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As part of my training for the Unitarian Universalist ministry, I am interning at Throop Church in Pasadena, California. Each month we choose a theme that informs the worship for that month, and the readings, music, and sermon each Sunday usually connect somehow with the monthly theme.

This month, the worship theme is Feminism. And it was my turn to lead worship last Sunday. But I didn’t deliver a whole sermon; instead, I gave a short introduction, and then turned the pulpit over to two women in the congregation — Ruth Torres and Frances Goff — who each related something about how feminism has affected their lives.1

Why share the pulpit like this? An example from our hymnal gives an explanation.

Margaret Fuller was a remarkable woman.2 She was born in 1810 to two Unitarian parents, and by the time she was 23 she was translating Goethe and publishing essays in Boston newspapers. When she was 25, friends introduced her to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Fuller became part of the Transcendentalist circle in Boston. At 30 she became the first editor of the Transcendentalist journal The Dial.

Her writing and editing brought her to the attention of Horace Greeley, the founder of the New York Tribune, and Greeley invited her to write for his newspaper. Fuller became the first full-time book reviewer in all of American journalism, as well as the first female editor of the Tribune.

In 1846 the Tribune sent Fuller to Europe as a foreign correspondant. She eventually found her way to Italy, where she reported on — and became a supporter of — the revolution that resulted in the formation of the Roman Republic of 1849.

During her time in Italy, Fuller met Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, a marquis who had been disinherited by his family for his revolutionary politics. Fuller and Ossoli had a child together in 1848. In 1850, Fuller, Ossoli, and their baby boarded a freighter to come back to the United States. The ship struck a sand bar off of Fire Island, New York, only 100 yards from shore, but Fuller, Ossoli, and their son all perished in the wreck. Fuller was only 40 years old.

Margaret Fuller had an incredibly remarkable life, especially for a woman in the first half of the 19th century. Some of her thoughts sound progressive even for our time. And so we come to the reason why I am telling you about her now.

The editors of the Unitarian Universalist hymnal Singing the Living Tradition did a wonderful job, collecting and editing music for singing and words for reading that have served Unitarian Universalists for nearly 25 years. But in any work of this size and complexity, one is bound to find editorial decisions one might disagree with… and for me, one of them occurs in reading #575, “A New Manifestation,” which consists of selections from Fuller’s 1845 book Woman in the Nineteenth Century, arranged to make a responsive reading:

A new manifestation is at hand, a new hour is come.

When Man and Woman may regard one another as brother and sister, able both to appreciate and to prophesy to one another.

A new manifestation is at hand, a new hour is come.

What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intelligence to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given her.

A new manifestation is at hand, a new hour is come.

Man does not have his fair share either; his energies are repressed and distorted by the interposition of artificial obstacles.

A new manifestation is at hand, a new hour is come.

We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man.

Were this done, we believe a divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages.

A new manifestation is at hand, a new hour is come.

My objection is to this quote: “Man does not have his fair share either; his energies are repressed and distorted by the interposition of artificial obstacles.” That’s what the hymnal says, but what Fuller actually wrote was this:

It may be said that man does not have his fair play either; his energies are repressed and distorted by the interposition of artificial obstacles. Ay, but he himself has put them there; they have grown out of his own imperfections. [Emphasis added.]

So in effect, what Margaret Fuller actually wrote was that “You might say that men have it tough too, but it’s their own darn fault.” Now, you may or may not agree with her; you may or may not like her analysis; you may or may not think that it was wise for her to have written this — but that’s what she wrote. And the hymnal takes that strong statement and shortens it to “Men have it tough too.” Even though the hymnal was edited by people sympathetic to her beliefs, the editors softened her very pointed statement – they moderated her strong viewpoint to make it easier to hear.

The lesson is this: If you want to know what someone really thinks, it’s best if they speak for themselves.

So that’s why I shared the pulpit last Sunday. I can tell you my thoughts about feminism, and someday perhaps I will; but to begin with, maybe it’s best to listen to someone other than a man.

Whether you are female, or male, or live outside of that binary —

May we work together so that everyone is seen for who they truly are; may we work together to create equality for all; and may we work together so all may live in beloved community —

for that is the work of feminism.

Image credit: Library of Congress. More information here.

