The few responses to my recent posts have mostly about UU lack of, or antagonism toward, God, monotheism, and the Christian faith.  It seems a little troubling that after centuries of theistic tradition, and three decades of worshipping ‘The Goddess,’ goddesses, and almost constantly using the word “spirit” and all its variations in worship what we are still most known for is atheism (meaning literally not-god-ism). 

Just the other day my Mormon neighbor, while she was weeding with her daughter on one side of the fence and I was putting away garden tools on my side, suddenly called out “Thomas, does your church believe in the Bible?”  My immediate response was my usual response to such questions with uncertain agendas, “Yes… in a sense.”  After a little conversation about this she said, “I ask because a friend at my church said that there were atheists in your church.”  I pointed out that there were many different variations of theism there too, and that even the so-called atheists in our church believe very deeply in the power of goodness, even if they don’t call it ‘God.’  “What matters is how we treat one another and making the world a better place,” I said, “Don’t you think so?” and she agreed wholeheartedly. 

I am sad, and I apologize, that some people have been hurt by angry atheists and frightened or self-righetous existential humanists in UU churches; but the domination of some parts of our culture by a particular philosophical and cultural thread is only one small part of our story.  Both atheists and theists have been hurt and divided for too long by small definitions of the word “god.”  Our power lies in our openness to the radical and transforming truth, known in all cultures and times and places and by many names.  What we embody, at our best, is that aspect of reality which leads to a renewal of the human spirit and a vibrant alliance with all that creates and upholds peace and justice in life.

The second most striking thing for me about the Pew Center Religious Landscape results is their decision to place us in the category of “Other.” Not “Other Christian” (as we have generally been listed for most of the past century of sociological studies) not “Other World Faiths” but a strange border category of “Other Faiths;” and most of us seem to find this  perfectly acceptable.  It speaks to me of our changing identity, which is never fully formed from within, no matter how lovingly we work at our congregational ”mission and vision statements.”  

In recent decades we have been dedicated to growing “our movement.”  Part of that effort has been a clarification of our “core” and that, I think has put us on a crossroads.  We are determining, some of us consciously, and others unknowingly, if we are to be a liberal religious movement or a liberal religion. 

For a long time Unitarians especially, but also most American Universalists, have insisted that ”we” are not another “denomination,” that is: just another variety of Christian.  In part we avoided that label because in connoted a distinct creed and we were non creedal, but more than that we sought to draw on the living “Truth” rather than any human denomination of it.  In fact many, even Ministers, referred to us simply as “Liberal Religion,” as if we were all the liberal religion in the world.  In the 1800s we were primarily liberal Christian.  Interfaith work expanded that identity through the 20th cent. until we began to see religious liberals in Hindu, Buddhist, Pagan, Existetialist, and even Muslim forms. 

The result was that we created places that promoted certain values in the world; nice communities to be sure, but with a rather vage “liberal” identity.  Thus, it did not matter so much if we created more U, and then UU congregations or even more U or UU people. What mattered was if we established and nurtured the values of justice, equity and compassion, openmindedness, and reason in the world.  It did not matter if 90% of our youth left our churches never to return, what mattered was that our children were kind and educated: willing to work for peace and justice and a healthy environment. (I even know of a member of a UU curchwho did not mind at all that her son had decided to go along withhis wife and have a Catholic wedding or raise their children with a Catholic identity.  But when he said he was thinking of voting Republican she became unhinged.)  As long as there was a general liberal secular culture and liberalism in mainstream religious societies we could ride easy on the waves of culture. 

But if we are to be more than an embodyment of Liberal Religion, and are to become A Liberal Religion, then what is unique to us will have to grow in importance.  Our rituals will have to take on a stamp all our own and spiritual depth will be described as UU interpretations of ancient concepts rather than liberalized borrowings.  Above all we will have to see our young adult children not joining a UU church as a failure or an insult or rejection rather than an inevatablility.  We will become not just an “other” religious movement, but a true alternative religion.  We could still serve the larger cause of liberal religion, but as one of its children rather than as its presumptive head.  Someday we might even move from ‘other religions’ to ‘world religions.’  I don’t know for sure, but I think the Pew Survey is one more mark of a turn in our history from mere liberalism to UUism.  I know this path has its dangers.  But it excites me to think that we might someday be even more than 0.3% of the world, because if what we say is true, then we and the world will all truly be changed for the better.

