WHY SHOULD I BELIEVE THAT?

WHY? (SHOULD I BELIEVE THAT?)
by: Rev. Dr. Edward Frost

In Walker Percy’s marvelous novel “The Last Gentleman,” the scene is a hospital room. Present are Will Barrett, a rather flaky, perhaps overly-earnest seeker of life’s meaning; young Jamie, the tragic figure, who Will took under his wing as mentor and paid companion; Jamie now at the end of his meager days, dying; and a priest, who Jamie’s family –specifically Val, Jamie’s sister, something of a nun-entrepreneur has forced into the scene to make sure the boy dies in a state of grace.

The priest, inconsequentially stranger to them all, bends to Jamie’s bedside and asks, “Do you accept the truths of religion?”

Jamie moves his lips. “What?” asks the priest, bending lower.

“Excuse me, Father,” says (Will). “He said, ‘What.’”

“Oh.” said the priest, turned both fists out, and opened the palms. “Do you accept the truth that God exists and that He made you and loves you and that He made the world so that you might enjoy its beauty and that He himself is your final end and happiness that He loved you so much that He sent his only Son to die for you and to found His Holy Catholic Church so that you may enter heaven and there see God face to face and be happy with Him forever?”

“Is that true?” said Jamie clearly, opening his eyes and goggling. To [Will’s] dismay, the youth turned to him. Will cleared his throat and opened his mouth to say something when, fortunately for him, Jamie’s bruised eyes went weaving round to the priest. He said something to the priest which the latter did not understand. The priest looked up at Will. “He wants to know, ah, why,” said [Will.] “Why what?” “Why should he believe that?”

The bewildered priest can think of nothing more to say in response than “Because it’s true.” Jamie mutters again, as he begins his fall into oblivion. And, again, Will interprets, “He’s asking me how you know that.” Oh, my. Of course, the priest just does. He just knows that. He believes all that because, as he says, if he didn’t he wouldn’t be there, and there would be no salvation, and so on and so on.

Why do people believe what they believe and how do we know what we believe is true?

Much of what people believe, of course, they believe more or less because they always have and certain beliefs are part of their personal and familial identity. People tend to believe what they were brought up to believe and to depart from those familial beliefs is to risk isolating oneself, or being isolated from, one’s family, including one’s extended family, the clan. It would be an odd and remarkable child indeed who did not believe what his family (his parents, grandparents, clan) told him was true to believe. In fact, such straying from the family belief system is one way of identifying religious genius –or, in telling the story in years to come, separating the incarnate god from the common herd.

The story is told in the Christian Scriptures of Jesus at some tender age not showing up for supper and being found, not at the local pool hall (or wherever kids hung out in Nazareth) but in the Temple, showing up the rabbis for the novices they were. Great pains are taken in identifying the Holy One by setting him or her apart from the common beliefs of his or her origin. Most of us start out, at least, by believing what we are told to believe by the spokespersons for our well-meaning clan.

My father taught me to believe that there is a world beyond our sight (unless one knows where to look, and how to look), a world that is populated with elves, fairies, and phantasms of various kinds. Neither he nor my mother had any interest in common Christian beliefs. It was my grandmother, a Jehovah’s Witness, who finally took over and told me to believe in God, in Satan, evil spirits, and Archangels, and in the horrible day of reckoning due any day now.

My young counterparts in India, China, Africa, Colombia, or high in the mountains of Tibet were being told other stories, adopting other beliefs that made them at home in the world into which they were born. Why would we question what grandmother told us sitting by the hearth as she sewed or the stories of the origin of our people that grandfather or uncle told around the great fire?

Part of the power of belief is the authority it comes from. If I’m six years old and the man I love says, “Look, here’s where the fairies dance at night,” am I going to say, “What, are you out of your mind?” Why should the wise ones–the fathers, mothers, grandfather and grandmothers–why should they lie to us? They know why the rabbit hops to this day as it runs and why the sun rises over only those mountains.

Why should I believe that? Jamie asks with that wonderful, refreshing innocence of one who never quite makes it fully into the world of supposed truth and reality. But, then, why should I not believe that? Why should I not have believed in protective elves or in lovely fairies in a world rocked by war and in nights lit by fire? Belief is a garden of the mind.

Unfortunately, of course, as Sophia Fahs wrote, “Some beliefs are like walled gardens.” They keep us safe inside –for as long as the wall holds and the barbarians are held at the gate. But what of those barbarians? That is, what of the dark side of belief? My father gave me beliefs –why should I not have believed –beliefs that soothed me, made me feel safe, explained all I needed to know, for then, about the world?

But my father also gave me beliefs to wall the garden in. There were the barbarians –and they were just about everybody who was not like us. We lived, in that time, in a world of enemies, of course –whole nations and races of people with whom we were at war. But beyond enemies there were the Micks, and the spics, and the wops, and the fuzzy-wuzzies. A whole world of people not us, so went the belief to be absorbed. And if it was true about the lovely fairies and the guardian angels, then it must have been true about the other, about those who are not us, about those to whom we were superior and better made.

We come into this world “trailing clouds of glory” to inhabit a world made up of differing dollops of truths, lies, and beliefs that may lie somewhere in-between.

Belief explains things. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” “Why should I believe that?” It explains things. The less information we have to the contrary, the more belief explains why and how things are. The thunder means the gods are angry. The illness that is sapping your life is punishment for your sins. God took your little child to be one of his angels. Belief creates the world we live in or want to live in. Unveiling the real world –well not everyone is up for that. To some extent, psychosis is a system of belief that explains one’s world whether one likes the terms or not.

So, we inherit our beliefs from the clan for whom the beliefs explain their world, beliefs, so the clan must assume, that will explain the world to us in the same way. After all, that is the duty of the clan and of the elders –to pass on the beliefs that tell us who we are. They must not send us out into a world that has no explanation. The beliefs we gain from the elders and the clan provide us with what is, perhaps for awhile, a necessary circumscription, a world small enough to be manageable; a walled garden. As it was for the race, so it is for the individual.

Maturity (“human” maturity and religious maturity) has to do with the development of the ability to doubt: “Why should I believe that?” Doubt has been portrayed by the guardians of faith as the work of the devil –the temptation against faith. A man in the Gospel of Mark says to Jesus, “I do believe. Help me in my unbelief.” There is doubt. The edge of maturity. Belief that begins to falter.

In the history of ancient Greece, there is a period known as “The failure of nerve.” The Greeks actually gave up their belief in the gods and decided to go it alone. But it was not the fullness of time. They were not ready to “go it alone.” The anxiety of unknowing, of unbelief, was too great. A failure of nerve. The gods were invited back. Not always easy –as Annie Dillard has written –to recover the gods one has asked to leave. Where does doubt come from? Given the power of belief, that which has given us identity, which has defined the very world we live in, where does the power come from to ask the gods to leave, to doubt, to believe otherwise, to bring down the circumscribing walls?

One might say that knowledge will displace belief. Know the truth and the truth will set you free. But that’s not really the case. As a theologian and a one-time psychotherapist; I know very well that belief can be more powerful than truth.

There are millions of people who live in a world in which science has provided their cell phones and their email –perhaps even kept them alive–and yet believe passionately that the world was created by God about eight thousand years ago–carbon dating notwithstanding. How can they believe that? Because some beliefs are part of a larger system of beliefs that are essential the meaning of one’s existence. The belief that God created the world eight thousand years ago is a stone in the arch that, if removed, would bring down the whole structure.

So, yes, knowledge can create doubt. As societies, we provide education to supplant ignorance, to supplant “mere belief.” It is better that people learn about illness and the vagaries of human behavior than that we burn women for being witches. It is better that we learn how to develop medications that heal, rather than draining the blood out of the sick, covering them with leeches, or waiting for God, in his goodness and wisdom, to heal –if that be his will. But, again, knowledge does not always prevail against belief.

There is experience. After the father loses interest, the years go by, and one doesn’t see elves any more, one begins to wonder. To be sustained, belief has to be fortified with experience. One has to either see elves or think one does. After awhile, the father gone, I began to play with those people who were not like us. I began to work with them, learn with them. After awhile, experience belied belief. It turned out they were like us after all or at least they certainly weren’t any worse than we were. Some beliefs are like walled gardens and, sometimes, all things being equal, getting through the gate and going out into the world beyond is all it takes for some to form new beliefs based on new experience.

This is the reason for bringing quality early childhood education to every level of our society. Education is a gateway, education in the context of diversity where the beliefs inculcated in poverty and ignorance can be confronted in the world beyond the ghetto walls. A child’s belief that she is of little worth, his belief that there is no hope, no way out, these are stubborn beliefs that only new realities, new possibilities can change. As the saying goes, “Seeing is believing.” Many cannot change the beliefs that bind them until they can see new possibilities to believe in.

So, the power of belief may bend to knowledge. The power of belief may bend to experience. I believe, too, that belief can change by influence –another reason why, in Sophia Fahs words, it matters what we believe. Just as I once believed, for better and for worse, what my father and my clan believed, so I have taken to myself beliefs of others who came into my life. I confess I have had a tendency throughout my life (for good or for ill in this case or that) to hero worship.

Again, belief is linked to identity. What we believe is what we are. It follows, then, that if we want to be like someone we will want to see the world the way she or he does; we will want to believe what the hero believes. That is, after all, the gift or the curse of heroes. You are someone’s hero. Be aware of what you believe.

Finally (not really finally, but one has to stop somewhere) it seems to me that doubt, the power that counters the power of belief and topples the walls to a wider world, is sometimes, in theological terms, the gift of grace. We don’t do anything to earn it. We don’t do anything to bring it about. Yet, seemingly, out of the blue, out of the depths, or from the Oversoul to our soul, comes doubt. “Why should I believe that?”

Saul, the persecutor and abuser of Christians, becomes Paul, the Apostle, believing in the Christ he ridiculed. The Nazi officer’s inbred beliefs about Jews fall from him like snowflakes. The white farmer opens his store-room to the runaway slaves on the underground railway. Charlton Heston throws down his gun. Well, that hasn’t happened yet –but who knows?

Belief is obviously a curious and complicated human phenomenon. It tells us and the world who we are. It leads us by on the other side or leads us to pick up the sufferer and lift him to a place of healing. It walls us in and narrows our view or opens the gates and sets us free.

It matters what we believe. May we never cease from believing and never cease from doubt.

Living The Full Catastrophe

LIVING THE FULL CATASTROPHE
by
Edward Frost

“Zorba, have you ever been married?”
Zorba answers his boss, “Am I not a man? Of course I’ve been married. Wife, house, Kids, everything…the full catastrophe!”

This really was not a lament on Zorba’s part. He didn’t mean that being married or having children was a disastrous state to be in. Zorba’a position before life was always one of amazement and his response to life was an outpouring of appreciation for its fullness and richness: life with its sorrows, tragedies, trials and inconsistencies. Zorba lived, really lived life, to its fullest–he was alive to the full catastrophe. His response to life—life as it is—was to dance through it, to celebrate it, to laugh with it and at himself, even in the face of failure and defeat. When his huge, marvelous, gerrymandered structure for moving rubble down from the boss’s mine collapsed, he laughed like a child at the magnificence of its fall.

As he laughed with and lived with the world as it is, he was never weighed down for long. Katzanzakis wrote of his Zorba the Greek. “He never ultimately defeated either by the world or by his own considerable folly.”Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn to k Zorba’s words for the title of his book, “Full Catastrophe Living,” an account of the stress reduction clinic he founded and directed at Massachusetts General Hospital. From the first time he heard the phrase “the full catastrophe,” Kabat-Zinn says, he felt that it “captured something positive about the human spirit’s ability to come to grips with what is most difficult in life and to find within even the most difficult trials room to grow in strength and wisdom.” For Kabat-Zinn, as for Zorba, full catastrophe living means living in acceptance of the whole of life, saying yes to the enormity, the full range, of our life experience.

There are major crises in everyone’s life. And, yes, there is disaster. But there is also the plethora of comparatively little things that add up. There are fires and floods, deaths and divorces. But there are also cars that won’t run. Children who won’t listen. Faucets that leak. Jobs that are menial or meaningless. There are bills we can’t pay. Houses we can’t repair. Bodies–ours or others–we can’t heal. There are boyfriends. Girlfriends. Broken hearts. Broken eyeglasses. Traffic. Toothache. My mother had a saying–no doubt heard in your family, too—“It’s always something.”

The full catastrophe. What to make of it? How are we to live with it? There was a time –not so long ago in terms of the evolution of human understanding–when it was assumed that everything, from the mildly unpleasant incident to the horrific disaster, was divine punishment for sin or some misdeed. Our earliest forebears, often starving, dying in childbirth, short-lived through violence or disease, assumed there must have been a time when life wasn’t like that. “They”–humankind that is– must have done something to deserve life as it is. And, for explanation, out of the depths of the human psyche came one or another myth of paradise lost, of first man and first woman, the introduction of evil, seduction, betrayal–and fall. Adam and Eve, blessed with paradise, not so much as a hangnail to begin a pile of woe. Nothing at hand for the makings of catastrophe: and they blew it. “Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” One thing they were not to do and they did it. Of course. Give a kid a bunch of red jelly beans and one green one, tell him not to touch the green one and what’s he going to do? Well, you know the story: “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” Paradise lost. Out they went. An angel with a fiery sword was posted at the gates of paradise so there would be no sneaking back in. Henceforth, God said, humankind would earn their bread by the sweat of their brows and women would bring forth children in pain. Wife, kids, everything. The full catastrophe.

