So I am pleased that same sex marriage passed in New York. Yet I also want to add the caveats that I don't believe that mirroring the heterosexual paradigm should be the be all and end all of rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer persons. As young queer people have told us, marriage is all well and good but they are more worried about surviving middle school and high school and whether or not their parents will throw them out of the house.
Yet my concern here is about the religion exemption clause that is part of the same sex marriage bill in New York, has been part of the proposed legislation in California and is in the newly passed civil union bill in Rhode Island. On the surface these seem innocuous ... a bone to those on the right who suddenly think that just because civil marriage is allowed for same sex couples that clergy and faith communities might somehow have to participate in these marriages even if it is against their teachings. After all what is the harm to put these clauses in if it makes people feel better and they will vote the right way?
First no clergy person or faith community is under any obligation, ever to perform a civil marriage - any marriage between any people. In fact religious communities can marry or not marry whoever they choose although not all those marriages may be recognized by the state as valid civil marriages. Such has been the state of same-sex couples whose faith communities, like Unitarian Universalism, have long been blessing their unions. There is no need for these clauses because faith communities and clergy people have a choice to bless or not bless any union.
So what is the concern? Well maybe I am just a bit paranoid but as the saying goes just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. I am concerned that in putting these clauses in these bills we are one still saying that same sex unions are not as worthy as heterosexual ones and that some how faith communities need extra protection from the LGBTQ community. Again it feeds the notion that LGBTQ people, their relationships, their families and their lives pose some sort of threat.
Secondly we have seen how the right and in particular the religious right never just let go of these fights even when they lose in the public square. Let's take contraception and abortion rights. The right knows it may not be able to undue Roe vs Wade but they can make it difficult if not impossible for a person to access contraceptives and abortions. Let's look at conscience clauses for pharmacists. Let's look at Kansas and Virginia that are using health and safety regulations to close clinics and make it more difficult for women to access reproductive health services. How might these clauses be used to further limit the rights of same sex couples to get married and to access full rights and responsibilities that come with civil marriage? Will hospitals be allowed to claim a religious exemption and not let a same sex spouse visit their sick loved one? Will cemeteries be allowed to deny same sex couples buying a joint plot? Will various non-profit and other organizations be able to claim a religious exemption from offering benefits to same sex spouses because of these clauses? And just like with abortion rights, I would not be at all surprised that courts would go along with these exemptions.
Maybe it is time to fully separate religious and civil marriage. After all why are religious leaders allowed to act as officers of the state in this instance? Maybe we need to require all couples to have a civil marriage ceremony and then they can choose whether or not to have a religious one. Let's separate civil marriage and religious marriage.
Let us render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto the Holy what is Holy.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
The Adjustment Bureau
Last weekend I went with my family to see The Adjustment Bureau. What an amazing movie and it is packed full of great theological questions.
Questions like is there a plan for each of our lives? If so what is my role in that plan? Do I have choice? What is the role of chance? Do we have free will? What is the nature of the creator of the plan - the chairman? Is it the chairman's intention only to enforce his/her/its version of the plan? What is the relationship between humanity and the plan and creator of the plan?
This film would make for a great discussion. I hope to invite my campus group to see it and discuss it. I have recommended it to my high school youth group.
Questions like is there a plan for each of our lives? If so what is my role in that plan? Do I have choice? What is the role of chance? Do we have free will? What is the nature of the creator of the plan - the chairman? Is it the chairman's intention only to enforce his/her/its version of the plan? What is the relationship between humanity and the plan and creator of the plan?
This film would make for a great discussion. I hope to invite my campus group to see it and discuss it. I have recommended it to my high school youth group.
Monday, March 21, 2011
All You Need Is Love
Well it is has been a long time since I have posted. Now that spring has come maybe I can be resolved to return to my weekly posting!
I'll begin with my sermon from March 13, 2011.
Call to Worship
“All You Need Is Love, Love is All You need” sing the Beatles. As I reflected on a sermon title and topic for today I could not get the Beatles song out of my head and hence our title for today’s service.
It may seem simplistic and naïve to say “All You Need is Love.” All one needs to do is pick up the newspaper and see the news coming from all parts of the globe and think we need a lot more than love. Yet do we? Certainly we need more than saying or singing the words. What if our actions are grounded in love; if our response to life and the events of the world is grounded in love – then what? What if we lived seriously into loving our neighbors as ourselves – both here in our families, friends and communities and in the larger community? Then might it be true that all we need is love?
Come let us explore the questions together! Come let us worship together!
Sermon
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” Familiar words to many of us followed by the familiar story of the Good Samaritan. So familiar in fact that often we just gloss over the story, thinking we know what it means, so familiar that it is hard to engage with it and find something new.