  1. And who, gloriously, brought Frida Kahlo and Terry Pratchett into the service. ↩
  2. The information in this brief biography came from Fuller’s entry in the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography, from her Wikipedia page, and from David Robinson’s book The Unitarians and the Universalists. ↩
sermons

Integrity of the Mind

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(A sermon delivered at Throop Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California on 8 January 2017. Copyright 2017 by Everett Howe.)

As many of you know, I was raised unchurched. When my wife Bella and I started to attend the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego, a little over 10 years ago, it was all a new experience for me.

A few years after we joined, I was at a committee meeting of some kind — of course! — and the leader of the meeting asked us all to consider why it was that we attended services on Sunday. I think that was the first time I had thought to consider exactly what the spiritual point was of coming to church on Sunday.

At the very beginning of my internship here at Throop, I preached a sermon that addressed this very question: Why are we here, in this room, each Sunday? The answer I proposed in that sermon had to do with the idea of community. It’s true that we can gain some spiritual growth and satisfaction on our own — by meditating, for example, or by spending time in nature — but there is something special about being present in a church community that both supports us and challenges us. One of our Unitarian Universalist principles is “the free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” and our community helps us stick to the “responsible” part of that.

But there’s another answer to the question of why we come here each week, and in fact it’s the first answer I thought of, way back when at that committee meeting.

At church, the services help me reflect on my own ethical values. By going to services on Sunday, and listening to the music, and singing the hymns, and (of course!) paying very close attention to the sermon1, and talking with people during coffee hour, I can think more deeply about what I believe, and about how I want to live my live. And then I can figure out whether I actually am living out those values. If I’m not living out the values that I profess, my church can help provide me with the resources and support that I will need in order to live my life in line with the values I believe in.

In other words: My church helps me live my life with integrity.

The worship theme for the month of January is “Integrity.” Each week we will explore a different aspect of the idea of integrity. Today it is “Integrity of the Mind”; over the course of the month we will also discuss integrity of the spirit, of the heart, and of the body.

“Integrity of the Mind” can mean a number of things. Perhaps the most straightforward meaning is that we should be honest.

Now, there are different types of honesty. There is honesty in your interactions with others, and there is honesty with yourself.

It can be hard to lie to other people. Just recently I ran across a quote by my favorite author — the 19th-century British novelist Anthony Trollope — that gives one reason why. Trollope writes:

A liar has many points in his favour, — but he has this against him, that unless he devote more time to the management of his lies than life will generally allow, he cannot make them tally.

Consistently lying to others is hard to maintain, it is immoral, it is corrosive to your relationships, and it makes it difficult for you to trust anyone.

Lying to yourself is easier, but just as dangerous. On one level, you know you are lying to yourself, so you don’t have to maintain quite the same façade as you do when you lie to others. However, even though it is easier to lie to yourself than it is to lie to others, the effect is just as corrosive: You end up not being able to trust yourself.

There are deeper meanings, too, about integrity of the mind. In Unitarian Universalism, many of these deeper meanings were well expressed by the Transcendentalists.

Transcendentalism was a movement among liberal religious people, especially Unitarians and those with connections to Unitarianism, in the mid-19th century, most prominently in the Northeast of the United States. Inspired by the Reverend William Ellery Channing’s idea that our conception of God comes from our examination of our own souls, the Transcendentalists were fierce individualists, who thought that our highest calling is to be true to our own souls.

One of the best-known writings about Transcendentalist individualism is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance. He did not mean “self-reliance” in the sense of being able to live on your own in the wild, or to cook your own food, or mend your own clothing; no, he was more interested in a person’s ability to rely on their own judgement, even when it conflicted with popular opinion.

Emerson writes that “Nothing is as sacred as the integrity of your own mind.” Really, his whole essay on self-reliance consists of expanding on this basic principle.

And yet I have intense reservations about Emerson. He seems so confident in the infallibility of his own intuitions, so dismissive of the idea that other people might have access to the truth as well.

Emerson’s famous aphorism, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” comes from this essay on self-reliance. And yet, what does he mean by this? If yesterday, all of your Transcendentalist insistence on the primacy of your own intuition demanded that you say one thing, and if today the same intuition demands just the opposite, Emerson says that you should proclaim just as loudly today that you are correct as you did yesterday. It seems to me, though, that you might want to be a little less certain that your opinions are always correct if you change them day by day.