From that earliest story on, the faithful have assumed that what ills befall them is divine and just punishment for evil done, sins committed.The people of Jesus’ time also assumed that catastrophe was divine punishment. Jesus himself assumed it. He said to a paralyzed man, “Your sins are forgiven you. Rise. Take up your bed and walk.” Wailing and gnashing of teeth. What did we do to deserve this–whatever it is? For our faithful ancestors, there was no such thing as just having a run of bad luck. The crops wither and die. The cows sicken. The village burns. And priest and preacher pray to heaven that the sins of the people might be forgiven that this catastrophe might come to an end. The ill wind blows and listeth where it will. Seeking out the sinners.

Or–and there’s another possible answer for what ails us–or it possible that our suffering means something? If not punishment, perhaps some deeper purpose. God wanted little baby for an angel. The virginal choir singer is stricken with cancer/polio/large truck so as to demonstrate to others the steadfastness of her faith. God sends AIDS to show how he feels about homosexuality. The Hebrew scriptures tell another ancient story–a story much older than the Hebrews who adopted it: in the story, Job stands as the supreme model of enduring faith in the face of divine caprice. In a bet with Satan over the faithfulness of the people, God rattles Job’s once settled life and rolls him in dung and ashesJob loses everything–crops, cattle. In the end, he didn’t even have his health, as they say, but sat on a dunghill, scraping his sores. In the earliest version of this ancient story, before the Hebrews gave it a happier ending, the story simply ends with a devastated Job, but faithful to the bitter end. Why should you expect more? Or less? Job’s own wife told him to curse God and die.

The story speaks to the bewildered faithful, suffering in spite of their righteousness. “Look at Job,” God says. “There wasn’t a more faithful man in all the land. And look what happened to him.” If we are going to be good, the story says, we must be good for goodness sake, not for any hope of reward or fear of punishment. The lesson for the faithful in the ancient story was that there was reason and purpose for Job’s suffering, cosmic purpose and meaning that transcended his suffering. Job couldn’t know what the meaning and purpose was. None of his business. But he bore his suffering in the faith that God must have some good reason for it. .Job’s suffering demonstrated how immovable one’s faith can be. The martyrs who went to lions and fires were inspired by the faith of those who went before them. The faithful whose children lay still, whose husbands mangled bodies lay in smoking foreign battlefields, whose own bodies are wracked by pain, are given stories of immovable faith by which to measure their own suffering.

The full catastrophe–the pain of birth, pain of death, a little time upon the stage only to shuffle off sans everything–all this can be endured if, perhaps, we deserve it or if, perhaps, it means something, serves some great purpose beyond our comprehension. But what if it doesn’t? What if all the disasters and accumulating battering of daily life don’t mean anything? Not even that we deserve them? Many people–perhaps most people–cannot bear that possibility. I have seen people who were contented skeptics all their lives, comfortable in unbelief, who, when terminally ill, reverted to their former faith. “No atheists in the fox holes,” the self-righteous used to prattle.

One of my closest friends in a congregation I served, a young wife and mother, developed incurable cancer. In the hospital, after a long spiritual struggle, she turned to the young Methodist chaplain for comfort in her dying. I couldn’t blame her. She needed her death to mean something. She needed an explanation for it. But I no longer had Job’s faith in a God who had his own reasons for human tragedy. I had no meanings or explanations for death. Jane’s parents had both died too young. Her brother had been a Navy test pilot. He was killed when his plane crashed. She was dying of cancer. She wanted me to tell her what it was all for. What did it all mean? What could she have done to deserve it all? She didn’t want to hear that it was all part of the full catastrophe. She didn’t want to hear that “suffering doesn’t mean, it is.” To say seek acceptance of what is in life sounds like, “Make the best of it.” Had I said such a thing, she would have been incredulous. The tubes, wires, needles, beeps and blinking lights. “Make the best of this?” “Consider the sufferings of the blessed martyrs, my child” may work for Father it’s not in my kit bag. The bottom line, as they say, dusted off and prettified, when it’s set out there, is still “make the best of it.”

Because that‘s what we do. When we don’t have the ancient comforts of the faithful, when we have tried but can no longer entertain the prospect of paradise regained, eternal reward for earthly suffering–then what we do is make the best of it: Make the best of the full catastrophe. When we have severed the experience of suffering from its primitive attachment to punishment and when we no longer expect suffering to teach us something profound about the meaning of life, then we have the opportunity to make the best of suffering, rather than the worst of it–that is, to put it in its natural place in the fullness of life.It has been the way of western culture to lead us to deny the full catastrophe and to create a dichotomy between the good –what we like, appreciate, enjoy—and what we call evil–that which carries with it pain and suffering. We have so set ourselves over against suffering that, even if we no longer believe it the work of the devil, we still make it alien, give it power and intent. “Why me?” “What have I done to deserve this?”

With sadness, I have seen so many people nearing death waste the preciousness of their waning energy in the futile struggle to discover why death was happening to them. We deny pain and grief it’s place in life. We do not let it in because, having given it such power, we do not believe we could bear its presence. Fear, anger, pain, grief–these experiences of our humanness have been made alien by our religions and so we are not intimate enough with them to know that we can endure them. Our cautious path through the thickets has its own pain and has cost us dearly. Some of us were trained by our parents–and have practiced diligently through our lives—to avoid the depths of our own being, to experience only the surface of life, to avoid what might cause us pain, including love. Yet only when life is embraced in its totality, only when we live in its depths and in all its corners can we learn that we can immerse ourselves in life’s joy and also endure the suffering that is always near at hand.
Martin Luther King, Jr. taught this gospel–this good news–of suffering and joy. When his church had been bombed and many people killed, he said this to the tormentors:

We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering.
We will meet your physical force with Soul force. …We will soon wear you down with
our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win yours in the process.

My own foremost spiritual struggle these days is with the reality of my own illnesses, aging and mortality. I discovered in my meditation practice that I had allowed my heart disease to alienate me from my body. The surgical scar down the center of my chest I came to view each morning as the icon of my mortality. My spiritual task has become to honor my life as it is, my body as it is, my days as I have them for as long as I have them. To achieve equanimity–acceptance of what is—in the face of illness, loss and the inevitable closing of the full catastrophe is the greatest challenge and, ultimately, the greatest gift of the spiritual journey. And we must engage in that spiritual journey in a culture which gives us little help which, again, divides life into good and bad.In our culture, life is Good and Death is so bad that it hardly bears discussing. Youth is idolized. A golden calf and golden goose. Age and the aging are feared, disguised, put away or otherwise denied. Little wonder that so many waste their latter years in despair and go to their deaths not raging at the dying of the light but drugged and immobile. One of the inspirations for my own journey has been the late Unitarian Universalist minister, Harry Scholefield. Harry, into his eighties, meditated in his garden each day at sunrise. He meditated with poetry he had learned by heart. He waited, he said, for the poets to come with their message for the day. He sat, in near winter, by an ancient tree is his garden and there came to him the words of Shakespeare in Sonnet 73,

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do
hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs, where late
the sweet birds sang.

For Harry, it was a peaceful companionship of fellow beings, of his own state shared with that aging tree. There is no regret of his own “time of year” and no dread of his own passing. Harry actually began his daily meditation when he first opened his eyes in the morning. He called his before-rising meditation he “Welcoming.” It is to offer a welcome to what the day may bring. To welcome all that the day may bring is to practice living the full catastrophe, for it is not always easy to welcome all that the days may bring. The day may be a re-awakening to a deep loss. The day may bring us to the dentist or the surgeon. There may be an unpleasant confrontation to be faced.

When we have learned to accept the full catastrophe as being what life is, and when we have learned that we have the capacity to fill ourselves with all that delights us and that we have the strength to endure what pains us, then we can welcome each day and, in confidence, welcome all that each day brings. I am glad to have renewed my acquaintance with Zorba, for Katzanzakis gave us the most alive of beings to follow. Zorba was pagan in his scorn of either sin or salvation. He plunged as fully into anger, fear and folly as he did into joy and passion. He allowed the full catastrophe into his life and, even when it wracked his soul with pain and even when his spirit was tormented by the cruelty of which the spirit-dead are capable.He did not judge what came to him, but welcomed it all. As the only way to live life fully–to live the full catastrophe.

Is Nothing Sacred?

IS NOTHING SACRED?
by
Edward A. Frost

Last week, a young man driving at 90 miles at an estimated ninety miles an hour chose to end his life by deliberately crossing the median strip on a busy Atlanta highway, plowing into oncoming traffic. He hit an SUV head on, killing himself and a man and a woman and their two children. And you say there is a God and that this God notes the fall of every sparrow? And did God “note” the action of that young man and the four innocent people whose lives he snuffed out?
Writing in the New Yorker magazine, James Woods enters the theological field by setting out what he calls “The Virginia Woolf Question.” The question is raised in Woolf’s most metaphysical, perhaps most theological novel, “To The Lighthouse.” Mrs. Ramsey, the central figure of the novel, has died. Her dear friend, the painter Lily Briskoe, sits at her easel deep in mourning. Next to her sits the poet, Augustus Carmichael. Woods writes, “…suddenly Lily imagines that she and Mr. Carmichael might stand up and demand an explanation of life.”
Woolf writes, “For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was [life] so short, why was it so inexplicable? [She] said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. “Mrs. Ramsay!” she said aloud, “Mrs. Ramsay!” The tears ran down her face.”
But Mrs. Ramsey will not return and there would be no explanation for this–no answer to “life, the universe and everything.” And the young man would not have his suicidal and murderous mind changed. The family’s SUV would not swerve aside. There would be no explanation for this. Sixteen million people would die for a madman’s vision. There would be no explanation for this. There would be no explanation because God, they say, is dead or gone away or never was.
The horror or the beauty of this is (as some atheists maintain ) that there is no cosmic parent, no “everlasting arms” to cradle and protect. We creatures, born not of the dust or of Adam’s rib but of flesh and blood, must make our own way.
Godot is not coming.
Some say atheism–the denial of the existence of God–began in the Renaissance with the rise of Reason; others say God was killed by Darwin and his “Origin of Species.” Some say a philosopher declared it. But surely as humankind began to stand there were a few who dared to doubt the thunder was an angry god. And surely there were some who thought the prophets who claimed to speak for God were simply mad and that Moses was but a sorcerer about whom fanciful tales came to be told. It did come to pass that the atheist fell into disrepute and lived under a cover of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” After all, the vast majority of western people assumed the existence–and the particular interest–of a divine being–a people who, despite all evidence to the contrary ,and despite the awful cries of “Why?” met with silence, put this nation “under God” and installed the Presence
in the halls of justice and government. There have been those who have objected to all that–some in defiance, some in anger, some in disdain. Until recent times, it required considerable courage to announce oneself as an atheist–to publicly raise reason over religion.

In the 19th century there was the famous–some said (and many still say) the infamous–Robert Ingersoll. Ingersol is little known today but in his time he was an orator in great demand in spite of the powerful religious revivals of his day. He was a courageous activist for justice, never failing to poke and prod the conscience of the nation and forever calling out the hypocrisy of government and politicians. “In our era,” Ingersoll said, “the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.” That, to me, has the ring of Martin Luther King, Jr. to it.
Ingersol was probably more an agnostic than an atheist. He didn’t so much deny the existence of God as he did consider the matter irrelevant. But he despised creeds, religious dogma, and what he considered to be the useless churches. And of the Bible he said, “If [one] would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If [one] would follow strictly the teachings of the New [Testament][one] would be insane. ”Ingersoll was a hero to the rational-minded minority of his day and reviled as devil’s disciple and antichrist by the faithful. Speaking of famous atheists, some may remember the founder and president of the organization “American Atheists.” In 1963, as an attorney, she brought the case Murray vs Curlettto to the Supreme Court which ended the practice of prayer in public schools. Murray loved to “stir the pot. She fanned the fires of the media whenever she spotted religion attempting to slip into the public tent. In 1964 she became so controversial that Life Magazine declared her to be “The most hated woman in America.”
In 1995, Madelyn Murray, her son and a granddaughter were kidnapped and murdered by her former office manager.
In our own time, atheists can openly display their denials of God in bookstore windows and join the battle of reason over belief and faith on the talk show circuit with hardly a whisper of rebuttal from pulpits and seminary podiums. Richard Dawkins, atheist, scientist, Oxford professor, did rattle some pulpits and pews of the faithful with the his recent book “The God Delusion”–mainly because Dawkins, like many outspoken atheists, tends to be condescending toward believers. The late Christopher Hitchens also took the condescending route with his book “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons everything”
Frankly, I have never understood why so many self-described atheists
are such avid evangelists for atheism. I call them “fundamentalist atheists.” It seems to me that their fervor for making converts of believers is a fervor not all that different from that of those fundamentalist believers desperate to convert unbelievers to the beliefs of Christianity. The evangelical or fundamentalist Christian is at least attempting to save our souls from eternal damnation but what is the goal of the enthusiastic atheist?
The Christian might assume that my ignorance of salvation in Christ will consign me to everlasting hellfire. But if the believer is ignorant of the rational values of non-belief it it seems to me his or her ignorance is harmless. While I was minister of our congregation in Atlanta was frequently approached–again, with fervor and urgency–to join an organization called “Freedom From Religion.” I suppose the assumption was that it would be a publicity plus if they could snag a minister and a Unitarian ought to be an easy catch.