The wonderful thing about the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey results is that they proclaim for all to see that we are not that special.  Our attitude of tolerance as one religion among many for example: 70% of all respondents, and 57% of Evangelical Christians (!) say that there is more than one path to “eternal life.”  Now maybe some of those evangelicals were saying that eternal life means eternal damnation and suffering, but I think it means that most are open to the idea that there are many paths to God and Heaven.  Nationally most people have accepted that there are many ways to interpret their own religions.  So diversity and inclusively are everywhere.

What I have long maintained is that we UUs are wrong when we make no distinction between UUism and liberal religion in general.  “We” talk as if our commitment to “freedom, reason and tolerance” are “so unique,” and we do come up some 20 or more percentage points above everyone else on most liberal religious questions.  But we are not liberal religion, it is everywhere.

Now we can keep pretending that we are the “one true” expression of liberal religion, or we can continue the work we have begun of shaping ourselves into a faith, rather than the anteroom to faith.  We must struggle with these questions: “What is different about us?”   “What do we keep of our Channing and Murray roots and what have we given up?”  “What practices and rituals are truly ours and no longer mere liberal reinterpretations and borrowings from Protestantism (or Native American traditions, etc.)?”  What is the difference between a UU Buddhist and just a Buddhist, what is the difference between a UU Pagan and a Pagan, or a UU Christian and all other Xians?” And above all we should answer “Why should anyone be active in a UU church?” Since answering that question will answer why those 200,000 who say they are UU but aren’t in our churches, should be.

I have found it difficult to become a real “blogger.” That is, I have trouble making regular posts, using the blog as a consistent source of writing that is updated all the time.  I was surprised to read my previous blog and notice that it had several spelling and grammatical errors and I noticed that there were a few sentences that needed to be expanded upon or clarified.  At first my impulse was to go back and rewrite the essay, but then I began to wonder if the point of blogging is to post great essays, that one might read over and over, or is it to be “in the moment” always writing something new, responding to the lightning speed of the cyber and pop culture?    When I began this blog I thought I would share one experience each week from my life as a minister, to show UUism from the point of view of one of its paid leaders.  But then sometimes the most striking experiences were those that were to private or confidential to share and others seemed to unfocused to make for good reading.  Is this a sort of journal or diary, or is it a set of essays designed to help people explore UUs?  And who is my audience?  Is it other UU ministers, active members of my church, people new to the faith and curious about its workings?  Should I be writing about theological ideas or what? I do like that I get interesting responses to my posts.  I helps me understand what I am doing, since all words are really about communication. So, my plan is to go back to setting an appointment to post each week, giving myself about 40 minutes to complete the post, and then see what comes up.  If I become clearer about what I want to post the posts might then increase in frequency.  

WORDS FROM THE WOODS

Like the Lorax of Dr. Seuss we like to speak for the trees, to protect them and affirm their verdant lives. In another way that the trees also speak for us, reminding us of who we are and what we should be. In the 96^th Psalm of the Jewish and Christian traditions the poet proclaims that “all the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the Lord.” Yet we know the trees have no voices, no language like ours, and no words in the sense of consciously chosen sounds that confer specific meaning. Those of us who pay close attention know that the trees make sounds: the susurrus of wind in the branches, the water-like rush of leaves rustling against one another, the creaking and rattling of wood. Other sounds are brought from them, such as the hammer of a flicker’s beak on bark. Much of their conversation is silent, using pollen, scent, and light on leaf. They communicate with water and sunbeams and shade. Their long lives and growth speak volumes.

So it also is with the UU approach to religion, our greatest truths are unspoken. Certainly, our choice of words is important, especially as to whether we consciously include all genders, races, or orientations in our services. Our ideas must spoken so as to be exposed to the light of logic; they must be able to endure the acid of doubt that “eats away the false.” We argue, rightly, about if we are a ‘religion’ or if we are ‘Christian,’ or what we mean by the term ‘liberal.’ But our faith is expressed more powerfully in how we live, how we treat others, who we spend time with and to what ends we use our money. One of the core affirmations of our church is that Ultimate Truth is beyond all labels and names and thus is affirmed or lost in each moment of our living. Use of the word ‘God’ is rare in our worship and yet, for me, the reality to which that word points is always present. We affirm something by what we are. For example it is rare to see a wooded lot like ours in Muncie, though trees were once the norm in this area; nearly unbroken forest stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction. Thus we are less of an odd alternative and more of a testament to what could be normative and what is of highest worth: human beings living in harmony rather than in domination of, the web of life. To paraphrase the 19^th Psalm, with the skies and stones and rivers, ‘Day after day the trees pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.’ Who among us can understand what they are saying?