This story was most likely first a story told orally as people who remembered Jesus and his teachings, shared them with those who had not known him. Eventually the story came to be written down and it comes to us a thousand plus years later. We read it not its original language of Greek, but in English. We read it not from the original writings because of course they don’t exist. To understand the story we must reinterpret in our own time, through the lens of a thousand years of readings, copies, translations. We must have things explained to us that would have been obvious to the followers of Jesus or even for the early hearers of this story who lived in first Century Palestine, under the rule of the Roman Empire. For the audience in the story, the lawyer who asks the question, the followers of Jesus that were listening, the Samaritan as hero would have been the twist, the unexpected plot turn. It was the Samaritan, the despised one, the one not to be interacted with, that did the right thing, who behaved in accordance to the law – the one that loved his neighbor as himself. For us so many centuries later, in a different context, a different world, we miss the twist. We must have it explained to us.
Because we read the story, not in Ancient Greek but in English we miss the subtleties of language. The Greeks had many different words for that which we translate as love. There is agape which refers to sacrificial love or it can also be used to express the love of a good meal, a feeling of being content or holding another in high regard. Agape is not based as much on the personal relationship but rather a general affection. It is the love found in the book of Corinthians which tells us that love is patient and kind and slow to anger. Eros is passionate love, sensual desire and longing. It can also be used to talk about knowledge of beauty and truth when it is not attached to physical attraction to another but rather to the spiritual quest. Phila is the love found in friendship and family and includes loyalty to friends and family and community. In this context the Greek word is “agape” that general regard, holding in high esteem and self-giving love that is the love Jesus commands.
There are many interpretations of this story and the command to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Martin Luther King Jr. used this story to talk about not just helping the man who was robbed but rather to transforming the road itself so that the dangers on the road were no more. He called us to transform the road, to offer not just charity to the victims of violence and oppression but rather an end to violence and oppression – so that never again would anyone be robbed and beaten and left to die. One can focus on the importance of first loving oneself, of holding oneself in high esteem in order to be able to love others. It can also be interpreted to talk about our obligation to assist others in need, even those who we might regard as our enemies.
Since it is such a familiar story, we often see ourselves within it or identify with the characters. I think for many of us we see ourselves as the Good Samaritan , or want to see ourselves that way. We don’t want to be the priest or the Levite although we may when by ourselves admit that we are probably most likely to act as the priest or the Levite in our daily lives. Most of us if pushed would admit that we would not stop and care for the victim on the road. We might use our cell phones and call 911, maybe we would even stay nearby making sure that help arrived. Most of us also don’t want to be the man left on the road half-dead. There is a clear winner in this story and that is the Good Samaritan – he is not a victim, he did the right thing, he is the hero of the story. So Jesus tells us that it was the person on the margins, the Samaritan – despised by the Jewish people at the time – that did the right thing, not the honored and revered priest or Levite.
We religious liberals, we who are committed to social justice and making the world a better place, see ourselves as loving the stranger. We see how it is wrong to stereotype people, to practice racial profiling as is happening Congress right now as they hold hearings on Islamic extremism – a politely veiled way of saying that all those who are Muslim are suspect. We may find it easy to say we love our Muslim neighbors. We stand on the side of love with LGBTQ people, people who others would despise and condemn and we say we love our LGBTQ neighbors.
Yet might it be easier to love the stranger then it is to love those closer to home. After all the Samaritan did not know the man who had been robbed. The man had given the Samaritan no reason not to like him. Yet often even in our comfort zones we are confronted with “neighbors” who we find it very difficult to love. How am I to love the person here at WUU that just drives me crazy? Or even how am I to love my family members who hold such different values than me?
We all have people in our lives that we can find challenging to love. All you need is love might be easy to sing but not so easy to live.
This is where the story of the “Rabbi’s Gift” I think can help us. I think the key to loving those, to holding in high regard the stranger and those who drive us crazy, is the notion of radical hospitality. In the story, the Rabbi tells the Abbot that he does not know how to help his dying monastery but he knows the Messiah is among you. The story then goes on to say how in this tight knit community, they don’t always like each other, they find it difficult to love, to stay in community. We are told of brother Elred who is crotchety and Brother Philip who is a nobody. How could either of them be the Messiah?. And certainly I could not be Messiah followed by the prayer – please not me. The Rabbi’s gift of course is that they see each other and themselves in a new way, in a new light. In some versions of the story, set in a classroom rather than a monastery, the Rabbi says they can’t tell anyone that the Messiah is among them. Of course each class is told the Messiah is among them.
What if I am the chosen one, the one sent to heal the world? What if it is the person next to me? If I look upon the world that we are each called to be a Messiah, to bring our gifts to save the world then how does it change how I look at it? How does it change me to look at myself that way?
Marianne Williamson speaks of this in her often quoted words from “Our Deepest Fear.” “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.” Our earliest Unitarian roots call us back to this – we are manifestations of the holy, of the Divine. Ralph Waldo Emerson rejected the divinity of Jesus not just because it wasn’t rational, not just because it wasn’t Scriptural but because he believed it stripped Jesus of his essential message - that we are all children of God, we are the chosen ones, sent to heal the world, sent to love our neighbors as ourselves. It let us off to hook to say that Jesus was divine and therefore we certainly could not be expected to live the life that Jesus led.
