Tag Archives: Unitarian Universalism

literature, reflection, research

Unfiltered

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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. ↩
poetry, sermons

Good Fences?

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(A sermon delivered at Throop Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California on 6 November 2016. Copyright 2016 by Everett Howe. I had hoped that this sermon would lose its relevance after the presidential election. Oh well.)

If you have been particularly observant, perhaps you may have noticed — There’s an election coming up soon.

Something I have noticed this election season, as I travel back and forth between here in Pasadena and my home in San Diego, is that the election makes the borders and boundaries between cities and counties more apparent than usual. The yard signs you see in different places are for different Congressional races — and the billboards support and oppose different issues. Up here in Los Angeles County you have to decide on propositions involving homelessness and how the Department of Water and Power should be run; while in San Diego, we have to decide whether to build another stadium for the Chargers, and whether to require that races for some local offices always have runoffs in November. As you travel from one city to another, the color schemes of the campaign signs change ever so slightly — I guess it’s our Southern California version of fall colors.

Los Angeles County, your home, and San Diego County, my home: They are two communities, with different issues before them. But what happens in each county will affect what goes on in the other — because we’re neighbors.

This is reflected not just in election issues, of course. There are all kinds of cultural ways in which Los Angeles and San Diego behave like neighbors do: similar to one another, but different enough to notice. Like our burritos; you’re much more likely to get french fries in your burrito in San Diego than you are here, and yet we can all agree that those things they serve in San Francisco are a different dish entirely.

More seriously (perhaps): as someone familiar with the Unitarian Universalist community in San Diego, I’ve found it interesting to experience life in the UU community in Los Angeles. Different congregations, different people, different ministers, somewhat different cultures, but facing some of the same problems and opportunities. It’s been an important part of my learning as your intern minister.

So I’ve been thinking about the idea of being neighbors, and today I’d like to talk about some of the things that have come up for me around that idea. I’d like to start by reading you Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”1:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

There are two ideas competing in the poem — on the one hand, the idea that “good fences make good neighbors,” the idea that the boundaries between us help define who we are, and that maintaining clear borders and clear boundaries helps us get along — and on the other hand, the idea that “something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” the idea that creating walls and boundaries destroys our wholeness. As Frost writes,

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

So let’s start with that second idea — that we should consider what it would be like to have fewer boundaries — what it would be like to consider more people to be our neighbors.

Now, if you ask someone in seminary to say something about the idea of “neighbors,” and about expanding our idea of who should count as a neighbor, nine times out of ten the seminarian will start talking about the parable of the Good Samaritan, from the Christian scriptures. Even the humanist seminarians. And that’s exactly what I will do — because one of the six sources we claim for Unitarian Universalism is, and I quote, “Jewish and Christian teachings that call on us to love our neighbors as ourselves” — and that is exactly what the Good Samaritan story is about.

I’m sure you’ve heard the story of the Good Samaritan before, but let me review it, so the details will be fresh in your mind.

It’s a story from the gospel of Luke.

A lawyer — that is, an expert on the Torah — asks Jesus what he has to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus turns the question back on the lawyer, and asks him, what does the Torah say, and how do you interpret it. The lawyer answers that the Torah says that you should, first, love God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength, and all your mind — and second, you should love your neighbor as yourself. This is actually an answer that is historically appropriate; it mirrors Torah commentary from the first century. In the book of Luke, Jesus hears this answer and says: Exactly, that’s just what you should do.

But the lawyer presses on, as lawyers sometimes do. He asks Jesus “And who is my neighbor?”

So Jesus starts his parable, and tells of a man who was walking from Jerusalem to Jericho, which is a very long day’s journey on a road that passes through a valley that was know to be a dangerous place. The man was overtaken by robbers, who beat him, robbed him, and left him half-dead by the side of the road. A Jewish priest walks by and sees the injured man, but crosses to the other side of the road in order to pass by. Then a Levite — a functionary at the temple — comes by, and also crosses to the other side of the road in order to pass by. Now, if you were a Jew in the first century listening to this story, you would would know what should come next: If someone is telling a story, and first a priest does something, and then a Levite does something, there is a third person you would always expect to be next. It’s kind of like a rabbi, a priest, and a minister walking into a bar; they always appear together. And for a first-century Jew, after having a priest — representing the center of the temple — and then a Levite, a less-central functionary — the next person should be an Israelite, representing the general population of Jews. But Jesus’s parable goes in a different direction: The next person to come by is not an Israelite, but a Samaritan. There was no love lost between the Israelites and the Samaritans. But in the parable, the Samaritan is moved by pity, and helps the traveler, tending to his wounds and taking him to an inn, where he gives the innkeeper enough money to house the injured traveler for two months.

Jesus asks the lawyer, “which of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer answers “The one who showed him mercy.”

He can’t even bring himself to say the word “Samaritan,” but he does acknowledge the point of the story.

It makes a lot of sense that this story is in the gospel of Luke, because it is very much in line with the perspective expressed throughout that book. Luke is full of examples where people at the margins of society are held up. For example, since we’re getting close to December, compare the story of Jesus’s birth given in Luke with the one given in Matthew. In the gospel of Matthew, the birth story is told so that an angel comes to Joseph to tell him about Mary’s upcoming pregnancy. But in Luke, the angel comes to Mary, the woman, rather than to Joseph, the man — and this is notable, in a patriarchal society. In the gospel of Matthew, when Jesus is born, wise men from the East come to give expensive presents to the baby; but in Luke’s version of the story, there are no wise men, and no expensive presents… instead, it is shepherds — itinerant field workers — it is shepherds who are visited by angels and told of the birth.