When I was ten years old my father and mother made it clear that they did not like guns, but they also made it clear that knowledge was a better defense than avoidance.  Knowing I might someday encounter a gun they decided I would be safer if I knew how to operate and hold guns correctly.   So I spent some weeks learning how to carry and shoot a rifle and pistol.  For years I kept the paper target with three holes clustered just above and to the right of center as a token of my success and passing grade in the class.   

Today I am something of a pacifist and as time has gone on I have become quite unhappy with the plethora of guns in this world: most of them born of fear or hatred.  Then, some weeks ago a member of my church found he was slipping into a deep depression and, instead of killing himself, he got admitted to the psych ward of the hospital.  Eventually he and I spent some time with his caseworker who said that before he could be released he needed me to remove one particular risk of suicide from his home.  So that winter afternoon, armed with the knowledge of how to find a key and where to find the source of temptation, I went and took a gun from his house. 

Never in my days did I think that ministry would lead me to hold a loaded gun in my hand.  I took the bullets out and then began to wonder “what next?”  One voice in me wanted to throw it into the White River, where it might “sleep with the fishes,” or perhaps I could give it a nice burial in the deep woods somewhere.  The ten-year-old in me thought about how this was not a James Bond weapon, more something that might be carried toward a High Noon, and considered keeping it.  The practical voice said that I should sell it and give the proceeds to the church’s operating fund, but immediately another voice said, “It’s not yours to sell, you don’t want to sell it to the wrong persons, and who wants the church to profit from the sale of weapons? Rid the world of its evil!”  Still the practical voice insisted that “selling the gun for the church is what was suggested by the case worker.”  So here I am, with a gun hidden away (not at the church) and not sure what I can and should do with it.  

What do you think? 

From May through October our worship faces north, into the woods, but in the bright bareness of winter all the chairs face west.  That north wall of the UU sanctuary in Muncie is all glass (at least for a third of the way up).  The east wall of the room is brick with three spaces for doors and one half the brick is hidden behind a wooden set of screens on which we have displayed the early history of our church (1859 to ~1900).   On Wednesday we took out several back rows of chairs and made a “U” of chairs on the south side that opened to a labyrinth.  One of my talented lay-leaders took brown paper bags, added sand and tea-lights and arranged them in a meandering line that began in the south and ended in the center with a small “loop” of about seven luminaria.  That night, when we turned off most of the overhead lights, the room was beautiful.  After some readings, a song and a little homily (about how life looks like a maze when we begin, but more like a labyrinth when we look back on our journey) we walked through the dark and silence; always keeping the little lights on one’s left.  Thus we walked on either side of the line, in and out again.  It was simple and elegant.  To the north we could see reflections of ourselves walking beyond the glass out in the woods, like ghosts walking where the near full moonlight illuminating the snow and tree trunks.  I have walked labyrinths in Oregon and New Mexico, Colorado and Ohio, on a bright clear morning and at sunset.  Sometimes it is a simple, uninspiring act.  Other times such walks get me thinking, or they awaken in me a sense of harmony and peace.  Sometimes they remind me of ancient earth-centered worship, other times of Christian pilgrimage to a Holy place, or the Sufi ‘journey to the beloved.’  Of my three favorite labyrinths all were temporary.  The first I made in the dry grass of a West Texas winter with lines of corn-meal.  The second was made of planters and lights on a high hill overlooking a river.  The third was in the Muncie UU Church Sanctuary this past Wednesday night.  The only sorrow for me was that there were so few people there to appreciate it.   