Radical hospitality calls us to be curious and welcoming. What if the next time we find ourselves finding it very hard to love the neighbor right next to us, we thought “what gifts does this person bring to the world, to this community, to my me, to my family?” It does not necessarily mean we will like them but can we hold them in agape – in high regard? Can we see the holy within them?
I recently had the experience of serving on a marriage panel at William and Mary. The panel included one of the priests from St. Bede’s Catholic Church and I found myself filled with pre-judging and outright anger. You see I had recently read about the Pope’s words against same-sex marriage and I didn’t know what it was going to be like to be on a panel on marriage with this Roman Catholic priest. I found myself pre-judging and making all sorts of assumptions. It is not that my anger at the Pope and his statements is not a righteous anger – I would even say it is a holy anger. It is not, however, helpful to direct that anger toward this person. It turned out to be fine and a lot of fun. I am not sure that we agreed on things but that was not important. What is important is that we were able to be at the table together.
The Beatles tells us that:
There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
There's nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time - It's easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love.
I'll begin with my sermon from March 13, 2011.
Call to Worship
“All You Need Is Love, Love is All You need” sing the Beatles. As I reflected on a sermon title and topic for today I could not get the Beatles song out of my head and hence our title for today’s service.
It may seem simplistic and naïve to say “All You Need is Love.” All one needs to do is pick up the newspaper and see the news coming from all parts of the globe and think we need a lot more than love. Yet do we? Certainly we need more than saying or singing the words. What if our actions are grounded in love; if our response to life and the events of the world is grounded in love – then what? What if we lived seriously into loving our neighbors as ourselves – both here in our families, friends and communities and in the larger community? Then might it be true that all we need is love?
Come let us explore the questions together! Come let us worship together!
Sermon
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” Familiar words to many of us followed by the familiar story of the Good Samaritan. So familiar in fact that often we just gloss over the story, thinking we know what it means, so familiar that it is hard to engage with it and find something new.
This story was most likely first a story told orally as people who remembered Jesus and his teachings, shared them with those who had not known him. Eventually the story came to be written down and it comes to us a thousand plus years later. We read it not its original language of Greek, but in English. We read it not from the original writings because of course they don’t exist. To understand the story we must reinterpret in our own time, through the lens of a thousand years of readings, copies, translations. We must have things explained to us that would have been obvious to the followers of Jesus or even for the early hearers of this story who lived in first Century Palestine, under the rule of the Roman Empire. For the audience in the story, the lawyer who asks the question, the followers of Jesus that were listening, the Samaritan as hero would have been the twist, the unexpected plot turn. It was the Samaritan, the despised one, the one not to be interacted with, that did the right thing, who behaved in accordance to the law – the one that loved his neighbor as himself. For us so many centuries later, in a different context, a different world, we miss the twist. We must have it explained to us.
Because we read the story, not in Ancient Greek but in English we miss the subtleties of language. The Greeks had many different words for that which we translate as love. There is agape which refers to sacrificial love or it can also be used to express the love of a good meal, a feeling of being content or holding another in high regard. Agape is not based as much on the personal relationship but rather a general affection. It is the love found in the book of Corinthians which tells us that love is patient and kind and slow to anger. Eros is passionate love, sensual desire and longing. It can also be used to talk about knowledge of beauty and truth when it is not attached to physical attraction to another but rather to the spiritual quest. Phila is the love found in friendship and family and includes loyalty to friends and family and community. In this context the Greek word is “agape” that general regard, holding in high esteem and self-giving love that is the love Jesus commands.
There are many interpretations of this story and the command to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Martin Luther King Jr. used this story to talk about not just helping the man who was robbed but rather to transforming the road itself so that the dangers on the road were no more. He called us to transform the road, to offer not just charity to the victims of violence and oppression but rather an end to violence and oppression – so that never again would anyone be robbed and beaten and left to die. One can focus on the importance of first loving oneself, of holding oneself in high esteem in order to be able to love others. It can also be interpreted to talk about our obligation to assist others in need, even those who we might regard as our enemies.
Since it is such a familiar story, we often see ourselves within it or identify with the characters. I think for many of us we see ourselves as the Good Samaritan , or want to see ourselves that way. We don’t want to be the priest or the Levite although we may when by ourselves admit that we are probably most likely to act as the priest or the Levite in our daily lives. Most of us if pushed would admit that we would not stop and care for the victim on the road. We might use our cell phones and call 911, maybe we would even stay nearby making sure that help arrived. Most of us also don’t want to be the man left on the road half-dead. There is a clear winner in this story and that is the Good Samaritan – he is not a victim, he did the right thing, he is the hero of the story. So Jesus tells us that it was the person on the margins, the Samaritan – despised by the Jewish people at the time – that did the right thing, not the honored and revered priest or Levite.
We religious liberals, we who are committed to social justice and making the world a better place, see ourselves as loving the stranger. We see how it is wrong to stereotype people, to practice racial profiling as is happening Congress right now as they hold hearings on Islamic extremism – a politely veiled way of saying that all those who are Muslim are suspect. We may find it easy to say we love our Muslim neighbors. We stand on the side of love with LGBTQ people, people who others would despise and condemn and we say we love our LGBTQ neighbors.