So the parable of the Good Samaritan fits into the larger perspective of the gospel of Luke. It’s a strong story that encourages us, in Robert Frost’s words, to not love a wall; it encourages us to break down barriers. In Unitarian Universalist terms, it is a story that emphasizes the inherent worth and dignity of all people, especially of people we may think of as different from us, or as dangerous.

But how does this work in practice?

Let me tell you a true story of something that happened to me several years ago, something almost straight out of a parable.

I had just parked my car in a small strip mall, and was walking over to a shop, when I heard a commotion in the small alleyway leading from the parking lot to the street. There was a woman in a motionless SUV who was honking her horn. I looked to see what the trouble was, and I saw that there was a man, who looked like he probably lived on the street, who had fallen in the alley and was having trouble getting up. He was blocking the alleyway, and the woman in the car couldn’t pass by. She looked nervous and anxious to be in this situation.

My first instinct was to help the man get up. But I have to admit, I paused. I took a moment to evaluate the situation: Was there danger? What personal boundaries of my own would I be crossing if I went to help him up? Did crossing those boundaries make me uncomfortable? Why? Should I cross them anyway?

It looked like the man might have been having trouble getting up because he was drunk or otherwise impaired, and I wasn’t sure how he might respond to a stranger approaching him while this SUV was looming over him. He was big and fairly stocky, and probably stronger than me. But it was daytime, and there were people not too far away — including the driver of the SUV, although she looked kind of spooked, and I wasn’t sure she would be able to help if anything happened…

After this brief moment of hesitation, I decided that the danger was probably small, and I was prepared to cross my internal boundaries. I approached the man, and talked with him. I helped him up; we walked together to the side of the alley, and I retrieved his bag of possessions, which were still where he dropped them in the middle of the alley. The woman in the car drove off, and the man and I talked for a while. He seemed OK, and did not want any medical care.

What’s the difference between my story and the parable? The parable doesn’t say what the Good Samaritan thought before he helped the man on the side of the road. Do you think the Good Samaritan hesitated? What would you do if you were in the parable? What would you do if you were in an alley with a man who had fallen down, who may have been impaired by drugs or alcohol?

It’s important to have personal boundaries. And it’s important to know when you want to cross them.

This church has a covenant of good relations that all members are expected to follow. You can find it on our web site, and it makes clear some of our expectations of behavior. This covenant helps us understand that while we all have inherent worth and dignity, that doesn’t give us an excuse to behave however we want. There are boundaries between us, borders that define what we can expect in interactions with one another.

But boundaries can be crossed, with permission. We let loved ones do things that we don’t let strangers do. The important thing is to be aware of what our boundaries are, and to know when they are being crossed.

In terms of the poem, we should know where our property line is, even if we choose not to build a wall there — walls come with a cost, and it’s not always a cost that is worth paying.

I think that the spiritual cost of walls is something we, as Southern Californians, are particularly aware of. We live on the border with Mexico. It’s important to have borders, because in democratic societies we need to know who is representing us, in what legislature. We need to know whose laws we live with, whose elections we vote in. But how hard should it be to cross these borders?

We in Southern California can see the costs that come with borders. The economic cost — like the time wasted in the hours-long lines to cross the border. The emotional cost, paid by the families that are separated by it. The spiritual cost: All the political fights about the border, and all of the detention centers we fill because of it.

In this election year, there has been talk of building a wall on the border, larger than what we have already. But we need to keep in mind the price — not just the cost of materials and labor, but the spiritual price.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.

May we be aware of all the prices we pay for all of the borders in our lives; may we recognize the neighbors across our borders; and may we know when it is good to invite them to our homes, and for us to visit theirs.

Blessed be. Amen.

Image credit: Public domain image by Pixabay user harborlight. Original here.

  1. From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, 1967 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright 1964, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1973, 1975 by Leslie Frost Ballantine. Reproduced here in accordance with the Sixth Principle (“Poetry Online”) of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry. ↩
sermons

Finding Grace

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(A sermon delivered at Throop Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California on 22 May 2016. Copyright 2016 by Everett Howe.)

The worship theme here at Throop Church for the month of May is grace. At the beginning of the month we heard Lynn Sexton speak of grace as “ease, help, kindness, and thoughtfulness,” and as a treasure we must learn to accept, and to bestow. Two weeks ago, Reverend Tera asked us to reflect on how well we are able to receive gifts with gratitude and grace; and last week she spoke of grace-filled leadership, grounded in relationship, covenant, and accountability. Just a moment ago we saw a live demonstration of one form of grace!1

Today I also will speak of grace — but I would like to use this exploration of grace as an example of an evolution of ideas. Unitarian Universalism today is a faith tradition that includes people with many different beliefs. We say that our faith draws on a number of sources: direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder; words and deeds of prophetic people throughout history; wisdom from the world’s religions; Jewish and Christian teachings that call on us to love our neighbors as ourselves; humanist teachings that counsel us to trust also in reason and science; and Earth-centered traditions that celebrate the circle of life and the rhythms of nature.

The religious meaning of grace is centered in a very Christian tradition. But I, as a humanist, have found meaning in the concept.

Is this a paradox? Well, this congregation was founded in 1886 by Universalists — Christians who believed in a loving God who finds worth in every person. They built this sanctuary in 1923, and thought it fitting to place images of Jesus and Mary and John the Evangelist and two archangels above the chancel. And yet now, today, here we are gathered — people with many beliefs; with a humanist at the pulpit; in front of these images that represent one strand of our spiritual history.

This is a paradox. And it is who we are.

So what is the Christian conception of grace? For most Christians, grace is God’s gift to humanity of love, mercy, and salvation; it’s a magnanimous gift, given to us despite our flaws.

