Universalist Unitarian Church Santa Paula, California

A Frank Discussion of the Unmentionable
by Reverend John Alexie Crane

In the film we saw a shy, gentle, timid couple grow gradually in affection for each other, and it was touching to watch this develop. Toward the end of the movie, there was a scene in which they decided somewhat hesitantly to go to bed together for the first time.

We saw them in bed, saw the man get up stark naked and grope around the room, saw him back in bed growing noticeably aroused, saw the woman panic, and race away from the bed, running naked toward the camera. Naked, for heaven's sake! In bed! And out of bed!

How the world has changed! As recently as thirty years ago, not only was sex not shown on movie screens, it was, by and large, an unmentionable subject in polite company. Except for an occasional dirty joke and various indirect references, little was said in mixed company about sex, and even in same sex company the discussion of the topic, while often bawdy, could hardly be called frank and open.

Almost all of us then were tense, inhibited in this unmentionable area. Now, even on commercial television, no sex act is unmentionable, including orgasm and masturbation.

Clearly, whether for better or worse, our people are no longer anything like as inhibited as they used to be about sex. However, we do still have some unmentionables remaining. A leader in this field is the subject of money.

I'm sure you have noticed, as I have, that money is a profoundly embarrassing subject among us. Have you noticed how reticent, how discreet, how inhibited we are in this regard, how tense and anxious we become when the subject is raised.

Oh we can talk freely about the economy, about the stock market, but per sonal income is something else. We discreetly avoid letting it be known what our income is. We do not discuss this with anyone but the person with whom we are most intimate; and even here we may hold back.

If anyone asks us for money, even a beggar on the street, we will grow tense and edgy. The philosopher Nietzsche noticed this, and suggested that "beggars should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them." It's true; and this is because of the anxieties that money generates in us. We are not at peace about money. We are (as they used to say in the 1960s) "hung up" about money.

I have noticed in myself and others, as I have moved among UUs in churches and fellowships around the country, that a great many of us have been riven with tension, irritability, crabbiness, inhibition in relation to money and the church. These are all symptoms of an underlying anxiety in the area. They signal the existence of unresolved conflicts. I can, I think, speak with some authority in the matter because I was for years in a similar state. Until fairly recently, in fact.

The feelings are not at all unusual in churches. It is more the rule than the exception. All around the country, in almost all denominations (apart from the fundamentalists (apart from the fundamentalists) people in churches are inhibited by this unmentionable. They are tense and irritable or shy and embarrassed in its presence.

The last thing any church member in the US wants to do is call on fellow members and ask them for money. Or even ask members to ask other members for money. Most church people have terrible, crippling feelings of inhibition and awkwardness about the matter.

I know these feelings all too well, personally, because I experienced them in myself for more than twenty-five years of my life in churches. You will be happy to hear, I'm sure, that I am now liberated from these constricting feelings, that I am no longer either inhibited or embarrassed; and I find the new state of being so delightful, so euphoric that I want everybody to feel this way. Lord God almighty, free at last!

Actually, it is good to be free of the tension and anxiety. Good not only for oneself, but for the church as well. The fact is that the feelings do not relate people to reality, but rather shut them away from it. The fact is that a church has material needs like any other institution, like a family or a business; and the well-being and vitality of the church depend to a considerable extent upon how adequately these needs are met.

Wouldn’t it be a far better world if churches and day care centers had all the money they needed, and the Pentagon had to hold bake sales to buy more weapons?

The experts on fundraising tell us that the secret of raising money is wonderfully simple. What you have to do is ask for it, and ask for it in a straight, open, relaxed, candid, unabashed manner, without tension or embarrassment. It is not an obscene act. It is a perfectly wholesome, normal, rational, realistic, and constructive act. It is our funny feelings about the matter that cause the difficulty.

If any very large number of us continue to be shy and embarrassed in this area (or crabby and cranky) it can only be crippling to the future well-being of the church. It's important that we school ourselves to transcend our funny feelings about money.

We need to feel relaxed, at ease, uninhibited about this heretofore unmentionable topic. We need to be able to speak to each other freely and frankly, without stress or distress. We need this for our own health and well-being, as well as that of this UU institution which has come to be part of our lives.

