Rev. Susan Maginn
"Beyond Reason"
August 17, 2008
Wy'east UU Congregation
Portland, OR
In our tradition we often say that reason is something that we cherish when it comes to religious life. We see this in our sources printed in your order of service, "Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit." We leave it to each person's reason to determine their beliefs and to follow them faithfully with the support of our congregational life.
We can see the roots of this way of believing in the reformation that gave way to the 'priesthood of all believers'. We can see it in the philosophy of Kant and the experiential emphasis in the theology of Schliermacher. Indeed the roots of this emphasis on reason can easily be traced in the history of philosophy to Plato and Socrates and Aristotle. Not at all a bad lineage, but I do wonder where this way of believing leaves us when we are not sure if we are growing and developing as a spiritual being. Is reason enough to pull us through a crisis of faith?
In Unitarian Universalism, there is no doctrine or creed or spiritual practice that unites all of us. Again citing our sources, we count on "Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life."
How do you experience that transcending mystery and wonder? This is the question for today:
How are you turning toward the Holy?
In the first decades of the twentieth century, humanism really started gaining traction. There was a belief in the upward trajectory of humanity, that we human beings were getting morally 'stronger, better and faster 'with every passing generation.
A professor of mine once said, "Any theology you have must make sense in the light of Auschwitz." And indeed all theologies buckled under the weight of the twentieth centuries wars, but especially humanist theologies. How could anyone look at such a bloody history and believe that human beings were improving with every generation?
As the wars waged, there were many in the mid-twentieth century were saying that there needed to be an acceptance that human beings are inherently flawed, capable of great harm and must, therefore, submit their sense of reason first to the church traditions and scriptural teachings.
Within our own tradition, I see us grappling with similar questions since a gunman opened fire in our Knoxville congregation. We are left to grapple with what it means to be welcoming and safe. We are left to grapple with what it means to honor the inherent worth and dignity of someone who means you harm. I believe after much time, that our tradition will be stronger for having to consider these questions. I pray that the strong theologians among us will be able to dig deep into these questions and I pray that we will have the ability to be led by them.
How are you turning toward the Holy?
Most people don't even know if they are turning toward or away from the Holy. Where do you look for that information anyway? Do I know if I am turning toward the Holy by looking in my daily schedule? Do I know if I am turning toward the Holy by listening to the voices of the people who speak to me: my family or strangers? Do I know if I am turning toward the Holy by noticing a change in my body, if so, where? Do I know if I am turning toward the Holy by seeing signs in the natural world?
Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson said:
"A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming."
What is dominating your thoughts and your imagination? Are you being 'careful' as Emerson says? Are you being deliberate about what you worship or are you going with the flow? My chief concern about 'going with the flow' is that it leaves us pretty vulnerable to the currents of commercial culture. If we are going to be going with the flow, we need to be diligent about which flow we are choosing.
Most people whether they are conscious of it or not, are worship at the temple of material security. First and foremost, we want to be safe and we want to be independent and most of us feel that the guarantee for safety and independence is money. We all have a need for material security in our lives, but we also know that material security does not bring true happiness. This is the stuff of pop songs and bumper stickers and yet it remains the most profound and most elusive of spiritual teachings.
Why is it that people with money are often so miserable? I believe it is because ultimately we have a deeper yearning than security. We have a yearning for awakening and healing and this yearning can be there regardless of our material security. I believe this is the very crisis our nation is facing, that we have focused exclusively on security while seeing that our moral soul is dying in exchange for our prolific security systems.
We have lost ordinary magic. This is the heart of the matter. Money can't give you the ability to be surprised by beauty, to see joy, to see silliness, to be generous with our time and money for no good reason at all. When our thought and imagination is focused primarily on the material world, then we have lost ordinary magic.
The most remarkable of ordinary magic is our ability to transform the way we see the world.