Yet might it be easier to love the stranger then it is to love those closer to home. After all the Samaritan did not know the man who had been robbed. The man had given the Samaritan no reason not to like him. Yet often even in our comfort zones we are confronted with “neighbors” who we find it very difficult to love. How am I to love the person here at WUU that just drives me crazy? Or even how am I to love my family members who hold such different values than me?
We all have people in our lives that we can find challenging to love. All you need is love might be easy to sing but not so easy to live.
This is where the story of the “Rabbi’s Gift” I think can help us. I think the key to loving those, to holding in high regard the stranger and those who drive us crazy, is the notion of radical hospitality. In the story, the Rabbi tells the Abbot that he does not know how to help his dying monastery but he knows the Messiah is among you. The story then goes on to say how in this tight knit community, they don’t always like each other, they find it difficult to love, to stay in community. We are told of brother Elred who is crotchety and Brother Philip who is a nobody. How could either of them be the Messiah?. And certainly I could not be Messiah followed by the prayer – please not me. The Rabbi’s gift of course is that they see each other and themselves in a new way, in a new light. In some versions of the story, set in a classroom rather than a monastery, the Rabbi says they can’t tell anyone that the Messiah is among them. Of course each class is told the Messiah is among them.
What if I am the chosen one, the one sent to heal the world? What if it is the person next to me? If I look upon the world that we are each called to be a Messiah, to bring our gifts to save the world then how does it change how I look at it? How does it change me to look at myself that way?
Marianne Williamson speaks of this in her often quoted words from “Our Deepest Fear.” “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.” Our earliest Unitarian roots call us back to this – we are manifestations of the holy, of the Divine. Ralph Waldo Emerson rejected the divinity of Jesus not just because it wasn’t rational, not just because it wasn’t Scriptural but because he believed it stripped Jesus of his essential message - that we are all children of God, we are the chosen ones, sent to heal the world, sent to love our neighbors as ourselves. It let us off to hook to say that Jesus was divine and therefore we certainly could not be expected to live the life that Jesus led.
Radical hospitality calls us to be curious and welcoming. What if the next time we find ourselves finding it very hard to love the neighbor right next to us, we thought “what gifts does this person bring to the world, to this community, to my me, to my family?” It does not necessarily mean we will like them but can we hold them in agape – in high regard? Can we see the holy within them?
I recently had the experience of serving on a marriage panel at William and Mary. The panel included one of the priests from St. Bede’s Catholic Church and I found myself filled with pre-judging and outright anger. You see I had recently read about the Pope’s words against same-sex marriage and I didn’t know what it was going to be like to be on a panel on marriage with this Roman Catholic priest. I found myself pre-judging and making all sorts of assumptions. It is not that my anger at the Pope and his statements is not a righteous anger – I would even say it is a holy anger. It is not, however, helpful to direct that anger toward this person. It turned out to be fine and a lot of fun. I am not sure that we agreed on things but that was not important. What is important is that we were able to be at the table together.
The Beatles tells us that:
There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
There's nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time - It's easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Finding Abundance Within - Worship Service Jan. 2, 2011
I thought I would post my reflections on abundance from the all ages worship service yesterday
Call to Worship
Happy New Year to all of you!!!
We begin the year by reflecting on abundance. During the month of January here at Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists we will be reflecting as a faith community on what is abundance, how do we recognize it and how do we live into it and share it. Abundance – not just enough but more than enough; abundance that feeling of at there is more than enough for me, for you, more than enough to share with everyone.
Now it is said that we preach or teach best what we most need to learn and I am thinking this is very true for me about abundance. Of course the danger of preaching on what one what one most needs to learn is that one is still learning and therefore knowing what to say, can be challenging.
We live in a society that thrives on scarcity, the very opposite of abundance. The very premise of our advertising and media is to make sure that we are never content with what we have for then there would be no need to buy anything. I am reminded of the mirror of Erised, from the very first Harry Potter book. This mirror allows the person who gazes in it to see their deepest desire. The inscription above the mirror reads I show not your face but your heart’s desire. Albus Dumbledore tells us that the content or happy person would see only him or herself as they are in the mirror. I think few of us would see only ourselves in the mirror.
It is hard when money or time or energy feels scarce, and most of us experience that kind of scarcity. At times it is difficult to believe that it is enough just the way it is. It is a nearly universal premise of religion that the abundance we seek is within us and that if we can’t find what we are searching for within, then we will certainly never find it without. Easy to say and quote when things are going along well not so easy when things are not.
I know that too often I prey victim to that there is never enough money, or time or energy - that all I see around me are undone tasks, and that life is just a whole series of problems. Not much abundance there!
So what are we to do it? How are we to appreciate what we have? To believe that who we are and what we have to offer are enough? That actually there is more than enough, that our true selves are exactly what is needed. Come let us explore together the abundance within!!!