Catholics believe that God’s grace was granted to people through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, and that people are free to accept or decline this gift of grace. The Calvinist conception of grace is different: it is a gift one cannot refuse. At the beginning of time, God granted grace to a select group — the elect — and no matter what they do while they are on this Earth, the elect will go to heaven. And, likewise, no matter what the non-elect do — no matter whether they devote their lives to good works, no matter how fervent their faith — they will not go to heaven.

Other versions of Protestantism have other variations of this belief. But the one common thread throughout them all is that grace is a gift that humans do not deserve. Whether because of original sin or because of humanity’s total depravity, we do not deserve God’s gift of salvation.

So that’s the definition we’re starting from:

Grace is the gift from God of salvation, which we do not deserve.

How might that definition be adapted to be more meaningful to more of us?

Before we continue to explore this, I’d like to say something about an interesting twist to the “we are undeserving” aspect of grace, relating to the history of Universalism in America.

Most of the early American Universalists were Calvinists; they did believe that God had divided people up into the elect and the non-elect. But the Universalists differed from most Calvinists, because they believed that nobody belonged to the group of non-elect people… they believed that everyone is elect.

And for some Universalists, this idea came from their own sense of feeling undeserving of grace. This was the case, for example, for George de Benneville, a Universalist of French descent who came to America in 1741, after facing religious persecution in Europe. When he was young, de Benneville had a vision of himself burning in hell, because of what he perceived to be his sins, sins he described as “too many and too great to be forgiven.” But later on in life he had another vision, of Christ praying for his soul, and he became convinced that he was saved by grace. He wrote:

[…] having myself been the chief of sinners, and God […] had granted me mercy and the pardon of all my sins, and plucked me as a brand out of Hell, I could not have a doubt but the whole world would be saved by the same power.

In other words: “I was a really rotten guy, and if God has saved me, he must have saved everyone!”

The Universalists took the idea that “we are not worthy”, and viewed it as “we are all equally worthy”, and then deduced that “if some of us are saved, we all are.”

So. Back to grace. Our first definition is that

Grace is the gift from God of salvation, which we do not deserve.

Now, my personal humanistic theology doesn’t include the ideas of God, or of salvation in this sense. So the first step in my personal evolution of the idea of grace changes this definition to be

Grace is a life-changing gift that we do not deserve.

While we sit and ponder whether that might be a good definition, let me ask another question:

Do people ever get what they deserve?

It’s a very compelling idea to believe that they do. And most societies are structured so that people who break the rules will get a comeuppance. But sometimes people do seem to get away with things, and that can be very frustrating.

Our desire for justice can fit into our religious beliefs. For example, in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, there is the idea of karma. The specific beliefs about karma vary among these faiths, but the general idea is that consequences flow from actions. It’s not that some god is sitting in judgement of your actions and dealing out rewards and punishments; it’s that the actions themselves lead to positive or negative outcomes. So, for example, if you constantly lie to other people, you may lose your ability to trust others, or even to trust yourself. I have heard this expressed as “you are not punished for your sins, you are punished by them.”2

Of course, sometimes the outcomes of your actions do not become apparent in your present lifetime; and, likewise, sometimes outcomes in your present lifetime are due to actions from previous lives, according to this philosophy.

This is in contrast to Judaism and Christianity, where an all-seeing God judges, and inflicts consequences, either in this life, or — in Christianity — in an afterlife.

These ideas fit in well with our innate desire for justice. But there is a darker side to thinking that people get what they deserve. When you hear of something bad happening to someone — a car accident, or an illness — do you ever find yourself thinking of reasons why the same thing won’t happen to you? “Oh, they must have been texting while driving.” Or, “I would never walk in a neighborhood like that at night.” Or, “Of course he got cancer; have you seen what he eats?”

I can feel this urge in myself. It’s an urge of denial. It’s not wanting to face the fact that sometimes completely random events beyond our control can completely upset our lives. It’s too frightening to consider the drunk driver crossing over the median and heading right towards us; too frightening to consider the randomness of illness. This is one reason why people think that it is safer to drive than to fly, even though by many measures it is not; with driving, there is an illusion that you have complete control; you’re holding onto the steering wheel, aren’t you?

So I distrust the idea of people “getting what they deserve” in some cosmic sense. And it’s for that reason that in my own mind, I modify the definition of grace. Instead of

Grace is a life-changing gift that we do not deserve,

how about

Grace is a life-changing gift that we were not guaranteed.

Now that brings in the concept of contingency — the idea that things could be otherwise than they are.

Jane Kenyon wrote a poem called Otherwise3:

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Grace is a life-changing gift that we were not guaranteed.

That feels like a definition that resonates with me.

Grace is a life-changing gift that could have been otherwise.

I think of good things in my life — of loved ones, of friends — and even though I work to make those relationships strong, there are so many random elements, so many ways that things could have been otherwise, despite all my efforts. If you’re willing, think for a moment of your own life, of a friend, of a partner, of a job you love, of a community that supports you. And think of how your life need not have included that friend, that partner, that job, that community, if things had been different. Grace.

Just over a year ago, Reverend Tera messaged me on Facebook, and asked me — out of the blue — what my plans for a ministerial internship were. I hadn’t even started thinking of internships; I had expected that I would have to wait at least a year, and maybe two, before figuring out how to fit one into my life. But Tera said that Throop was ready for a part-time two-year intern.

I talked with my wife, and we weighed the pros and cons. It was not a slam-dunk decision. We had to figure whether a crazy commute from San Diego would be sustainable. I had to arrange things with my employer. Even after my employer agreed to let me work at 60% time for two years, we had to deal with the indisputable mathematical fact that 60% time at my job and 50% time at an internship adds up to more time than there is. There are so many reasons why this internship might not have come about.

