Universalist Unitarian Church Santa Paula, California

Things That Matter Most
by Reverend John Alexie Crane

Until very recently the people of the western world were convinced that the quality of their lives here and now (and for all eternity) was dependent upon the religious beliefs they held. People were convinced for centuries that the beliefs a person consciously affirmed were what mattered most of all in this life. As recently as fifty years ago the idea was taken for granted by most people that we get the most out of life by believing exactly the right things.

It's strange, is hard to see now how we could have held such an idea for so long. We can now see that consciously held beliefs play a relatively minor role in our lives. We understand enough about our own nature now to see that the beliefs we express in words do not touch the depths of ourselves which contain the principal sources of all our deeds and decisions.

Religion is not a tidy, orderly list of intellectual beliefs. Religion is a deep inner concern with what concerns us above all, with what matters most to us in existence. It involves far more than the formulation of stated beliefs. It involves the deepest levels of our being, as well as the upstairs, conscious level.

The religious quest is the search for the highest values around which we must focus our energies and attention if we are to find our way forward into life, if we are to be saved, as our ancestors put it.

This is what matters most: not the beliefs we consciously affirm, but the values, attitudes, aims, ideas and dreams around which we come to center our lives. The quality, the contents, the form of our existence will be shaped above all else by the deep, central values we come to cherish, by what we see as important, by what we understand we must strive for. This is our real religion.

Biologically, we possess a will to live. Culturally, we possess, as expressed in our religious concerns, a will to live fully, completely. Religion is an expression at the level of culture, of the forward thrust of life that is evident in all living creatures. Our religion encourages us to be better, to be more and higher and finer than we have been, to work at creating a world better than the one we found around us. It expresses the upward thrust of human life.

II. How Love Matters

Let's look at some of the things that really matter, the things we most need to strive for if we are to be fully alive. First of all, it is importeant for us throughout our lives that we be close to others. There must be, at all times in our lives, at least one person who cares about us and about whom we care in return.

One of the principal things in this life is that we be involved always, in depth, in warmth with at least one person. Friend, relative, lover, mate, companion.

We need to be involved in life-giving patterns of personal relations with others. We need to learn to be comfortable in living close to a few others, giving and receiving warmth, sharing our strengths, experience, giving help and allowing ourselves to be helped.

It is important that we polish the rough edges of ourselves, that we encourage the development of our nature in such a way that, when we are in the presence of others, they will find us good to be with, to share with. We need to shape our nature so that when we relate to others, they find us nourishing and sustaining, rather than toxic and taxing.

Love matters profoundly to us. Not romantic love, but love in the ethical sense, love between people. When we love, we care about the well-being of others. We wish them well. We care about their well-being as well as our own.

We must take care not to harm or to hurt other people unnecessarily, whether physically or emotionally. We must be careful not to take advantage of any power we come to have over others. This does not mean only official power, but also that subtler power we have over those who love us. Love requires that we not take advantage of the power we have over others, that we continue to care about their well-being.

Love. It's a complicated word. It does not mean being constantly gentle, compliant, giving. We must be sensitive enough to others to be able to see what they need for their well-being at any given moment. This is not easy, requires insight, perceptiveness.

Often we will most contribute to the well-being of another, not by being sweet and pleasant, but by being direct and confronting. It may mean insisting that the one we love face up to a situation that they are afraid of, are reluctant to deal with.

Love requires understanding, sensitivity, awareness. It also, of course, involves feelings. Tenderness, warmth, affection, admiration, respect, trust. We need to be in touch with these feelings, need to learn to experience them within ourselves, learn to express them clearly, directly to others so that they can be aware what our feelings are toward them. So that they can know us in depth.

III. Self-Assertion and Self-Command

It is important that we learn to love, but also that we learn to assert ourselves if we are to be fully alive. We must develop the capacity to assert our own needs, wants, wishes and convictions. We need to learn to reach out for what we want, to make it known to others, need to make things happen for ourselves.

This will often mean doing what we know we need to do, in spite of being anxious and afraid. Learning to assert ourselves comfortably, without tension, will do more to enhance the quality of our existence than any set of intellectual beliefs. Far more.

There is another side to this. It is also important that we not allow ourselves to be driven by the casual, uninformed impulses that crop up in us with some frequency, nor, on the other hand, by the uninformed inhibitions that hold us back from doing things that matter.

Our existence is shaped not only by external forces, but by forces within our own being, by the insistent pressure of impulse and urge and inhibition. We tend to take these innner forces for granted, regard them as unalterable, inevitable. But, in fact, they are not. We can change them if we will. We can be in possession of ourselves. This is the meaning of freedom.

One of the major forces within us is fear, anxiety. No other force, internal or external, has a more profound effect on the quality of our lives than our habitual fears. It is important that we not allow our behavior to be determined by fear and anxiety.

We need to learn to recognize our unreal fears, and admit them freely to ourselves and others. We must not pretend in this area especially. Human beings are often afraid: this is how it is. But ever so often our fears drive us away from reality.

Our anxieties may have little connection with anything actual, and if we allow ourselves to be hemmed in by them, we will cripple our existence. One of the things that matters most is that we face and master our fears.