Believing We Are Enough
Hosea Ballou preaches that God will save all people just as they are. A radical notion in the Calvinist/Puritan society in which Ballou lived, that preached that only a very few would be saved. A radical notion still in a world in which evangelical ministers stand on street corners shouting about how bad and terrible we are and that if we don’t come to believe as they believe then God will not love us, God will not save us. A radical notion in light of advertisers that say only if we have this item, this trip, buy this program can we be enough, have enough.
The Universalist message is a radical one, the holy, the Divine, the sacred is not just for a few special people but for everyone. The message that God’s love is abundant – that there is more than enough for everyone - everyone without exception. An amazing notion that we are enough just as we are, what a gift, what an amazing gift. A gift so big that we almost can’t grasp it – the fact that there is enough love in this world, that the holy loves so abundantly and so without exception, that there is enough for everyone!!! There is even enough for me. The holy does not require that we embark on long arduous self-improvement projects, spend endless hours in prayer and meditation, in self-discipline and in cleaning ourselves up. All that is required is that we be ourselves, our authentic selves. That who we are and our unique gifts are all that is required.
The message of the Universalists is like the lesson of the Mirror of Erised. See the danger of the mirror is that people had gone mad sitting in front of thinking it was real, could it be real, if they just reached out a little further they could touch it and then maybe, just maybe it would be true. Harry himself gets caught up in the yearning for his heart’s desire. He nearly gets caught out of bed after hours, he doesn’t even realize that Dumbledore is the room with him because he is so caught up staring in the mirror – seeing the loving family that he never knew. The message was not Harry’s heart’s desire, to know a loving family, where he belonged was not a legitimate, and even very good desire. Yet the mirror showed him his parents, who are dead, and a reality that Harry can never have. Dumbledore reminds Harry that no magic can bring back the dead. The lesson of the mirror of course is that when we are content within ourselves, then the mirror reflects that back to us. The problem with not finding abundance within is that we find ourselves longing for a reality that we can’t have, a reality that isn’t possible.
We can think of many examples in our own lives. Maybe we believe that we would have enough if we just won the lottery and money was no longer a concern. Maybe it is a lost opportunity from the past – if we had just taken that road instead of the one we did. Maybe a person we lost touch with. It is not that the desire is bad, it is when the desires fills us with a sense that of scarcity – a sense that our lives are incomplete, that we are incomplete, that we lose touch with that sense of abundance.
The task of knowing who we are and that we are enough is the work of a lifetime. It is a process.
I think it is something we know strongly at times and forget at others. It comes and it goes. We learn it and then we have to learn it again, in a newer, deeper way. It is not that how we knew it before was wrong, we just know it differently. Like I said preaching on what we most need to learn, means that I am not sure whether or not we can continuously hold on to the knowledge of who we are and that who we are is enough. I wonder if we need to keep learning it – learning it new ways and in new situations. I wonder if we don’t ever reach a place and say there “I know that I am enough. I know that my gifts and my true self is exactly what this world needs. I know that there is more than enough love to give and that I am a part of it.” I think we learn it, then we learn it some more, we learn it this new way and that our whole lives become an unfolding of the abundance that is us.
Living in Abundance
How are we to live in abundance? How can we more often tap into that abundance that exists within us?
Well earlier I said that the Divine does not require hours of meditation and prayer, arduous spiritual practices and that is true – the message of the Universalists is that we are loved just as we are and that God’s love is abundant - given freely to all without exception. And spiritual practices that are continually arduous are probably not very conducive to cultivating one’s soul. Not that spiritual practice shouldn’t be challenging – if it weren’t challenging it wouldn’t be a practice but like with any practice, it is more likely to be a productive one if we actually WANT to do it..even when we don’t. For even with things we love – playing an instrument, writing, meditating, cooking..all require practice and we won’t always want to. Meditation, prayer, time alone, worship in community, service, all of those are practices that can lead to us learning and living into that sense of abundance. They are all ways of reaching deep within ourselves, of connecting to our true, authentic selves, to the Divine within each of us. The more we tap into that true self, the more we live out of that true self.
Many have learned about the abundance in their own lives by living in service with others. Please notice that I said with others and NOT to others. Service only TO others can actually lead to us only seeing scarcity and not abundance. Too often in our service, we forget to be in relationship. To serve with others, means that I recognize the abundance as well as the need in another. If all I see is another’s need, and not the abundance and I only seek to fill the need, then I may close myself off to what gifts that person has to give. What needs that person may be able to fill. When all we see are the problems, challenges, needs in others, just like when that is all we see in ourselves – than the world becomes a place of scarcity – a placed filled with problems to be solved. We learn from each other. We learn by serving and we learn by letting ourselves be served. Then we can see the world as a place of abundance, as a place where there is more than enough for everyone.
It is easy to focus on the problems and I am not advocating that we stop paying attention. I am saying let’s pay attention to how we pay attention – if we pay attention only to the problems and the lack of will and resources to fix them that is all we will see; if we only see through rose-colored glasses – refusing to see any problems, refusing to see that there is need anywhere than we live in very self-centered way – focused only on gratifying our own ego but if we see both the needs and abundance – then we can see that the abundance is there, that it exists everywhere and that we might even be able to see how to meet the needs from the abundance that already exists.