Perhaps some of my reluctance to adopt Emerson’s philosophy comes from the suspicion of a comfortably-situated white man justifying his own beliefs by saying, “Trust your intuition! Speak your truth! Dare to express your individuality! That’s what I do, it’s worked out great for me…”

Emerson encourages all of his (white, male) readers to say to their loved ones,

I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. […] I must be myself. […] If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly.

And then, the most perfect quote: “Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.”

Emerson is saying, “Eventually, when you peer into the regions of absolute truth, you will find that my way of doing things was right all along.”

I agree that one should be true to oneself, but I have to admit that I find Emerson to be insufferable. I can’t think of a more arrogant attitude than what he expresses. And so I was very pleased when I learned of some writings by his wife, Lydia.

Lydia Emerson, in a moment of inspiration, wrote down something that she mockingly called the “Transcendental Bible.” It is a satirical take on the arrogance and self-righteousness that seemed to come along with some of the Transcendentalist beliefs of her husband. Here is one — long — sentence from it.2

If you scorn happiness (though you value a pleasant talk or walk, a tasteful garment, a comfortable dinner), if you wish not for immortal consciousness (though you bear with impatience the loss of an hour of thought or study), if you care not for the loss of your soul (though you deprecate the loss of your house), if you care not how much you sin (though in pain at the commission of a slight indiscretion), if you ask not a wise Providence over the earth in which you live (although wishing a wise manager of the house in which you live), if you care not that a benign Divinity shapes your ends (though you seek a good tailor to shape your coat), if you scorn to believe your affliction cometh not from the dust (though bowed to the dust by it), then, if there is such a thing as duty, you have done your whole duty to your noble self-sustained, impeccable, infallible Self.

“Your noble self-sustained, impeccable, infallible Self.” That one phrase confirms what I imagine it must have been like to live in the same household as Ralph Waldo Emerson.

So that’s another meaning of “integrity of the mind”: being true to your own beliefs, even when they contradict what is believed by your friends or by society at large. But we see that one of the difficulties is that you need to be true to yourself without being arrogant; you still need to listen to others and acknowledge that sometimes they will be right.

At one point, Emerson writes:

[…] man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he […] lives with nature in the present, above time.

And that brings us to another form of integrity of the mind: Keeping your mind focused on what is happening now, right around you, and not having your mind wander to the past or the future.

Meditation practices from around the world encourage us to develop the habit of focusing on the present. And, interestingly enough, a pair of researchers at Harvard came up with a way to test the idea that people are happier if they live in the present.

The researchers created an iPhone app for volunteers to use. You can read about it at trackyourhappiness.org, where you’ll find a link to the Apple App Store. If you download the app, it will interrupt you at random moments throughout your day and ask you a series of questions. The questions include:

  • “How are you feeling right now?”
  • “What are you doing right now?” and
  • “Are you thinking about something other than what you are currently doing?”

The individual users of the app then get to find out what activities actually help them stay happy. But the researchers get back the data from all of the users, and they have been using that data to test various hypotheses about happiness. And they’ve found some interesting things.

First of all, the researchers found that people’s minds wander a lot. About half the time the app interrupts someone to ask what they are doing, the person says that their mind was wandering.

They also found that no matter what activity a person was doing, they were less happy if they were not focusing their attention on it. It was worst, of course, if their mind was wandering to unpleasant things, but even if their mind was wandering to something nice, they were less happy on average than if they had been thinking about what they were doing.

Now, this shows that unhappiness is correlated with mind-wandering, but you might wonder whether that actually shows that one of these things causes the other. To answer this question, the researchers checked to see whether people’s mood at one point in the day was correlated with their mind wandering later that day, and vice versa. What they found was consistent with the hypothesis that one of these things does cause the other: not focusing on what you are doing will reduce your happiness.

So there’s a benefit to mental integrity in the form of focusing on the present: it will make you happier. And perhaps this happiness can carry you through the times when you do have to take your mind off the present in order to plan for the future.

The mind, the spirit, the heart, the body — in each of us, these are all connected to make a unified whole. This month, may we all find new ways to better understand each of these parts of ourselves, so that we may better live a life of integrity.

Image credit: Water lily with latticework reflections, copyright 2006 by the author. Shot in the Conservatory at the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena.

  1. Wink ;) ↩
  2. The whole thing is worth reading, and it’s just a couple of pages; you can find it here. ↩
sermons

Sinful Desserts

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(A sermon delivered at Throop Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California on 15 November 2015. Copyright 2015 by Everett Howe.)