But it did come about. And now, in my life, I have this congregation, and all the people in it. Grace.

This is the last sermon I preach before taking the summer off. I will be here on Thursday for my usual weekday in the office, and I will be here next Sunday assisting with the service, but that’s it until September. I will miss you all, but during the summer I will rest, and do math, and take courses at seminary, and perform a wedding, and I will come back in the fall ready for a second, and even better, year with you.

I’d like to close with a story. The musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson tells of a time she was visiting her brother, an anthropologist, in a Tzotzil village in Mexico. She lived with the women of the village, and helped as best she could with their daily work. She says that the name they gave her — “Loscha” — means, roughly, “the ugly one with the jewels.”

Anderson says4:

Now ugly, OK, I was awfully tall by local standards. But what did they mean by the jewels? I didn’t find out what this meant until one night, when I was taking my contact lenses out, and — since I’d lost the case — I was carefully placing them on the sleeping shelf [in the yurt where everyone slept]; suddenly I noticed that everyone was staring at me and I realized that none of the Tzotzil had ever seen glasses, much less contacts, and that these were the jewels, the transparent, perfectly round, jewels that I carefully hid on the shelf at night and then put for safekeeping into my eyes every morning.

So I may have been ugly but so what? I had the Jewels.

Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.

May we all see with fresh eyes the grace that is in our lives, the jewels we may take for granted, that in some other universe we might not have.

Image credit: Detail of Botticelli’s Primavera, ca. 1482. Via Wikimedia Commons.

  1. In the form of dancers from the Lineage Dance Company, with whom we were sharing that day’s collection plate. ↩
  2. See the Fake Buddha Quote web site for a discussion of the provenance of this phrasing. Spoiler: It was not said by Buddha. ↩
  3. From Jane Kenyon, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1996. Copyright 1996 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. All rights reserved. Reproduced here by permission of Graywolf Press. For further permissions information, contact Permissions Department, Graywolf Press, 2402 University Ave., Ste. 203, St Paul, MN 55114. This poem also appears in Jane Kenyon’s Collected Poems, and was one of the poems selected for the Library of Congress’s Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High Schools. ↩
  4. Transcribed by the author from “The Ugly One with the Jewels”, from The Ugly One with the Jewels and Other Stories. ↩
sermons

Living Into…

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(A sermon delivered at Throop Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California on 3 January 2016. Copyright 2016 by Everett Howe.)

The worship theme for the month of January is “embodiment”. This is an interesting theme for Unitarian Universalists, because UUs have the reputation of being overly intellectual, of living in the mind rather than in the body. Here at Throop, as in many UU churches, worship is usually patterned after the same traditional Protestant service that was practiced by 19th-century Unitarians and their Congregationalist predecessors in New England. One author writes that by 1800 “the usual […] order of service included the opening blessing, followed by a psalm or hymn, a Scripture reading, a prayer and an anthem, the sermon, another prayer, another psalm or hymn, and the closing blessing.” As the 19th century progressed, psalms fell out of favor and more hymns were used. This is essentially the same order of service you hold in your hands! The main differences are in content, not in form — what counts as scripture, and what sources inform the sermon. But what you do during the worship service is the same: You sit and listen to prayers, readings, and sermons, you occasionally get up and sing, and you may have a chance to meditate or pray.

But Unitarian Universalist worship services do not have to be structured like this! I know ministers who have led laughing meditations during service, and ministers who have had the congregation blow soap bubbles throughout the sanctuary; at the annual solstice celebration at First UU San Diego, one of the highlights for many people is an extended period of drumming, which inspires many to ecstatic dance — in the pews, in the aisles, in front of the chancel; and many UU congregations have led “soulful sundown” services that center on music and performing arts. Of course, other traditions give more examples of embodied communal worship: the Pentecostals sometimes speak in tongues; the Shakers tremble with ecstacy; the whirling dervishes, well, whirl.

I will not surprise you this morning with an invitation out of the blue to ecstatic dance, although I’m sure Chris1 would be happy to provide the drumming. As an introvert myself, I know that when I do embodied practices — which, for me, is usually Iyengar yoga — I often prefer privacy. Later on in the service, though, I will be inviting you to participate in a short meditation that involves some physical motion.

Why is our worship like this? Why is it that in public worship in many UU churches, people are more comfortable engaging the mind rather than the body? Part of the reason is certainly tradition — but I would suggest that another part of the answer is because the body is very personal; it is the one piece of the physical world that we claim some control over; our bodies are fundamental to our identities. And engaging in embodied worship in public involves ceding some of that control in a way that can raise up deep emotions, for good or for ill.

As evidence of the deep connection we have with our bodies, I’d like to give some examples of how some primal beliefs and emotions — deep physical responses of enjoyment and of disgust, together with ideas of purity — quickly come into play when we speak of our bodies, and of accepting new things.

Let me start with a story.2

I like many different kinds of cheese. And for my work as a mathematician, every year or two I have to go — or rather, I get to go — to conferences in France. Many years ago, on one of these trips, I was introduced to a cheese called époisses. Wikipedia politely describes this cheese as being “pungent”, and it definitely has a strong odor and flavor. But in my opinion it is a little bit of heaven on earth. Some époisses on a piece of crusty bread? There is nothing else like it.

