The Blaze And The Stumble

Musings, 1990

(Copied from scrap notes found in a file)

The Blaze And The Stumble
July 1967

When walking the Appalachian Trail, one can go off course when there is failure to locate the next blaze: the white bar, sometimes arrow, painted on tree or boulder. But one can be a bruised and irritated hiker if one is guided only by the painted blaze of distant markings.

The trail is strewn frequently with talus and rocks – unsteadily balanced – accumulated or poised by the combined tensions of gravity, glacial debris, and ancient erosion. Many times the footings are sharp-side up or form an efficient trap for ankle or calf.

One must watch each step so that the foot will squarely counteract the lop-sided shift of eccentrically formed shale or schist. On rare occasions, I’m told, a poisonous snake may be sunning on the rocky slope, ready to respond aggressively to invasion of the territory he has pre-empted.

Watch your step lest you fall; but follow each successive blaze coming into view lest you become lost. On the trail one dwells very little on that abstract social achievement called “progress”. Rather, one thinks of the immediate sense experiences, the shortening distance to the shelter, a briefer wait for the fire, the food and that luxurious experience of rest after sweaty labor. But if you want to consider the experience on the trail a parable of progress. I have no objection.

Follow the blaze, but watch your step.

Old Worlds and New Beginnings

December 31, 1967
Plainfield

Old Worlds and New Beginnings

On a day such as this when we contemplate the man-made calendar defining the end of an old year and the beginning of a new, I would direct your thoughts and feelings toward Old Worlds and new Beginnings. The human condition seems to be a dynamic tension between the values we have prized in the past and the hopes we cherish for a different order of things in time to come. The human family wavers between believing that the Golden Age was in the past and, contradictorily, that the Golden Age is in the future. We sing “should auld acquaintance be forgot,” while making New Year’s resolutions to change our ways.

Some of mankind’s oldest myths deal with old worlds and new beginnings – Paradise Lost and Heaven to come. Because the myth is much more than usually assumed, understanding is to be acquired from searching out the meanings of myth. Furthermore, because Christian theology fixed at a wrong level the meaning of the myth of Adam, Eve, and the eviction from eden, I would suggest to you that that myth is one of growth and hope, not of regression and despair.

When considering the nature of myth, one can be guilty of either of two fallacies. One is to accept the myths of one’s religion literally and unquestioningly as the disclosure of God’s will. This mistake is made by the orthodox in all religions, but particularly it is an error committed by those who stand rigidly for Christian dogmas. About the turn of the third century of the Christian era, Tertullian, a Roman convert to Christianity, was an influential and controversial theologian. His pronouncement concerning the total body of Christian mythology is still quoted as a defense of unquestioning faith: “I believe it BECAUSE it is absurd.”

Unitarians are quick to reject such irrationality, and rightly so. But it is just as unthinking to dismiss blithely or cynically all the myths of the human family. More than that, to look upon the mythology of man either with wry distaste or obstinate hostility may impoverish our understanding of ourselves and others.

Myths have sometimes been called primitive science. Pre-scientific man, who had no technical knowledge of biology, evolution, or other scientific disciplines, tried to explain the events that happened to him. On this level of definition, the Garden of Eden myth was the attempt of [an] ancient folk [culture] to answer such questions as:

Why snakes have no legs
Why women suffer pain when giving birth
Why people must work hard
Why death comes to people

If mythology represented only the “why” stories of pre-literate, non-technical, scientifically ignorant, or intellectually naïve people, then myth would long ago have lost power, at least in Western culture.

But there is more to it. Myth is also that “which never happened but is forever true.” (John Courtney Murray). Adam and Eve were not historical persons. But the relevant meaning in the myth has nothing to do with the reality that Adam and Eve were not historical persons, as you and I are persons in history. The ancient folk-tale gathers into myth many of the loose ends of human experience in an artistic expression that helps us to understand ourselves and others. The fallacy of Christian dogma has been to insist that the symbolic be believed literally. Christian theology insisted that when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they disobeyed God, became guilty of sin, which was transmitted to all their descendants. The old story of salvation proceeds with the notion that this congenital sin could not be removed by man’s own efforts. Man could not save himself. Therefore God could save people from his own punishment only by supernaturally impregnating a peasant girl, some 2000 years later, whose child was the God incarnate. The plan developed that thirty years after that, God planned to be executed in an atoning death in order to descend into Hell, in order to rise from the dead three days later. Such an artificial salvation scheme can have neither truth nor guidance for us here.

But as C.G. Jung, the founder of analytic psychology, has pointed out, and as many others have understood, all enduring myths have more than one edge of meaning. Myths are levers with which we can pry open the door to more complete knowledge of ourselves. Myths, like dreams, can be interpreted many ways. I like the manner Henry Bamford Parkes wrote, “the great social myths by which a society is animated, are imaginative projections of man’s sense of membership in a larger whole, and of his belief in the objectivity of moral, political, and aesthetic values. If take literally, they are by rationalistic standards always untrue. Yet they convey truths that the human mind cannot apprehend directly, and as long as they meet human needs and do not lead to the denial or suppression of any important element of human experience, they should not be dismissed simply as illusions.” (GODS AND MEN)

It is in such a spirit of search for meaning in myth that one can think of Adam and Eve, not as the Fall of Man into “sin and corruption” but as the myth of the New Beginning when an old world was gone.

For me, it is not acceptable to believe Adam and Eve’s “sin” was that of sexual relations – that eating of the fruit of the tree referred to awareness of sexuality. Only the guilt-filled attitudes of Christian believers in many centuries allowed such an erroneous concept to become fixed and to prevail in theology and social attitudes.

It is of passing interest that the Adam and Eve myth, like most myths, has roots deeply buried in prior cultures. There is a similar myth in the earlier Sumerian culture but with some difference. For example, in that early myth from Sumer, eight fruits are forbidden, not one; and the animal that does the tempting is not a snake but a fox.

Neither can I accept a more sophisticated interpretation of Adam’s Fall which proposes that the myth symbolizes man’s rebellion against God. As this variety of interpretation goes, God protected Adam and Eve from death, pain, and the necessity to work laboriously, just as long as they obeyed God’s instruction not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. When they disobeyed, God punished them with death, pain, work and inflicted them with congenital “sin,” to be inevitably inherited by all their descendants, including you and me. A god who would set such unremitting punishments in operation would be a strangely inconsistent and vindictive deity who, I suppose, could be worshiped out of fear but not adored with love.

I believe we should think of this old story from Genesis as the myth of Adam’s growth, the myth of a new beginning, the myth of the emergence of conscious, deciding persons who are growing toward freedom and more complete self-realization. Adam, for me, becomes Everyman becoming aware of himself as a person. Animal behavior seems for the most part to be instinctive or conditioned. But one of the unique characteristics of the person is a consciousness of the opportunity to be deliberate and decide, not restricted to stimulus and automatic response.

One teacher has suggested that the serpent was not a seducer but a giver of good advice. Most older religions have had taboos – experiences forbidden because [the] sacred would be violated if the acts were committed. The giver of good advice said, “Don’t be fenced in by taboos. Eat the apple and discover for yourself if the experience is one of growth.” In this sense, the snake was a benevolent influence because Adam and Eve experienced the desire to know. It was an experienced-centered curriculum, if you will.

B.D. Napier, an Old Testament scholar, has some appropriate poetic lines about Adam’s awareness:

Read
Quote, “Come sweet death”
p. 16-17

“The road O Lord, I have to know the road,
I need to go and come and go again.
Your garden is a prison – or a tomb – without a road.”

A luxurious prison is a prison still. And Eden, without freedom, is Hell in the midst of comfort. As Tillich wrote somewhere, man alone has a complete self and a whole world. That is, where food is given, exemption from pain is granted, and eternal life is provided, the whole world is given. But without a self to be aware, to suffer the pains of growth and death, one is not a person. (STI 258)

In the TEMPEST, Shakespeare has Caliban renounce Prospero and become the slave of a new master. Caliban sings, “Freedom, hegh-day, freedom-high-day, freedom.” For in New Beginning, Everyman’s growth is accompanied not only by the satisfaction which arrives when we have wisdom, but also by the pains which are the consequence of our follies.

Help toward greater fulfillment as persons in society requires not the rejection of the great myths of man, but a fuller understanding of them or new interpretation. Myths are not contrived; they are not easily manufactured as one can fabricate a gear or wiring assembly, Perhaps man can no longer create myths which universalize both the cosmic and human condition.

But whether one can accept, appreciate or respond to ancient mythologies, it seems clear that salvation in this world resides in accepting the requirements of responsible personhood:

To be able to accept the pain and uncertainty which accompany the freedom to choose alternatives;

to accept the consequence of one’s decisions, including the labor necessary to bring the decisions to completion; and

to exalt in the joys and suffer the sorrows which flood in when one opens the tidal-gates of imagination.

It is far better to be a person knowing irritation as well as comfort, experiencing defeat but occasionally knowing victory, than to be in complete ignorance of possibilities which await the acts of persons who have deliberated and decided.

In summary, the myth of Adam and Eve charges us to be persons who are persons and not just organic responses to whatever stimuli may have acted on nerve endings.

Such an attitude toward Old Words and New Beginnings is to be recommended. For grow we must as persons and as members of a social order or we perish. Goethe said it well in “Noble Be Man:”

[Editor’s note: the rest of this sermon is missing]

The Art of Following Stars

December 24, 1967
Plainfield

The Art of Following Stars

There are many ways to acquire wisdom. On this December 24th, why not permit your imagination to respond to the possibility that what makes wise men wise may be the art of following stars? Matthew’s gospel describes the legendary visit of the Wise Men from the East. The factual basis for this legend can be discussed in a minute. But deserving of much more time than alloted today is the rich suggestiveness of the story as a source of wisdom for living.

Books of astrological predictions abound. Astrological forecasts are regular features in many newspapers. there are still many people who believe, or have a teasing intuition, that the heavens not only declare the “glory of God” but also chart or influence our individual destinies. Astrology is one of the most ancient belief-strands. The legend of the wise men who brought gifts to the baby Jesus may have gathered around several traditions of ancient folk-lore. First, Matthew’s gospel emphasizes the Christian belief that Jesus was the Messiah whose coming had been long awaited by the Jews. There is a specific reference to an old scriptural prophecy from Numbers, (24/17), where it was predicted that,

“a star shall come forth out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall arise out of Israel.”