The members of “Freedom From Religion” and other organizations of activist non-believers confuse belief or unbelief in God with religion. Regardless of whether or not I believe in God this week I have no desire whatsoever to be free from religion, the religious or the spiritual. I have spent my adult life preaching religion, extolling the religious life, and encouraging spiritual experience and growth. Atheists like Dawkins, take the position that belief in God is ignorance, plain and simple and that rational thinkers merely need to free believers from the silliness and abuses associated with religion by confronting them with rational argument. Again, I really don’t understand why they feel the need to take the time and trouble to attempt that but, that aside, the fact is that just as the non-believer is seldom converted to faith by rational argument, the believer is highly unlikely to be converted to atheism by appeal to reason and intellect. Sometimes, when someone discovers that I am a minister he or she feels obliged to tell me they don’t believe in God–as if casting down the clang of an armored gauntlet and challenging me to a cosmic duel. If I’m in the mood, what I like to say in response is “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in.”

Often the God the unbeliever has deserted turns out to look rather like the Headmaster in a Harry Potter movie, who keeps a massive ledger detailing the sinful course of our lives, and who does nothing more critical to the universe than creating the color purple. Too many atheists assume believers to be, as Dawkins says, silly or ignorant or intellectually immature. It’s a lack of humility that does the atheist a disservice.

None other than Albert Einstein said, “There are people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” If Einstein is quoted as having said there is no God, he is being misquoted. Einstein certainly did not believe in a God who lives in the sky or looks like Santa Claus or the headmaster of Hogwarts’ School. But Einstein did say that he believed himself to be a deeply religious man. In one of his most frequently quoted statements, Einstein said:

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. [One] to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only I am a devoutly religious man.

As I say, this is one of his most often quoted statements (perhaps because he was so often asked about his religious beliefs}. But, of course, his statement didn’t satisfy everyone. Boston’s Cardinal William Henry O’Connell said, “The outcome of this doubt and befogged speculation about time and space is a cloak beneath which hides the ghastly apparition of atheism.” But Einstein’s sense of the religious was no “ghastly apparition” of atheism. To repeat the most critical statement: “To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness.”

Einstein also had a concern about atheism–a warning, if you will. “[One} who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.” This is that “near enemy” of reason and doubt–to be drawn into the conviction that there is no God in heaven and that, therefore nothing is sacred: as if, with “the death of God” all that is sacred crumbled into mere physics. To bind atheism with the absence of awe with the absence of wonder and the mysterious, to insist that every human experience must be reduced to rational, scientistic explanation is indeed to “snuff out” that candle that is often the saving light of humankind’s soul and spirit.

For aeons beyond our imagination humankind has conjured, worshipped, loved and feared one form of God or the companies of gods. We looked above and outside ourselves for comfort, for understanding, for the meaning of existence itself and for laws as if written in stone to compel our morality and our ways of living with and sharing the earth with each other. But in his last work, published after his death, the mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote, “The old gods are dead or dying and people everywhere are searching, asking: What is the new mythology to be, the mythology of this unified earth as of one harmonious being?” It is critical to sustain a life that is blessed with enthusiasm, empowered with meaning and purpose. It is essential that we not forsake that sense of awe and the joy of wonderment and mystery and surrender it for mere denial. We must continue to find ways to move beyond the too simple and often simplistic litany of what we do not believe. Those old heroes of atheism had their day, when, in the face of religious fervor, scorn and, yes, the occasional tossed rotten tomato, it required courage to carry a banner of disbelief. But to my mind the “new atheists”–like Dawkins and Hitchens and others–are going over old ground.

What is needed in our time is devotion to a life which is grounded in truth and reason but which is at the same time devoted to the religious quest. I firmly believe that to have a life of fulness, health and happiness we need to confront the world with truth and reason–but that we also need to nurture our capacity to cherish the wonder and mystery of earth and nature, the wonder and mystery of our own being and the infinite worth of every being.

The old gods of my childhood and youth seem dead or dying–and I no longer seek them or call their name. But I believe there is a sacredness in our lives and a sacredness in life itself that has it own immutable and eternal truth and I believe we are enriched in its presence and diminished to that snuffed out candle when it is denied.

I have felt something sacred in the late night alone in that ancient cathedral and may have heard there the shrill draw of murderous swords and shivered with the death of the Archbishop. And in the early morning chill of a winter night I had no doubt of an abiding presence in that Memorial to Lincoln, the Emancipator. Is that not sacred ground? At dawn I watched from the place I knew as sacred as the sunlight flew across the desert and climbed the mountain toward me and blessed me as deeply as any divine hand.

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,–both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”

EPIPHANIES

EPIPHANIES
While on sabbatical in England some years ago my family and I visited the southwestern seaside town of Minehead, one of those summer resort spots where, when I was a child, my parents and I spent our holidays. It’s a dramatic setting–a gently-curving beach, marked, at one end, by a steep hill which, in England, serves well enough for a mountain. We were there in winter-time. The beach was deserted. Braving the damp and chilly wind, we walked the sands alone, collecting shells, watching the ships heading in and out to the Bristol Channel.
As my wife and daughter became absorbed in examining the gifts from the sea
I found myself walking alone, at ease, my brain resting, it seemed, for the first time in a long time. Suddenly, everything changed. The empty beach became now covered with ugly coils of barbed wire The expanse of sand now dotted with immense concrete pyramids set to discourage enemy landing craft. Before me knelt a brown-haired little boy working in the sand with shovel and pail, digging a moat to hold off from his castle the most persistent of Norman–or Nazi–invaders. The boy stopped his work, looked up at me, stared for a moment, then smiled in recognition. The child father to the man. “Time past and time future,” T. S. Eliot wrote, “are both contained in time present.” The past and the future met. The decades folded in on each other. Promises were exchanged. The adult was promised remembrance, the child was promised future: possibility.
Each took his place in the cycle of time. It was but a moment, but a moment of profound and perfect integrity. One could ask, understandably, if the experience was “real”as if explanation would make any difference. It was moment of epiphany, defined as an unwilled, unexpected appearance. In James Joyce’s early uncompleted novel “Stephen Hero, “The character Stephen Daedelus defines Joyce’s concept of the epiphany. It is, Daedelus says, “A sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture, or in a memorable phase of the mind itself.” It is, he said,” The most delicate and evanescent(the most fleeting) of moments.”
While he was an adolescent at University College in Dublin, Joyce collected over seventy accounts of epiphanies–sudden “appearances,” flashes of intuition, “visions.” Fifty of them appear in his book “Stephen Hero” and in “Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man.” The epiphany might be described as a “revelation.” It shows us something. It demonstrates something to us in a way that perhaps no other way could. And in its offering of previously-hidden truth it sometimes presents us with the opportunity for transformation–as with Moses before the burning bush. That epiphany on the seashore at Minehead showed me the continuity of my existence. It showed me the integrity, the wholeness I had, in part, returned to England to find.
It might be that, for many complicated reasons of personality and temperament, the epiphany is experienced most often by the artist–perhaps because the artist expects to experience it. John Updike said that his stories often came to him “as a packet of material to be delivered.” In Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, the anguished Salieri studies some of Mozart’s manuscripts, manuscripts that seemed like clean copies. But he soon realizes that they are not copies, but first, and only, drafts. He says, “What was evident was that Mozart was simply transcribing music completely finished in his head. And finished as most music is never finished.” Joyce Carol Oates, writing of epiphanies, says that the epiphany is not the appearance of gods from the cosmos but is, she writes, “the evocation of an already existing but undefined interior state.”
Again, part of my mission in spending that sabbatical in England had been to recover and test some left-behind part of myself. The appearance of that child affirmed and confirmed what was already in me. His appearance brought all the various versions of “me” into some kind of reasonable wholeness–an identity which was already there, perhaps, needing only to be evoked, to be brought before “me.” Obviously, I knew in those moments–fragile and fleeting–that I was not being confronted by a ghost. I had returned to this scene after having been away for almost fifty years. Obviously I was remembering, retracing steps in the sand. I knew on some level that what I was experiencing was something, not alien, but something evoked of my own. If I hadn’t known that on some level, I probably would have run screaming down the beach.
“Evocation” means the “calling out” or “calling up.”What does the evoking? What calls up the epiphany? “Something,” Oates says, “insists on speaking through us.” What is that something? What is the source of those precious appearances, the visions, intuitions, revelations? The epiphany, I believe, is evoked, called from us not by something outside ourselves, not alien, not wholly other, but by that within us that does not love the wall we have erected between the aspects of ourselves–body separated from mind, mind from spirit, and would have it down and have us whole.
Unfortunately, that which calls the message out from with us is something which we, in western culture, have been trained to deeply distrust. The epiphany would come from that part of us that is spontaneous as opposed to the rational, deliberative, and analytical way of being we are taught to honor and value most highly. We have the tendency–particularly in western culture and perhaps particularly in our sometimes overly-rational Unitarian Universalist religion, to over-emphasize the analytical, deliberative mind, and to suppress that more “spontaneous,” more receptive part of ourselves. That may be why we do not experience more epiphanies, why we do not hear many voices, see many visions. Emerson said, “One will meet no gods who harbors none.” “The soul’s health,” Emerson said, “consists in the fulness of its reception.” That is, it is important to allow ourselves to receive, not only from the world of prosaic fact, but also from the world of wonder and intuition. This receptivity, this openness to many forms and sources of knowing makes possible the calling out, the evoking of the epiphany, the sudden appearance and revelation of what lies within us, insisting on speaking through us. But that degree of openness and receptivity to what might teach us and guide us is very difficult for most of us.
I know that, though I work hard at the discipline of meditation, I have, at best, an essentially unproductive sense of “ought” about being receptive, meditative, quiet. I tell myself that I “ought” to sit quietly and let be what will be, let come what will come. But I’m not good at it. Within a few minutes of stillness another “ought” takes over I “ought” to be doing something–something “productive.” I suppose it is part of the protestant ethic, the parental/schoolteacher voice saying, “Don’t you have anything to do?”
That time in England was my first sabbatical. I wanted to use it wisely and efficiently. I had several academic productive, sensible plans. I was going to study this, that, and the other thing and return to my work at home filled with new wisdom and purpose. As it turned out, the most important thing I accomplished–after a couple of months of struggle with my “oughts”–was allowing myself to be still and receive. It was only then that that seaside epiphany came to me. Having allowed that to be, others could follow–and eventually did.
The poet Robert Bly–long before he became a guru of the men’s movement–translated forty-four of the poems of the 15th century poet, Kabir. In Bly’s version of Kabir’s tenth poem Kabir writes, “Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing.” Ideally, we would swing freely, as our ancestors did, between the conscious and unconscious realms of our being. The problem is that most of us don’t use the swing but are frozen at the conscious, analytical place, suppressing the spontaneous, the open and receptive. Carl Jung taught that our task in growing to human maturity is to seek a place to be in which we can live comfortably between the two realms, moving between conscious and unconscious, between rational and experiential.
To attempt to live only on one side or another is to live with the danger of the other side breaking through and our being unprepared to deal with it. The compulsively active person fears the quiet and the stillness. The passive person fears the call to reach out beyond the familiar, if lonely comfort of the closely controlled and protected self. There was a time when people were quite comfortable with epiphanies, with the voices they heard and the visions they saw. But what would you do if you were hiking up a mountain and suddenly a bush beside you burst into flame and a voice from within it spoke to you? Moses, according to the story, just stood there respectfully and obediently and listened to the voice.
Unlike our forebears, we not only distrust the epiphany, the voice and vision, that which comes from the spontaneous part of our selves, we fear it. Freudian psychology–or, at least,the popular understanding of Freudian psychology–has led us to dread the unconscious as the repository of a seething mass of destructive impulses and ideas pressing always at the limits of our consciousness, threatening to burst forth and do us in. It’s a pity that our western culture became more enamored of Freud and his Jack The Ripper unconscious than of Jung with his view of the unconscious as the powerful source of creativity and of our spiritual nature.
To be open to the epiphanies which might lead us and guide us to more fulness of being, we must learn to trust the wholeness of our selves–to trust our intuition, our sense, our feeling at least as much as we trust our careful reason and analysis. Too often our intuition, the voice heard, the vision seen, the dream, is rejected out of hand–as Scrooge rejected his ghostly visitor as the product of “an undigested bit of beef.”
Knowledge does not always begin with reason. Emerson said, “You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge…trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason..by trusting it to the end, it shall ripen into truth and you shall know why you believe.” “As in any fairy tale or legend,” Joyce Carol Oates writes, “the magic key unlocks a door to a mysterious room–but do we dare enter?” Our forebears lived in many inner and outer rooms of being. They passed freely and frequently between one room and another, between one mode of being and another, between the rational and the intuitive, the manipulative and the spontaneous, the conscious and the unconscious. But now, within many of us, doors are closed, locked, rusted latches, cobweb-covered. What lies beyond the doors is mostly forgotten or conjured up as something to be at best scorned and at worst feared. We habitually live out of fragments of our selves, partial, discordant, incomplete. A healthy religious attitude is one of trust in the wholeness of existence and experience and in the wholeness and goodness of self, a willingness to enter all the rooms of our being.
“Compose yourself.” There’s an interesting phrase. It might mean”Become the composer, the creator, of your self.”"Put yourself together.”Take the fragments–the bits from here and there,the random notes and chords of your life and put them together into a wholeness. For many aboriginal young people the way into adulthood was through the vision quest–the deliberate seeking of the epiphany, the appearance of the informing, challenging vision. The young woman or man went to the mountain, the desert or forest to sit, without food or water, and await the appearance of that which would reveal to them their gifts. Some saw the great eagle, who showed them their gift for seeing far, for prophecy and knowing the future; others were visited by buffalo who gave them wisdom; some were carried about by the wind, others made shamans by Coyote.
We, too, have gifts–strengths, abilities, understandings, possibilities, directions–which lie within us unacknowledged and unused because they are in a place of self into which we do not, perhaps have dared not reach. Perhaps we dream of soaring, gliding smoothly on the winds. Then we wake and forget that epiphany of freedom, or push it out of thought, rather than feel the pain of the spirit we imprisoned for some forgotten cause. Perhaps, in a crowd, we catch a glimpse of someone familiar as a twin, someone from the cycle of our time who took the path less travelled. We shake off the impossibility of vision and hurry on to the place that is our confinement to do perhaps what makes little difference in our world. “One will meet no gods who harbors none.”
But surely not every god in us is dead? Surely not every message waiting in our souls to be evoked and set before us in epiphany has been dried up and blown away? I don’t think we would be here if that were true. We have given up on sacred books and holy men who can work magic and do no wrong. We have lost faith in the ancient desert god and in the old men who carried his bone sin to musty creeds and dogmas. But I think we are here because we hope still to experience something remarkable, some vision of what is true and good and beautiful and we hope still to hear a voice that will call us to come and listen to an ancient new story that will be the very one, the very story we heard once, forgot, and long to hear again.
I know that’s why I am here. I am here to tell you my stories so that you will continue to believe or so that you will come to believe .I come here to be among you as an ordinary person–one you see going into the bathroom, one you see with a runny nose, with a frayed cuff and spotted tie: very ordinary, not at all saintly, priestly, or other-worldly. Very much like you, which is the point.
For I am here to tell you that I encounter epiphanies. I see visions. I hear voices. I soar as an eagle. I converse with desert squirrels on mountaintops. There, on a beach in winter, in a passing moment, I meet myself playing in the sand. I looked up and there I was visiting from many years hence and it was good and I smiled in recognition. I tell you this so that you will know that there is a place where you can go–a place you know about where you may sigh out the weight of the world –or there is a place in your home in a quiet time where you can practice the patient discipline of quietly waiting for a brief encounter, an epiphany, a vision, a voice, an understanding welling up into the quiet you have made.
I close with this from Annie Dillard:

When her doctor too her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw the tree with the lights in it (which was a tree in bloom). It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with lights in it. I stood on the grass with lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power.

May you have visions and may your visions empower you to live with them fully and joyfully.

“To Be Or Not To Be” (a sermon on assisted suicide)

“Whether ‘Tis Better To Suffer”
by
Edward Frost

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.

In this perhaps most often quoted of what is perhaps Shakespeare’s best known play Hamlet considers the fragility of life; the all-too-brief light, brief as a spark, ending inevitably in death’s nothingness–or perchance to pass into eternal dreams. “Ah ,there’s the rub.”
As Hamlet speaks of death, he begins to muse on suicide–to consider if ending one’s life rather than enduring life’s pain might be the better course.“ To be or not to be; that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? ‘tis a consummation,” Hamlet says, “devoutly to be wished.”
On the other hand, is it perhaps more “noble” to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that flesh is heir to?” In his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” the existentialist philosopher, Albert Camus, plays on the theme of Hamlet’s musing of “To be or not to be” as he wrote:

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest-whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories–comes afterwards. These are games. One must first answer [the question of suicide].”

These are the questions that lie at the heart of the continuing civic, philosophic and religious struggle with the issue of suicide–particularly the issue of assisted suicide. If we are suffering the agonies of illness and disease for which there is no cure, suffering most of us cannot imagine which, after months or years inevitably ends in death–should we not have the right to by taking action “take arms against them and by opposing end them? Should we not have the right to choose for oneself when it is good, and moral and timely to die and to seek the help of those who are prepared to help us die in dignity ,in peace, safety and in the company of friends, loved ones and compassionate helpers?
At the present time, assisted dying is legal in only three states. Oregon was the first state to pass a “Death With Dignity” act. which authorizes physicians to provide lethal drugs. Washington and Montana have a similar laws.

An article in “CNN Health” says,

“The idea of allowing someone to end his or her own life is undoubtedly controversial.The article points out that in Gallup’s 2011 Values and Beliefs poll conducted in March of this year45% of Americans consider doctor-assisted suicide morally acceptable, –and 48% believe it’s morally wrong; The article reported that the split was closer than on other hot-button issues such as abortion, having a child out of wedlock and cloning animals.”

Frankly, I was surprised to read that almost half those surveyed considered doctor-assisted suicide morally acceptable, given the fact that only three states in any way condone it. Of course, I don’t know where the survey was conducted: it might have been in those three states in which it is legal. What are the objections to assisted suicide? Obviously, not everyone believes that ending one’s own life is “devoutly to be wished for.”
One of the objections is that suffering is somehow “redemptive.” We often read of someone’s death as one who “suffered heroically” in his or her “battle” with a terrible illness. Here the wish to not suffer “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” but to oppose them, to end them, seems to be judged by some to be a selfish and even cowardly–ignoble choice–to end a life which, though lived in the fog of drugs and in terrible pain when the drugs wear off with shorter and shorter periods of relief which can only end in death prolonged. Either choice, “To be or not to be,” to cling to life with all the palliative care that science and medicine can offer or by choosing to end the suffering–either choice may be courageous. It is not for us to judge the choice of others. We can only work to assure that those who suffer have the choice to bear it for their own reasons or to end it in their own time and by their own means.
Shortly after leaving the congregation I served in Atlanta the Associate Minister who had worked with me, The Rev. Suzanne Meyer, developed inoperable and terminal cancer. Another colleague was a constant companion to Suzanne in her last days. She writes, “Suzanne was in unbearable pain whenever the morphine wore off, and it was hell for those of us who loved her to have to bear it as witnesses from the outside, let alone how it must have felt to her.” This, by the way, is another objection to assisted suicide–that the suffering person will be persuaded by that “hell” of those who can only stand by helplessly to end their lives, not for their own sake, but for the sake of their loved one.
But Suzanne’s companion, The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger, s writes,

Everything in me screams out that that pain was not in any way redemptive. It was, instead, the exact opposite–it was reductive. A person in that kind of intense, unrelieved pain, with no end in sight except death, is not gaining character or spiritual power or anything else. They are losing their humanity and their personhood, they are struggling without meaning and without purpose and with no end except death.

Having been with so many people in that struggle personally I don’t need to be convinced of what has seemed to me be to be “struggle without meaning.” If there is some kind of heroism or nobility in it I cannot imagine what it could be. “What’s wrong with lying peacefully in bed,” my colleague writes, “Saying good-bye to loved ones, listening perhaps to music or sounds of nature, and then quietly and with full humanity letting go as the breath stops? Why,” she asks, “is struggling in pain, crying out, face distorted, tears flowing, family members helpless and distraught, considered more authentically human?”
In a powerful, deeply compassionate PBS documentary called “The Suicide Tourist” (which you can access online),a man suffering in the final stages of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) says “As you experience yourself draining inexorably away you come to see yourself as an empty shell, existing mostly to take in and excrete fluids.” He finally made arrangements with one of the four legal assisted suicide organizations in Sweden and died peacefully with their help with his wife by his side.
There are, of course, many people–that fifty percent or so–who believe that there is a lot wrong with ending one’s own life–assisted or not. There are powerful and perhaps immutable religious objections that, like the issue of abortion may never be resolved..For many people, the answer to the question “Whose life is it anyway?” Is simple and beyond question. For believers, our lives are not ours alone but belong to God–and it is the gravest of sins to deliberately end them.
The Roman Catholic Council of Bishops does not object to palliative care and supports patient’s final directives that no “heroic measures” (an interesting way to put it) be taken to prolong their lives. But the bishops draw the line at suicide, reaffirming the doctrine that suicide is a sin, that life, no matter how unbearable, is a gift of God which no one can set aside without fear of sin from which there may be no redemption. Other religious bodies support palliative care but most also embrace the doctrine that life belongs to God and no one has the right to end it–or to assist in ending it.
The man with ALS, in discussing his decision to end his life, said “I have decided that it is my time–my time to die. I know there are some who object to my decision, but, then, who’s life is it?” I find it interesting that in Hamlet’s soliloquy he does not include God in the dilemma “To be or not to be.” “That is the question,” he says, and he apparently assumes that it requires a human answer. But the traditional religious conviction is that since God breathed life into Adam the breath of our life is the gift of God–even when that breath is noisily drawn by a machine, whether the sufferer would choose to have that breath drawn or not.
Generally speaking, I believe it is pointless to argue against belief–unless that belief involves violence or oppression against others. But I find it difficult to understand the nature of a God who demands that a person of faith continue to prolong life into weeks and months of excruciating pain. The traditional answer to questions of “God’s will” is either that we have no answer–that God has his reasons and that we cannot always know them; Or, that God requires the prolongation of suffering to prove or demonstrate the faith of the sufferer.
In the play, “J. B.” by Archibald MacLeish based on the biblical book of Job, God has inflicted all manner of suffering on Job. He strips Job of all that he had possessed as a formerly rich man and afflicts him with horrendous sores that caused him to sit on an ash heap and scrape at them in agony. All his suffering, according to the narrative, is for God to prove to Satan and to Job’s skeptical friends that Job will remain faithful to God no matter what abominations God piles on him. Finally, J.B.’s long-suffering wife has had enough of this contest between divine and human will and says to her husband, “Curse God and die.”
We should note that the biblical story of Job is derived from one of the oldest narratives in human history. In the ancient narrative the story ends with the faithful one continuing in his agony. But the Hebrew writers, in adapting the story, gave meaning and purpose to enduring suffering by providing an alternative ending in which Job is redeemed from his suffering and all his possessions are multiplied ten-fold as reward for his faithfulness.
“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…” In my mind, there is no nobility in such suffering.
But if it eases the minds of the dying and their loved ones to believe God has some purpose in it, in their presence I can only keep my deeply religious objection to it to myself and minister as best I can. Some object to any form of assisted suicide, whether by the assistance of compassion in dying organizations or, even where the law allows, by physicians, because they fear that assisting the terminally ill and suffering to die we would be stepping on that proverbial “slippery slope”and the reasons for choosing to die would become less and less compelling. In time, so the objection goes, assistance in suicide could become easily available to anyone who simply wants to die.
But those of us who argue for change in the laws against assisted suicide are not by any means arguing for helping people to die who are simply literally “bored to death” with life. We are not even speaking of helping people to die who, they feel, have lived long enough and want to end it before the infirmities of aging take their toll. We are not even considering helping people to die who suffer from mental illness–perhaps persistent and life-sapping depression. Organizations such as “Final Exit” and “Compassion and “Choices”are not going to consider helping people to die who have decided they cannot answer Camus’ question of whether or not life has sufficient meaning to endure it. The issue of assisted suicide is by no means a contention that suffering or disabled people ought to die. The issue, again, has to do with whether or not one suffering greatly from a terminal illness ought to have the right to choose to die–to perhaps die with the assistance of a physician or with the assistance of such organizations as Compassion & Choices, Final Exit or the Hemlock Society.
A compelling reason for working toward legalizing these organizations is that it really is not as easy to end ones life as one might think. I recall the tragedy of an aging theology professor and his wife who decided to end their lives together. They shared a lovely candlelit dinner then lay down on their bed side by side and drank what they believed to be a lethal poison. Sadly, the poison did end the life of the professor but did not end the life of his wife who survived with irreversible brain damage.
Assistance in dying by compassionate and knowledgeable people is essential because suicide is not easy,as the theme song of the movie “Mash” claims and the consequences of botching the task can be tragic. What we wish for those who are convinced that their lives have become unbearable is that they have the right to choose to be assisted in dying, dying peacefully with compassionate befriends and perhaps with loved ones by their side as their journey ends.
In 1988 the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association adopted a “Death With Dignity” Resolution. The Resolution began in relation to the first of Unitarian Universalism’s Seven Principles: “That we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person and that we are] Guided by our belief as Unitarian Universalists that human life has inherent dignity, which may be compromised when life is extended “beyond the will or ability of a person to sustain that dignity; and believing that it is every person’s inviolable right to determine in advance the course of action to be taken in the event “that there is no reasonable expectation of recovery from extreme physical or mental disability.”
There are several “Whereases” and “Be It Resolved” in the Resolution but I believe the essence of it is: “That Unitarian Universalists advocate the right to self-determination in dying, and the release from civil or criminal penalties of those who, under proper safeguards, act to honor the right of terminally ill patients to select the time of their own deaths; And–BE IT RESOLVED: That Unitarian Universalists, acting through their congregations, memorial societies, and appropriate organizations, inform and petition legislators to support legislation that will create legal protection for the right to die with dignity, in accordance with one’s own choice.”
Again, the issue here is choice. And it is every bit as profound a religious choice as it is for the Roman Catholic Council of Bishops–because the choices before us, whether they have to do with choosing to die or a woman’s right to choose have to do with our theological and philosophical convictions about the nature, source and, literally in the end, the “ownership” of human life. I insert here a passage from a letter Rev. Meyer wrote to her friends in her final days:

My health failed me in the end,” she says, but my friends did not. I never felt abandoned by God, or punished; in fact, my cancer brought me closer to God by bringing me closer to other people’s suffering. My greatest life-long fear was that I would die sick and alone in some indifferent institution. Thanks to my loving friends, I never felt alone or isolated. I was overwhelmed by the love of friends. Through them I caught a glimpse of heaven.

