Universalist Unitarian Church
Santa Paula, California |
Centering Quote:
Belonging is the central truth of our existence. E. Robers & E. Amidon
Responsive Reading: A Common Destiny, # 557
Hymns:
Just As Long As I Have Breath, #6
My Life Flows On In Endless Song, #
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There was a UU minister named Peter Raible, who was a well loved minister, I am told. He gave much not only to his church and its members, but to the wider community of Unitarian, and later, Unitarian Universalist ministers with whom he spent many decades in service to this denomination. At the Ministry Days preceding this general assembly, in which the community of religious professionals gather to be strengthened again by one another’s presence and to have our dedication to this faith renewed, his words were read on several occasions in his honor and in his memory. Rev. Raible said:
My first class at Claremont was called "A Theology of Belonging." It was a class in process theology, which is way of understanding the world in which everything is connected; nothing lies outside what might best be called a living web. Process theology is a favorite among UU’s because it looks to science as well as the softer discipline of theology to form its tenets. And so this class began with an exploration of quantum physics as this relates to modern theology. I remember John Cobb, the professor, who is the most well regarded process theologian alive today, sitting in front of us on that first day, calmly explaining how that the tables we sat at had atoms in them that had been in the body of Moses, and molecules in them that had been part of the groundwork of Rome in the first century of the common era. This was the time when the story of an amazing teacher called Jesus of Nazareth was spreading and reshaping a culture, creating a new religion. Dr. Cobb went on to say that of these atoms in fact we could believe that some would be woven into the cloth of the robes of Tibetan monks in the 24th century, noting that nothing even in our own modern genetic makeup is ever really new or separate.
I have been interested in the notion of theologies of belonging ever since. The desire to belong, is after all, is as old as humankind. It is as abiding as the atoms that apparently weave endlessly through time and space. It is as old at least as the first people who gathered in groups to protect themselves from the elements and the harsh realities of early human life, when to survive to the age of 25 was rare. Some religious and cultural historians date these ancient ones as far back as 40,000 years ago, to a time when the presence of man & woman was still new on this planet, and the earth itself was truly the ground of all being.
These people looked to each other, and all around them and asked, To whom or what do we belong? And how then shall we live? They learned that by coming together as a tribal group they could increase their chances of survival. They learned to make fire, and to gather around it to warm themselves, and to cook food for their hunger. Their answer to the question "to whom or what do we belong?" - grew out of the world around them, out of what they saw and understood. And so they learned to follow the course of the sun and the seasons, and to honor earth, air, fire, and water as elements which by their very life giving ability were sacred, precious, and irreplaceable. They made their belonging to earth and to each other real through ritual and an ongoing recognition of the life around them, within them, and beyond them. Thousands of years later renowned psychologist Fritz Perls would teach that "rituals are an expression of the human need to belong.1" And so these first people came to understand that there was no separation, that all was connected, forever bound by the spirit of creation into the web of life itself.
Other traditions also asked these questions of belonging. Listen to some of their responses: From the Hindu came the teaching that: (the divine )"enters into every atom, every planet and every living being. All creation is holy and the source of life connects everything and everyone.2" Again – atoms and connection, no separation. Taoism is built on a premise of the oneness of all while Buddhism declares the interrelatedness of all sentient life forms. A centering quote for my own ministry comes from Islam:
To bring us into the present, thousands of years after the origins of these wisdom traditions, post-modern science also proclaims an inherent unity to life. Scientist Brian Swimme declares: "the great news of our time is the evolutionary story in which we come to realize that we humans are all embedded in a living, developing universe, and that we are therefore cousins to everything in the universe.4" David Brower, noted environmentalist, is equally clear: "We all possess a little fragment of the first bit of life on earth. Consequently, everything that’s alive is related.5"
But just as science, the discipline of the reasoned mind, speaks of this radical interconnectedness, so do those whose thinking flies in the face of the rational: the mystics. And here I ask us to remember what Carl Jung said, that "it is to the mystics that we owe what is best in human kind", and that "it is only the mystics who bring creativity to religion."
And so I invite you now to listen to the words of the Jewish mystic, Rabbi Lawrence Kushman:
"There is a place that is as far from here as breathing out is from breathing in. For the world is very near to you. Where life forever holds gentle sway over death, where people are human with the same grace that a willow is a willow, where the struggle and the yearning between male and female is at last resolved.