There is a story in Roman history which records the visit of three Eastern magicians to the emperor Nero, to bring him gifts and to salute his sovereignty. This visit to Nero may have been an influence on Christian traditions, because the birth stories about Jesus in the gospel of Matthew were not a part of the gospel until long after the time of Nero. Furthermore, the birth legends of both Matthew and Luke were probably not attached to these gospels until much later than the other parts, possibly as late as 115.

Astrological calculations represented a powerful influence in the old Persona religion of Zoroastrianism, a religion at least six hundred years old at the beginnings of the Christian era. In addition to the Jews, there were many other Near-Eastern and Asian peoples longing passionately for a Messiah who would free the oppressed people from foreign tyranny. There could have been many journeys by Persian astrologers following directions derived from interpreting the rhythm of the night skies.

There is no way of substantiating whether the legends about Jesus’ birth have some literal truth or not. Moreover there can be little expectation that we will have more substantial historical authority for any facts about the Wise Men. But there is an abundant help for our human situation in the imaginative resources of the wonder-full old story. Christmas is an appropriate occasion for the free play of imagination.

Those three men were wise not because of special knowledge derived from their astrological charts, but rather from a correct perception of what was good and what was bad in human events. They came from the East seeking a king they might worship. To locate a king, see the old king, so they sought out Herod. This was natural enough. The ancient and accepted ways prescribe that royalty mixes with royalty; that royalty descends from royalty, with succession of being established by direct blood lines, usually.

But the kind the Wise Men were seeking was not known to Herod. Herod’s crown rested uneasily on his head, for he knew the rebellious temper of oppressed people who would unite in revolt when the Messiah should come. When Herod summoned his advisers, they told him where the centers of insurrection might be. Herod’s secret service knew the Hebrew scriptures, not so much for inspiration but as the documents of subversion. So they quoted the prophet, Micah (5/2) to Herod:

“And thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah,
Art by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from thee shall come a ruler
Who will govern my people Israel.”

Seemingly, Herod did not want to spring the trap prematurely. Bringing the Wise Men again into his presence in order to direct them to Bethlehem, he said, “When you have found him bring me word that I too may come and worship him.”

With this advice and request, the Wise Men left behind the royal court. They made their way to Bethlehem where the star came to rest over the place where the child was. Greatly rejoicing, the astrologers brought their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh and prostrated themselves in worship before mother and child. Then, “being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.”

To take another way is an expression of the art of following stars. The Wise Men had been disciplined by an encounter with evil and they had been inspired by an experience of creative good. One learns to sort out the good from that which is evil, or less good, by a readiness to seek new directions; a willingness to re-interpret meanings when reason, or sometimes, intuition, suggests such need.

The Wise Men also were not deceived by Herod’s crafty attempt to use them as tools in the betrayal of the baby. What the old legend refers to as “being warned in a dream” may be that – a warning contained in a dream. It also may be a poetic way of reporting conferences. Insights and revised plans based on shared opinions. Perhaps they had agreed to keep open minds on what they might discover in Bethlehem.

They must have been wise enough to recognize Herod’s motives. The Wise Men did not yield up the objective of their journey. They followed the brightness of their star in the heavens and ignored the dazzle of Herod’s power. The Wise Men brought their gifts to the child; then they went home another way. Modern analytic psychology might find that the image of a child in a dream indicates the beginning of a new life taking form in the self. Wise Men found a new life and went back another way.

What do you do when confronted with the enthronement of wrong? The Wise Men have taught that one can go over, around, or even through an obstacle and still not lose sight of the goal for long.

If you have ever seen the desert, you know that footprints which could be guides, swiftly disappear, covered by shifting sands. The Wise Men had to develop the art of following stars, because there were no footpaths in the desert. But then too, there were no wheel ruts either.

The deserts of difficult choice do not provide easy paths, and ruts should be avoided. It is an art of human experience to become aware that one need not be stymied hopelessly behind a barrier, even when the obstacle is entrenched power. One can climb, side-step, or dig a tunnel. Just as a sailing vessel must tack, approaching a destination obliquely when certain winds prevail, so we need flexibility in charting directions, wherever one’s Bethlehem may be.

Perhaps most important to the art of following stars, when the Wise Men encountered evil in their human experience, they changed directions, but did not sacrifice the goal. There are times when the toll highways are not the best way to the destination. There are occasions when even the very learned, or the very obstinate, or the very angry, should dream of other answers because the old ways may not be the best ways anymore.

The taking of another way was not only the result of being warned and disciplined by evil, but also was the result of being inspired by the experience of the good. With the jewels of their crescents sparkling like the flame they worshiped, the splendidly-robed Magi brought their gifts – where? To the tent of a wealthy caravan merchant? To the throne of Caesar? To the court of Herod the Syrian king? To a learned astrologer? No, to none of these.

They brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to a pungent stable in a cave where a young mother shared her gladness in her new son.

Joseph and Mary’s son in Bethlehem, the Bernadone’s boy infant in Assisi, Thomas Lincoln’s biblically named baby in the Kentucky wilderness – how many of us would have guessed the potential? Yet we perceive in our more responsive and imaginative moments that there is something in the fresh presence of wanted babies in the world that makes better people of most of us, at least for awhile. Sometimes it is the experience of parents; sometimes it is the daring and charming possibilities that we feel are potential for the human family. Theodosia Garrison in some lines from her poem, “The Star,” poetically suggested the universal appeal of new life on earth:

“Some only dreamed who followed it,
Some, knowing, bore rare gifts and bright,
And some, poor souls and lack of wits,
But followed where they saw the light;
Yet all were led (by Jesu’s grace)
By the same star to the same place.

“There are many roads to love
as paths above the world may stray.
Some dip below, some wind above,
Yet one star shows to each his way;
And dreamer, king, and lack of wit
(By Jesu’s grace) may follow it.”

Now if the Wise Men’s experience could not also be ours in some sense, all this would be trivial chatter. But we too encounter the good and the bad in our travel toward our goal-stars. Like the Magi, we will be affected by the evil we encounter. Like they, we can be transformed by the good we meet in all varieties of human experience.

The Wise Men saw skies teeming with stars, even as on clear evenings still, the blue-black canopy of night is jeweled with uncounted millions of sparkling gems. According to the old story, the Wise Men plotted their course guided by a star which led them to Bethlehem. They chose the star that would lead them to the place they wanted to go.

This is our continuing opportunity too. Which star is the one to follow? To move from poetry to practicality, which of many goals are you going to choose? Life can frustrate us rather thoroughly unless we are skillful enough in the art of following stars to pick the one that illuminates the way to our best fulfillments.

But to make the Wise Men’s choice, we must admit to our minds and hearts enough warm light to illuminate the cold, dark places of our pride. The Wise Men had to leave a monarch’s glittering palace to find authentic royalty in a rude stable – emergency housing for a peasant family.

Carl Sandburg told a story of Lincoln which illustrates that the achievement of goals may require the dispensing with a certain amount of personal vanity. When Lincoln was an officer in the Blackhawk War, he “was a beginner and once couldn’t think of an order that would get the two platoons endwise, two by two, for passing through a gate. So he commanded, ‘This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of this gate.’” (THE PRAIRIE YEARS, p. 62)

This not only was an example of a clever mind, but also in a military setting it was honestly humble – and an omen of the creative leadership that Lincoln would one day bring to the nation. He knew the art of following stars – the courage to take another way, even though he might lose face in the opinion of an expert drillmaster.

The wisdom of taking another way is one of the enduring experiences that can come to us as the light lengthens, as human hospitality warms us, as the love of children who are loved casts a magic glow on the human scene. The wisdom of the ancients was glorified by the light of a child’s face. This was as it should be ever, for the living creations of love and labor are both the means and ends of a life that is worthwhile.

The Right To Be Human

December 10, 1967
Plainfield

The Right To Be Human

The nature of the human condition is such that it must possess rights. The American Revolutionists spoke of the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Beyond such generalities, I would suggest (with Bettleheim and others) that the human self is not just a mechanism molded and directed by external conditions determined by the accidents of birth in a particular family, in a given culture, in a specific period of time. Unique and independent, the self operates in the external world, working out its activity guided from within. We all have the basic creative inner center of direction, but this can be smothered by oppression and hopelessness.

The authentic human self must have power to exert some effect on events in the world in order to be truly and fully human. The power to influence is a uniquely evolved quality of being human. The human self is developed through awareness of one’s powers; and the experience that one does have power.

If this is the human condition, then social forces which destroy the influential self or restrict its despotically are the social forces which must be understood, challenged, and eliminated.

Recognizing such unalienable human rights as proper goals and standards for all the peoples of mankind, the General Assembly of the United Nations, with no dissenting votes, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on December 10, 1948. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the General Assembly of the United Nations has proclaimed 1968 as International Year for Human Rights.

Today I would seek to remind you of some of the international standards which have begun to have some influence as a consequence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then, because I believe there is an essential linkage, I would summarize the meetings between the “Black Caucus” and the Board and Trustees of the U.U.A.

There are nine conventions and two covenants which have been adopted by the United Nations – 4 by the United Nations and 4 by the ILO. Here is a brief review of these because never in human history have international organizations spoken so clearly about the rights of persons and the obligations of governments to respect these rights:

1)The Supplemental Convention on Slavery outlaws not only slavery but also practices similar to slavery – prison for debt, serfdom, purchase of brides and child labor, as well as slavery itself.

2)Genocide – defined as committing certain acts with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such. All who are guilty would be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials, or private individuals.

3)Political Rights of Women: This provides that women shall have equal rights with men as regards voting, election to publicly elected bodies, the holding of public office, and the exercise of public functions.

4)Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination: Condemns racial discrimination and undertakes to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and promoting understanding. Among other goals, integrationist multi-racial organizations [are] encouraged and anything which tends to strengthen racial division is discouraged.