This is important because it will enable us to be in touch with the real world, to see it, not as we fear it is, but as it actually is. If we fail to do this, we will live in an uncertain, shadowy world. We will be plagued by fears and fantasies. We will act on unfounded assumptions about the nature of things.

IV. Knowing Ourselves

This kind of awareness, of understanding is dependent not only on intellectual capacity, but also upon the quality of our personal character. Awareness and understanding are rooted not in the intellect alone, but in the whole being. The quality of the self, its freedom from fear, excessive egotism, greediness will strongly affect the level of understanding we are able to attain.

It is exceedingly important to our well-being that we come to know ourselves as well as the world. This is not something we can achieve by aiming directly at the goal. We will discover who we are by finding out first what we are not.

We must get behind the illusions and misconceptions we have been accustomed to holding about ourselves. We have to get inside the defenses that all of us have built up to protect ourselves from being wounded.

Our essential selves invariably are covered by layers of misconception and illusion and defenses. Once we become aware of what these are, of what is essentially not ourselves, we will understand who we are.

Then, having become aware, it is important that we be ourselves comfortably, without pretense, without surrendering entirely to the social pressures that will define us if we let them.

It is important also that we become ourselves, that we never regard ourselves as finished, complete. It is important that we continue to grow throughout our lives in the quality of our person, that we continually expand the capacities of our nature.

This means developing, refining our capacity to love. It means learning to work constructively in some way, means learning also how to get away from work and give ourselves over to pleasure, play, relaxation, and frivolity.

It means developing a consciousness of self and world, acquiring knowledge, learning to reason, and also to be whimsical, imaginative, able to fantasize, to feel deeply, to be sensual, to be sensitive, to perceive the beauty there is in nature, in art, in everyday life.

V. Choice and Commitment Must Coincide

As we grow (or fail to grow), we make choices unceasingly. We make choices in awareness, with understanding, or we let the choices be made for us by circumstance, by pressure from others, from institutions and ideologies. As we choose, each day, each night, whether deliberately or passively, our lives take form. Our self takes form.

It is vital that, when we make a choice, we be committed to its implications, its requirements, giving what it asks of us. Sometimes we do not make an intentional choice: we fall into it, we let it happen. We make a choice without really willing it or wanting it very much.

We have made a choice but we are not really committed to it. We go through the motions of moving with it, but do not really commit our attention and energies to living with the choice. We hold back. We drag our feet. It is important, if we are to be fully alive, that our choices and commitments coincide. This will make it possible for us to be, to fully be, what we have chosen to be.

It is also important that we develop a constructive relationship to the society of which our own lives are a part. We are social beings. Our human nature can take form only in a human, social order.

We need to relate our energies and abilities to the developing patterns of life in our society, rather than just feeling hostile, bitter, rejecting. Some of our life energy should be given to significant social causes and institutions.

We also need to learn how to be creatively, intelligently selfish. It matters that we develop a pattern of life that will allow us to have frequent periods of peace, quiet, serenity, and collectedness.

If we move always in haste and anxiety, racing from task to task, the quality of our lives will be impoverished. We will not be able to give ourselves wholly to being with others. We will find it difficult to enjoy the pleasures of life, to give ourselves to playing.

We must develop the habit of having our attention, our awareness and energies focused in each present moment where we are. We must not allow ourselves to be consistently preoccupied with the past or the future. We must learn to be in touch with each present moment as it passes before us, for this is where life takes place. We need to be there, wholly there where life is, immediately before us, in the present.

VI. Conclusion

What I have done so far is list a kind of catalog of the things that appear to me to matter most in life. These goals have a far greater impact on the quality of our lives than any set of intellectual beliefs we affirm about God, Christ and eternal life.

Let me summarize to conclude. These are the things that matter most, that make life full and whole, that enable us (as it were) to be saved:

1. Love matters. Being close to at least one person, knowing them and being known, understanding them, caring about their well-being; and being cared about, understood in return.
2. Being freely assertive, comfortably letting others know what we want, need, wish for, and what we want from them.
3. Gaining command of ourselves, so that we are not driven blindly by either impulse or inhibition, by greediness or anxiety.
4. Knowing our real, essential selves, then freely being ourselves, without pretense.
5. Growing continually in the quality of our personal character.
6. Being able to work in a dedicated way, and also able to let go, to play richly.
7. Our choices and commitments must coincide: we must be wholly committed to what we have chosen.
8. We must find a harmony between ourselves and our society, must care about the well-being of our society, its people and institutions.
9. We must develop a wholesome selfishness, take time for ourselves, for meeting our own needs, for renewing ourselves.
10. We must find our way to serenity and peace; learn not to hurry, not to live in haste and anxiety,but instead learn to be fully present in each present moment.

Or, to sum it all up briefly in another way: "What people are in themselves, what accompanies them when they are alone, what no one can give them or take away, is obviously more essential to them than anything they have in the way of possessions, or even what they may be in the eyes of the world." (Arthur Schopenhauer)

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

Lex1304@aol.com