(A general note on the sermons I post: While I do lightly edit them and add links and footnotes, they are still basically texts that I wrote with the intention of speaking. Therefore I sometimes use punctuation that is more appropriate for spoken language than for written language. Grammar, too, is different in practice for spoken language than for written language, so if something looks funny to you when you see it written here, try reading it out loud.)

In Providence, Rhode Island, there’s a bakery called simply: Sin. Their web page says that they have “a line of special occasion cakes and desserts that makes the ‘Sin’ of dessert well worth it,” and they encourage you to “go ahead and Sin… Eat wicked and never feel guilty.”

Closer to home, near Venice Beach, there’s Sinners and Saints Desserts. “If you are a sinner,” they say, “you will enjoy our decadent, scrumptious creations.” If you’re a saint, on the other hand, your choices are limited to their gluten-free selections.

The colder parts of the Central Time Zone seem to be home to great depravity. In Saskatoon you can patronize Mortal Sin Foods 1, and in Sioux Falls, be sure to visit Sinful Things Desserts, “home of the ultimate sin.”

Or, if you prefer the comfort of your own home, search for “sin” and “dessert” at cooks.com.

What is going on here? Why is there a very strong thread of American culture that associates pleasure — especially bodily pleasure, and most especially the pleasures of eating — with sin? Why is it that choosing something to eat solely because you like the taste — and not because it’s full of anti-oxidants or B-vitamins or omega-3 fatty acids — why is it that choosing to do something solely because you like it is often seen as the top of a very slippery slope towards selfishness?

Spoiler alert: I won’t be able to tell you the answers to these questions in the next 20 minutes. But I would like to raise up the questions themselves as something to think about, especially as we enter the winter holiday season. Because our worship theme this month 2 is gratitude, and I would like to encourage you to be grateful for, and not guilty about, pleasure.

High school students often think that life is unfair. I was no different, and when I was in high school, one of the particular unfairnesses that bothered me was that… I had a body. It wasn’t so much of a question of it being a body that was failing me in some way — which really, mine was not, unless you count a bad case of acne — no, my complaint was more fundamental than that. I used to stay up late at night, reading, or working on math problems, or studying chess, or — one lucky summer — programming the school’s personal computer 3 that I had been allowed to take home. Basically, I would stay up late doing nerdy things that I liked. And whenever I started to get sleepy, I would regret the fact that I lived in a body. Why do I have to go to sleep?, I would wonder. Why can’t I just live as a disembodied mind — or, as the conventions of science fiction would have it, as a brain in a vat of nourishing fluid?

A few clarifications must be given here…

First of all, a person living as a brain in a vat would still get tired. Sleep is a really a function of the brain, not just of the rest of the body. But what I was really confronting in high school was the distinction between the mind and the body, not so much the brain and the body.

Secondly: Star Trek fan that I was, I should have remembered that many of the science fiction stories about disembodied minds are really about the benefits and pleasures of our bodies, benefits that we are prone to overlook.

But perhaps the main thing to mention is that trying to maintain a distinction between the mind and the body — or, to move from philosophy to religion — to maintain a distinction between the soul and the body… the thing to mention is that trying to assert or maintain this distinction has a long history. The ancient Greeks, for example, contrasted the intellectual and restrained Apollo with the physical and ecstatic Dionysus. Many religions speak of a human soul that exists independenly of our bodies, and that may live on after our bodies die, or be reincarnated into a different body.

And if we become so focussed on our souls as being completely separate from our bodies, it’s easy to wonder, as I did in high school: Wouldn’t we be better off if we didn’t have bodies.

But we all do have bodies. Our consciousness comes from our bodies, so in some sense we are our bodies. We take up space in the physical world. And not just our literal, physical volume; the existence of our bodies uses up resources. We consume things — air, water, food — we eat other living things — to survive. And society has a lot to say about how much space, literal and metaphorical, we should feel entitled to.

I was at a conference in Ottawa last week, so I’ve been on two cross-country flights recently. There’s nothing like being on an airplane to bring about awareness of your body — as you sit in those uncomfortable seats, wishing you had paid extra for that luxurious extra four inches (four inches!) in Economy Plus — as well as awareness of other people’s bodies, as you wonder: Who will wind up in the seat next to me, and battle me for the arm rest?