5)Abolition of forced labor: Attacks and discourages forced or compulsory labor as a means of political coercion or education, as a punishment for expressing political views, as a punishment for striking, or as a means of labor discipline.

6)Discrimination in employment: Promotes equality of opportunity and treatment in employment with a view to eliminating discrimination based on race, sex, religion, political opinion, national extraction, or social origin.

7)Equal pay for equal work: Seeks equal pay for men and women workers for equal work.

8)Freedom of Association: Workers and employers shall have the right to establish and join organizations of their own choosing.

9)Discrimination in Education: Administrative practices, equality of opportunity and treatment. Parents free to choose private education for their children.

10)Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Consideration of communications from individuals who claim to be victims of violations of civil and political rights.

11)Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights – Right of self-determination to work, to strike, to social security, to protection and assistance for family, for adequate standard of living, to education, to participate in cultural life and enjoy benefits of science.

In preparation, but not yet adopted, are conventions on the elimination of religious intolerance and to promote freedom of information.

These become more than fine-sounding statements only when they are signed by the representatives of governments; and then ratified by the particular parliamentary body. In the United States, it is the Senate which can ratify the articles. Of the eleven which have been adopted by the U.N., the United States has ratified only one – the Slavery Convention. Four others have been signed, but not ratified by the U.S. Senate: racial discrimination, genocide, forced labor, and political rights of women.

One of the appropriate ways that 1968 can be properly observed as the International Year for Human Rights is to encourage our Senators to ratify the articles before it and to encourage the consideration of all other conventions.

Thus the international community we know as the United Nations has set standards of achievement, and by consent of some nations, established goals in the form of laws which may help substantially to establish the right to be human where this is denied; and will help protect the right to be human where some of these rights have been established as moral standards.

Of course, when we celebrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we need to look at our own nation as well as others.

If the right to be human requires that a person be aware that he is not just a mechanism to be conditioned, but a self with the joys and pains of awareness; a self with some power to influence one’s own destiny, then the prejudices and discriminations which nullify or ruin this awareness and prevent this oppression of influence, deprives the person of the right to be human.

When a person in our community is prevented just by his color from purchasing a home, for which he has the proper deposit and has met the requirements of the mortgage, then he is being robbed of the right to be human because he is prevented from exercising the power of self-choice of freedom of movement and association.

When a person in our community is denied a job because of his color, he is being blocked from maintaining his right to be human. He is robbed of power.

Until there is much more general recognition of the relationship of self to being accepted as a person with all a person’s rights, including the right to be an influence, to have power to determine one’s own destiny in some authentic measure, then more troubles and turmoil cannot be averted. Hopelessness and despair drain the self-powers of the human condition. Inhuman consequences surely follow.

If you were here when Roger Hall and Roger Guthrie communicated their understanding of the findings and feelings expressed at the Emergency Conference on the Black Rebellion in New York, you probably have some impression of the difficult position of the white Unitarian Universalist.

The tensions and mixed feelings they felt at that meeting have increased, denominationally, as a consequence of the meeting between the Steering Committee of the Black Caucus and the Unitarian Universalist Board of Trustees. Following their meeting, the Steering Committee of the Black Caucus was vehement in denouncing the U.U.A. Board position.

My present views are that I still believe in an integrated social order, in integrated Unitarian Universalist churches and fellowships. I hope I understand the feelings of Black people. The reach for Black identity, Black organization, Black control, is directly related to the right to be human. To be human is to be able to exert influence, to be able to lead in the determination of one’s destiny.

So I can understand the wish for Black separatism, but cannot endorse it, because even though integration in our churches may be a “liberal fantasy,” as Henry Hampton wrote, I still believe integration in our societies and parallel organizations to be the best possible condition from which to make longer strides in shorter time toward full recognition that all person are of worth and dignity and deserve equal opportunity. Unless I have been badly misinformed through the years, this has been one of the causes for Negroes joining our churches – that we believe in the superiority of an open society – open to all.

Therefore, I believe that the U.U.A. Board takes a position with which I can agree. I would make this reservation: If the February Conference of the Black Unitarian Universalists, subsidized by the Commission on Religion and Race, should make it clear that the prevailing conviction among Unitarian Universalists generally, not just the 30 members of the Black Caucus at the N.Y. Meeting, is that there should be a Black controlled, Black membership organization as one of the affiliate agencies of the U.U.A., then I believe that such a movement should be recognized and accepted. I would maintain, still, that given the U.U. context, as well as the context of the minority groups, one could predict that such separatism would not endure. But if such organization proves to be a strongly-felt need, then this will emerge as one of the results of the forth-coming February conference.

One thing more, I can understand the feelings which led the Black Caucus and the Black Steering Committee which came to make peremptory demands – accept or reject, without debate, etc. I think I can understand the impatience with the tedium of the parliamentary process. But I cannot support the view. The process of affirmation and opposition; the right to argue against a proposal as well as support – these ways of information and decision are not just temporary expressions of our U.U. movement. One can deride or berate Roberts’ Rules of Order, or scold those who prolong floor debate. However, the procedures are not trivial, but the product of at least a thousand years of due process. I do not see how we can fail to protect the right of dissent. I have been a member of minorities frequently enough – and protected by the right of dissent – I cannot believe we can lightly jettison this hard-won procedure in democratic relationships.

Certainly we have failed to eliminate discrimination and prejudice. Certainly we have been too ready to believe in automatic progress without personal sacrifice and pain. But the most enduring values that have grown and among the better human resources of hope is the establishment of the rile of law and the democratic process in our religious societies, in our nation, and slowly, but increasingly, in our world. This may sound hollow to those who have not received anything like equal treatment. If I were a member of the minority burdened by centuries of prejudice and cruelty, I might not believe any more in the functioning of due process, of orderly procedures which allow for dissenting arguments and negative votes. But, as I see it, no one could gain much and everyone could lose much more from an abolition of the due process by which groups make decisions following the assertions of those who wish to be advocates of their cause.

The Celebration of Human Rights should be more than verbal or philosophic recognition of the various articles defining human rights and claiming these rights for all persons. To properly celebrate, we must feel the tension of what has been done and what must be done to advance the freedom, dignity, and equality of opportunity for persons. Circumstances do not permit the neglect of our community, our U.U.A. or our world.

We are charged not only by the developing moral awareness of the U.N., but also by the best values of our Unitarian Universalist tradition to defend and promote the right to be human; to be a conscious self, aware of the fulfilling achievement of being able to guide the direction of life – one’s own and, in a measure at least, the trend of society. There can be no real sense of individual responsibility until a person is convinced that there will be a real response to his labors, his voice, his aspirations, his assertions of his rights. If one expects responsibility on the part of others, one must be willing to be open to the response from others. This I believe is one of the true balances between self and other; this is the right to be human.

In the [Brothers Karamazov] (p. 92), Rakitin is asked to confirm the charge that if there is no immortality, there can be no virtue. Immortality is not the subject today, but his reply speaks pointedly to the right to be human, “Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality. It will find in it the love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity.” Such love and the ability to so love is basic to the right to be human.

Let The Church Be ... What?

December 3, 1967
Plainfield

Let The Church Be ... What?

What holds this religious society together? What attitudes should prevail? We are various persons with unlike responses to minister, worship, denominational trends, administration, ideas, communication, action. What do you want this religious society to be? What I say this morning is a summary of my present views.

In the Unitarian church service, there are those who attend because they seek intellectual stimulation. Table 6 of the Goals Report indicates this is the prime cause of persons attending – 74.4% of those surveyed indicated this was very important, and 23.1% indicated it was somewhat important; only 2.5% believed intellectual stimulation to be not important. The desire to be intellectually stimulated outranked the desire for fellowship by 10% and led other reasons – celebrating common values, group experience of worship, music and aesthetics, motivation to serve others – by up to 20 percentage points.

One could therefore conclude that the intellectual presentation of provocative ideas is the leading justification for Unitarian worship. Certainly our traditions provide some precedence for the position that our service should be the seed-starter of dialogue, the stimulus to excellent conversation, the productive center from which the interplay of ideas results in individual growth, and occasionally, some influence on society.

In all candor, I wonder how authentic this predominant generality is? Pride of intellect, particularly if there is more form than substance to the basis for pride, can be but a well-covering arrogance. There are those who classify the ideas they agree with as intellectual and interesting. Ideas which do not interest them are labeled as abstruse, boring, or offensive. There are those among us who quite frankly say that they choose to stay away when the theme is one they oppose or about which they have no current concern. If you purr intellectually only when your pet ideas are stroked, then the Unitarian prideful claim of intellectual leadership needs more objective appraisal. There are great ideas stirring in the world which are not adequately discussed either in the U.S. News and World Report or I.F. Stone’s Weekly – or for that matter, in the Goals Committee Report of the U.U. A.

And so I suggest to you that the need for ideas has never been more acute. Furthermore, that true dialogue involves the art of listening as well as assertion. And another furthermore, an idea is not necessarily trivial or worthless because it is not of immediate and pressing interest to you.

There are those who believe that the Sunday worship service should provide comfort, inspiration, uplift. I agree. We live in a world where many times comfort is needed to mend torn feelings. The disillusions of the day require constant inspiration in order to persist with the tasks that are ours. In a world where we are put down frequently enough. we need to be uplifted to gain sight of new and fairer perspectives. We need comfort, inspiration, and uplift.

But if in reality, comfort, inspiration, and uplift are words to indicate a belief that nothing irritating or disturbing should ever be referred to in the sanctuary of worship, why then of course it is disease, not health, to want comfort, inspiration, or uplift, when these are disassociated from the social order. For it is in the social order that men, women, and children live in tears and laughter; where they are wracked by injustice; where they are shaken by evidences of man’s inhumanity to man; where they are afflicted by the callousness of others; where they are blocked by stubborn, selfish advocates of an antiquated status quo.

So it makes a great deal of difference if by comfort, inspiration, and uplift, one really means an escape from those issues of life which are uncomfortable to confront with conviction. It makes a great deal of difference if my comfort, inspiration, and uplift, one really intends to avoid that which is dirty, but real, sad, or presenting a choice to be made. When such evasion is why there is the wish for comfort in any religious society, what seems to be the perfume of sanctity will actually be the smell of decay.