I am not interested in appealing to Generation X, or any other generation for that matter.  I am aware of the “Gen X” lable, but I don’t trust it.  Instead we have several Young Adults in our congregation and I work to pay attention to them as individuals and keep them involved as long as possible. I pay attention to the most recent blips in popular culture and make references to them, but only because I find it interesting.  In sermons I rarely introduce a name or event from more than ten years ago without briefly explaining who that person or event was not because 20 year old people will not remember, but because 40, 60 and 90 year old people might not remember.  I tell stories as illustrations in my sermons about people of all ages and pay attention to how inclusive I am, sometimes changing gender or age or ethnicity of the characters if it adds something to the illustration.   When I tell “Children’s stories” to the little ones who come up front I remember that I am speaking to every child within every person in the congregation.  I don’t try to appeal to just young parents, or some generalized “Gen X” group or create a “UU Emergent” service.  I and my leadership include young adults as best we can, and encourage them to create their own support groups, knowing that some will move away in a matter of months or years and might never return to any UU congregation, while others might end up living in Muncie town for the rest of forever.   The current leaders of the church were attracted to the creativity of Rev. Drew Kennedy in the 60s and 70s, but they were not targeted as a ministry category and it was not just his ‘post-hippy style’ that kept them around all these years.  Instead, Drew did good ministry, cared for the people in a time of many congregational deaths, and spoke lasting truths.  I think ministry is best if it is not targeted to a labeled group but given to people in all their diversity. 

Last night we held a Universalist Ash Wednesday service.  Rev. Derek Parker led the service and included some interesting remarks on the history of Unitarian and Universalist ambivalence about the day.  For example Main and New Hampshire sometime ago set aside the day as a holiday, but called it “The Day of Fasting,” rather than “Ash Wednesday.”  He also noted that many Universalists would mark their hands rather than their foreheads with the ashes, because it fit more with Jesus’ advice that we not “disfigure our faces” like the hypocrites when they fast, and because it was a more visible to ourselves rather than to others as reminder of our mortality.  Derek focused on the theme of mortality, which was all the more poignant because I had just read that afternoon the text of the sermon in which Rev. Forrester Church announced that his cancer had returned and he would likely not survive its ravages.  It was a very fine service, especially the moment when Derek spoke to each person who participated by name, saying “… remember that from dust you have come and to dust you shall return,”  or something like that, then he spontaneously asked me to mark his hand and I had to speak the words I had not memorized.  It was a meaningful moment, sad and happy, more peaceful than anxious.  But what impressed me most was the fact that out of a congregation of 250 only seven people attended this service.  Despite all I have done to include Christianity clearly as a living part of our tradition, not just an ancient root, the congregation remains “post-Christian.”  

Tonight I went to a prayer meeting in a black neghborhood of Muncie, with a group of some thirty people in a small church with a painting of a white Jesus on the wall behind the pulpit.  I was first invited to these meetings back when I was leading community conversations on race and race relations.  The group meets in a different church each week rotating through about six or seven small churches, in affirmation of their spiritual Christian unity. 

 They seem to accept me and I like being accepted as Christian for a night.  The evening begins with some opening words spoken from the heart of one of the lay leaders.  There is a wonderful song leader, an old guy with a strong voice who knows all the songs by heart and lines them out for the rest of us.  I am always happy when they sing a UU song like “This little light of mine.”  The next segment of the service is random reading of scripture as chosen by members of the group, then a sermon by the host pastor or lay leader.  Tonight it was the classic God will help you and never forsake you no matter what happens. 

Then we sing again as we gather together in a large circle holding hands and the prayers begin.  As one person prays, usually the one who speaks first and with the loudest voice, all the others fill the room with a blur of sound, amens, thank-you-Jesus, etc. 

I spoke up after two or three other prayers. I had been thinking of the begining, but I did not know where it would go after that.   ”Oh Most Holy one I pray for all the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who are surrounded by death, surrounded by evil, who must see and do terrible things.  Keep them and protect them and hold them so that they know you are with them even in the hell of war.  I speak of the lonely, let them know you are with them even in their lonlieness. I pray for the sick, that you stregthen them and sooth them in thier suffering, I pray for the lost that you help them find a way. I thank you for this gathering and the blessing of this fellowship…”  I ended with “Amen in the name of your son, amen.”  I spoke with power, the energy of overcoming shyness, but also the power of sincerity.  Even if I am more of a Buddhist than a Christian, more of an atheist than a theist, in that place I can affirm the human desire for hope and love and wellbeing. 

Afterward the group broke into applause and a final song, one that I did not know, about “That day.”  Several thanked me for my prayer afterward, or thanked me for all my work on behalf of the city, or they expressed surprise that I had shaved my beard. 

It was a happy gathering an affirmation of connection accross great differences. I don’t think they know exactly how different my theology is from theirs, and I don’t think they really care.  They just hold to their faith and affirm that I am willing to be with them and affirm them and stand with them in the struggle for civil rights and freedom from oppression.