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in these little battles over who gets what space that we can forget: Who is it that said that the airline seat is the appropriate amount of space for a human body? The airlines set expectations for how much space we should be able to take up. If you happen to exceed those expectations, air travel will make you keenly aware of this… both from the discomfort of trying to fit into those narrow seats, and from the awareness of your fellow passengers’ relief when they see you walk past their row when the plane is boarding.

This is just one reflection of our societal expectations about body size, and how they encourage feelings of shame and guilt. Larger people know from repeated experience: strangers feel free to comment on their bodies, on their perceived health, on their choice of clothing, on their purchases at the grocery store… especially if they are buying food with government assistance. Women, of course, get an especially large helping of this barely-disguised disapproval, because their bodies are often viewed as not being their own; their bodies exist, society says, to be attactive to men, or to be incubators in which to grow babies. “Don’t eat that!”, complete strangers will tell a pregnant woman. “It’s not the best thing for your baby.”

But society is wrong! Our bodies are our own. We are our bodies. Mind and body are not separate things — our minds, our souls, come from the physical existence of our bodies. We, all of us, take up space in the world. And we have a right to do so.

We take up space with our bodies, and we take up space in other ways as well. We all agree that helping others is good; but taking care of ourselves — physically, emotionally, spiritually — these are morally good things too.

My learning service agreement for my internship with Throop Church lists eight areas that I am supposed to focus on. Some of these areas are things you would probably expect — I am supposed to develop skills in worship, for example, and in pastoral care. But perhaps you will be surprised to learn that one of the focus areas is “self-care.” It is easy for people who are attracted to ministry to buy in to the belief that their whole lives should be devoted to nothing but service; that self-sacrifice should be the goal. But this is not only unsustainable — I say that it is also morally wrong.

A couple of months ago, from this pulpit, I talked about the Transcendentalists, and the notion of “self-culture” that they adopted from William Ellery Channing. In that sermon, I pointed out that the Transcendalists seemed to miss the importance of community. But they were not wrong in stressing the importance of cultivating one’s own soul; what is the point of being alive and being human, if not to spend at least some time expanding one’s horizons.

There’s an older story, too, that I think makes this same point. It’s a story that appears in the Christian scriptures, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John — the story of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus.

The story is this: 4 One night, in the week before his crucifixion, Jesus was staying with friends in Bethany. While Jesus and others are having their dinner, Mary of Bethany comes to Jesus with a container of a very valuable perfume, and she anoints his head and his feet with it, using up almost the entire container. The disciples see this, and say “Hey, Mary, what are you doing? Why are you wasting this perfume on Jesus, when you could sell it for a lot of money and give that money to the poor?” Jesus tells them to leave Mary alone, because she has just done something kind. And then he says, “The poor will always be with you, and you can help them any time you want. But I’m not always going to be with you.”

This is a very interesting passage from the Gospels, and there is a lot of commentary on it. Reading the some of the commentary, you sense the discomfort that the story creates. There’s a sense of anxiety; some commentators say “Now, don’t go and use this as an excuse not to help the poor.” They seem to be worried that this story will give people permission to be entirely self-centered.

Now, who am I to be giving Biblical exegesis? But I am going to go ahead and do so anyway. And, I am going to trust that all of you here already have social consciences; that you do think about caring for the poor, about righting wrongs, about justice, about healing the planet.

But what does Jesus say about these issues? “The poor will always be with us.” The problems and injustices of the world are huge, larger than any one of us — which is why we have to work together to solve them. But any single one of us? If any single one of us devoted all of our energy to helping humanity, we would do some good — but alone we would never be enough; there is always be more to do. Each one of us could throw our entire selves up against these problems — and be completely annihilated.

And what would be the point of our human existence if this were all that we did?

It is important to devote time and energy and money trying to help our fellow humans and to help improve the world; but we each need to have some time left to be our own individual selves. Again: What is the point of your existence as a human if you don’t spend some time expanding your soul… experiencing your body? Experiencing wonder at existence?

People seem to find it very easy to discount this lesson. Let me give one example of where I think this happens.

There is a philosophical and social movement nowadays called “effective altruism;” two of its main proponents are Peter Singer and William MacAskill, philosophers at Princeton and at Oxford, respectively. I think there are many problems 5 with this movement, but I will try to summarize it without getting too sidetracked by my criticisms.