Should the church be a place for friendship and fellowship? Should not our halls and rooms be the place where friendship between like-minded persons are established and cultivated? The easy answer is, yes.

I know of one of our Unitarian churches where the slogan for more than 100 years has been, “here, let no man be a stranger.” But in spite of that, many persons told me how cold was the attitude toward visitors and newcomers. One Unitarian I met a couple of years ago had moved to several cities successively. Rather uniformly she accepted the fact that when she attended the Unitarian church for the first time, she would not be greeted warmly or introduced around in the coffee hour. So she made a practice of breaking into the little in-group circles, introducing herself, and establishing her place by her own initiative, rather than expecting to be welcomed.

A colleague of mine, beginning his ministry in a Unitarian church, discovered that the social attitudes were no less cold than the New England climate of the area. The persons who gathered to worship remained detached from one another, going their separate ways, with few greetings or signs of friendship. Deciding to attempt some warming efforts, he consulted with the board chairman in an effort to get some practices established which might create more fellowship. The board chairman said, “Young man, if we Unitarians here in [B....] wanted to know one another better, don’t you think we would have done something long before you arrived on the scene?”

From some of the discussions sponsored by the Adult Program, the message comes through rather clearly that newcomers here feel that there is coldness, a deficiency in welcome, an indifferent attitude being expressed to newcomers.

This is not experienced by everyone, but certainly by some. If you are a veteran member of one month, or one generation, then you do not need any exhortation from me to decide whether or not we are a friendly church. Furthermore I don’t know any area of church which requires less organization than being friendly. This is something anyone can do. No board decisions or congregational vote is required at all.

Should this church be a place of friendship and fellowship? Of course. Can such an atmosphere be coerced by a minister, committee, or board? Of course not. Some enabling practices can be adopted, but the essential friendly spirit is either here or it is not.

Is the church the place for social action? More needs to be said at this time on this aspect of church life than about the other subjects to which I have referred. First, because the principle and nature of social action has become a vital and sharp issue in all religious institutions. Second, because of the traditional freedom of the Unitarian Universalist to disassociate himself from the commitments of other persons, the issue is central to us, both as a continental denomination and a local society.

For several years in marches, pickets, demonstrations, public stands, there has been considerable visibility of clergymen, nuns, and laymen explicitly there because of their religious convictions. The March on Washington in 1963, the Selma-Montgomery March the following year, and peace parades are instances which come to mind readily.

A news correspondent repeated the story which seems symbolic of the need among those who march and picket. Plainclothes officers were trying to gain entrance to an illegal narcotics party. “When the policemen knocked at the door, a voice inside called for identification. The answer, ‘Man, we’re looking for the action.’ The door opened and the police were welcomed.” There are those who believe that the door to authentic religion in our time is where the (social) action is.

Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, in a speech this year (Christian Science Monitor, 4/14/67) said, “‘The Church should not be timid about soiling its hands in an effort to grapple with social events and responsibilities.’ Senator Percy called upon churchgoers to involve themselves in the social and political affairs of our times. ‘The Church must lead not only in religion but in life. It must minister not only to the whole spirit but to the whole man, the whole community. It must be relevant as well as reverent.’”

In what ways was Senator Percy correct? Would you agree with the late Dag Hammarskjold who wrote in MARKINGS, “In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.”

In the world of organized religion, this METHOD of action is the most debated question. A prominent Christian churchman, the Archbishop of York, wrote, “one of the most central issues confronting Christianity today is whether it should deal primarily with the saving of souls or with the achievement of social justice in the community.”

The linkage between religion and sweeping changes in the social order delights some, but disturbs many. As an example, a nun marching in a civil rights demonstration was attacked by white racists who cheered when her blood spilled on her bib. Generally, while those active in action issues are highly visible, and those who are angry at them are loudly vocal, the great majority of church people seem indifferent to the radical, social movements in which religious professionals seem over-represented.

Such meager generalizations about social action generally are only introductory to Unitarianism in particular.

The Goals Report is some indication of Unitarian Universalist feeling about social action. Table 30 indicates that 48.4% consider social action very important and 43.7% important – that is 92.1% believe social action is at least important. When Table 37 is reviewed, the statistic is that 27.8% strongly approve public stands by the congregation and 45.9% approve – a total of 73.7% of Unitarians sampled who believe in group stands by the congregation.

I agree with this majority, as I have said on more than one occasion. My belief is that there are issues important enough for a corporate group of Unitarian Universalists to say this WE believe, here WE stand. Furthermore I am convinced that a group statement has the power to influence community, state, and national attitudes and decisions. I cannot prove or demonstrate this, anymore than he who disagrees can prove to me that only individual expression and action have influence. Then, too, I believe that dialogue and debate pointed toward decision ought to be a more informed and searching interchange than discussions which cannot be concluded with an opportunity to say aye or nay, or to stand to vote for one’s conviction.

But it is clear to me that the majority of the members of this society do not agree. The majority believe that the principle of individual freedom is so precious that a group stand infringes on that right even when established by proper meeting procedures. Now I am neither dismayed by being in the minority nor chagrined that this Society does not seem to be typical of the Unitarian societies sampled in the matter of group stands and social action.

Freedom is still basic – the individual Unitarian has the right and should assume the responsibility to arrive at his own conclusions about religion, and the application, if any, to the issues of the social order. Euripides has Pylades say (from Iphigenia in Tauris, p. 51),

“Let us forget
All but the one word Freedom, calling us
To live, not die by altars barbarous.”

I can appreciate the Unitarian who asserts that he wants no other Unitarian to speak for him.

But when I assert that freedom is still basic, there is a twin freedom, of equal necessity to this or any other Unitarian Universalist society. That is the freedom of the Society to act as a corporate body in a properly called and conducted meeting. This too is as historic in our religious traditions as the right of freedom of individual belief. This parallel, equal, freedom of the right of the religious community to speak and act gives the only authentic meaning I know to religious organization. When I am in the minority in a membership vote, other Unitarians are not speaking for me. Rather, the majority speaks or does not speak as a majority.

I am not arguing that any one of you must believe as the majority sampled, that a congregation should take a stand. Rather I am maintaining that the Society has the freedom to consider, vote, or not consider, not vote on any matter properly brought before it; and that there can be no substantial objection to this freedom principle.

If such is not a valid position, then what is called in the democratic method in human relations can never be more than a scattered collection of opinions, never capable of much clear focus.

The late Teilhard de Chardin, one of the most cogent of modern thinkers, observed that even as the early Greeks believed the greatest speculative issue to be the problem of the one and the many, so the sharpest social issue of modern times is the relationship of the individual and the community. I believe that recognition of the twin freedom in the Unitarian Society – the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the Society, provides a working model for the resolution of this dilemma.

Let the Church be ... What?
The setting for intellectual stimulation? In part, but not in whole.
The source of spiritual comfort? In part, but not in whole.
The place for friendship and fellowship? In part, but not in whole.
The impetus for social action, whether as an aggregation of individuals or a congregation of members? In part, but not in whole.

All these, and more (I have not mentioned religious education) are gathered in the church as sanctuary. Let the church be sanctuary (sanctuary is a word I have always been reluctant to use, because in our Judeo-Christian tradition, sanctuary represents ideas I resist. In the Jewish tradition, the sanctuary was the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of Solomon’s Temple, where only the High Priest could enter. In Christian usage, sanctuary has meant the altar section where only the priest can offer the sacrifice of the Mass.) But increasingly, I have come to accept a truer meaning of sanctuary – the most sacred part of any religion – that which is sacred and inviolable; an area that may not be invaded [even] with consent.

In that sense, let the church be the sanctuary for all the hard-won ideas that the human family has achieved. Let the church be the sanctuary of hope whereby we dream and work to the end that the great ideas and goals of the human family will spread first to the edge and then overcome the center of all ills that men inflict upon one another.

Let the church be the sanctuary where we can face up to ourselves as we really are – light and shadow, commendable and condemnable; but ever persisting in the search for meanings beyond both the bouquets and brickbats of any given day. Let the skills and arts of the creative persons among us be a lighted fuse leading to such imagination which could explode with new bursts of creativity.

Let the church be the sanctuary whereby we confront the sharp edges of dissent – for freedom to hold diverse opinions is one of those hard-won ideas which we must protect and defend.

But also let us remember the idea of brotherhood – too much an abstraction and an insufficiently realized abstraction still.

Let the church be the sanctuary for the confrontation of the contradiction between individual freedom and brotherhood. For brother is a family concept – and who in a participating family can ever be wholly free?

This is the painful dilemma we face under such phrases as “group social action,” “Can the congregation speak for me?”, “should the membership take a group stand?” Two superb ideals – individual freedom, human brotherhood. Let the church be the sanctuary whereby we can reckon creatively, and as friends, with the interplay between these two great goals.

Let the church be the Creative Center whereby we guard the noblest traditions and cherish the finest hopes.

Just one caution – we must not forget. Thomas Becket’s great protagonist was Henry II, a competent king who organized many practices which became valuable institutions [and] important precedents. It was said of this notable king, however, that “he mourned the dead with a grief far greater than he loved the living.” (R. Winston, BECKET, p. 53)

We guard great values; we dream great dreams. But as we uphold these values, let us love the living in the next pew, in this membership, in our cities, and all across the world. Let us be among the human forces in such a creative center of accomplishment and search.

The Future of Unitarian Belief

November 5, 1967
Plainfield

The Future of Unitarian Belief

Irrespective of how many of us may respond to samples, trends, and projections of beliefs among Unitarians and Universalists, this above all: the religious foundation each of us needs should provide the basic strength to confront both triumph and disaster with continuing confidence in life; should give assurance that there are resources within for the conquest of fear; and should bestow a continuing attitude that no matter how gloomy at times the human condition may seem, we are given hope that worthy aspirations may ever be renewed and that decisive conduct is an option always available, if we WILL to act.