Living in Abundance means holding on those moments in our lives when we have experienced it – like in our meditation today. Living in abundance means living and serving in relationship with others. Living in abundance is remembering that our deepest needs and desires can never be filled by external things. It is remembering that the content person looks into the Mirror of Erised sees oneself as they are and knows that is enough.
.
Call to Worship
Happy New Year to all of you!!!
We begin the year by reflecting on abundance. During the month of January here at Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists we will be reflecting as a faith community on what is abundance, how do we recognize it and how do we live into it and share it. Abundance – not just enough but more than enough; abundance that feeling of at there is more than enough for me, for you, more than enough to share with everyone.
Now it is said that we preach or teach best what we most need to learn and I am thinking this is very true for me about abundance. Of course the danger of preaching on what one what one most needs to learn is that one is still learning and therefore knowing what to say, can be challenging.
We live in a society that thrives on scarcity, the very opposite of abundance. The very premise of our advertising and media is to make sure that we are never content with what we have for then there would be no need to buy anything. I am reminded of the mirror of Erised, from the very first Harry Potter book. This mirror allows the person who gazes in it to see their deepest desire. The inscription above the mirror reads I show not your face but your heart’s desire. Albus Dumbledore tells us that the content or happy person would see only him or herself as they are in the mirror. I think few of us would see only ourselves in the mirror.
It is hard when money or time or energy feels scarce, and most of us experience that kind of scarcity. At times it is difficult to believe that it is enough just the way it is. It is a nearly universal premise of religion that the abundance we seek is within us and that if we can’t find what we are searching for within, then we will certainly never find it without. Easy to say and quote when things are going along well not so easy when things are not.
I know that too often I prey victim to that there is never enough money, or time or energy - that all I see around me are undone tasks, and that life is just a whole series of problems. Not much abundance there!
So what are we to do it? How are we to appreciate what we have? To believe that who we are and what we have to offer are enough? That actually there is more than enough, that our true selves are exactly what is needed. Come let us explore together the abundance within!!!
Believing We Are Enough
Hosea Ballou preaches that God will save all people just as they are. A radical notion in the Calvinist/Puritan society in which Ballou lived, that preached that only a very few would be saved. A radical notion still in a world in which evangelical ministers stand on street corners shouting about how bad and terrible we are and that if we don’t come to believe as they believe then God will not love us, God will not save us. A radical notion in light of advertisers that say only if we have this item, this trip, buy this program can we be enough, have enough.
The Universalist message is a radical one, the holy, the Divine, the sacred is not just for a few special people but for everyone. The message that God’s love is abundant – that there is more than enough for everyone - everyone without exception. An amazing notion that we are enough just as we are, what a gift, what an amazing gift. A gift so big that we almost can’t grasp it – the fact that there is enough love in this world, that the holy loves so abundantly and so without exception, that there is enough for everyone!!! There is even enough for me. The holy does not require that we embark on long arduous self-improvement projects, spend endless hours in prayer and meditation, in self-discipline and in cleaning ourselves up. All that is required is that we be ourselves, our authentic selves. That who we are and our unique gifts are all that is required.
The message of the Universalists is like the lesson of the Mirror of Erised. See the danger of the mirror is that people had gone mad sitting in front of thinking it was real, could it be real, if they just reached out a little further they could touch it and then maybe, just maybe it would be true. Harry himself gets caught up in the yearning for his heart’s desire. He nearly gets caught out of bed after hours, he doesn’t even realize that Dumbledore is the room with him because he is so caught up staring in the mirror – seeing the loving family that he never knew. The message was not Harry’s heart’s desire, to know a loving family, where he belonged was not a legitimate, and even very good desire. Yet the mirror showed him his parents, who are dead, and a reality that Harry can never have. Dumbledore reminds Harry that no magic can bring back the dead. The lesson of the mirror of course is that when we are content within ourselves, then the mirror reflects that back to us. The problem with not finding abundance within is that we find ourselves longing for a reality that we can’t have, a reality that isn’t possible.
We can think of many examples in our own lives. Maybe we believe that we would have enough if we just won the lottery and money was no longer a concern. Maybe it is a lost opportunity from the past – if we had just taken that road instead of the one we did. Maybe a person we lost touch with. It is not that the desire is bad, it is when the desires fills us with a sense that of scarcity – a sense that our lives are incomplete, that we are incomplete, that we lose touch with that sense of abundance.
The task of knowing who we are and that we are enough is the work of a lifetime. It is a process.
I think it is something we know strongly at times and forget at others. It comes and it goes. We learn it and then we have to learn it again, in a newer, deeper way. It is not that how we knew it before was wrong, we just know it differently. Like I said preaching on what we most need to learn, means that I am not sure whether or not we can continuously hold on to the knowledge of who we are and that who we are is enough. I wonder if we need to keep learning it – learning it new ways and in new situations. I wonder if we don’t ever reach a place and say there “I know that I am enough. I know that my gifts and my true self is exactly what this world needs. I know that there is more than enough love to give and that I am a part of it.” I think we learn it, then we learn it some more, we learn it this new way and that our whole lives become an unfolding of the abundance that is us.