The effective altruists try to measure the impact of any action by a single number; they measure goodness in “quality-adjusted life-years,” or QALYs. For example, one year of life for a healty person is valued at 1 QALY; one year of life of a person with AIDS who is not receiving AIDS medication is worth 0.5 QALYs; if that person were to take AIDS medication, the value of one year of their life would increase, to 0.9 QALYs. A year of life for a blind person, they say, is worth 0.4 QALYs.

Now, the effective altruists want to use these numbers to evaluate the benefit of good actions — for example, of giving AIDS drugs to patients who need them, or of preventing blindness. But perhaps you already see one problem with their system: Your blind friend may not view their life as being worth only 40% of the life of a sighted person. But I promised not to get distracted by criticism, so let’s continue.

Once they have figured out the worth of every action in terms of QALYs, the effective altruists then try to figure out the most benefit, as measured in QALYs, that you can get from various life choices. They come up with some interesting and counter-intuitive conclusions. For example, if you happen to have the skills that would make you employable on Wall Street, the effective altruists say that the best and most moral thing you can do with your life is to work on Wall Street, and donate most of your income to a charity that, for example, provides mosquito netting to the poor in malaria-infested parts of the world.

Don’t volunteer at a food bank or a homeless shelter, they say — that time could be spent more profitably working at a high-paying job, and sending the proceeds to the mosquito-net charity. The children you will save from malaria outweigh the homeless and the hungry in your own town.

I think that there are many problems with this philosophy. For example, it works entirely within an existing political and economic structure, without questioning whether that structure is good. It is like taking the size of an airline seat as an absolute fact of nature, instead of as a choice that was made because it is convenient to a large corporation.

But here is the problem I would like to focus on today: This utilitarian philosophy does not take into account the worth of the individual. It views each person simply as a machine whose moral value is measured in how much money they can make to donate to charity. It does not value the preferences of the individual; it does not value the spiritual satisfaction of the individual; it does not value the social connections, and the moral growth of the individual.

Perhaps I take this too personally — because as a Ph.D. mathematician, I am employable as a Wall Street financial analyst. According to the effective altruists, people are dying of malaria because I am standing here today, instead of working at a hedge fund.

That may be true. But I would rather be here today than at that hedge fund. Because my soul grows here. And that is worth something.

Perhaps you will be glad to know that my desire to live as a brain in a vat did not last long. As I have grown older, I have learned to appreciate the connection between my mind and my body, and to enjoy the pleasures that I can still get from my body. These pleasures and abilities will not always be there; being able-bodied is a temporary condition.

I would like to close this sermon with some homework. It is optional; and it will not be graded.

If you are willing, take the time this holiday season just to notice when pleasures — and, in particular, foods — are decribed in terms of good and evil, sinfulness and saintliness.

Now, you personally may need to think of dessert in the context of a medical condition, or dietary restrictions; and in any case, it is good to think of dessert in terms of how it will make your body feel not just immediately, but also in the next hour, and the next day. But for extra credit, see whether you can avoid thinking of dessert — or of any food — in terms of sin, and guilt.

Because you deserve more than sin and guilt. Take up your space in the world, and know that you have value.

Photo credit: Peggy Greb. The image is in the public domain, and was released by the Agricultural Research Service, the research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture. More information here.

  1. Oops, they have closed. ↩
  2. At Throop Church. ↩
  3. A Processor Technology Sol 20. ↩
  4. Versions are given in Matthew 26:6–11,
    in Mark 14:3–7, and in John 12:1–8. ↩
  5. These articles mention some of them. ↩
sermons

Why Are We Here?

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(A sermon delivered at Throop Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California on 23 August 2015. Copyright 2015 by Everett Howe.)

Last spring, when Rev. Tera invited me to come preach at Throop some Sunday in August, neither she nor I had any inkling that I would wind up being your new intern minister, starting in September. I am really very happy to start this relationship with all of you here at Throop.

Traditionally, an intern minister’s first sermon at their teaching congregation is a personal introduction of sorts, telling the congregation something about who the intern is — their history, their path to ministry, their theology… but technically, my first sermon as your intern will be next month, so today I will not tell you too much about my own background. But I will tell you a little bit; I will start with a little bit about my beliefs, and a story.