In speaking of the future of Unitarian belief, I am making observations beginning with Table 41 of the “Report of the Committee on Goals” of the U.U.A. Under the leadership of our Adult Programs Committee, discussions begin tomorrow using some of the findings of the Goals Committee as a starting point. The purpose of these discussions is not to hammer out uniformity of belief but to discover the nature of the bond among Unitarians which causes them to support a common enterprise, namely this First Unitarian Society of Plainfield. Someone recently defined maturity something like this, “I once defined maturity as the art of being willing to shell peas, but now I think it is accepting cheerfully the fact that something is always out of order.” (From STILLMEADOW CALENDAR, Gladys Taber, Lippincott) Somehow that reminded me of the Universalist Unitarian societies and organizations.

Or if that didn’t come through to you, consider this statement about Unitarian Fellowships by author Betty Mills (with the exception of such distinctive fellowship artifacts as borrowed furniture, the observations apply to established UU Churches)

“A fellowship is an island of liberalism in a sea of orthodoxy; it is a group of people sitting on borrowed chairs in preference to padded pews. It is a state of religious satisfaction amidst financial despair. A fellowship consists of people with horrified relatives and precocious children, and develops tremendous esprit-de-corps by arguing violently among themselves. A fellowship has sourdough pancakes for Easter breakfast, jazz for the processional, and Mark Twain for the benediction. It cries loudly to Boston for help, and then tells its emissaries how to run the denomination. It borrows furniture from its members, hymns from the orthodox, and ideas from everyone. It is composed of 3 parts exhilaration and two parts exasperation, and glues everything together with coffee. It is at once a risky adventure and a great adventure, and without it I would be a lost soul.”

It is with some similar blend of inspiration and confusion that many of us have examined the statistical tables and goals in the Report.

Table 41 represents the belief preferences of the sampled members of the U.U.A. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the theological hopes are divided as follows:

6.4% prefer that ten years from now we will be closer to liberal Protestantism.
4.8% prefer that ten years from now we will be closer to the ecumenical Christian movement.
36.7 % prefer that ten years from now we will be closer to an emerging, universal religion.
52.0% prefer that ten years from now we will be closer to a distinctive, humanistic religion.

Do these classifications have substantial differences? It would seem that the approximate 11% who would prefer we be closer to the liberal Protestants and the ecumenical Christian movement would look favorably on the spirit of Christian myth, belief, and practice, rather than on the rigidities of Christian dogma. But only a fraction more than one in ten prefer this trend. My guess is that this is an accurate prediction.

A surprisingly large total, almost 89%, nearly 9 in 10, prefer that we become closer to an emerging, universal religion or closer to a distinctive, humanistic religion.

Before dealing with the question of whether beliefs are trivial or vital, and the possibility of emerging universal religion, just a few lines of definition to review and emphasize some of the authentic differences in meaning that are represented by such words as atheist, agnostic, deist, theist, humanist.

An atheist usually denies the existence of any god or gods.

An agnostic holds that it is not possible to acquire knowledge of whether or not god exists. As originally coined by Thomas Huxley, agnostic indicated a suspension of judgment about ultimate issues.

A Deist believes that there is a God who created the Universe, but remains entirely apart from it. Such a God is not the source of goodness; not a moral being; and has no communication with human persons.

A Theist usually believes that God is a personal Being, both above and within the Universe and who does have relations with persons.

A Humanist is even more difficult to define briefly. Essentially, he may be deist, agnostic, or atheist as far as the idea of God is concerned, but holds that the proper focus of religion should be entirely fixed at the human life on earth; life here and now; “the proper study of mankind is man.” In another sense, the Humanist may believe that the only source of human knowledge is from human perceptions, not supernatural, natural only, individual and collective; that beliefs in Gods (like all other beliefs) are the product of human cultures, social and personal; that any religious belief is therefore always relative, never absolute.

I am aware too that many of you will not fit into any of these categories; that inevitably many of you would offer some variety of “yes, but” qualification to every definition.

There was a time when the issue of Humanism vs. Theism raged hotly in Unitarian Universalist societies. That there could or should be a vital religion without God was controversial, as some of you may remember. Some partisans were willing to erect some sort of creedal barrier in order to keep Humanists out. Some Humanists were equally outraged that there were Unitarians and Universalists who could hold such an antiquated and outdated belief as that there was a God who existed. Perhaps some of you remember the story, current a few years back, of the denominational executive who received a delegation from a convinced Humanist congregation who had fears that their theistic minister was trying to evangelize them. As one version of the story goes, the head of the delegation, a retired schoolteacher insisted quaveringly, “But Dr. X in his prayers has got to the place where he actually asks the Lord to bless us, and we can’t stand it.”

Now it seems somewhat strange that liberal fevers should have raged so hotly. Now there is cheerful acceptance of differences of theological belief. We have recognized that different meanings can be attached to the same words; and different words may have essentially the same meaning. I guess the closest current parallel would be to ask some of you to compare the depth of your feelings about the church taking social action stands and positions as a society. That today probably has much the same high emotional fever as the humanist-theist controversy ten to 20 years ago.

As the table indicates, the trend is toward a blend of Humanist attitudes and a search for creative consolidation of the enduring insights of all religions, Western and Eastern.

Should we then assume that differences in belief are of little or no account in the deliberations, attitudes, and programs of a Unitarian Universalist religious society in the 1960s? As a matter of record, not only in our societies but also in the main streams of Protestant orthodoxy and to a lesser extent in Roman Catholicism, heresy seems to have become “old hat.” This is the headline of a recent article (NYT 1/67) pointing out that even for much of orthodox Christianity, “all theological formulas are approximate” and that “theological freedom is an element of risk that must be tolerated.” Alan Watts wrote that “the standard brand religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist are as now practiced, exhausted mines.” (THE BOOK, p. 4)

It seems no longer news that “god is dead.” Last year’s extensive coverage of this obituary, startling to many persons, has dwindled to an occasional item or article. Are such signs among the larger denominations signals to Unitarian Universalists that all theology is either imponderable or irrelevant? Should we ignore beliefs and get down to what is real – individual and collective action to set right the things which are so obviously wrong in our city, nation, world?

If so, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Unitarian Universalists, Jews, Moslems and you name it should no longer make a big deal out of their distinctions in theology, group worship, and differing organizational structures and programs. Forget traditions and beliefs; remember issues and actions! Is that the “word” for today? And is it good advice?

But however one may react to the “death of God,” whether as a somewhat exaggerated obituary or not, there is little doubt in my mind that a theology or philosophy of one’s own is necessary to a more fully-developed self and more effective living with others in the social orders of family, communities, world. I’m not referring to murky, theological generalizations redolent with the dust of obscurity and the foggy incense of dogmatic abstractions. I’m asserting the need to attach a “why,” “how,” and “where” to life – of coming to grips with the nature and destiny of this being we call the self; of arriving at some tentative conclusions about the character of and reason for this universe, our home.

The need for belief is not because the conduct of life is of lesser importance or that convictions about and actions on social issues are of minor value. Quite the contrary. We need beliefs about persons and destinies because the more we have confronted the options and chosen to believe in certain ways, the more assured and effective will be our actions.

A formidable reality seems to occur when dealing with issues that bristle with controversy. When the process of seeking social change begins, usually the approach is moderate, but the resistance of many counter-social forces causes transformation to more radical positions. For example, in the troubled cities, fundamental changes, not gradual, are called for and there is a new militant stance in the Civil Rights movement. This is a change that is now at hand. If you do not feel this sea-change in attitudes, I hope you will be here next Sunday morning when Roger Gutrie, Roger Hall, and I attempt to communicate some of the content and feeling of this change as reflected in the recent U.U.A. Emory Conference on Civil Rights.

Action and demands are going to test beliefs, perhaps as they’ve never been tested in our lives. Therefore it would be well to have belief.

We become our beliefs. William Jovanovich, a publisher, makes the interesting point that “man becomes the servo-mechanism of what he himself creates.” (American Scholar, Winter 66/67). For example, the ancient tribes of Israel formed a covenant community and bonded the covenant with the Torah, the written Law. Soon they became known as the People of the Book. The name has persisted for thousands of years. They created the Book because they believed in the Covenant, and [in so doing] became the People of the Book. This illustrates the fundamental power of belief.

Issues and troubles are testing beliefs as never before. If one has no beliefs to be tested, then he is like unto the leaf fallen from the tree, blown hither and yon by every breeze of changing circumstance. If, however, he is like unto the live leaf attached to the tree, the source of life and strength, then he is more likely to hold on even when the winds of force rise.

Achieving one’s basic, undergirding belief is not easy. Change and social pressure, along with the fantastic growth of knowledge, can easily confuse us. The temptation is great to shirk the task of achieving convictions which can be both rationally held and felt deeply. Inertia in a thing-centered civilization creates easily a state of comfortable paralysis of the will. To be a person fired by emotion, who has wrought out conviction on the anvil of experience with the hammer of thought, is to have labored continuously and arduously. Yet that labor will bring reward, not in what we have, but in what we do, and more vitally still, in what we are.

George MacLeod, found of the re-established Iona Community, said, “pray for more light, but follow the light you see.” (WE SHALL REBUILD)

For one, I believe I am beginning to see glimmers of light which illuminate belief, increase my understanding and effective action. The trend toward universalism and Humanism will continue to grow in importance as our way of understanding ourselves and others.

I think the time is past when we will grow strongly on the basis of what we don’t believe about God, Man, Trinity, Salvation. The beliefs that appeal now are positive – what we do believe, what we intend to do. How seriously do we take the difference between real and ideal. Can Unitarian Universalists act – and in what ways?

Recognizing that our perceptions of experience are the ways of our human learning, and accepting the obvious social reality that different cultures have produced different ways of believing, we will increasingly seek out the best insights of Buddhism, Hinduism, and ancient Chinese religion as enriching streams flowing into the pool of better religious insights. Furthermore, as we eventually overcome our over-emphasis of abstract thought, “rational” so-called, we will take unto ourselves some of the enriching, aesthetic expressions – color, movement, sound, touch – of those religions we have erroneously called “primitive.” This search for enriching values which have universal application will not be indiscriminate. We will discard as well as incorporate. But when we search with openness, we will find that which should be retained and valued. Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The decay of Christianity and Buddhism as determinative influences in modern thought is partly due to the fact that each religion has unduly sheltered itself from the other.” This is an observation not limited to Christianity and Buddhism, but plies across the spectrum of religions.