Living in Abundance
How are we to live in abundance? How can we more often tap into that abundance that exists within us?
Well earlier I said that the Divine does not require hours of meditation and prayer, arduous spiritual practices and that is true – the message of the Universalists is that we are loved just as we are and that God’s love is abundant - given freely to all without exception. And spiritual practices that are continually arduous are probably not very conducive to cultivating one’s soul. Not that spiritual practice shouldn’t be challenging – if it weren’t challenging it wouldn’t be a practice but like with any practice, it is more likely to be a productive one if we actually WANT to do it..even when we don’t. For even with things we love – playing an instrument, writing, meditating, cooking..all require practice and we won’t always want to. Meditation, prayer, time alone, worship in community, service, all of those are practices that can lead to us learning and living into that sense of abundance. They are all ways of reaching deep within ourselves, of connecting to our true, authentic selves, to the Divine within each of us. The more we tap into that true self, the more we live out of that true self.
Many have learned about the abundance in their own lives by living in service with others. Please notice that I said with others and NOT to others. Service only TO others can actually lead to us only seeing scarcity and not abundance. Too often in our service, we forget to be in relationship. To serve with others, means that I recognize the abundance as well as the need in another. If all I see is another’s need, and not the abundance and I only seek to fill the need, then I may close myself off to what gifts that person has to give. What needs that person may be able to fill. When all we see are the problems, challenges, needs in others, just like when that is all we see in ourselves – than the world becomes a place of scarcity – a placed filled with problems to be solved. We learn from each other. We learn by serving and we learn by letting ourselves be served. Then we can see the world as a place of abundance, as a place where there is more than enough for everyone.
It is easy to focus on the problems and I am not advocating that we stop paying attention. I am saying let’s pay attention to how we pay attention – if we pay attention only to the problems and the lack of will and resources to fix them that is all we will see; if we only see through rose-colored glasses – refusing to see any problems, refusing to see that there is need anywhere than we live in very self-centered way – focused only on gratifying our own ego but if we see both the needs and abundance – then we can see that the abundance is there, that it exists everywhere and that we might even be able to see how to meet the needs from the abundance that already exists.
Living in Abundance means holding on those moments in our lives when we have experienced it – like in our meditation today. Living in abundance means living and serving in relationship with others. Living in abundance is remembering that our deepest needs and desires can never be filled by external things. It is remembering that the content person looks into the Mirror of Erised sees oneself as they are and knows that is enough.
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Sunday, January 2, 2011
What is religion if not ethics - Between the Lines - Illawarra Mercury
So this article was posted on Facebook. Religion and ethics have certainly been split apart over the years. Even in theological schools ethics is taught separately from theology - even in so far as ethics being one department or specialty area and theology another.
I do like the author's point about not choosing between the two. Also with the decline in ethical behavior any effort to help people live more ethical lives is welcome.
What is religion if not ethics - Between the Lines - Illawarra Mercury
Lots to think about for this New Year!
Blessings,
Margaret
I do like the author's point about not choosing between the two. Also with the decline in ethical behavior any effort to help people live more ethical lives is welcome.
What is religion if not ethics - Between the Lines - Illawarra Mercury
Lots to think about for this New Year!
Blessings,
Margaret
Monday, December 27, 2010
Finding Abundance
The spiritual theme for January at my congregation is abundance and I will be leading a multi-generational worship service on this topic this coming Sunday. So I have been thinking a lot about abundance and scarcity and how that plays out in my life.
I keep coming back to how do we find abundance in what we already have in our lives. This is no easy task particularly as we are bombarded by advertisements and media whose very premise is scarcity, whose very premise is that what we have now, is not enough.
It is hard when money or time or energy feels scarce, and most of us experience that kind of scarcity. At times it is difficult to believe that it is enough just the way it is. It is a nearly universal premise of religion that the abundance we seek is within us and that if we can’t find what we are searching for within, then we will certainly never find it without. Easy to say and quote when things are going along well, not so easy when one is struggling to have time to spend with family, run the errands and still keep up with work. Easy to say when there is enough money to pay the bills or maybe there is even something left at the end of the month.
I know that too often I prey victim to that there is never enough money, or time or energy - that all I see around me are undone tasks, and that life is just a whole series of problems. Not much abundance there!
So what are we to do it? How are we to appreciate what we have? To believe that who we are and what we have to offer are enough? That actually there is more than enough, that our true selves are exactly what is needed.
Well I think it begins with even brief moments of insight, remembering those times when we experienced abundance. For example, when I was on silent retreat in May, it was so amazing to just spend my days reading, walking, praying. I did not miss talking. I did not miss television or e-mail. It was enough to just enjoy the sunshine, the books I was reading. Sometimes, when things are just too stressful, I will remember those days at Richmond Hills, remember when it was enough to just stop and unplug. I also then promise myself to go again, to take the time away.