To be or not to be.That is the question.”

May we stand for the right and freedom to freely choose the answer for ourselves.

I used the following passage as closing words in the Service in which this sermon was delivered. It is from a sermon by the Rev. Kathleen McTigue, Senior Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of New Haven.

“There is no absolutely clear place for us to stand on this issue. We have to walk with supreme care, respect and compassion, and be prepared to struggle mightily for clarity in each singular case. But we have to begin to shine a light here, to talk about it, to tell our stories, to open our hearts to all the contradictory and sometimes painful realizations that arise. We have to find ways to push forward laws that more truly reflect the realities we are now living — the realities we are now dying. ”

THE GREAT AMERICAN RELIGION

THE GREAT AMERICAN RELIGION

by
Edward A.Frost

One of the reasons for the emigration to the shores of North America in the 17th century was to establish new colonies in which religious groups, such as the Puritans, the German and Swiss Lutherans, and the Quakers could practice their religion freely .But to say that those oppressed people of faith were seeking to establish freedom of religion in America would not be strictly true. With the exception of the middle Atlantic colonies such as Rhode Island and Pennsylvania there was precious little religious freedom, and little, if any, religious toleration, in the new settlements.
The contracts and charters of the early colonies specifically forbade the practice of any but the “official religion” of the colony,.and the punishment for heresy could be death or banishment They punished anyone suspected of “popish practices”with public whippings or worse,and required everywhere, by law,attendance at the one available public worship Fervent believers in their own faith,they were not believers in the right of anyone else to hold and practice a religion of free choice.
In spite of the almost fanatical intolerance of the colonists, however, there were factors which came eventually to make religious tolerance possible in America.First of all, sheer space can create a context for freedom.And there was plenty of space in North America.If the Massachusetts colony would not tolerate Roman Catholicism,the people could, and did, move to Mary–land Where the Anglicans were made to feel unwelcome–as the next worse thing to Roman Catholics–they could, and did, move to the South. The Dutch Reformed and the German Lutherans settled to the North–and in New Jersey, and later, of course, to Lake Wobegon.
In time, this outward flow of settlers began to force an economic reality on the Pilgrim Fathers and their descendants. The financial backers of the colonies, the trading companies and the governments, realized that religious intolerance was, if not essentially irreligious, then economically impractical. The financial backers of colonization wanted to open up the prime trading areas in the new land, not limit them. So the ruling classes, the clergy and the colonial governors were soon forced by government and company decree to reluctantly admit believers of diverse faiths into their midst if not into their hearts. Religious toleration came to America, then, not so much as a Grand Ideal–the light from blighted and darkened Europe being brought to shine in the Promised Land–but as a very practical matter
By the time of the revolution, religious pluralism in America was a fact–a fact of toleration if not acceptance. It only remained for the framers of the Constitution to make sure that no single religion could ever so bond itself with government as to wield power over other religions or over the state itself. In matters of religion, the framers of the Constitution themselves were, for the most part, religiously neutral or privately disinterested. And they were determined that the government itself was to be, if not a-religious, then religiously neutral. Benjamin Franklin financially supported just about every church that asked him. He did attend a Presbyterian church for awhile,but stopped going when he felt that the minister was more interested in making people Presbyterians than he was in making them religious.
The Jeffersonians believed that the primary function of religion was to support government in promoting the public welfare. It was therefore a function of government to protect the welfare of religion–just about any religion. Though Jefferson’s personal religious ideas were profoundly liberal for his day–tending toward the unitarian– he believed that religious ideas–just about any religious ideas–promoted order, morality and contentment. For this reason, Jefferson said of the churches, they are all “good enough.”
And so it became the function of government to promote, not religion, but the free practice of religion and to prevent the coming to inordinate influence of any single religion. It was written,”Congress shall make no law in respect to the establishment of religion.” Religious pluralism came to American, then, by steady progression. Quakers, Methodists, Anglicans, Lutherans, Unitarians, Roman Catholics, Baptists–all practicing freely with the protection and consent of the nation’s constitution. The people did not need to tolerate each other socially, but they did have to tolerate each other legally. The Roman Catholics were free to practice their religion and in aristocratic Boston the Brahmin Episcopalians and their fellow aristocratic Unitarians were free to look down their noses at them.
Out of all the particular beliefs, and out of all the particular faiths, there arose in America a kind of “common faith:” a common religion by unspoken consent. This “common religion” has been variously called “Civic Religion,” “The Religion of the Republic,” and “The American Religion.” The common religion boasts a belief in God, immortality, and Responsibility (some surveys guess that 90% of American “Believe in God.” The Jeffersonians believed this was the essential faith of the churches which Jefferson deemed “good enough.” Aside from those basic religious concepts, as far as the state was concerned, whatever else people chose to believe was their own business and irrelevant in the public realm. The American Republic, though it favors no particular religion, is not a-religious or non-religious and never has been
“We believe that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Abraham Lincoln, though he refused to belong to any specific church, was a firm believer in and adherent of the American Religion. “We must continue in the right,” he said, “As God gives us to see the right.” In every presidential inaugural–with the exception of Washington’s—and in almost every political oration of note, the precepts of the American religion are set forth. In 1948, Dwight Eisenhower said, “I am the most intensely religious man I know. Nobody goes through six years of war without a faith That doesn’t mean I adhere to any particular sect” And again in 1952, Eisenhower said, “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply-felt religious faith–and I don’t care what it is.” In his Inaugural Address, John Kennedy said, “…I have sworn before you and Almighty God.” And, Kennedy said, that Americans had fought around the globe for one tenet of the American religion, “The belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hands of God ”
A basic tenet of the American Religion is obviously that it doesn’t matter what one believes as long as what one believes does not stray far from the core of the common religion. It is assumed in the religion of the Republic that everyone believes there is a God and that God favors and supports the American people, their endeavors, and “The American Way.” American Religion and the American Enterprise are inextricably bound. The concept of the American Enterprise as being the “Second Exodus” was explicit in many speeches and essays of 18th and 19th century public leaders. Like the Hebrews of ancient time,The American people had a great Exodus, a journey melding a single, powerful identity E Pluribus Unum. The American Exodus was the Exodus from Europe And the American people believe, like the Hebrews of old, that out of that Exodus, they became a chosen people.
An understanding of this element of the American Religion helps a little in understanding some of our foreign and domestic policy and of our general attitude toward the rest of the world. It is inconceivable to the average American that God could be anything other than the amalgamation of superman and Santa Claus conjured in the western mind’s eye. The doctrine of “Manifest Destiny,”as applied to and against other nations–including the nations of the indigenous peoples of America—has been grounded in the religious concept that God is like us, made in our image and sanctifies our ways . The American Religion has its rituals, priests, icons ,places of worship, holy shrines, ceremonies,holy days—and even hymns. Almost every president has had what Philip Roth, in his novel “Our Gang,” called “the spiritual coach” Billy Graham was the spiritual coach to a congregation of presidents. Think what it means that it was Billy Graham’s religion which has provided spiritual guidance to decades of American political leadership Well, what it means is precisely nothing. Religion, in the realm of politics, is “good enough” as long as it is essentially meaningless and without significant effect or requirement
It has been a long, long time since the nation has heard prophetic preaching like that of Harry Emerson Fosdick, founding minister of Riverside Church in New York, who, during the First World War, called the churches, “Adjuncts of the war department ”Or preaching like that of Unitarian Community Church’s John Haynes Holmes, who continued to preach pacifism in the face of war fever. The spiritual coach—the priests of the American Religion—are morally and ethically neutral in matters of state They have to be. That’s the American Way in Religion. The political leaders decide where God stands and civic religion’s preachers cry “Amen.”
The Founding Fathers considered the value of religion to be that it helped keep the Commonwealth together. Sociologists of religion, like Max Weber, have called religion, “the glue that binds society.” The American Religion has High Holy Days such as Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. On these days the processions processions form with symbols and icons held high–processions proceeding to the meeting places where clergy of the Republic’s faith call down the blessings of its God on all we have done and on all we are about to do.
In a congregation I once served, I earned the animosity of many of its members by refusing to take my turn at offering public prayer at the city’s observance of national holy days, and for refusing to personally ring our church’s steeple bell when the war in Vietnam was officially over. I am not unpatriotic; but I am also not, as Fosdick said, an adjunct of the war department. I am not a functionary to legitimize public celebration of barbaric behavior—whatever the outcome—and I am not a believer that being patriotic means holding and preach the doctrine of “my country, right or wrong, my country” Those clergy who have stood against the behavior of the Republic are often branded as malcontents at best and heretics and worst. It is unthinkable to devotees of the American Religion that any clergy person would suggest that what America does and how American lives might either be contrary to the Will of God or of no interest to God at all. The religious right–including the “Tea Party” sect–rises from the ground of rigorous dogma, passionately held, intransigent, committed and intolerant. Several. GOP candidates for the presidency have signed a pledge that, if elected, they will work toward an amendment to the Constitution that will declare that marriage is to be defined as between a man and a woman. One front-runner candidate has declared that evolution is “just a theory.”
The religious right holds its own dangers for America. The American Civic Religion is vacuous, empty, without ethical or moral content or moral demand. And that, too, holds its dangers. To say that God exists is to say nothing that changes the world for the better. A biblical writer said that the devil himself believes that God exists. Every nation that has tried to rape the world and oppress and enslave its people has carried with it into battle the belief–or at least the declaration–that God was on its side. Every army has chaplains in its ranks.
Because the American Religion is without form and without significant content and because it is without ethical or moral demand, it is largely impotent—powerless to do what religion ought to do—and that is to stand in prophetic judgment of the state. Even the personal priest of the Roman emperors had a more prophetic role than our spiritual coaches The Roman priest’s function was to stand behind the emperor as the crowd’s roared their acclaim and whisper into his ear from time to time “Remember, thou art mortal.”
If the churches and sects of the Republic have lost their bearing and significance, it is because they have surrendered their identities to merge and become indistinguishable from the great, vague, meaningless civic religion. I see that the minister of a church in my neighborhood is beginning a series of three sermons on the Apostles Creed: as if it could possibly matter–as if such an exposition could possibly matter to our world of sorrow, tragedy and atrocity.
With the exception of a Berrigan brother here and there, the prophets of the nation are not the faith communities or the clergy judging from altar and pulpit. Today’s prophets are much more likely to be writing in the editorial pages of the daily newspapers. So, in spite of what the Constitution says, there is an established religion in America It is the recognized religion of the Republic, the American Civil Religion, inseparable from the American politic, and inseparable from “the American Way of Life” Its God is praised on its currency, sworn to in its classrooms and courtrooms, and invoked amid the chatter in its legislative halls There is no doubt in my mind that if the western nations war with the nations of Islam it will be fought as a holy war. Christian “truth” pitted against Islamic error. The Blessed Trinity against Eastern Apostasy The One True God, of course, on our side The next war will be a crusade.
Barry Goldwater (remember him?) said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” But freedom is empty without justice. A great hymn says, “All whose boast it is that ye, come from forebears brave and free; If there breathes on earth a slave, are ye truly free and brave?” Eternal vigilance must be the price–not only of freedom—but of justice and possibility for every person. The Unitarian Universalist theologian, James Luther Adams, declared that “Faith must be the sister to justice”
Now, as much as ever, now more than ever, it is necessary for every person of faith in justice and compassion to take her and his religion seriously, to know its careful evolution in which its principles were crafted, to know the principles of a faith which commands commitment to ultimate values. When we pay attention to the beliefs of the presidential hopeful, it is critical that we pay attention to our own–that we know what difference is made by what we believe.
It is the function of true religion to be, not unpatriotic, but everlastingly suspicious of the state. When religion and the state find themselves in accord, religion must sleep uneasy with its bedfellow. For these are not true lovers. Where the state is obsessed with power, religion is obsessed with justice; where the state is concerned with wealth, religion is concerned with the lives of distinct human beings; where the state is concerned with national and civic pride, religion is concerned with compassion and mercy.
We religious liberals must continually pursue the nurture of a mature moral faith, faith which—far from being the handmaiden of the state—will be forever the itch and the conscience of the state. With all due respect to Dwight Eisenhower, America’s civic religion is not “good enough.” No religion is good enough which does not harass, buzz, and bedevil the state until the foremost mission of the Republic becomes justice, compassion and possibility for all.
May we hasten that day

