and] fear touch our planet in many places. Our small lighted tapers do not illuminate very much the threatening dark.

The night of November 8, 1864, President Lincoln was with a few associates waiting for election returns. Charles A. Dana, one of those present, was called by Lincoln to his side. Lincoln took a pamphlet from his pocket and began reading aloud some of the quips and jokes of Petroleum V. Nasby, a folksy humorist.

Secretary of War Stanton was very impatient. Dana tells how Stanton beckoned him into the next room. Writes Dana, “I shall never forget the fire of his indignation ... that when the safety of the Republic was thus at issue, the leader, the man most deeply concerned could turn aside to read such balderdash and to laugh at such frivolous jests was to Stanton repugnant, even damnable. He could not understand that this was Mr. Lincoln’s prevailing characteristic – how the safety and sanity of his intelligence were maintained and preserved.

When we take a serious look at life, most of us have to admit that almost all of our energies are expended just in coping with the experiences and events of our own lives. No matter how vast and fearful the world problems, most of our energies are applied to the day by day tasks and worries of living. There are very few who do not carry burdens, sometimes perceived by friends, sometimes not. The lost job of the long-time worker, the limited opportunities for those entering the job market, the illness – when a loved one has an illness from which there is no hope of recovery – how [to] relate to him or her and oneself. When death enters the home, what then? How often the painful global problems of the world are eclipsed totally in the agonies, dilemmas, frustrations of the home the job, the family? [CJW note: felt too tired to think?] How many times have rosy dreams faded in the heat of unexpected disaster? During the terrible days of the Civil War, when a French nobleman asked President Lincoln what was his policy, he replied, “I have none. I pass my life preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.” [Have there been] times in your life when you felt like that?

So many times I have heard a troubled person say, “How can I plan with all that’s happening to me?”

In AS YOU LIKE IT, Shakespeare has the exiled Duke say,

“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
And this our life, exempt from
public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in
the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good
in everything.”

Amiens responds [I think the line should be read with irony],

“I would not change it.
Happy is your grace
That can translate the stubbornness
of fortune
Into so quiet and sweet a style.”

It is my experience and that of many others, that the sweetness of adversity is only known when one looks back – in retrospect. When adversity is experienced, it is not sweet, but bitter. Whens someone offers the cliché, “all things happen for the good,” the person, troubled, flailing about in the mire of defeat or sadness, is not likely to be comforted. Maybe later, years later, but not in the times of trouble. Who was it [who] said, “Life is an onion. You peel it year by year, and sometimes you cry.”

Then, too, a serious look at our lives eventually deals with the question, “who am I?” We are told that if each of us can deal realistically and wholesomely with this question, we are on the way to emotional maturity. That I believe to be true as long as we allow for foreseen and unforeseen changes in the self-portrait. William W. De Bolt wrote:

AMNESIA

“When I was young as dreams I knew
Exactly what I’d be,
And now I don’t know where to find
Blueprints I made of me.”

There is an identity game where members of the group would write 10 fill-ins to “I am.” Answers [would usually be,] in order: man (woman), father (mother), husband (wife), teacher/manager/lab tech/homemaker, citizen, ... Unitarian Universalist ....

The difficulty comes when we stay fixed with one set of identity priorities. Many persons would put father or mother first or second in priority when the children are young. But there are sad conflicts when a father or mother maintains the same attitude towards sons and daughters of 20 to 30 as when they were seven or eight. I suggest to you that dealing with the perennial question “Who am I” will in the course of time call for placing “father” and “mother” lower in the priorities.

Another example is the placing of husband or wife close to the top of priorities as so many do. Death – divorce – inexorably alters that priority. Failure to deal with that chance shows a distorted picture of self.

Who am I? The focus narrows or widens; the scenes and players change; the lens shutter may be at a slower or faster speed. The self-image modifies, and should.

Unless we do continue a serious look at ourselves, then we suffer because we have neglected our own human limitations; we may substitute the ideal for the reality. Both are needed.

the down-to-earth + the dream
the gritty now + the good expectation

Now, if I have left the impression that dealing seriously with our selves and our immediacies are our only concerns, that should be corrected. Of course I believe that our voices should not be raised, our energies expended on the awe-full problems of war-suffering. Nothing is more obvious, politically, [than] that voices must sound, values articulated, and our efforts added to the weight of the scales.

But for many persons, time for these needed actions for social justice and peace must [be] squeezed out of too little time, and too many day-to-day struggles. All the more reason for more persons to share their limited time and energies.

I believe in both the light touch and the serious look. In another paragraph from [the] article from which I read, Conrad Hyers writes,

“The comic spirit could restrain us from the ever-present temptation to confer upon our finite understandings and endeavors an ultimacy which nothing human enjoys. It attaches, as it were, a footnote to every pious act, creedal statement or proud posturing to remind us of our humanity, our finiteness and fallibility, our foolishness.”

We are sustained by both the light touch and the serious look. These are both ingredients in a religion for humans.