In the United States it is not legal to sell a true époisses, made with unpasteurized milk. Nowadays you can find a pasteurized version just down the street at Whole Foods, but it’s really not the same. So once, when I was coming back from a conference in France, I decided to take some true French époisses home with me, so I could share the experience with my wife and with friends.3

The day before I left my conference in France, I went to the local cheese shop, and bought an époisses. I asked the clerk if he could wrap the cheese in plastic. “O, non non!” he said. “Les bactéries anaérobies!” Dangerous anaerobic bacteria would flourish if the cheese were wrapped tightly in plastic. So instead, I had it wrapped loosely in paper, and I kept it in the hotel refrigerator overnight. When I left early the next morning, I wrapped the époisses thoroughly with several layers of newspaper for insulation, put the whole package in a paper bag, and then in a plastic sack. I did not put the cheese in my luggage, because I wanted to make sure it stayed cool; instead, I kept it with me as carry-on baggage. On the trans-Atlantic flight I asked the flight attendant for some of the dry ice they use to keep drinks cold; I put the dry ice in one of the layers of newspaper around the cheese, and I wrapped the whole package — cheese, newspaper, dry ice, more newspaper, paper bag, plastic bag — I wrapped it all in my coat, and put the whole thing in the overhead bin.

I sat down next to the colleague I was travelling with and settled in for the twelve-hour flight. My colleague sniffed the air, and asked, with wrinkled nose, “What’s that smell?”

For him, I’m afraid it was a very long flight.

The point is that my colleague and I each have strong reactions to the idea of eating this cheese. To him, it’s too stinky to even consider eating. To me, it is an invitation to bliss. And both of our reactions seem to completely side-step rational thought.

These preferences we have for what foods are delicious, what foods are disgusting, what foods are “clean”, and so forth — these preferences are very personal, and can be hard to overcome or to change. They are deep-seated.

Sometimes, our visceral reactions align with our intellectual choices. I know that some meat-eaters seem to think that vegetarians are all secretly craving some bacon or a nice steak, but that’s not been my experience — most of the vegetarians I know are at best indifferent to the taste of meat, and often are actively repelled by the idea of eating it. Their vegetarianism — whether it comes from an intellectual or an ethical choice, or from a cultural or religious tradition — their vegetarianism matches up with their gut reaction.

And, conversely, for many meat-eaters the taste of a well-cooked steak provides a visceral satisfaction that is not matched by other foods and that is hard to describe in words.

It is very helpful when deep-seated gut reactions align with our higher goals. But whether they align or not, I believe it is good practice to be aware of the part of our reactions that come from our gut, and the part that comes from our minds, and how the two are related. Here’s a story to illustrate this.

As I mentioned, for my work I go to Europe every couple of years. But the first time I went to Europe was in the late 1980s, while I was still a student. I traveled for about a month, staying in youth hostels and using a student Eurail pass to get from place to place. I would take the train to a new city every few days, and see the sights, go to the museums, visit the churches and cathedrals… And in some ways, I felt like I was getting an education in Bible stories and Christian history in the same way that a medieval peasant might have — by seeing the mosaics and stained-glass windows in the local churches.

If you haven’t ever taken an opportunity to look at the stained glass windows here at Throop, I encourage you to do so after the service. The windows on the north side illustrate parables from the New Testament, while those on the south side are based on the Sermon on the Mount; the windows behind me show Mary, Jesus, Saint Mark, and the angels Michael and Gabriel. This is an ancient tradition; the mosaics and windows in European churches and cathedrals also show saints and stories from the Bible, sometimes annotated with highly abbreviated names in Latin or Greek. Part of the embodied experience of visiting these sacred spaces is the coolness of the stone buildings, the muted light through the stained glass, and the shining gold of the mosaics. When I first saw these mosaics and windows, 25 years ago, I could sometimes figure out what the scenes represented, but since I hadn’t been raised in a church and had never read the Bible, many of the stories were unfamiliar to me.

When I visited the Basilica of Saint Mark in Venice, there was one mosaic outside the main doors that really puzzled me. It showed two men opening up a big wicker basket to show the contents to several men wearing turbans; the turbaned men are turned away in disgust, and one is literally holding his nose. What story is this, I wondered.

It turns out it is not from the Bible — rather, it tells something of the history of Saint Mark’s Basilica itself. The story is that the bodily remains of Saint Mark had long remained in Alexandria, where he is said to have died. But in the 9th century, when Alexandria was under Muslim control, two Venetians took Saint Mark’s relics, put them in a basket, covered them with cabbage leaves and pork, and tried to smuggle them out of the city. The idea was to keep the Muslim customs inspectors from investigating the basket too closely. The trick worked, and the Venetians smuggled the relics to Venice, where they remain to this day.

Who knows whether this is true — and it is certainly an example of people of one faith mocking the traditions and beliefs of another. But the point is that sometimes the things that we have immediate gut reactions to — things that we don’t want to consider or think about — those things can become blind spots.

The residents and civic leaders of many cities like to think of their cities as prosperous, as being places where everyone has opportunities for work, and every life is valued. But when homelessness becomes apparent, when people are sleeping in alleys and on park benches because they have nowhere else to go, too often the reaction is not: How is this happening? What economic and social problems are leading to this? Do we have housing that people can actually afford, and homeless shelters that actually provide safe quiet space?4

No, those questions require taking a problem — a contradiction between what we think of our society and what it actually is — and accepting that this problem exists, internalizing it, as a first step towards solving it. I think that that is one reason why it is so much easier for people to say, “Let’s just pass laws to make sleeping in public illegal.” That keeps the problem external: If we just make those people go away out of sight, we won’t have to think about this difficult problem.