DEARLY BELOVED: SAME SEX MARRIAGE

“”Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and this company to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an estate ordained by God and sanctioned by the state.” That, give or take a few words, is the opening of the wedding ceremony as found in most traditional Service books and as used by most traditional Christians. It contains the propositions in the issue likely to continue to be one of the most controversial and divisive of this era.”>”Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and this company to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an estate ordained by God and sanctioned by the state.” That, give or take a few words, is the opening of the wedding ceremony as found in most traditional Service books and as used by most traditional Christians. It contains the propositions in the issue likely to continue to be one of the most controversial and divisive of this era.
The propositions are that matrimony–marriage–is an “estate”–that is, a “condition under which persons live,” which is ordained by God and sanctioned by–that is, authorized by the state.
A Wedding is one thing. Marriage is something else. Clergy conduct wedding ceremonies. Only couples can make a marriage.
Marriage is an arrangement based on certain agreed-upon, largely culturally-determined ways in which two persons live together.
Their intention is, generally, to share living space, to be partners in their future, and, in most cases, to raise children together. There are usually contracts involved, some imposed by the state in which the marriage is initiated–to protect the rights of each person and to protect any children of the marriage.
Some contracts are legally-drawn between the couple (such as prenuptial agreements) and some contracts are unspoken, implicit (such as, “I will be this and you will be that).
Now, two people–or several, if so inclined–can live together without legal license to do so. They can insist that they are married “in the eyes of God” or “by nature.” And that’s all well and good unless they attempt to take that marriage to market, to school, or to the mortgage company.
The unromantic reality is that the state does determine who can use the term “married” and who cannot–at least, and gain any material benefit from doing so. So, on what basis does the state stick it’s non-too-attractive nose into all that romance and loveliness apparent at the wedding?
And, pressed to the present extreme, where does the state get off declaring that marriage is not simply between two persons but specifically between one male and one female person?
And where does the state get off deciding when marriage is no longer workable and can be dissolved? Can’t two adults be trusted to do what is best for them?
Well, you and I know that quite a few adults cannot, in fact, be trusted to do what is best for them, let alone for someone else. But the state’s position is that, adult or not, even adults–and the state determines who is an adult–even adults cannot be trusted to do what is best for the public good.
“…for the public good.”
Here’s the sticky part. Who decides what is for the public good? Of course, theoretically, we the citizens, define the public good: but let’s get back to that. What about the assumption that traditional, heterosexual marriage is for the public good and is the only acceptable model? After all, it is on the basis of this assumption that the Bush administration enacted the “Defense of Marriage Act “fifteen years ago. “Doma,” for short.
The “Defense of Marriage Ace” was struck down by a Federal judge last year in Massachusetts as unconstitutional.
The Federal Defense of Marriage Act defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman for purposes of all federal laws, and provides that states need not recognize a marriage from another state if it is between persons of the same sex.
Thirty-seven states have their own Defense of Marriage Acts Several states have strong language that defines marriage as one man and one woman. There are thirty states that have constitutional amendments protecting traditional marriage.
Two months ago the Obama administration declared that it would no longer defend the Act and the Justice Department withdrew it’s challenge. However, House Speaker, John Boener declared that the House would hire a private lawyer, using funds from the the Justice Department Budget, to defend the constitutionality of the Law.
This means, of course, that the defense of the act would be paid for by our taxes.
The “private lawyer,” was King and Spaulding of Atlanta, whose fees are $500 an hour.
In this continuing farce, King and Spaulding dropped their defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. That led one of their most prominent partners, Paul Clement, to resign from the firm immediately and join another law firm in order to continue to defend the act.
Each of us should loudly complain to our representatives that public funds are being used to defend this unconstitutional action. It is nothing but blatant political pandering to such entities as the Tea Party and the religious right.
If you have access the the internet and specifically to Facebook you will find several opportunities to petition Boehner and President Obama to scuttle this outrageous Act.
The official line is that Marriage needs this “boost” of the Defense of Marriage Act because marriage and the family are currently in grave danger from advocates of same–sex marriage and heterosexual marriage and the family, they insist, are the “bedrock” of our national, public health and well being.
The fact is that, as Maria Russo puts it in her article “The Marriage Hoax,” “…marriage has always been a shaky, contested, unreliable institution, and we’re kidding ourselves that it was ever any other way.”
We may despair of the moral state of the nation, but there is no evidence whatsoever that that state is any worse than it was fifty years ago. A large contingent of citizens has always despaired of the moral state of the nation.
In his “love alters not when it alteration finds Sonnet,” Shakespeare wrote that rather love should “bear it out even to the edge of doom.” Well, what a happy marriage that must be.
Pure nonsense, of course.
Love that does not alter when it means, for example, staying with a brutal, abusive partner, is not love but either fear or obsession which, too often, does end in doom for the abused.
It is a strange position to take, it seems to me, that we would all be better off if people who cannot bear each other were forced to remain married.
So, bottom line, marriage is not the rock stable institution it is often advertised to be and actually never has been.
As for the sanctity of marriage and its spiritual value to our culture–the so-called “sacred institution between a man and a woman”–to be preserved at all costs, let me just say this–Britney Spears.
As you may recall, one of pop-culture’s finest, Britney Spears, and a fellow named Jason Alexander, (not Seinfeld’s side-side-kick) buzzed off to a little wedding chapel a couple of years ago and, on a lark, got married. Legally. Really married.
The marriage lasted for fifty-five hours–and was annulled.
A columnist Ellen Goodman, suggested at the time Britney and Jason may have done more for gay marriage than all the gay rights advocates put together.
Assorted folk chimed in with the same thought: “Hey, a man and woman can get married on a lark,” the say “but when a committed gay couple wants to make it legal, they’re accused of wrecking the institution.”
I say all this about marriage simply to fly the facts in the face of those who say that same-sex marriage will weaken and de-stabilize traditional marriage. The reality is clearly that traditional marriage has managed to be de-sanctified and destabilized quite well without the presence of same sex couples in its midst.
So why should those on the outside of this institution want to get in? Because–although marriage is obviously not for everyone–marriage is, actually, “a good thing.”
And, after all, believe it or not, I am speaking for marriage this morning. Let’s keep in mind that, while fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, fifty percent do not–and for that fifty percent marriage is a way of living that blesses and helps to support loving and supportive relationship.
As George Eliot wrote in a frequently chosen wedding ceremony “What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow, “to share with each other in all gladness, to be one with each other in silent unspoken memories?”
Again, it isn’t necessary to have a wedding ceremony or to jump through the state’s hoops to enjoy this promise and quality of relationship.
But there is no question but that public declaration of an intention to enter into a long-term partnership, to share responsibilities and to care for each other has its value for many people; if this is what is meant by “being married,” then marriage provides the structure to hold those promises and intentions and helps to preserve and support them.
Happily married people–people in that bond of relatedness–have been shown to live longer and healthier lives than the unmarried, unrelated population in general.
And, there is no question that the legal marriage does safeguard to some extent the rights of married persons and to some extent protects children of the marriage.
Here’s the rub: None of this needs to have or ought to have anything to do with the race, color–or gender of the married persons. Why on earth should John and George or Harriet and Julia not enjoy for the rest of their lives together (or for as long as they mutually desire) all the rights, privileges, and protections that Britney and Jason enjoyed for fifty-five hours?
Because same sex relationships are an abomination in the sight of God?
What is in the sight of God is in the eyes of the beholder and ought to have nothing whatsoever to do with what is legal or illegal. If any religion chooses to deny same sex partners the benefit of clergy, that’s their business.
Same sex marriage would undermine and devalue traditional marriage? Please.
Again, people have been undermining and devaluing traditional marriage for centuries without the help of same-sex partners. There is not a whisker of evidence that same-sex unions, legal or not, have any affect whatsover on “traditional marriage.”
The Bible, the Koran, our Sacred Scriptures do not support marriage between men or between women? Anyone who uses this argument must be suggesting that our laws ought to grounded in religious faith.
“Sacred Scripture” undergirding of over-riding civic law. The “Defense of Marriage Act” is, I believe, clearly unconstitutional in that there is no ground for denying same sex marriage other than religion.
So, putting aside any religious grounding–or a federal law–for the assumption that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman what’s left as argument against same sex marriage?
If what is left after constitutionally irrelevant arguments are discounted is “marriage is between a man and a woman because–because it just is. Well, that just won’t do. We won’t have it. That, too, we shall overcome.
Laws against same sex marriage are grounded in the benighted agreement of the majority of the citizens of the nation (and the collusion of their their elected representatives) that it’s a bad thing and we’re against it–much like the laws saying people of color may not drink out certain water fountains or sit in the front of the bus and that women may not vote were based on common agreement.
I’ve been around long enough to remember how unthinkable it was, for most people, that people of different races would marry.
In many places, during my professional lifetime, it would be inviting the worst kind of violence for a black person to marry a white person. For that matter, I’ve been around long enough to remember how unthinkable it was, for many people, for people of different religions to marry.
Therefore, I suggest that there is nothing absolute at all about marriage being only between a man and a woman.
Whatever laws there are or will be asserting such a thing are not ordained of God or grounded in nature but are expressive of un-evolved public views and values.
And public views and values change when enough citizens change their opinions and advise their representatives That the laws no longer represent their values.
That’s our job as citizens. And that’s our responsibility as people of faith who believe in the civil rights of all people–To make sure our elected representatives–Presidents, Speakers, and high ranking members of Congress–know without a shadow of a doubt what our opinions are.
I am encouraged by the words of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as it upheld the decision of a lower court supporting same sex marriage.
In the words of her decision, Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Margaret Marshall said, “For no rational reason the marriage laws of the Commonwealth discriminate against a defined class; no amount of tinkering with language will eradicate than stain.”
And, in case that wasn’t clear to some, she went on to say, “Barred access to the protections, benefits and obligations of civil marriage, a person who enters into an intimate exclusive union with another of the same sex is arbitrarily deprived of membership in one our community’s most rewarding and cherished institutions.”
Whether or not the ruling stands, of course, remains to be seen. I fear that much of the social and moral progress our nation has made may be under severe challenges in the coming era.
But the movement now in several states for the freedom of gay couples to marry–in spite of the Defense of Marriage Act–is clearly the shape of things to come.
I conducted the first same sex wedding to be held in the chapel of Emory University. The University Board of Trustees and the president of the University castigated me, in person and in the newspaper–falling back on the religious values of the Christian foundation of the university.
But the wedding was held–with added guests from the Atlanta police department for protection of me, the wedding party and guests. It was a lovely wedding.
I have conducted same sex weddings for many years and I intend to continue to do so when asked.
I can’t sign their wedding licenses as an agent of the state and give loving couples who wish to publicly proclaim their commitment the same rights, protections, and privileges as I give other people I marry.
But, as far as I’m concerned, they will be as “married” as any other couple who stand before me, and their friends and family, and their household gods and proclaim their love, fidelity, and care.
And if, some day, if one of my grandchildren should become a minister, or a judge, or, better yet, the captain of a garbage scow, I believe that he will be able to celebrate the wedding of John and George or Harriet and Julia, sign their license, sending them off into marital bliss for as long as love shall last.
And, as Shakespear’s Sonnet ends: “If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no [person] ever loved.”