It is to begin with, all inside us. But because we are all miniature versions of the universe, it is also found far beyond. And because we are all biologically and spiritually part of the first (human being) the place preceded us. And because we all carry within us the genotype and vision of the last (human being) the place is foretold in us.
There is no surprise in any of this. We have all known it all since before we were conceived… (but) do not be confused if sometimes the place seems as real as your house or as illusory as your happiness. Only know in advance and instead that ordinary words will not be vessels or stores for some kinds of knowing.6" -
Ordinary words will not be vessels for some kinds of knowing. There is a Greek a word for "knowing", "Sophia". Now this word has many meanings, reflecting the many different kinds of knowledge or wisdom. Most often in the New Testament however, Sophia means the kind of wisdom that ordinary words will not serve, the kind of knowing that the mystics and the physicists speak of, the kind that cannot be easily held or simply expressed. This is the knowing that comes when we experience the unity of life firsthand, when we realize or remember that we ultimately belong to each other, to all life, and to God, however we understand God to be. This is the knowing that bursts forth deep inside, and is somehow quite nearly beyond the heart’s ability to bear, or the mind’s to comprehend. This is the knowing that understands what we are not able to explain, and that does not need language to believe. This is no ordinary wisdom.
How do we find this place, how do we attain this kind of knowing? Again from Rabbi Kushner: "True theology must finally be personal. God meets one of us. And we in turn are compelled to tell a story from which no objective theological truth can be distilled. For this reason, all authentic God-talk must always begin with … Ma’aseh sh’hayah, which is Hebrew for, "It once happened.7"
Ma’aseh sh’hayah: I can tell you how it happened for me. Some years ago, one night, in the desert of Arizona, at a small UU worship service, framed by simple songs and silent prayer we were asked to speak aloud to the community, if we wished, by finishing the sentence "I am struggling with". To my surprise, for I was something of a stranger in this congregation, I heard myself say, "I am struggling with the sorrow of my identical twin sister’s life." Now I want you to know that my sister faced many challenges, physical and mental, and for all of my life I had tried to help her. I had advocated and intervened for her with parents and teachers and authorities, been to physicians and therapists, and (like any good UU) read every book that I thought might help me to help her. But nothing did. As her twin I was haunted by the knowledge that she lived in pain. But that night, something happened when I spoke those words. As the service ended I went outside with a woman I’d only come to know that weekend. She walked beside me and took my hand. Together we walked into the desert, in silence, the Arizona sky above us brimming with stars, the warm desert wind around us. After a time she said, "I’d like to hear about your sister sometime." That was all she said. And I nodded, saying yes, someday I would talk more about it. I can’t tell you what happened that night beyond that. Those are the facts. It was a simple worship, followed by this brief human contact, the enduring touch of hand in hand. What I can tell you is that something happened, in a way that to this day I can not fully explain, and a lifetime of grief and responsibility eased for me, never to return in the same way. For forty years I had wandered in a wilderness of struggle, desperate but helpless to save my sister. And then, somehow, I was free – not of my love for her, never of that, but of the terrible ache of failure and blame. Though I did not understand it, and for years afterward could barely speak of it, I accepted it. I said, yes; Ma’aseh sh’hayah. It once happened. Not long after that experience I knew that in one way or another I would live the rest of my life in service to the faith tradition in which such a thing could happen.
Remember, the place is as close as breathing. We may not be able to speak of it with ordinary words, but once we have been there, we are never the same. Whether we call it the Kingdom of God, or the Beloved Community, or the Tao, the Truth, or the Interdependent Web, to be in this place is to open our hearts to the oneness of life, and to know peace. How do we find this place? The answer is where it has always been, perhaps for none more than Unitarian Universalists and our forebears - all those seekers of truth whose foundations we build on to this day. The answer is in our lives, and – now as then - in the world around us. And yet, it is not easy to find this place. It is not easy. It takes us beyond our safe places, beyond the boundaries of ordinary time, and we have to say "yes" to go there. I think, perhaps without meaning to, that we do this most often when life is hard, when we are hurt or alone or afraid. Womanist poet Alice Walker offers some insight on this, with her words: "Here’s the thing. The thing I believe … only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you’re looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow.8"
None of us, I think, wants to say yes to sorrow. None of us, at least not at first. We would rather turn away, not face it in its fullness. And yet the Buddhists hold a concept called Bodhichitta, which means "the heart broken open". This, they say, is what happens when we say do not turn away - when we say yes not only to the joy of life, but also to its pain, when we let the sorrow of the world enter into our beings so fully that we begin to fear for our own lives in the process. To a small extent this is what happened, I now believe, that night in Arizona, when we spoke of my suffering for my sister without saying one word of hope, one sentence of consolation. When we do this, say the Buddhists, let ourselves fill with the hurt of the world, we open ourselves to life in its wholeness and become more fully a part of all that is, ever was, and ever will be. We do not have to feel this suffering forever, they say, only until we become so full of the pain of the world that we can do nothing but be in it, abide there.