There’s a similar dynamic, I think, with the question of refugees fleeing the violence in Syria. As I mentioned in services last month, we face a tension between two things — On the one hand, we have the images of America that we believe in: A nation of immigrants; a place that welcomes those who have been oppressed elsewhere; a country that asks for “[the] tired, [the] poor, [the] huddled masses yearning to breathe free”; a country that announces to the world that we will provide refuge when others will not. All of that on the one hand, and on the other: Fear. Fear that among those we welcome, there will be people who will do us harm; fear that we will invite evil into our homes.

Confronting this tension — thinking carefully about our values, and about our fears, and acknowledging the conflict between them — this is hard work. It means we must take the problem inside ourselves, and confront our own contradictions.

It is so much simpler to try to make the problem go away; to think of it as a problem caused by refugees — instead of being a problem within us, that is made evident by the refugees.

That brings us to another question of embodiment, to another meaning of the word: What principles do we want to embody, to live into — our values, or our fears?

Let me take this back to the idea of spiritual practices involving our bodies. If feeling and acknowledging our own internal conflicts is necessary and yet unsettling, what can we do to make the process easier?

I’d like to close by sharing a movement-based meditation that I was taught by Rev. Kathleen Owens, who says that she learned it from a Buddhist monk in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1990s. I was taught this practice in the context of training for lay ministry; the question was, what do you do if you have been ministering to someone who is facing serious problems; what do you do when you have helped someone deal with their own stress by listening and absorbing some of it yourself? What do you do when you have been upset by what you have heard?

There are a number of physical practices that can help when you need to recenter yourself. One is simply to go outside, and breathe, and touch the ground. Another practice that can help is a meditation that Rev. Owens calls “three palms”. If you are willing, I would like to teach this to you now, so that you might use it later.

Ideally, this is a standing meditation, so if you are willing and able, please stand. If standing is not good for you, don’t worry; you can do this seated as well. As you are willing and able, stand up straight, tall but comfortable. Keep your feet shoulder-width apart, and keep your knees loose, and unlocked. Press your toes gently into the floor to create a slight arch under the toes. Leave your arms at your side. Now:

  1. Face your palms outward. With an inhalation, slowly raise your arms away from your sides and up to almost together over your head.
  2. As your arms reach the top of the arc, exhale; let your middle finger tips touch one another, then the rest of the fingers, then the bottom edge of your palm, leaving an opening between your palms.
  3. Inhale while lowering your arms and hands to a resting position in front of your mouth and throat. Rest here and exhale.
  4. Inhale as you continue to lower your arms and hands down until they reach a position in front of your heart. Exhale and rest.
  5. Inhale, and with your palms together, turn your fingertips away from your body and towards the floor. Rest your hands in front of your navel, and exhale.
  6. Inhale as you extend your arms and hands down, and separate your arms back to your sides. Exhale and rest.

Repeat this two more times.

After the third time, stand quietly and breathe deeply for a minute. Then release.

May your mind and your body find connection with one another, and may you know peace.

Photo credit: The author. (Warped panorama of the interior of Sainte Chapelle.)

  1. Our percussionist. ↩
  2. A composite of several different events. ↩
  3. These are current topics in Los Angeles. You can search the Los Angeles Times for articles about the recently-passed homeless ordinances. Here’s a religious perspective on the issue. ↩
poetry

The Common Room

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I don’t write poetry. But earlier today, while searching for an old document on my computer, I found something I wrote three years ago:

“The Common Room”

How does it happen?— this transformation.
Arriving from many directions,
one bearing snacks,
another the workday’s toll of tension;
one anxious for the family dinner,
one thinking still of the parent’s sickbed,
or the child’s;
one joyful from a day well spent, and one
still processing, processing
the pain of another, revealed
in confidence.
How do we do it?
How do we become a whole,
a body,
each listening to the other,
accepting ideas not our own,
building together;
wiser and more compassionate
than any of us alone;
creating and calling
the spirit of life,
living
the spirit of love.
And then leaving, returning
to the home, or the workplace;
to the family, or the empty room;
to the sick parent, or child;
or to walk quietly before sleep,
thinking, thinking of this day.
How do we come together?
How do we make this time sacred?

— November 2012

In 2012, I had just finished a three-year term on the Board of Trustees of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego. I guess I had found something inspiring in all of those meetings in the church’s common room.

Photo by the author.

sermons

Universalist Influences

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(A sermon delivered at Throop Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California on 18 October 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.)

As you may know, at Throop Church we have monthly worship themes. Sometimes these themes are overridden by the requirements of particular services — like the Blessing of the Animals service last week — but in general, there is supposed to be a common theme among the services each month. For the month of October, the theme is “Letting Go.” Now, the title of my sermon today is “Universalist Influences,” and you may well wonder what that will have to do with “Letting Go.” But really, this sermon will be about evolution. Not the evolution of species, but the evolution of ideas, the evolution of theologies — and this evolution involves a continual process of letting go of some old beliefs, and embracing some new ones.

What happens to our history when we let go of old ideas? What do we think of our forebears, when we have moved on from some of their ideas? I’ve spoken several times now from this pulpit, and each time I have brought my perspective as a humanist. As I have said, I am an atheist — by which I mean that I do not believe in anything that I would call “God.” And yet I specifically chose the first hymn we sang this morning — the hymn that begins “Unto thy temple, Lord, we come with thankful hearts to worship thee.”

What kind of evolution can happen that would lead an atheist to ask you to sing those words?

Universalism, of course, is part of the very foundation of our congregation in Pasadena. In 1885, the Universalist minister Caroline Soule held services in Pasadena. In the following year, the Universalist minister Florence Kollock, who was vacationing in California, also preached in Pasadena. Under the guidance of Kollock and our namesake Amos G. Throop, this church was founded as the First Universalist Parish of Pasadena. As far as the State of California is concerned, that is still our name — the First Universalist Parish of Pasadena — although we are “doing business as” Throop Memorial Church and Throop Unitarian Universalist Church.