In the closing minutes of this sermon, let me attempt to state my present convictions about my hope for the future of belief among Unitarians and Universalists. Given our individual freedom of belief – no other option is possible for us – my hope is that the trend toward universalism and humanism must recognize and attempt to bridge the imagination gap in self and society. I have no doubt that rationality will continued to be valued among us; it is now more important that we permit the imagination to form images of higher, more effective religious attitudes.

Many persons today live in fractured segments. They participate in an occupational culture with its rules and attitudes; they perform volunteer assignments in innumerable organizations which may provide an atmosphere in some contradiction to the work culture; political parties represent an additional fragmentation for many, not to speak of the expressed attitudes of religious organizations and leaders taking stances which may be anathema to some persons who are looked to for support of these religious organizations and spokesmen. Then there are other differing worlds – the home, the club, the leisure world, and the most underestimated of all, the expressive arts which we create or to which we respond.

The conflicts we feel between these differing worlds rip the stability of many persons because there is no stable center to which all can relate and be harmonized. This estrangement can be called “alienation” or “identity crisis.” The feeling is widespread.

The only available bridge to link these differing worlds is the ability of the self to respond with imagination. The person, the self, the individual is a unique being, unrepeatable. Our inner self, this constellation of traits kept in orbit by that deeply buried core cannot be Xeroxed or mimeographed.

This conflict caused by fragmentation of interests and commitments is not a new problem for the human family. The ancient ones solved it by having various gods for the various divisions of life – a god of harvest and fertility, a god of love, a god of travel, a god of justice, and so on. As societies achieved cultural cohesion, occasionally some God was the connecting bridge, as was Yahveh of ancient Israel.

But life becomes increasingly more complex. The god or gods of others will not do for each of us. It is ourselves which must provide the co-ordinating center, or the bridge.

Thus, as I have said on other occasions, while I believe we live in a universe of enormous force, which created us, the underlying power will not intervene from the outside to build the imagination gap for us or solve our problems. We must understand and cultivate the inner self in order to interact with others in the confrontation of difficult problems. The light I begin to see begins to make clearer that the inner self has magnetic power which can gather more closely the fragmented segments of our lives. I believe that the future will disclose this in our experience if we are alert to it and do not dismiss ourselves as accidental aggregates of wishes meeting environmental forces.

Some of the best thinking on the need to bridge the imagination gap was done by the late Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit scientist, whose books, THE FUTURE OF MAN, THE PHENOMENON OF MAN, and THE VISION OF THE PAST have created much interest and discussion.

His thought is stimulating and controversial. Because it is worth some emphasis, a two-sermon series is in preparation, not only because there are those of you who have raised questions about de Chardin’s philosophy, but also to help my own growth. Just a sample may indicate why I believe he spoke to the Imagination Gap (CJW then quotes from THE PHENOMENON OF MAN, p. 261)

In summary, the future of belief for Unitarians is humanistic with a response to and gathering of insights and wisdom from all times and places. We will recognize that no one ever had all the truth, but that most enduring religious cultures had a grasp on some portion of truth about the human condition, internal, environmental, or both.

In my view, we will seek to develop our inner imaginative self to bridge more successfully and creatively the conflicts in society. Answers to problems will not wait until everyone achieves this imaginative self-stabilized grasp of experience. War, conflict in our cities, old wrongs of segregation and discrimination cannot tolerate much more delay. This reality we should not forget. We must act as wisely, promptly, and effectively as humanly possible.

But if religious belief has a future, then its energy is that of the self, dealing creatively with its physical and social environment to the end that one can love his neighbor and himself, not in words alone but in interpersonal relations, social ethics, aesthetic creativity and receptivity, and a common, unending search for that which is good and enduring.

War and Peace – Is a Genuine Survival Ethic Possible?

October 15, 1967
Plainfield

War and Peace – Is a Genuine Survival Ethic Possible?

“Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?” That was the protest of the good Bishop in LES MISERABLES after his visit with a man condemned to death. But I guess that’s one of the differences between fact and fiction – even great fiction. In fact, men have always pre-empted the right to assign their fellows to death. War is the most terrifying and formidable of the ways men and women of the human family willingly, even eagerly, accept death in war as necessary to accomplish goals. In history, wars have been between tribes, kingdoms, nations, and clusters of allied nations.

War and Peace, is a genuine survival ethic possible? In attempting to wrestle with the question, inevitably there is repeated the old cliché that there always have been wars, there always will. The Vietnam War drags on with its hourly cost of human lives and suffering. Seemingly there is little measurable effect of all the efforts of those who believe that negotiations are possible if we would halt the bombing and be willing to recognize the National Liberation Front as a party in peace talks. Every effort to mount a peace campaign seems to cause a response of further escalation by our government. You know my belief about this damnable struggle. [CJW note: Confirm its origins wrong & its escalations; vague & contradictory in its goals] Perhaps all that can be done is to continue to assert the truth as one sees it, even when the military seems to have its way. Dissent may still be acceptable. Certainly the ranks are growing of those who dissent and want negotiations now. Yet there is no assurance that those who believe peace is possible have any influence with the President compared with those who believe that continued, escalating war is necessary at even the awful daily cost. But silence about this wrong war would be a comfort to those who want it prolonged and intensified.

Yet the Vietnam war, costly as it is, is but the palest representation of what will prevail should the widening war bring in direct participation of the U.S.S.R. or Mainland China against us.

War has always been cruel. 2500 years ago, the Hebrew farmer and city dweller killed by a sword-thrust by the Assyrian invader who swept down like a wolf on the fold, were just as dead as the Japanese children incinerated at Nagasaki. Atomic deaths are quicker, perhaps, But we must remember that any geographically-confined war, such as Viet-nam or the Middle East, can spread like a forest fire. Destruction could quickly become global. Lives not destroyed by the fusion blast or radiation may die from germ or chemical weapons. At stake are not just armies and navies, but the planet itself. Man now has available the forces of fire and fever to destroy people and planet and possibly every living organism.

No catalogue of horrors seems to impress us sufficiently with the unmitigated nonsense and moral stupidity implicit in the new weapons of war. Just this one item, published three years ago (quoted, UNESCO COURIER, Aug-Sept 67, p. 3):

“An American reporter, Mr. James Polk vividly described a nerve gas plant at Newport, Indiana.
“The killer chemical which emerges from the plant’s ovens and chilling chamber is nerve gas. A stealthy assassin, it is odorless, tasteless, and virtually invisible. A drop breathed or soaked into skin can be fatal.
“At the end of this unique assembly line, laced with 40 miles of pipes, the nerve gas is poured into rockets, land mines, and artillery shells – destination secret .... The plant has now been in operation twenty-four hours a day for three years (in 1964).
“A U.S. Army handbook says that this gas can cause death within four minutes and it is so potent that, delivered only on a small scale, its effect can approach that of nuclear weapons. The gas is very cheap; the Newport plant costs only $3.5 million per year to run.”

I’m not sure that such terror items stir us to change our ways of thinking about war. But we ought to take to heart the words of Abraham Maslow, “To be untroubled when one should be troubled can be a sign of sickness. Sometimes smug people have to be scared into their wits.” (p. 196, TOWARD A PSYCHOLOGY OF BEING)

What is a genuine survival ethic? Without any inclination or need to spend your time on ethical theories, let me be as terse as possible. By a survival ethic, I mean one that will provide a political, economic, and communications climate in the world which will prevent the exchange of missiles, fire, and poison on a scale that will destroy the peoples of the world. By genuine, I mean an ethic which does not require that any nation or culture be deprived of the values it cherishes and believes necessary. No genuine survival ethic would provide for the end of our individual liberties and civil rights. No 1984, “Big Brother” overrule could constitute a tolerable survival ethic for us. But neither must we assume that our choices must also be those of other nations. Some will, as some have, choose varieties of what is called communism. Other systems will evolve which will not fit into the political definitions of today.

A genuine survival ethic for our world will allow for such choices in the framework of world peace through world law. Our ability to reason must be applied to the problems; we must open our feelings to the pain of people’s needs everywhere; and we must never cease to re-evaluate ongoing efforts in the light of experience and consequences.

There have been at least two communication areas where we must be more alert to what is happening, or we may find ourselves so far down the road to global war that there can be no turning back. We must penetrate the jargon, and understand the forces that are a hazard to world peace.

There is a need to penetrate the jargon of the military establishments (for a more complete statement, see the article by Philip Noel-Baker in UNESCO COURIER, Aug-Sept 67). Abraham Lincoln’s philosophy has been summarized, “In any great public crisis, find the truth and put it into plain words before the people. Then give them time and they will vindicate you.” But when obscure phrases and terms are used which fail to indicate the devastating nature of military proposals, then there is need for each of us to translate into plain words in order to test proposals with clearer reason and deeper feeling.

Examples: the atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima is called a “nominal bomb.” Somehow the feeling comes through that nominal is minimum or almost a light punishment. But Hiroshima was hit by a bomb with the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT. The military describes this as a 20 kiloton bomb – and the dimension of 20,000 tons of TNT seems to have become blurred.

This becomes more vague when talking about the megaton bomb. The first H bomb we set off at Bikini atoll was 15 megatons. The U.S.S.R.'s H bomb (1961) was 60 megatons. Megaton sounds scientific and organized, but a megaton is the equivalent of 1 million tons of TNT. When one comprehends that our experimental bomb at Bikini atoll exploded with a force equal to 15 million tons of TNT and the Russian-tested H bomb was the equivalent of 60 million tons of TNT; and then remembers that the Allies dropped a total of only 1.2 million tons of chemical explosives during the 6 years of war and destroyed cities, industries, population and railway systems, some elementary realizations should come through. There would be no place on the continents to hide when the great powers began to exchange their missiles.

We need to penetrate the jargon in other instances:

Much is said of “tactical battlefield atomic weapons.” But the majority are as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb and such romantic names as the Davy Crockett and Bazooka should not lead us into overlooking their power to destroy whole areas, not just gain tactical advantages in wars limited to soldiers.