QURAN BURNING

Deftly mixing metaphors within a single sentence, Terry Moore, pastor of the (fortunately) rapidly diminishing congregation of the “Dove World Outreach Center” in Gainesville, Florida said recently, “It was intended to stir the pot, to shake the boat.” “It” was a “trial” held in the church on March 20 with judge, jury, prosecutor and defense attorney–oh, and of course there was the accused: the Quran.
A “jury,” was made up of a few of Moore’s remaining parishioners supplemented by a few local Muslim haters. Judgement was swift. The “defense attorney,” an Imam from Texas, called no witnesses. The convicted Quran was deemed clearly guilty of spreading violence, death and terrorism. Shades of medieval “justice,” the condemned was publicly burned.
Within hours, violence broke out in Afghanistan in protest against the desecration of the Holy Book of Islam. As of this writing, nine people are known to have been killed and over 80 injured. Clearly expecting some repercussion, Moore asks, “Did our action provoke them? Of course. Is it a provocation that can be justified? Is it provocation that should lead to death?” It was a provocation the consequences of which were entirely predictable. Should it have led to deaths? Of what earthly difference does “should” make? Predictable effect followed deliberate cause. Moore is quoted as saying, “People have tried to make us responsible for the people who are killed. It’s unfair and somewhat damaging.” In response to a comment by a person he was interviewing, William F. Buckley once said “I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”
Moore has stated that his mission is to spread the word that “Islam and the Quran are instruments of violence.” No doubt there are references to violence in the Quran. Some mis-interpret and mis-use them as a rationale to violence. But millions of Muslims live and love peace as inspired by the book they revere as Holy.
Surely “Pastor” Moore is aware of the slaughter and violence depicted and even sanctioned in parts of the Hebrew Testament. And, yes, the Bible has been misused to justify violence against “unbelievers.” Why not burn it along with the Quran, since it has been so misused? But millions of Jews revere the Torah–the first five books of the Hebrew Testament–and millions of Christians and Jews are inspired to seek peace and justice by the Book they hold as the Word of God.
Book burning is now and has always been an odious stunt–from the church in the middle ages out of its fear of “heresy” to the bonfires of the Nazis out their fear of Truth–establishing nothing but the cowardice and mindless bigotry of the perpetrators. In this event, the burning of a book held sacred by people of the Islamic faith resulted in deaths and scores of injuries. And, yes, I for one hold Terry Moore and the “trial” he orchestrated to be responsible for that tragic outcome.
Then there is the despicable behavior of the members of The Westboro Baptist Church and their pastor, Fred Phelps (I doubt that many Baptists would claim them). These fanatics spew their fear and hatred of gay people by gathering near graveside Services for young soldiers killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. They wave their crude signs reading “God Hates Fags” and shout above the prayers and the cries of mourning families that God killed these young people in retribution for the sins of gays. The Supreme Court recently ruled that such obscene madness is protected by the First Amendment. The First Amendment is a necessary but double-edged sword.
Can any good come of such hate mongering in the guise of Christian faith? It is difficult to think how. Perhaps it is encouraging that it appears that many of Terry Moore’s congregation have slipped away, belatedly recognizing that there is little if anything of the Christian message or the balm of religious community in the “Dove World Outreach Center.” Moore has said that the people of Gainesville, Florida don’t like him and he’s thinking of moving to Texas. Congratulations to the people of Gainesville and woe unto the people of Texas.
Cults the like of Westboro Baptist “Church,” the “Dove World Outreach Center” and their self-aggrandizing leaders demonstrate the danger of religion gone awry and ignorance and bigotry writ large. Perhaps the enormity of their deviance from any semblance of love and grace could lead others to examine their own religious lives, the message of their religious community, and the part they play in assuring that their religion actually does reach out to the world with love and compassion. If what you hearing is bigotry and enmity toward the faith of others, you are in the wrong pew.

Let My Sheep Go!

Friends sent me a St. Pat’s Day animated eCard: a dog chasing a leprechaun and letting out a flock of sheep in the process. It reminded me of this experience: We were spending my first sabbatical in England (going home again, for me). We lived for six months in a typical West country
village, with 13th century church, garden cottages, a manor house–
the works. And there was a lovely hill with meadows for grazing sheep.
I hiked up there one day and finding a wide spot in the wire fencing
I climbed through to the meadow to enjoy the view from the hill (the sea
was visible on a clear day: only about eight miles as the crow flies). As
I went through the fence there were two sheep standing there, just
watching. Once in the meadow I lay down amid the flock and fell asleep
(it was the first warm, sunny day in weeks: literally). When I awoke and
looked around there was not a sheep in sight! Apparently, the two sheep
watching me go through the space in the fence had called the attention of
the rest of the flock to the portal to freedom. Did I go look for a farmer to warn that the sheep had made a break for it? I did not. I made a break for it myself before the farmer or shepherd came along and found me in the meadow and the sheep gone. I’ll never know where they ended up.

“THE THING WITH FEATHERS” HOPE

THE THING WITH FEATHERS

by

Edward A. Frost

The Unitarian Universalist theologian, James Luther Adams, said that our liberal religion is religion “in the optative mood”– that is, ours is  a religion in the mood of vision, and of hope toward the future. Adams wrote, “The affirmative answer of prophetic religion, which may be heard in the very midst of the doom that threatens like thunder, is that history is a struggle in dead earnest between justice and injustice, looking toward the ultimate victory in the promise and fulfillment of grace.”

This assumption of “ultimate victory,” assuming and depending upon  the ultimate victory of good over evil, justice over injustice, is at the heart of most religions: At Hanukah we share these hope-filled assumptions with others in the Judeo-Christian heritage. The prophets of Israel and the teacher from Nazareth both turned, as Adams put it, “from retrospect to prospect,” from reliance on idolatry of the past to the promise of the future. Jesus, in fact, was almost entirely oriented toward the future. He taught in relation to his expectation of an imminent and total transformation of the world.

But why should we assume this “ultimate victory”  of justice of injustice, good over evil, life over death? Is there any real ground for hope, or is all religion founded in nothing more than wishful thinking? Tennyson wrote, “O yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill.” “Somehow?” There is no theology in Tennyson. He offers no ground for the trust he speaks of.

Others have found what they believe to be firmer ground for hope– those whose hope is rooted, for example, in faith in a divine being. “My hope is built on nothing less,” says an old hymn, “Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” And in another hymn, “We hope in thee, O God in whom none hope in vain; We cling to thee in love and trust, and joy succeeds to pain.”

This hope rests in the belief in the “events”–the stories–and the promises  contained in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and in the tradition of the Christian church. Those stories are of a God who, having been faithful in the past, can be trusted to fulfill the hope for the future. The hope of Judaism is grounded in the Exodus, the story of the escape from Egypt, the giving of the Law, and in the divine covenant, “I shall be your God and you will be my people.”

For orthodox Christianity, hope is grounded in the story of the resurrection. The faith is that God gave his only son as the only acceptable sacrificed for the sins of humanity, then raised him from the dead.

And it is written that Jesus then said, “Because I live, you shall live also.”

In nineteenth century religious liberalism, the ground from which our own religion has sprung, liberal theology turned from biblical miracles to find hope and faith in “natural religion”  and in nature itself. Ralph Waldo Emerson, rejected the anthropomorphic, “man-like” god  and saw divinity, and therefore hope, in the very heart of nature.

Emerson spoke of “Destiny” and of the “Beneficent Genius” that guided all existence. He wrote, “It turns out that love and good are inevitable in the course of things.” “It turns out…” Emerson said: meaning, I suppose, that from Emerson’s faith viewpoint all the evidence was in and it was clear  that good would “naturally” prevail. This was a hundred years before the holocaust. As much as I respect Mr. Emerson, I fear that his perspective on the nature of reality was very much limited by his time and by his experience with the cultured classes in the neighborhood of Boston–which Boston Brahmins often, and to this day, confuse with heaven. From that very tiny piece of the world it was perhaps not difficult to support the hope that love and good are inevitable winners in the cosmic struggle. Others, in search for a ground for hope have turned away from what they see as wishful thinking, have turned from the unsupportable beliefs of religion, and have turned to humanity itself and to the wonders of human accomplishment.

Darwin’s theories in particular gave great hope to many who derived from his proposals sweeping generalities  in philosophies of inevitable “onward and upward forever!” James Breasted wrote, “Moral development on our planet is an unfinished process, and in this fact lies our greatest reason for hopefulness.” A strange leap, that, for a scientist–to assume that an unfinished process has nowhere to go but toward the good, true, and beautiful.

In assuming that the moral sense was unfinished in humanity and that it would, therefore, continue to develop positively Breasted could not have foreseen  the moral disasters of the twentieth century—the World Wars, The holocaust, The Stalinist purges, 9/11,  Iraq, Afghanistan. How can any sane person look around, speak of “moral development,” and cling to hope?

And hope for what? That the swords will be turned to plowshares? That the wolf will lie down with the lamb? That there will be no hunger, no disease– and, of course, the persistent hope, that there will be no death?

In a speech to the Virginia Convention in 1775, Patrick Henry said,

It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren ’til she transforms us into beasts…Are we to be in the number of those who, having eyes, see not and having ears, hear not? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

Patrick Henry might well have been speaking to the Jews of Europe in the 1930’s– and to everyone else– who, in spite of what was before their eyes and ears, refused to see and hear, continued to cling to the illusion of hope that what was clearly foreseeable would not, in fact, happen.

Given the realities, can it be anything other than false hope, wishful thinking, that led  nations on in a mad arms race, chattering foolishly about how we “hope” those weapons will never be used? –building up an incredible force for death and destruction in the mid-east “hoping” that it will not be necessary to use it?

Much of modern literature, film and theater has turned its back on the traditional grounds for hope and promises nothing, reveals no deeper good in which hope is grounded. In the movie, “As Good As It Gets,” Jack Nicholson, as he passes through the psychiatrist’s waiting room filled with depressed, despairing, hope-less souls, says to them, “What if this is as good as it gets?” Most artists of the modern era do not hold out hope. They simply describe. This is the way it is. And many, who read them, say, “This is awful,” as if they themselves had not noticed how awful it is and had hoped for something else.

Of course we hope, no matter how shallow the ground for it. How can we not? As human beings, we have been both blessed and cursed with consciousness,  with awareness of ourselves, not only in present time but in history and in the future. We can project our consciousness into the future. We have, in fact, no choice but to do so. It is the beckoning of the future moment which keeps us sane and alive.

Given awareness of the future, we can exist only in the hope that we are contained in that future–not only that we have existed but that we shall exist in future time. So, hope springs eternal. “While there’s life there’s hope,” Or, as Studs Terkel calls his latest book “la esperanza muera ultima.”  It was a saying of the vineyard workers organized by Caesar Chavez. It translates roughly into “Hope Dies Last.”

“Hope,” wrote Emily Dickinson, “Is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the  words/And never stops–at all.”

Patrick Henry said that hope was the siren that may turn us into beasts. But it seems to me, that, without hope, we are beasts, living always between time, only in the moment, without memory and without desire. It is not so much, then, that “there is hope” in the sense that there are always hopeful indicators, always visible grounds for hoping for the good. Obviously, that is not the case. There is hope simply in the sense that hope is. Hope exists, regardless of the conditions of existence. In fact, paradoxical though it may seem, the conditions of existence, including evil and injustice, create hope. After all, in a state of perfect good, what would there be to hope for?

Hope exists, not only in spite of the sometimes awful conditions of existence, but because of them. The question, then, “How can one look about and speak of hope” is a moot question. Hope exists.  It is. The religious question is whether we choose to live in it or out of it. Liberal theology takes account of the fact that those awful conditions of existence are, to a considerable extent, created and perpetuated by human will. The ovens of Auschwitz, the ditches at My Lai, the ghettoes of our cities, the literally millions of hungry people in America, ignorance, stupidity, and greed–which are the contexts of injustice–these are humanly-created conditions.

Liberal religion has a theology of hope because of our conviction that not all the conditions of human existence are givens, eternal and inevitable Some may look at the evils, the horrors and atrocities that we have committed and despair. But, from the perspective of liberal theology, evil is not pre-ordained  or unchangeable except through some supernatural intervention. That would indeed be cause for despair.

“It’s all in God’s hands,” is an expression of ultimate despair. Human beings do not behave as they do because it is their “nature,” because they are condemned to “sin,” but because we choose evil or good. The Hebrews knew that. The Hebrew God said, “This day have I set before you life and death. Therefore, choose life.”

It was known and accepted that, as human beings, we are awesomely capable of choosing death. When human beings choose evil, it is because they are free to so choose. And it is that freedom which provides liberal theology with ground for hope.

Granted, there are severe limitations on human freedom. We cannot wish away the givens of existence. Hannah Arendt wrote, “The chances that tomorrow will be like yesterday are almost overwhelming.” What happens in defiance of those chances, she says, “Is of infinite improbability” or, and here she uses a theological term, “a miracle.” Nevertheless, no matter how improbable or miraculous, the fact that something can be done which will make tomorrow not like yesterday means that the conditions for existence are not givens, not inevitable.

And we ourselves are the miracle-workers. We are the definers of infinite improbability; We are the beings who can see the future and, if we will, change it. We have the gift of freedom, and the gift to act in consciousness of future time. Therein lies our hope. This theology of freedom and action in time–this theology of hope– not only denies the idea of fate in our personal existence but denies the idea of fate in all human existence.

This gift of freedom and the freedom to act exists also as a demand. For people of faith, the freedom to act is the requirement to act.

The religious demand is not merely to passively hope that something will happen,  but to care about what happens. Hope, then, theologically defined, is something active and deliberate. Mere waiting, spectatorship, is a denial of the gift of freedom. Hope as a theological principle is not merely observing the struggle between good and evil and “hoping” that “somehow” good will prevail.

The condition of human existence is rather like being in an automobile rolling down a hill with no brakes. In Hannah Arendt’s terms, the chances of avoiding a smash-up are in the category of infinite improbability. With that condition as a given, then, one can take any one of several attitudes toward the condition–attitudes which will lead to different kinds of actions. One can let go of the steering wheel, scream, and jump out of the car. Suicide. That is, as Camus pointed out, one possible response to the human condition which must be taken seriously.

Another option is to let go of the steering wheel in the assumption that there is nothing one can do to alter the situation. One is helpless. One is in the hands of fate. This is the “God is my co-pilot” response. Sitting back and waiting  to find out what fate has in mind for us in this situation is another kind of theology. It assumes that there is a reality beyond that which we can see and grasp. It assumes that a greater power than ours can reach over and “take the wheel”—if it chooses to do so. Such a theology is inherent in the brief admonition, “Let go and let God.” Underneath are the everlasting arms. It is a gamble.  A wager of faith.

Jumping out is despair. Leaping in to the abyss in the assumption that there is nothing to be done. The present condition is unbearable and the outcome is inevitable.