So what does “Universalist” mean? Those of you who already know this, forgive me — but let me review some history and theology.

When America was founded, the religious elite were mostly Calvinists. One of the basic ideas of Calvinism is that there are two types of people; the “elect,” who will go to heaven, and everyone else, who will not. But the interesting thing is that the determination of whether or not you are one of the elect? Calvinists believed that that decision was made at the beginning of time; it has nothing at all to do with how you behave here on Earth.

For many people nowadays, this theology is surprising. Whether or not you go to Heaven has nothing at all to do with how you behave on Earth? What would motivate a Calvinist to behave well?

Of course, one response — which, as a humanist, I prefer — is that people’s morals are not determined by what they hope or fear for their afterlife. But there’s a psychological motivation that came into play as well. If you were a Calvinist, you really, really hoped that you were one of the elect, one of the people who will go to heaven. You would be looking for signs that somehow indicated this. You might think: How would one of the elect behave? You might think: If I were one of the elect, I would probably behave well; I would probably tithe to my church, and help the poor, and contribute to my community, and do well by my family. And since you really, really hoped you were one of the elect, you would do the things that you thought would confirm this hypothesis.

Now, who were the Universalists? One strand of Universalism was grounded in Calvinism. These Universalists also believed in the idea of the “elect” — they also believed that there are two types of people, those who would go to Heaven, and those who would not — except that they believed that everyone was in the first group. These Universalists could not believe that a loving God would make some of His children suffer for all eternity in Hell.

The name “Universalist” comes from this belief: the belief in universal salvation — the belief that everyone will go to Heaven.

Everyone will go to Heaven… eventually. Universalists in the 18th and 19th centuries had various beliefs about purgatory. Some believed that people would have to suffer some amount of time to “pay for” their sins on Earth before they would be allowed into Heaven. Some Universalists — called “Restorationists” — believed that people would continue to suffer until they were reconciled with God, but that as soon as they were reconciled, they would go to Heaven. And some Universalists, sometimes called the “ultra”-Universalists, denied the whole idea of “paying for one’s sins” in the afterlife; they denied some of the basic tenets of Calvinism.

Oh, by the way: All of this was viewed as heresy by the mainstream churches in America. Even many Unitarians, who felt some sympathy for the Universalists, wanted to keep their distance, for fear of giving their theological adversaries yet another heresy to accuse them of.

For example, in his autobiography, 1 Adin Ballou, a Restorationist (and a younger cousin of the ultra-Universalist Hosea Ballou), wrote about his own installation in 1832 as minister of First Church and Congregation in Mendon, Massachusetts, about 30 miles outside Boston. Among the ministers participating in Ballou’s installation were four Restorationists and four Unitarians. Ballou wrote:

In those days it required no little moral courage for Rev. Mr. Whitman and his Unitarian brethren to unite with the Restorationists in a public religious service like that of my installation.

Writing nearly sixty years after the event, Ballou recognized the courage shown by the Unitarian ministers who attended, but also mocked the prejudices of some of their brethren. Speaking of Unitarians in general, he wrote:

The Unitarians were largely a well educated class of people, and nursed the pride of having a highly educated ministry. But the Restorationists, tried by their standard, were “unlearned and ignorant” — only a trifle better schooled, perhaps, than the humble Nazarene himself and his original twelve apostles, without a [Doctor of Divinity degree] among them, and little better than barbarians when compared with the graduates of Harvard College, and other polished literati. This was quite as objectionable to many of the “grave and reverend seigniors” of the denomination as our peculiar theology.

Some of these stereotypes about Unitarians and Universalists are still with us today!

In the early 20th century, the meaning of Universalism widened — for some, it referred to the idea that there is some kind of universal religion; that religions that are different in their particulars are somehow trying to explain or understand or live with the same ultimate truth — the idea that we would now express with the image of different people feeling the elephant in the dark room, or with the expression “one light, many windows.” This widened view of Universalism is why, for example, Swami Vivekananda — a Hindu religious leader who had been a sensation at the World Parliament of Religion in 1893 — was welcomed in 1900 as a speaker at both Throop Church 2 and at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland. 3

But how is all of this theology relevant to us today? What are some of its influences?

Let me quote Benjamin Rush, one of the founders of the United States — a member of the Continental Congress, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, and a Universalist. He wrote: 4

A belief in God’s universal love to all his creatures, and that he will finally restore all those of them that are miserable to happiness, is a polar truth. It leads to truths upon all subjects, more especially upon the subject of government. It establishes the equality of mankind — it abolishes the punishment of death for any crime — and converts jails into houses of repentance and reformation.

Rush’s writing 200 years ago sounds a lot like what Marilynne Robinson said just last month, in the quote I gave as today’s reading: 5

I believe that people are images of God. There’s no alternative that is theologically respectable to treating people in terms of that understanding. […] It seems to me as if democracy is the logical, the inevitable consequence of this kind of religious humanism at its highest level.

The Unitarian Universalist blogger Doug Muder, in a sermon on “Universalism, Politics, and Evil” delivered earlier this year at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois, expands on this idea:

The political upshot of Universalism — which continues in Unitarian Universalism today, even among those of us who don’t believe in God or the afterlife any more — is that since God isn’t writing anybody off, we don’t get to either. We are obligated to try to imagine the full humanity of everyone, to picture them not as damned or evil or inconsequential, but as people deserving of the same kind of consideration we would like to claim for ourselves.