When one reads military staff talk about “counter force strategy,” does one always understand that this means the destruction of enemy cities and the eradication of populations?

Or that “counter-value strategy” is the policy of “directing strategic nuclear attack not on military targets but on centers of population and industry?”

Or that “bonus kills” refers to those who die as a result of radiation poisoning from fall-out as compared to those who are immediately killed by blast and firestorm?

One megadeath is the death of a million people; megacorpse, one million dead bodies; “overkill,” the power to destroy the entire population of any enemy country more than once.

We must penetrate the jargon in order to feel what the words can mean.

In addition, we must understand the forces, deliberate and unwitting which combine to continue the enormous build-up of military power and consequently, reducing to a trickle, comparatively, available money for great needs on the civilian domestic scene.

When President Eisenhower delivered his last speech as President, January 17, 1961, this General-President whose entire career up to being elected President was in the military, warned against a new development in American political life which never before had existed to such a degree. He identified it as the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry ... the total influence is felt in every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” He further said, “only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can so manage this complex that security and liberty may prosper together.”

In 1963, according to then-President Kennedy, defense, space or atomic activities absorbed about 2/3rds of the trained people for exploring our scientific and technical frontiers.” Certainly this percentage cannot have diminished any may have increased with the pyramiding costs of the Vietnam War. The defense budget (this year upward of 90 billion) merges the military-industrial complex into one effort. Such a merger creates the authentic danger of an excess of power, political and economic in the hands of this combination.

Consider the words of Christian Science Monitor correspondent Joseph C. Harsch, certainly no radical, “There obviously is a complex of military and allied industrial interests which wields great influence. This influence may not have ‘brainwashed President Johnson into the Vietnam War,’ as Republican Senator Thruston Morton suggests. But certainly it is one reason why finding the road to peace is proving so long, painful, and difficult. An end to the war would be in fact contrary to the interests of the military-industrial complex.”

It is in such circumstances – the difficult jargon and the forces we fail to understand completely (and there are many such forces) – that world peace through world law must be achieved. One may argue with various plans; or criticize harshly the United Nations. As U Thant pointed out in his summer report this year, which was somewhat pessimistic, that needed was more UN machinery to stop disputes before they explode – machinery for negotiations, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement and more use of the World Court. But needed just as keenly is much more trust by the large nations of such an international peace-keeping process.

There is a story of the wars between the Royalists and the Cromwell Puritans in 17th century England. A Royalist general before fighting at the battle of Edgehill prayed this way, “O Lord thou knowest how busy I shall be this day; if I forget thee, do not forget me. March on, boys.” This is a rather typical attitude – not only in prayer but in reference to such organizations as the U.N. “If I forget thee, do not forget me.” Well a world of peace through law won’t work if we expect it to remember us while we forget the responsibility to take the hopeful risks of peace rather than the fatal chances of war.

Can there occur in time a replacement of war by law? Only if there grows steadily, and without prolonged delays, an increasing groundswell of public opinion affirming that a strengthened world assembly – a U.N. with peacekeeping power – is the inescapable requirement to prevent a burned-out, pestilential planet.

Many of us remember the growth of totalitarianism in the 20s and 30s. The dictators ruled by force through obedient military establishments whose responsibility it was to carry out orders, regardless of what those orders might be. This was clearly demonstrated in the Nuremberg trials. But the dictators acquired and held power because they had the explicit support or the silent acquiescence of the largest segment of people – the middle and upper classes, people like ourselves, by and large.

Do you know the story (from the Christian Science Monitor) of five-year-old Betty, who “unwittingly tried to promote her older sister’s chances one evening when her boy friend unexpectedly called at their home. ‘My sister isn’t home,’ Betty told him, ‘She wants to get married so she’s going to night school studying domestic silence.’”

Well, many wrong things could be set more right if there were more of us not practicing domestic silence on issues that are pivotal to genuine survival.

In all candor, there will be a prevailing silence unless attitudes change. There can be no growing recognition of public opinion for peace unless public opinion exerts its force. How [can we] change attitudes? Various approaches are limitless in variety. But I would like to speak of just one attitude change which would help build a world of law, not war – we need an expanded idea of patriotism.

Patriotism has referred to the soldier, the sailor, the marine, the men in uniform, volunteers and draftees alike, who carry out orders in the face of danger, suffering wounds, imprisonment, death, to fulfill volunteer or imposed obligation to the country in time of war. The patriot is ... Nathan Hale, courageous in the face of the gallows, John Paul Jones, Andrew Jackson, U.S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Sgt. Alvin York, the unknown soldiers, those awarded medals of honor and Purple Hearts – these have been called the patriots and rightly so – all honor to them, now and forever.

Patriotism is also more loosely used to designate those in organizations hewing to the military line and criticizing all varieties of dissenters. “My country right or wrong.”

But the definition should be wider, not only those who die in war, but also those who work for peace are patriots too. The values we prize, the very existence of human life in our land depends on peacemakers more than those who plan the deployment of our young warriors.

Jean Giraudoux, in his play “Tiger at the Gates,” has Andromache (Hector’s wife) say to Demokos, the passionate nationalist, “But which is the worse cowardice? To appear cowardly to others, and make sure of peace? Or to be cowardly in your own eyes, and lose a war?”

Demokos answers, “Cowardice is not to prefer death on every hand, rather than the death of one’s own native land.”

The warrior’s wife replies, “Everyone dies for his country. If you lived in it well and wisely and actively, you die for it too.”

How can we fail to recognize in this age where instantaneous death for most of the world is the wired button near the finger of the Chief Executive of at least two nations, each hostile to the other? How can we fail to recognize that patriotism is keeping the peace as well as struggling valiantly in war? Such is an attitude change which would move us toward growing insistence on a world governed by law with rights guaranteed. There is no other alternative.

Of the Celtic pioneer farmer-freeman before the Norman invasion, the historian Sir Arthur Bryant wrote, “He was wont to speak his mind out freely in the court of the village or shire – for among this simple people, the man who spoke the truth fearlessly was as honored as the man who fought bravely.” (MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND, p. 18). If that is a simple truth, it is one we need to recapture and hold and honor as our own, too.

I have tried to say that a genuine ethic of survival in this world where war can demolish and exterminate everything living requires:

That we must be critical of jargon which blurs the horrible realities of war.

That we must understand the forces that by definition need an intensified [effort towards] world peace through world law, with a strengthened U.N. as the most obvious and available instrument through which this can be achieved.

That before this can happen in any degree of strength, that public opinion must gather much more strongly in favor of replacing war with law through international peace-keeping.

That public opinion must experience attitude changes before it will turn to peace in such a manner.

Think again on the worlds of Isaiah, “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; Neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”

Was that dreaming the impossible dream? Who can say. But when gloom is heavy upon me I consider the insensibility of so many to the horror of war and the beauty of peace; there are times I pick up a paper with some words written by a friend of mine, who for many years has dreamed that impossible dream, has persistently upheld the claims of a world at peace. He too gets discouraged, but also he wrote:

“There are no ‘great men.’ Those of the ‘great men’ whom I have observed directly were just men into whom the people, the mass of people, had poured their dreams. Some of these men were big enough to shoulder their load of dreams and become ‘great’ and some have been so small that there was no discernible relation between the true man and the public image of the man.

“But whether the man was ‘great’ or a pygmy, hidden behind an image of greatness, the thing that really made for “greatness” was the great dream that people dared to dream. When millions of people dared to hold the faith that people need not starve in the midst of plenty, great new leaders appeared and the depression was licked. When millions and millions of people dared to abide by the faith that a ‘master race’ was a myth, a false god, then great leaders emerged and Hitler crawled into his bunker.

“And if we look to great men to save us, we are lost. But when you and I, many of us, each of us, stand up and say out loud, ‘War in an atomic age is suicide,’ then from somewhere as has always happened and always will happen, a great leader will appear.

“There are no great men. But great men appear when the people dare to dream great dreams. It is the little people who dream and will not stop dreaming who are the heroic men.”

Sixty-six and two/thirds

October 1, 1967
Plainfield
Also Morristown, November 10, 1967

Sixty-six and two/thirds

Note: August 31
A few hours ago when midnight created the bridge from yesterday to today, 66 and 2/3 of the years of the 20th century became history. Millions of persons were born in the 20th century and died in infancy, childhood, or youth or middle years. Millions of persons still live who were alive when the 20th century began. Millions now living will see the beginning of the 21st century, thirty-three and one-third years from now.

The year 2000 will be anticipated with all varieties of wild alarms and predictions of catastrophe. The thousand year divide has always stimulated the imagination. Centuries before the C.E. began, Plato predicted that departed souls would return after spending 1000 years in the underworld. Part of the orthodox Christian hope has been always for the 2nd coming of Christ. When the year 1000 dawned, the churches were filled with the devout and fearful because of an abundance of predictions that the time had arrived for the end. The millennium had become synonymous with the end of things. But the world did not end in 1000. We approach 2000. Once again there will be numerous foretellers warning us that Christ will return with his angel armies to destroy unbelievers and the forces of Satan. All sorts of tortured mathematical formulas, linked to out-of-context Biblical passages will "prove" that 2000 will be the time of supernatural Armageddon.

There are other predictions than the theological. For example, there was an article titled "push-button beauty": "The chic woman of the year 2000 may have live butterflies fluttering around her hairdo... attracted by a specially scented hair spray. The same woman, according to predictions made at a cosmetics industry luncheon, will control her body measurements by reclining on a chaise lounge with electronic bubbles that massage away problem areas." (Daedalus, p.64) It is probably rudely irreverent or crudely unaesthetic for a male to wonder about the correlation, if any, between butterflies in the hairdo and bats in the belfry.

But as Daniel Bell pointed out, "the future begins in the present." As 2/3 of the 20th century has become history, it seems appropriate to ) review and appraise. When Casey Stengel was released by the Yankees, he said, "I guess this means they fired me. I'll never make the mistake of being 70 years old again." - which is good Stengelese emphasis on the reality that we can't turn back time. But if we are wise in seeking a better life we will attempt to interpret our experience in order to understand it, to learn where we might recast our expectations and redirect our efforts.