I am walking down a quiet street in New York just after a college class...Intro to Painting. This is Greenwich Village, so the buildings are simple because they are only a couple stories high, but the buildings are also warm because they are a couple centuries old. The sun had set hours ago and the rain looks like it has just taken a break too. And then I see them. Shadows...everywhere. Crouching beneath the leafless branches, then stretching long and wide along the narrow streets. And then the light! Pushing through the thick air, then suspended in an orb around every streetlight.
I had never taken a painting class before, and my guess was by the look of this light, that the painting class was starting to get to me. I was getting a glimpse into how visual artists might just always live with this sense of aching alertness.
I knew in that moment that my way of seeing the world had been changed by my painting teacher. I was fresh from a class where I was being taught to measure the distances between objects with my thumb so that I could realistically represent them on a canvass and I was being taught to look at these objects and see the shadows and the light. I was surprised to walk outside and learn that these skills did not stay in the studio with my painting materials.
That experience was 15 years ago and I, for better or for worse, don't live my life disabled by every shadowy street on a rainy night. But what has stuck with me is the reality that we can engage ourselves in such a way that our entire experience of life is altered. With a good teacher, we can train ourselves to see and experience the world in a new way.
When we change how we see the world, it may look simple from the outside, but inside it is a miracle like the parting of the red sea. Spiritual awakening and living the life of an artist are similar in that both mean being acutely sensitive to what is - seeing, hearing, feeling and awakening to the magic within the simple and the ordinary.
How are you turning your life toward the Holy?
Indeed our ability to turn toward the Holy, especially in times of crisis, might not give us all the answers but it will give us a foundation of peace where we can return when the questions are so fast and the answers so slow. Turning toward the Holy will allow us to live well in the questions, when it is our time to do so.
The quote on today's order of service says: "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you." We would do well to ask ourselves this question: Where does your heart rest?
All around us now we are seeing that we have been resting in some funny places. We have been living beyond our means in a culture of debt, in a polluted and fragile world. It is not good that we have been resting in an economy that is based on people living beyond their means. It is not good that we are resting in an energy system based on ways that are life threatening, not life giving. It is not good that we are resting in a food system that is based on eating foods year-round from the corners of the earth instead of food grown from the corners of our neighborhood. It is not good that we have obese children that would rather rest in front of a DVD in the mini-van rather than ride their bike.
We are not alone in this. There are prophets and poets among us to lead the way toward the Holy but they cannot lead without followers. Let us hear what they say and see what they see and rest where they lead. Trusting that the challenges and inconveniences of our day are problems worth having. These problems are worthy of our life, love and devotion.
Change comes out of crisis - whether it is world war or environmental fragility or the shooting in Knoxville - change comes out of crisis. And it is time to change. Time to accept these challenges as invitations to creativity, invitations to imagine how we could live our lives in ways that may feel like a sacrifice at first but may feel like spiritual practice in the near future, may even become a turning toward the ways of the Holy, shifting the direction of our own story.
We may not be able to see the way to change. Many of us, in the wake of a crisis are stunned into stillness, silence, perhaps even apathy. This is where the Glowers (from today's children's story) come in. These are the people who see a way through a crisis. I bet each one of us has been a glower at one time or another.
These are the prophetic voices who bridge the imaginative and the political, the mystical and the legal. These are the voices who call the people to turn from the world of wealth, power and greed to the world of the Holy. They are the bridges between these two worlds, calling us to awaken again and again.
Again, the Unitarian Universalist sources draw from the "Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love."
The prophetic voices in the Bible and among us today are poets really. They are not gifted with super natural powers. They are not social activists or community organizers or cabinet members or protesters. They are poets. They are people who look closely at the world, and where most of us see nothing remarkable, they see signs from beyond. They are ready to join hands and get there together.
You might just give your hand and follow them. And after a while you may find yourself walking - perhaps walking down an empty street after dark, the streets wet with rain you may see the shadows again and those shadows might steer your eye toward the light, the light you never noticed before now...(singing)
More light, more truth is breaking through this world.
More light, more truth. Oh Spirit, help us say what needs to be heard.