Unnecessary anxiety and crippling inhibitions are very poor life-companions, and it is clearly a good thing to be as free of them as possible. Freedom in this connection markedly enhances the quality of one's life.

II. Banks, Bars, and Churches
I went to church at First Presbyterian in Santa Barbara not long ago to attend the Martin Luther King community-wide service. It was a splendid and moving occasion. As I sat there in the large, stately church, I found myself thinking what a strikingly handsome building it was— as our own church is.

It occurred to me that what happens in that building must matter deeply to a lot of people because it was not built in the cheapest possible fashion. Quite the contrary. The ceiling was far higher than it needed to be. The room was spacious and solemn in its architecture. It was beautifully, quietly decorated with stained glass and other artful ornamentation. If economy were the aim, that amount of space could have been provided, surely, at less than half the cost.

Why aren't churches built in the simple, inexpensive, utilitarian form in which supermarkets are constructed? Here you see expansive space at minimum cost. Flat roof, ceilings of modest height, neon lights, no spires or steeples, no stained glass, no ornamentation, no statuary.

You have no doubt noticed that architecture is not concerned only with providing sheltered floor space. It also makes a statement about how people regard the activities carried on within the structure.

The architecture of churches makes a statement that what happens in these buildings is of high importance to the people who inhabit them. It says that what happens within these walls has profound meaning, has dignity, solemnity, has significant consequences. The architecture says this building matters deeply to those who built it, and will matter as well to subsequent generations.

You see a similar statement in the architecture of banks. Have you noticed this? Banks are very impressive buildings, by and large. They too tend to have high ceilings, and are embellished with marble oftentimes, with handsome drapes and decorations. You will often see tall columns, ornate grill work, fine furnishings. Though they are places to store and distribute money, they do not look even a little bit like a warehouse.

The architecture of a bank typically makes a statement like: what happens here is of high importance in the life of this community. We care a lot about what happens within these walls. What people leave here or take away is something that has great meaning for them. This is a special, serious, solemn place, and no nonsense will be tolerated here. Here we conduct ourselves with dignity.

You can understand why we make our banks so imposing in form. They are devoted to the care and expansion of money, and the acquisition of money is one of our highest goals as a people, if not the most high. Money is a substance for which all of our people have enthusiasm and reverence. Money moves people.

Money matters, no doubt about it. With good reason. It can buy us a lot of good things, chief among these, freedom from poverty. We make some effort to romanticize poverty, but it is in fact a miserable state. Hence, the architecture of banks: handsome, spacious, solemn, impressive, commanding.

But why ever in the world should we be moved to make churches even more imposing? What is there in the function of churches, in our feelings toward them, that leads us to make them so extravagantly spacious and beautiful? Churches make movie theaters look relatively cheap and shoddy; and a barroom or a cocktail lounge can't hold a candle to a church for beauty and dignity. Though there is some similarity.

Have you ever noticed, in this regard, how much like an altar is the bar in a cocktail lounge? It really is. Think about it. A bar typically looks very much like a worship center of one kind or another. It has an air of reverence about it. There are mirrors and soft lights and colorful, orderly rows of bottles containing the "holy water," arranged aesthetically behind the bar.

There is the highly polished or gently padded altar rail, along which communicants assemble to find union with the god Bacchus, to find bliss, to find that peace which passes all understanding; and behind the altar rail is the priest or priestess, serving communion, speaking softly, agreeably, solicitously.

We express our various aspirations and values in similar ways, in the architecture of banks and bars and churches. Banks husband our money; bars bring us instant bliss; but what about churches? What ever moves us to make them so solemn, so still, so quietly handsome, so monumental in form?

III. That We May Wholly Be
I have thought a lot about this, as I have found religion an endlessly interesting field to explore. It is a curious sort of activity, and not at all easy to understand. We tend to think of it as that area of human life which contains sacred scriptures and saviors, with gods and creeds and "thou shalt not" codes of behavior; and it is quite true that these are the traditional, outward forms in which the religious impulse has expressed itself among us. But religion itself is not defined by its historical forms. It is deeper and more fundamental than that.