What have we learned, if anything, from the first two-thirds?

The 20th century dawned rosy-fingered. Large segments of the “Christian” world believed that its doctrines would soon prevail and heal the world’s ills. An enduring Protestant weekly was founded and named "The Christian Century." Eloquent preachers were urging believers to evangelize the world in one generation. Most Americans believed that it was the manifest destiny of the United States to lead the world in a triumph of peace and good-will.

But clouds soon obscured the rosy-fingered dawn – war and death and fear and strife and disillusion. The first World War was fought, in the words of our President Wilson to "save the world for democracy." But the countries that fought soon forgot that, including our own. The totalitarians filled the political vacuums with their songs, strongmen, slogans and slaughter. And in our own land, President Coolidge reminded us and the world that the business of America was business.

Technical progress and scientific development have been marvelous. Knowledge has doubled and doubled and doubled again.

But many hopes have become tainted by disillusions born of inhumanity, injustice, and most of all by our failure as a human family to put an end to war. Fear and conflict stalk the cities of our land. Prospects for prompt solutions there seem more and more remote as bureaucracies falter and ideals become dimmer. There are those who believe Spengler had the clearest insight and most accurate prediction when he wrote of the “Decline of the West.”

James Reston summarized:

"The first third of the century brought America out of her political isolation; the second third handed her the leadership of the Western world; the final third will determine whether she can guide the blind forces now threatening the human family.

"The first third of the century gave us the automobile, the airplane, the first World War, the Soviet revolution, and the Great Economic Depression.

"The middle third destroyed the old empires and the old political and religious order in an even more savage World War, and gave us atomic power and the intercontinental rocket, the Chinese revolution, and a wholly new map of fantastically rich and miserably poor nations."

As a young man, I remember when persons talked about plans for the future, again and again a subordinate clause would introduce their hopes, "If I keep my job, we will go here or buy that." That was the time of the Great Depression, and, in this land at least, deep insecurities gathered around the fear expressed as "If I keep my job."

But fears have moved to another threshold where pain is close to the surface and clusters of anxieties are more unsettling, even among those who seem suave and self-confident. Said or unsaid, the subordinate clause to our hopes and plans is, "if the bomb doesn't fall...." All our frustrations at the maddening obstacles blocking the way to a world at peace are contained in those words, "if the bomb doesn't fall." The very expression implies feelings of helplessness, "if the bomb doesn't fall" – indicating somehow that the bomb of itself can choose its time and place, rather than persons in power at the triggers.

Other certainties too are gone or disappearing. The old, harsh Puritan moralisms have lost power to enforce rigidities of behavior. But by and large, we have failed to learn better ways or to accept our own responsibilities to define and maintain ways of living which are both fulfilling to ourselves and generous to others.

The old, comforting theological assurances have eroded to the stage that, at 66 2/3, there are but fine grains of shifting sands remaining of the Rock of Ages. In spite of scholarly theologians and eloquent speakers, close to the surface of most religious discourse is the common agreement that God is not going to set things right. I do not encounter persons who possess such abiding hopes. Spoken or unspoken is the rebellious response that if God was going to set things right, God should have acted before the death camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, before saturation bombings, before the terrible atomic hours of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What can we believe? What can we do? If the bomb doesn't fall in the remaining 33 and 1/3, there may be a chance.

There are ways of considering the issues of living in the years before us. If any of us can exert influence, it must be where it will capture the attention of others, or to so grow ourselves in wisdom and stature that we can wrestle strongly with some part of the issues before us.

How would you define the most formidable questions ahead of us in the last third of the 20th century? I like the way Gyorgy Kepes of M.I.T. summarized (SR 3/5/66)

"FIRST, our environmental chaos, which accounts for inadequate living conditions, waste of human and material resources.
SECOND, our social chaos – lack of common ideas, common feelings, common purposes.
THIRD, our inner chaos – individual inability to live in harmony with one's self, inability to accept one's whole self and let body, feelings and thought dwell together in friendship."

In such classifications one can find central problem points. There is contained in his summary much of the temper of our time, whether one is disturbed by our reckless expenditure of our natural resources, feels the pain and perplexities of life in the cities, or senses the faltering of inner competence to deal with life wholesomely and happily.

In cybernetics, there is a necessary process called "feedback." Feedback is that series of events or experiences by which a machine or an organism corrects its own action. In the human system, pain is a feedback by which we learn not to put a finger in the fire. In a mechanical system, feedback may correct by thousandths of an inch the amount of steel being shaved by an automatic lathe. In the human, organic, living systems, moral feedback needs to flow through control mechanisms of values or goals that are to be prized and sought above all others. In my view, these values can be compressed into three propositions. One way or another, each of us teaches, preaches, writes, behaves in some fashion that either is productive or not in the solving of the problems before us.

There is an enduring insight in the parable of the Prodigal Son, quite apart from any theology, Jewish, Christian, or anything else. The young man wasted his life and substance in a far country. Then we read, "when he came to himself."

Each of us will come to himself as there is recognition that everyone of us, without exception, needs a self to live with. Now I am not trying to become a diluted, suburban imitation of Norman Vincent Peale. I have neither the competence nor desire for such emulation. But, more and more I become convinced that what we call the "self" is not a far country, remote from the burning questions of the social order. Our beliefs about ourselves make substantial differences in how authentically productive we can be in the social order. Recognizing the need to so grow that one reaches a self to live with
does not mean that one escape blissfully from the arenas wherein human destiny is determined. To have a self one can live with does not mean that one thinks about different problems but rather that one thinks about the same problems differently. It makes a great deal of difference in my over-view of the social order whether or not I believe life is worth living for me. And this applies to you also.

Believing that I need to maintain a self to live with and that you do also, next week I shall attempt to elaborate the idea of the Pilgrim Self.

But if I stopped here, there would be great disproportion. In addition to a self to live with, we need someone to live for. I speak not just of the complete and fulfilling relationship of a man and woman, although I do mean that in speaking of the necessity of having someone to live for; I speak not just of the love and care of parents for children and children for parents, although I do mean that; I speak not just of the close bond of friend and friend, as with David and Jonathan, although I do mean that. But even for those denied or deprived of such intimate bonds, there is a necessity of having someone to live for.

One recognizes the need of having someone to live for when he devotes time and attention to begin new and creative answers to persisting problems of the human condition – whether these are these of population control, reform of abortion laws, our recognition that we have been only fumbling around so far in attacking the problems of the cities or dealing effectively with the life or death issue of war and peace. To be fully human we are required to treat others as fully human as ourselves. That is living for them.

Because we must of necessity live for as well as with others, I shall attempt to deal with “War and Peace, an ethic for survival” two weeks hence.

Martin Buber had profound insight into the necessity of having someone to live for in his "I-Thou"relationship. Buber meant that we become authentic persons ourselves only when we believe, feel and accept others as persons totally, accepting them as persons, not things to be used. A wise, sensitive physician once wrote of the necessity and difficulty of the "I Thou" relationship, "we cannot constantly maintain the tension of intimacy and dramatic identification. A great many of our relations to persons may and must occur in the objective mode. We will, no matter, what we do, think of some people as 'things'. However, the basic indispensable and ultimate in relationships are those between two persons who see one another as real in their own right, who have the capacity to feel other others feelings, see through the others eyes and hear through the other's ears. Such intimacy is too much for any of us to endure as a steady diet. But all of us must have some of it or die." (Loomis, THE SELF IN PILGRIMAGE, p.66)

One thing more, or there would be much disproportion still; we need a self to live with and someone to live for – we also need a religion to live by. You might prefer to say, "a faith to live by"; or a "philosophy to live by"; or "a set of values to live by." No matter the precise word. The question is, what do we hold to be ideal? What do we believe to be the true goals in this planet adventure? What do we believe to be fundamental about this creating universe of which we are a part? What do we believe is going to be powerfully determinant in our destinies in the years left to us, whether limited to this 20th century or overlapping into the 21st century?

Cardinal Wolsey, political schemer for Henry VIII, is alleged to have said on his deathbed, "If I had served my God as I have served my King, I would not now be in this extremity." Perhaps it is the yearning for the overview of life which made so many respond to Robert Bolt's play and movie, "A Man For All Seasons,” not just that he believed the Pope to be supreme authority – Church Council. On the 29th, I shall attempt to emphasize the need for an overview of life in the world through a biographical service, based on the life of Thomas More. More's life was a spectacular instance of the cost and worth of an overview of life, loyally maintained.

Much social change is happening; the pace will intensify almost surely. Without an overview, chaos and disaster can catch us unawares. Whether one calls the overview religion, faith, belief, or whatever, I believe we need such supporting framework for our existence, even as the all-glass skyscrapers must have the supporting framework of metal, creatively designed and skillfully joined.

In our time and particularly the one-third left of this century, the need for a universal framework becomes more and more obvious to me. The Christian Century is no longer an adequate name or description of the times. Actually it never was. There are clusters of universal idea-sharing beginning to be felt. Just as the Asian world needed Western ideas of progress, organization, and modernization, so the Western World needs some of the ancient Asian insights into the self in its solitariness and the relationship of self to that which underlies the rhythms of the Universe, If the East needed Western reason and practical knowledge, so the West needs Eastern feeling and deep reflection.

In summary, as the last third of the 20th century moves irresistibly toward the 21st, there will be prophecies of Biblical heaven and hell, doctrines of last things, exhortations about one final and irrevocable day of judgment. But such archaic suppositions can have no meaning for most of us. What we will confront, or should confront are those drives in our lives stirring us to deal with the meaning of the universe of our experiences – the purpose of life, creation, growth, decay, death, and the inescapable obligations one should fulfill in terms of his belief. To such searching we may address ourselves, possibly in the modes I have suggested –

a self to live with
someone to live for
a religion to live by

The framework for faith in our times has little space for a bland collectivity of inoffensive religion; and no room for an inert ethics. We should have no tolerance for mindless comfort. In this dimension we call "time" we have before us the opportunity to use the resources of civilized excellence to construct a live faith and a functioning ethic, both of which are necessities in our diverse, pluralistic and precarious world.