For my beliefs, the short version is this: I am a humanist; I do not feel that there is any innate meaning to the universe, but I do believe that people can give life meaning. Also, I am an atheist; by which I mean that I do not believe in anything that I would call “God.” If you keep all of this in mind, the story I will tell you becomes more interesting.

For three years, starting in 2012, I was a volunteer on the “lay ministry” team at my home congregation in San Diego. One duty of the lay ministers is to be available after each service to listen to people; if someone has a joy or a concern that they would like to share with someone, they look for the lay minister on duty at the back of the sanctuary, and go over to talk for a while. Sometimes people are excited and want to share good news; sometimes people are going through a tough time, and they need to tell someone about it, to get some emotional support and to know that they are not alone; sometimes people just want a hug.

The first time I was going to be on duty as a lay minister I was nervous. I was prepared — the lay ministry team is trained by our ministers in techniques of pastoral care — but training is different from real life. What would it be like if someone with a serious problem came to me for sympathy and help? Would I be able to be present with them, and to listen? Would I be able to avoid the temptation to try to fix things? — because some things can’t be fixed, and often what people need is not advice, but rather someone to be with them on the journey.

That first morning, as I was walking the few blocks from my parked car to the church, I was nervous about these questions. I centered myself by thinking about another aspect of lay ministry: part of the job is to be a living manifestation of the concern the whole church community has for the welfare of its members. The lay minister is not just one concerned person; they represent something larger: the spirit of love of our community. “May this spirit of love work through me,” I thought to myself, “and be visible to those who come for help.”

“May this spirit of love work through me, and be visible to those who come for help.”

“Huh,” I thought, as I walked into the sanctuary. “I think that was a prayer. Funny thing for an atheist to be doing.”

The title of this sermon is “Why are we here,” and maybe it’s not so clear what that story has to do with this question. But I have to admit that the title may be a little deceptive. I did not mean “why are we here?” in the grand philosophical sense; if you came here hoping that I will reveal the secret of life and of our role in the universe, I won’t be doing that… today. What I meant by that title is: Why are we — you and me, the people in this room — here — here together this Sunday morning? Why are we at church today?

Of course, we each have our own answers to this question; we each probably have several answers. And personally, I’ve come up with a number of different answers for myself over the years. What prompted me to talk about this today, though, were some ideas that were coming up for me this past semester in seminary while studying Unitarian and Universalist history. I’d like to talk about an argument for why we might not want to be here, an argument with deep roots in our Unitarian history.

[Right about now Rev. Tera may be feeling a little nervous… “Is the intern really going to be telling people why they shouldn’t be at church? Is it too late to reconsider this whole internship plan?”]

At the beginning of the 19th century, William Ellery Channing was one of America’s most prominent liberal theologians. For 39 years he was the minister at what is now called the Arlington Street Church in Boston, and in 1825 he helped found the American Unitarian Association. One of the things that made a theologian “liberal” at that time was the belief that the Bible should be viewed as a book written in language suitable for a particular time and for particular people, and that any truths it contains are subject to interpretation. The liberal theologians thought that God communicates to people not just through the word of the Bible, but in other ways as well; for instance, through the workings of the natural world, through the details of creation. But in 1828, in a sermon he gave at an ordination, Channing spoke of yet another way we can learn more about the Divine. He said,

That man has a kindred nature with God, and may bear most important and ennobling relations to him, seems to me to be established by a striking proof. This proof you will understand, by considering, for a moment, how we obtain our ideas of God. Whence come the conceptions which we include under that august name? Whence do we derive our knowledge of the attributes and perfections which constitute the Supreme Being? I answer, we derive them from our own souls. The divine attributes are first developed in ourselves, and thence transferred to our Creator. The idea of God, sublime and awful as it is, is the idea of our own spiritual nature, purified and enlarged to infinity. In ourselves are the elements of the Divinity. God, then, does not sustain a figurative resemblance to man. It is the resemblance of a parent to a child, the likeness of a kindred nature.

To modern ears, it almost sounds like Channing is saying that people created God, not the other way around. Channing wasn’t saying that, because for him God was a given. But he was saying that God is like us — or, at least, like the best parts of us — and that we can learn about divinity by studying our own natures. Pretty wild stuff for the time, especially if you were a Calvinist.