“We are obligated to try to imagine the full humanity of everyone.” This is not an easy thing to do, but I think it is an important thing to try, even though we are bound to fail. It calls us to remember that even people who we dislike, people who do things that are undeniably evil, are human. It doesn’t mean that we should excuse people for misdeeds — people should be held responsible for their actions — but we need a vision of humanity that includes our failings, and that recognizes that these failings occur in every one of us, to some extent.

“We are obligated to try to imagine the full humanity of everyone.” We are tempted so often to not do this; we are tempted by all of the discourse around us to view so many people as less than human. People who are not like us; people who speak a different language; people whose culture is not our own; people in other political parties; people who disagree with us on moral issues.

“We are obligated to try to imagine the full humanity of everyone.” For me, there is a certain political figure who stands out as a particular challenge here. Someone who I think has done great harm, who has damaged institutions I hold dear, who has helped make incredibly bad decisions. [I won’t say who this is, because it doesn’t matter — I’m sure we all have someone we can think of who plays this role for us.] I try to imagine the full humanity of this person, and frankly it is difficult. But I need to keep this in mind, even as I work against policies that this person and others have put in place.

Here is a question: Do Unitarian Universalists believe in equality? You can conduct an experiment during coffee hour, and ask this of the friend sitting next to you. I have not done the experiment myself yet, but here’s a prediction. If you ask a Unitarian Universalist whether they believe in equality, there’s a 95 percent chance that one of two things will happen: Either they will say “yes,” or you will find yourself in a 20-minute discussion of “what does equality mean, anyway?”… and then they will say “yes.”

If we believe in equality, where can we find it in the list of seven UU principles?

The second principle speaks of equity, but equity and equality are not the same thing.

It is my belief that equality appears in the first principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Where did the first principle come from? The Unitarian Universalist Association was formed in 1961 with the merger of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America. Originally, the UUA had a list of six principles. One of them begins:

The members of the UUA unite to affirm, defend, and promote the supreme worth of every human personality.

Here’s one thing among many to notice: The word supreme. I haven’t yet read the records of the time that explain how this principle evolved into what is now our first principle, but I can imagine many reasons for wanting to remove the word “supreme;” for example, it represents a very human-centered view of the universe.

But I think there was an unintended consequence of removing the word “supreme”. The idea is that if I have supreme worth, and you have supreme worth, then we both have equal worth. This is the equality that Benjamin Rush speaks of as a consequence of Universalism; this is the equality that Thomas Jefferson expresses, imperfectly, as “all men are created equal”; this is the equality that I struggle with when I think of certain people; this is the equality that I must struggle with, the equality that is at the foundation of my religious belief.

Removing the word “supreme” has made this concept of equality much less explicit, but I think that it is still there in our first principle: the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It’s not that we all have worth and dignity but some of us get more of it than others; it’s that, as the Universalists would have it, we are all equal in the eyes of God.

Why did this service start with hymn #35? Not because of the first verse; but because of the second:

The common home of rich and poor,
Of bond and free, and great and small;
Large as thy love forevermore,
And warm and bright and good to all.

All humans are created equal.

May we have a Unitarian Universalism that is large enough to recognize and celebrate what we have in common with the Unitarian author 6 of that hymn; a Unitarian Universalism that allows us to open our service singing of a God that some of us have let go of, and close it in celebration of the Universalist love that still influences us.

Please rise, as you are willing and able, as we sing our closing hymn, “Standing on the Side of Love.”

  1. Completed by his son, based on notes he left at his death in 1890. ↩
  2. On the evening of January 28, speaking on “The Way to the Realization of a Universal Religion.” ↩
  3. He spoke seven times at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, in February, March, and April. ↩
  4. Quoted in David Robinson’s book The Unitarians and the Universalists (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985). ↩
  5. Which is from a fascinating conversation held between Robinson and President Barack Obama in Des Moines, Iowa, on 14 September 2015. For the reading, I gave a slightly longer excerpt. ↩
  6. The hymn “Unto Thy Temple, Lord, We Come” was written by Robert Collyer, who was a Unitarian, not a Universalist. He was known as “the Blacksmith Preacher” because earlier in his life he had been a blacksmith in England. He put an anvil in a place of honor in Unity Unitarian Church in Chicago (which he founded) because, it is said, he wanted to hammer out the truth as he had once hammered out horse shoes. He wrote “Unto Thy Temple” for the dedication of the building that housed Unity Church after the original church was destroyed by the great Chicago fire. Note that Unity Unitarian Church is now Second Unitarian Church of Chicago; the similarly-named Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Oak Park comes from the Universalist tradition. ↩
Uncategorized

Belated Introduction

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Hello, and welcome to The Humanist Seminarian blog.  My name is Everett Howe, and as I am writing this I am just starting my second year as a part-time low-residency student at Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley.  I am also just starting a two-year part-time ministerial internship at Throop Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California, under the supervision of Rev. Tera Little.

All this is in addition to my role as a husband and a father of two children, one just starting college and one a junior in high school.  And in addition to my career as a research mathematician.

A research mathematician?

Yes. I’m still trying to work out what a calling to ministry might mean to me — but I know for sure what a calling to mathematics means.  I’ve known since I was about 8 that I wanted to do math, and I’ve devoted a lot of energy and the majority of my life to answering that call. I’ve taught at universities, I’ve worked at a think tank for 20 years, and I’ve published a few dozen research articles in math journals.

So what’s all this about ministry?  Well, I guess if you stick around here, you’ll find out… as will I.

I should mention that there is already a well-known Unitarian Universalist blogger with a Ph.D. in math — his is in algebraic geometry, mine in arithmetic geometry.  So I have a lot to live up to.