But remember – true theology is personal. So I can only speak of it for myself. ma’ash sh’ hayah, it once happened. Shortly before I began seminary, having yielded to the heat of the calling to ministry born that night in the desert, my identical twin sister died. And I went to that place full of sorrow where all of us must almost certainly go sooner or later, if we open ourselves to loving others in this world. But somehow, perhaps because I had learned to trust the darkness that warm night in the desert of Arizona, I said yes to being there. I went to that place where hope does not grow, where no joy breaks the sound of weeping and no god rises in a sky bleak with loss. I said yes to that place and I stayed. And then Sept. 11th came, so quickly, and all I could think about were the thousands of people who had also lost loved ones, who were with also given over to grief. It seemed like it was forever that I was there, but I think in truth, it was not so long. For there came a time when, so full of sorrow, mine and the whole world’s, I had room for no more. And somehow my openness to that sad and dark place gave way to a greater truth, and the beauty of the world returned to me.
And Ma’aseh sh’hayah, it happened that the holy and inexplicable web to which we all belong was made manifest and real on this earth, in the community of my home church. I was warmed at fires that I did not build, and helped to find my way again by lights they others held so gently and steadily before me. A few days after my sister’s memorial, which took place amid the living and healing hope of that congregation, I began seminary. And I did so in thanks for the world, for its beauty and its sorrow, its reality seen and unseen. I learned to live and to love again. As can happen in life, more struggle would come my way in the next few years, including the unexpected end of a long term marriage, but I had been changed. I had been to that place of darkness and come out again into the light of the world. I would not only endure but thrive. Ma’aseh sh’hayah.
It is not easy to do this kind theology, so personal, created out of the very stuff of our lives. And yet, I became a Unitarian Universalist, and now a UU minister because of this. Our heritage as religious liberals mandates that we embody our theology. It asks that we allow the stories of our lives to inscribe their beautiful and bitter truths on our hearts and our minds until we are satisfied that ma’aseh sh’hayah – it once happened – until we know for ourselves the particular answers to that second part of the question: And how then shall we live?
It has never been easy to do this work. It takes us beyond the confines of what is comfortable, beyond the boundaries of what we know and trust. It asks that we open ourselves not only to the reality of our lives – the ecstasy and the despair – but that we open also to the mystery of life, to a knowing that might rise deep in us one night in the desert , or one season lost in grief … a knowing that we cannot perhaps ever fully give words to, no matter how much we want to, or how adept we are at the tools of language and reason - but if we are to believe what we have lived and to trust the truth of our lives – we must accept. When we do this we open ourselves to that holy and infinite place where life holds gentle sway over death, where we are human with the same grace that a willow is a willow, and where the struggle between people who seem so different is at last and forever resolved. To say yes to this place is to be willing to be changed, for a moment or for forever. To say yes is to honor this place that is as close as breathing, as infinite as eternity. And it is to pay tribute to those whose foundations we build on that we did not lay; whose fires warm us, though we did not build them; and whose trees grant us shelter, though we did not plant them.
As for me, I go to the wells often these days, though I did not dig them, and I drink deeply. There is a song of thanksgiving on my lips and an incarnation of giving that measures my days. With a joy almost too great to hold, I bow to the mystery, and answer: "yes, yes I will." I do this because I believe. I do this because Ma’aseh sh’hayah, it once happened.
Tell me, how has it happened for you?
Benediction:
Let our lives be our benediction, our words and deeds the ongoing seeds of creation in a world at once both broken and whole.
May the sustaining hearts, minds and hands of this beloved community keep us and hold us until we meet again.
Go in peace.
© Carolyn Price, 2004.
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