Channing also championed an idea he called “self-culture” — culture as in cultivation and agriculture, as in helping one’s mind and soul to grow. His idea of self-culture included studying “nature, revelation, the human soul, and human life;” it included (as he put it) “control of the animal appetites;” it involved interacting with superior minds, for instance through reading. It involved what Ralph Waldo Emerson would later call “self-reliance” — figuring out one’s own opinions and holding true to them, even if they are unpopular. In short, self-culture involved knowing oneself better; by this, Channing believed, one could be closer to God.

Both of these ideas of Channing’s took firm root in the Transcendentalist movement, of which Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the principal members. Emerson’s essay on self-reliance celebrates independence of thought and of spirit, and is still often included in high-school and college English curricula. Henry David Thoreau, another member of the Transcendentalist movement, is perhaps most famous for his book Walden, an account of his two years of simple living at Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. His cabin was in fact not very far from civilization, and only a mile and a half from Emerson’s house, but his ruminations and meditations on nature and solitude and self-reliance are quintessentially American. Walden is also often taught in high school, and it still resonates in American culture. Some of you may be familiar with Annie Dillard’s collection of essays Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, or with Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild, which was made into a movie last year. I recommend both books; and they both live in the shadow of Thoreau’s Walden.

Thoreau’s writing encourages isolation and contemplation of nature; Emerson championed the strength of the individual mind andsoul. But what did the Transcendentalists have to say about church? In 1838, Emerson was invited by the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School to give a talk. He himself had already left the Unitarian ministry. In his speech to the graduates, he told an anecdote about being at church and not being inspired by a particular preacher. He said:

A snow storm was falling around us. The snow storm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow.

When faced with a bad sermon, Emerson’s first thought is how he would rather learn from nature. To be fair, Emerson was not against sermons — he just thought they had to be good — or, as he famously put it in that same passage, they should be “life passed through the fire of thought.”

Now, the Transcendentalists were not just some eddy in the backwaters of history. Their ideas greatly influenced American culture — and Unitarianism specifically. Two of the hymns we sang this morning had words by Emerson, and I counted at least 24 hymns and readings in the grey hymnal with words from 8 different Transcendentalists.

So the Transcendentalists are important to our movement. And what do they teach us? God is reflected in our own souls; and we can learn spiritual truths through contemplation, reading, immersion in nature, and intentional solitude. Also, bad sermons aren’t worth sitting through. So again, why are we here? There’s a perfectly solid theological basis — set forth by Unitarians and Transcendentalists — for why we might just as well stay home and read a book, or go hiking up Mount Wilson to look at flowers and trees, and the wonders of creation.

Well, what are some of the problems with this argument?

One of our Unitarian Universalist principles is “the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” The Transcendentalists were really into the free search for truth and meaning, almost intoxicated by it. The idea that you could learn about God just by self-reflection was powerful; and, as a professional mathematician, I have to point out that they found philosophical justification for this idea by appealing to mathematics. Mathematicians come up with universal truths just by thinking, they said; why not theologians?

But they ignored one important aspect of mathematics — after you have convinced yourself of some mathematical statement, and think you have found a proof for it… you need to try to explain your reasoning to someone else, to see whether they find any mistakes. The Transcendentalists conveniently left out this part of the process.

Our UU principle is “the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” I think that the responsible part involves coming into community. Here, we find that the truths that seem so apparent to us may not be so clear to other people; here we find other perspectives, ones that we may not have considered; here, perhaps, we learn some humility… which, incidentally, is a characteristic that I personally do not find in Emerson’s writings.

Channing’s idea is that God is reflected in our own souls, and therefore we can find divine truth by introspection. But if God is in everyone’s souls, then we can equally well find divine truth in community with others.

Community.

There are many reasons to come to church. It can be a time apart from the rest of the week, a sabbath. Worship, with music and words and silence, can put us in touch with the things we find divine. It can be a time when we reflect on our values, and ask ourselves whether we are living them as well as we would like to.

But for me, one of the main reasons for being here is to build a beloved community. A community that supports each of us; that challenges us to be our best selves; that helps us think about the mysteries of life, and of death; that gives us companions through good times and bad. In the words of our responsive reading, “All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.” We live out this fact by being together, here.

I said at the beginning that I do not believe in anything that I would call “God.” But as I’ve started on this path towards ministry, I’ve learned from talking with many people that I do believe in some things that some other people might call “God” — for instance, that thing that we are creating, week by week, by coming here.

May the spirit of love work through all of us, and be visible to all those in need.

Blessed be. Amen.