So for my New Year's resolution, I am going to resolve to look for the abundance already present. I want to live into what I have is enough. I resolve not to do some great new project or start some new self-improvement program. I resolve to see what I already have, what I already am and believe that it is enough.
I keep coming back to how do we find abundance in what we already have in our lives. This is no easy task particularly as we are bombarded by advertisements and media whose very premise is scarcity, whose very premise is that what we have now, is not enough.
It is hard when money or time or energy feels scarce, and most of us experience that kind of scarcity. At times it is difficult to believe that it is enough just the way it is. It is a nearly universal premise of religion that the abundance we seek is within us and that if we can’t find what we are searching for within, then we will certainly never find it without. Easy to say and quote when things are going along well, not so easy when one is struggling to have time to spend with family, run the errands and still keep up with work. Easy to say when there is enough money to pay the bills or maybe there is even something left at the end of the month.
I know that too often I prey victim to that there is never enough money, or time or energy - that all I see around me are undone tasks, and that life is just a whole series of problems. Not much abundance there!
So what are we to do it? How are we to appreciate what we have? To believe that who we are and what we have to offer are enough? That actually there is more than enough, that our true selves are exactly what is needed.
Well I think it begins with even brief moments of insight, remembering those times when we experienced abundance. For example, when I was on silent retreat in May, it was so amazing to just spend my days reading, walking, praying. I did not miss talking. I did not miss television or e-mail. It was enough to just enjoy the sunshine, the books I was reading. Sometimes, when things are just too stressful, I will remember those days at Richmond Hills, remember when it was enough to just stop and unplug. I also then promise myself to go again, to take the time away.
So for my New Year's resolution, I am going to resolve to look for the abundance already present. I want to live into what I have is enough. I resolve not to do some great new project or start some new self-improvement program. I resolve to see what I already have, what I already am and believe that it is enough.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Meaning of Christmas for Unitarian Universalists
Of course I have to begin with the caveat that I cannot speak for all Unitarian Universalists. One of the primary values of our free faith tradition is the freedom and responsibility to each search for truth and meaning on our own. We come together in community to do so with other seekers, to test our ideas and know that we are not alone. Not all Unitarian Universalists celebrate Christmas or some may celebrate Christmas in addition to Hanukkah and Winter Solstice.
For this piece however I want to focus on how Unitarian Universalists understand the story of the birth of Jesus. The moral teachings of Jesus are one of the six sources that Unitarian Universalists draw upon for the search for truth and meaning. Unitarians early on stressed the importance of Jesus’ moral teachings and his life as an example of how each of us should live. Universalists stressed the universal love of God through Jesus – his life as an example of God’s deep love for humanity.
For Unitarian Universalists, Jesus’ humanity and his life serves as an example of the goodness of humanity and the potential each of us possess to make this world a more just, loving and peaceful place for everyone. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who addition to a being a great speaker and writer was a Unitarian minister. He said this about Jesus in his famed Divinity School Address: “Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world.”
So for Unitarian Universalists, Jesus serves as example of the divine indwelling in all of humanity – that each person is made in the image and likeness of God. Sophia Lyon Fahs (1876-1978), Unitarian Universalist minister and religious educator tells us that each night that a child is born is a holy night, for each child a manifestation of the holy in the world. She wrote “Each night a child is born is a holy night: A time for singing, A time for wondering, A time for worshiping, Each night a child is born is a holy night.” So on Christmas as we honor the birth of one child, Jesus, we honor all the children born, each person born. Christmas reminds us that each of us has the capacity “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
This Christmas, may we honor the miracle of each child born!
Blessed Be!
For this piece however I want to focus on how Unitarian Universalists understand the story of the birth of Jesus. The moral teachings of Jesus are one of the six sources that Unitarian Universalists draw upon for the search for truth and meaning. Unitarians early on stressed the importance of Jesus’ moral teachings and his life as an example of how each of us should live. Universalists stressed the universal love of God through Jesus – his life as an example of God’s deep love for humanity.
For Unitarian Universalists, Jesus’ humanity and his life serves as an example of the goodness of humanity and the potential each of us possess to make this world a more just, loving and peaceful place for everyone. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who addition to a being a great speaker and writer was a Unitarian minister. He said this about Jesus in his famed Divinity School Address: “Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world.”
So for Unitarian Universalists, Jesus serves as example of the divine indwelling in all of humanity – that each person is made in the image and likeness of God. Sophia Lyon Fahs (1876-1978), Unitarian Universalist minister and religious educator tells us that each night that a child is born is a holy night, for each child a manifestation of the holy in the world. She wrote “Each night a child is born is a holy night: A time for singing, A time for wondering, A time for worshiping, Each night a child is born is a holy night.” So on Christmas as we honor the birth of one child, Jesus, we honor all the children born, each person born. Christmas reminds us that each of us has the capacity “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
This Christmas, may we honor the miracle of each child born!
Blessed Be!
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