I have gradually come to understand that religion is a cultural expression of the biological drive that is in all living things, the drive to live and live fully, completely.

Religion is a cultural expression of the upward thrust of life that permeates all creatures great and small. It expresses itself in us, mingled with other often contrary impulses, as a desire in ourselves to be more than we now are, than we have been, to create a world better than the one we have known. Religion is for fostering life, for enhancing it and refining it, raising it to the highest level possible.

This is viewing religion as an institution. In individuals, religion is their way of life. It is their fundamental life-orientation. It is made up of the goals, the values, the ideas, the understandings, the standards of judgment by which we relate ourselves to others and to the world in which we live.

It involves our whole being: thought, feeling, awareness, intuition, impulse, drive, will. It involves our unconscious as well as our conscious selves. Our philosophy is an intellectual matter, may involve the mind only; but our religion engages our whole being.

Everybody has some kind of religion, some sort of orientation in existence. There is no way to live without a religion, though it may be well or poorly developed, may be creative for oneself and others, or it may be destructive. We cannot choose whether or not to have a religion. We can only choose which kind. We can let it grow in ourselves by chance, by social conditioning, or we can choose deliberately to develop it, can consciously encourage its growth in a creative direction.

There is a great deal at stake in the form our religion takes. Our existence stands or falls, is made rich or impoverished by the way of life we come to adopt, by choice or by chance. Which no doubt is why we have come to build our churches in grand, striking, stately forms. Their architecture is an expression of the high sense of importance we are dimly, tacitly aware of in this extraordinary area of human concern.

If this is so, why are we typically so tense, so ill at ease about money and the church? I think it's because we come to take the church for granted, lose sight of its real purpose. We cease to be aware that the church aims fundamentally to foster life, to encourage growth toward what we may become at our highest, as individuals, as a species.

What we may become? What an intangible entity to sell! We resent being asked to give money for such a subtle, gentle, uninsistent need. It's not like the need for food or sex or sleep. These bring themselves urgently to our attention. We resent being asked to give hard cash to serve such an ephemeral need as that served by churches. Then we feel anxious and guilty for not having given what we are dimly aware we would have done well to have given. We grow irritable and crabby about the whole matter, do not feel good either about ourselves or the church.

All over the country, churches are disabled by these tense, tangled, conflicting feelings, are held back from being what they might be, doing what they might do. I propose that in our church, in our denomination we rise above the popular pattern, that we learn to feel at ease in the presence of the unmentionable, to discuss it freely and frankly among ourselves, without tension or inhibition, in order that we may be whole and healthy, in order that we may become what, at our best, we are capable of becoming.

Let us, together, find our way to freedom and fullness of life.

So, in the service of this cause, why don’t I speak frankly about the unmentionable. It is exceedingly important that, in the annual fund drive that began yesterday, that we talk about money easily, comfortably with each other. That we coach and cajole ourselves to move up to this advanced spiritual level. Be relaxed, open, easy about asking each other for money to support this life-giving institution. Transcend our “hung-up-ness.”

Well, that’s all well and good, you may say, but the fact is I am just now feeling grumpy about the church. It doesn’t look like any confounded life-giving institution to me. Alas, this is not an unusual pattern of feeling in some churchgoers. Grumpiness does crop up in members of our species, even in churches, even here where love is a central aim. But, of course, not giving to the church is hardly an effective way of improving its quality.

This church moves in the realm of spirit, but it’s inescapably rooted, grounded in the material world. The vitality, the creativity of the church is dependent upon the level of our giving to it.

IV. Postlude
I have undertaken this frank discussion of the unmentionable because I think it's a wholesome and moral thing to do. If any of you still feel anxious or irritable in the area, and I have offended your sensibilities, I apologize. You will be relieved, I'm sure to know that the topic will not be raised here every Sunday. Indeed, it is not likely to be raised again until about this time next year.

I do not myself like to give much time and attention to raising funds, not because the matter is of no importance, not because it is repugnant, but because there are too many other interesting and challenging topics to be dealt with here, topics that bear on our primary focus of concern, namely, the problems and possibilities of this remarkable life that we share here on earth.

Dr Alexie Crane
2880 Exeter Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 682-3476

Lex1304@aol.com