The other option, of course, is to grab hold of the steering wheel, pay careful attention, summon all the knowledge, skill and courage one has to steer that car down the hill. The chances may not be good. But one is free to choose a response and one is free to act in the hope of ultimate victory.

la esperanza muera ultima.

PLAYING WITH THE ITALIANS

My father was furious when he heard that I had been playing with the Italians. That’s the first thing I remembered.

On the last day of a conference, I attended a workshop that sounded harmless enough.  It had to do with what one person could do to help create a sustainable environment. To my horror, the leaders started right in by asking us to hold hands with the people beside us. I usually manage to avoid this sort of thing–the handholding, hugging, foot massage sort of thing. But it was too late. The woman beside me was clearly a workshop pro and quickly had my hand in a firm grip.

We were instructed to tell each other a story about the first time, in our memories, in which we had taken an independent action that had made a difference. I’d gone to hear a good talk, maybe get inspired –who knows, maybe get an idea for a sermon, and here I was trapped, hand-held,  and we were going to share. “You go first,” I said. She told me of her childhood passion to be a nun. Her parents were against it. For one thing, they were Lutherans. But she persisted in her goal.  She took her stand and was a nun for many years, making a significant contribution, making a difference.

Part of my brain was registering her story– while another part  was frantically trying to come up with something to say when my turn came. I had nothing. A bell rang. My partner stopped talking. I was on. I had nothing. For an awful moments, my mind stayed blank.

And then out it came: the story of an experience I had not merely forgotten but actually didn’t even know I knew. I was seven years old, perhaps, maybe eight;  being raised in England. It was the immediate aftermath of the war. We lived in a large city, across from a park. In winter, after slight, seldom snowfalls,  we kids took our sleds to the long hill in the center of the park. Most often there was no snow. But sometimes there was ice–black and treacherous. Only the most reckless took a sled to it.

That winter, we discovered that the hill had been adopted by the Italians–Italian prisoners of war. The war had long been over for them. They were held in minimum security while governments made the deals  that would send them back home. Confined to camps during the night they were free to roam the city during the daylight hours.

They had discovered the park and the iced-over hill. They had no skis but their big hob-nailed boots served well enough in a sport second nature to them. Knees bent, arms outspread, they flew down the hill laughing, shouting in their wonderful, so un-English language, thrilling in the familiar bite of the cold wind. They had survived. They were alive. And, soon, they would be going home. We found each other, the children and the Italians.

The first brave boy–it wasn’t me– allowed himself to be picked up,  slung up and over and onto the shoulders of an Alpine skier sans skis borne laughing and screeching down the hill and carried or dragged by the scruff of the neck up again. The adventure went on for days, maybe weeks. We rushed to the hill after school and early in the frosty weekend mornings. Friends were made.   Friendship and trust.  “Hey, Harry, look, no hands!”

One evening, I came into the house flushed and breathless. Parents. “What on earth have you been doing?” “Playing with the Italians!” I said with joy, pride. My father was furious when he heard I had been playing with the Italians. They were the enemy. “But the war is over.”  “But they don’t have any guns.”  “But they weren’t bombing us.” “They didn’t even want to fight us. They told us they didn’t.” But I was up against the official view. They were the enemy just the same. We’d spent the nights of two years or more in a damp and stinking air-raid shelter. Much of the city was still in ruins. Great Aunt Rose had died in the London blitz. And I was playing with the enemy.

Loud and clear. Stay away from the Italians.

I think my mother–still with us at the age of 90– would confirm it if you ask her: I was a good boy. Obedient. Happy. My dad’s pal. But something was wrong with being forbidden such joy and friendship because of something called “the enemy” –a concept that didn’t fit my experience  of these loving and life-loving men. I disobeyed.

had been a long afternoon of sliding, walking, playing soccer –even, I remember as I write, games of cowboys and Indians. Talk about your “spaghetti westerns.” I must have been late getting home because, as I was leaving the park my father was crossing the street toward the entrance. “What have you been doing?” he shouted, getting right to it. Tears fought back. Tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Not grown enough yet for that British stiff upper lip. But I came out with it. Damn the torpedoes. “I was playing with the Italians,” I said.

He slapped my face. That was terrible. That was the most terrible moment of my life. Terrible more in the shock of it than the pain. My father had never hit me.  Never did again. And–here’s the moment remembered that started the story flowing– I remember looking full into his anger and saying, finally, “Alright. But I’m going back.” It’s odd, but I don’t remember anything of what happened then. There was no more hitting.  I would have remembered. No doubt there were threats  about what further disobedience would bring. But my parents must have given it up. Because I did, in fact, go back to play with the Italians  until, one day, they were gone.

That was the end of the story I told my companion at the workshop But it’s not the end of this story. When this part of the workshop exercise was over the leaders asked if anyone wanted to share with the whole group what they had said to their partners. I couldn’t believe myself. What on earth was I doing? My hand was up.  I was going to “share.”

I told the story again and then found myself unfolding what, moment by moment, I was realizing the story meant. It was a story about self-discovery, personal power, and taking a stand that would make a difference. My father’s reaction to my playing with the Italians came out of so many hard, sad, and bitter places within him. Some places he had built for himself out of the stuff a harsh life had handed him. Some of his reaction simply came out of the culture that made him– a culture of colonial pride  that the sun never set on the empire’s flag in a world full of foreigners –foreigners to be fought, hated, feared, ridiculed. There wasn’t a nationality I hadn’t been taught to hate, fear, watch out for, look down on, make fun of.  I remember seeing posters depicting Gandhi:  caricatures of a funny little man in a loin cloth who was making trouble for us in India.

But in that moment of defiance– in that declaration, “Alright. But I’m going back”– in that moment I was confronting all of that with the reality–and the legitimacy– of my own experience. I was separating myself out from the tangled mess  of ingrained bigotry, fear, and self-serving stereotyping. Those men were not the enemy. They were just men. Fathers. Brothers. Sons. They were friends. They were not evil –and, if that laughter, friendship, joy-sharing was evil then I was going to play with it and know it firsthand.

My father was wrong. My parents were wrong. And, if that’s how everybody thought, then “everybody” could be wrong and I would forever have to make up my own mind and trust my own inner sense of “rightness.”

That’s what the workshop leaders were helping us to find, of course –some moment in our lives in which rightness, truth, justice was revealed so crystal-clear and unadorned that acting upon it was a matter of course. After all, the story I recovered was not about courage. The point is not that I had the nerve to defy my father so that I could go back and have fun with my friends. What came to me so clearly as I recounted the story was that I was determined to go back to my friends quite simply because it was the right thing to do. Not only was it right– it was necessary. I was going back to play with the Italians because my parent’s reason for forbidding me –their reason and perhaps the entire adult culture’s reason– was so clearly, so unarguably, wrong. I was not defying my father so much as I was responding to something no less than a revelation. Perhaps a better term would be “illumination.” My experience of the men I played with was the pure experience of relationship,  relationship with people –not as Italians, not as foreigners,  certainly not as “the enemy.”

The poet Wordsworth wrote that we come to earth “trailing clouds of glory.” He was expressing a popular romantic notion of his time that the newborn are embodiments of pure spirits, that we are born with all the inherent power we need to fulfill our possibilities. That power to fulfill our possibilities is what some have called the “true self.”

The Unitarian theologian, Henry Nelson Wieman, referred to that “true self,”  as our “original experience.” Our original experience, Wieman said,  is “…every experience we can have  when we do not conceal it or overlay it  with conventional experience.” Original experience, he said,  “Is the true  self, in contrast to the uniformities  adopted by everyone in

society  to facilitate the routine adjustments of everyday life.” Sadly, among “the routine adjustments of everyday life” are the adjustments to myths of inferiority, prejudices and bigotries,  the division of humankind into “them and us.”

From birth, then, our true self,  our “original experience,” begins to be suppressed by the social demand to conform to conventional experience. Originality, unique individuality, begins to fall under the requirements of the herd. This is disempowerment –the empowerment of the mass and the disempowerment of the individual. Think of the power of those Nazi soldiers amassed at the rally at Nuremberg. Think of how disempowered each of those soldiers had to be to make that power of the mass possible.

The leaders of the workshop I attended knew that each of us has given up much of our power along the way. We have given up much of our individual power in order “to facilitate  the routine adjustments of everyday life.”

My childhood experience, with its illumination of my power to see truths to which my own parents and teachers were blind, that experience did fade from memory. In time the story itself was lost and, perhaps with the lost story was lost something of that awesome, absolute conviction. Like most of us, I had forgotten that I had the power to stand before the world –even before the great, father god– declare what I knew, and vow to act upon it. Somewhere in us is a story in which we are the hero, fearless before gods and giants, girded up as the scriptures say “in the whole armor of God,” knowing for a certainty that right makes might. Each of you has a story, waiting to be remembered, about the power you had and have still to make a difference. Begin to tell your story to someone –even though you may not know yet that you know it. Just begin by saying, “The first time I realized I could make a difference was…” The story will rush forward to be told.

By the way, as it happened, the story of my story had not ended. The people in the workshop were obviously moved. There was a hearty round of applause and the program was over. As I was making my way out of the crowded room, a young woman came up to me and said, “My grandfather was an Italian prisoner of war in your city. He often spoke of playing with the boys in the park. Thank you, for playing with my grandfather.”

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Playing With the Italians

My father was furious when he heard that I had been playing with the Italians. That’s the first thing I remembered.

On the last day of a conference, I attended a workshop that sounded harmless enough.  It had to do with what one person could do to help create a sustainable environment. To my horror, the leaders started right in by asking us to hold hands with the people beside us. I usually manage to avoid this sort of thing –the handholding, hugging, foot massage sort of thing. But it was too late. The woman beside me was clearly a workshop pro and quickly had my hand in a firm grip.

We were instructed to tell each other a story about the first time, in our memories, in which we had taken an independent action that had made a difference. I’d gone to hear a good talk, maybe get inspired –who knows, maybe get an idea for a sermon, and here I was trapped, hand-held,  and we were going to share. “You go first,” I said. She told me of her childhood passion to be a nun. Her parents were against it. For one thing, they were Lutherans. But she persisted in her goal.  She took her stand and was a nun for many years, making a significant contribution, making a difference.

Part of my brain was registering her story– while another part  was frantically trying to come up with something to say when my turn came. I had nothing. A bell rang. My partner stopped talking. I was on. I had nothing. For an awful moments, my mind stayed blank.

And then out it came: the story of an experience I had not merely forgotten but actually didn’t even know I knew. I was seven years old, perhaps, maybe eight;  being raised in England. It was the immediate aftermath of the war. We lived in a large city, across from a park. In winter, after slight, seldom snowfalls,  we kids took our sleds to the long hill in the center of the park. Most often there was no snow. But sometimes there was ice–black and treacherous. Only the most reckless took a sled to it.

That winter, we discovered that the hill had been adopted by the Italians–Italian prisoners of war. The war had long been over for them. They were held in minimum security while governments made the deals  that would send them back home. Confined to camps during the night they were free to roam the city during the daylight hours.

They had discovered the park and the iced-over hill. They had no skis but their big hob-nailed boots served well enough in a sport second nature to them. Knees bent, arms outspread, they flew down the hill laughing, shouting in their wonderful, so un-English language, thrilling in the familiar bite of the cold wind. They had survived. They were alive. And, soon, they would be going home. We found each other, the children and the Italians.

The first brave boy–it wasn’t me– allowed himself to be picked up,  slung up and over and onto the shoulders of an Alpine skier sans skis borne laughing and screeching down the hill and carried or dragged by the scruff of the neck up again. The adventure went on for days, maybe weeks. We rushed to the hill after school and early in the frosty weekend mornings. Friends were made.   Friendship and trust.  “Hey, Harry, look, no hands!”

One evening, I came into the house flushed and breathless. Parents. “What on earth have you been doing?” “Playing with the Italians!” I said with joy, pride. My father was furious when he heard I had been playing with the Italians. They were the enemy. “But the war is over.”  “But they don’t have any guns.”  “But they weren’t bombing us.” “They didn’t even want to fight us. They told us they didn’t.” But I was up against the official view. They were the enemy just the same. We’d spent the nights of two years or more in a damp and stinking air-raid shelter. Much of the city was still in ruins. Great Aunt Rose had died in the London blitz. And I was playing with the enemy.

Loud and clear. Stay away from the Italians.

I think my mother–still with us at the age of 90– would confirm it if you ask her: I was a good boy. Obedient. Happy. My dad’s pal. But something was wrong with being forbidden such joy and friendship because of something called “the enemy” –a concept that didn’t fit my experience  of these loving and life-loving men. I disobeyed.

had been a long afternoon of sliding, walking, playing soccer –even, I remember as I write, games of cowboys and Indians. Talk about your “spaghetti westerns.” I must have been late getting home because, as I was leaving the park my father was crossing the street toward the entrance. “What have you been doing?” he shouted, getting right to it. Tears fought back. Tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Not grown enough yet for that British stiff upper lip. But I came out with it. Damn the torpedoes. “I was playing with the Italians,” I said.

He slapped my face. That was terrible. That was the most terrible moment of my life. Terrible more in the shock of it than the pain. My father had never hit me.  Never did again. And–here’s the moment remembered that started the story flowing– I remember looking full into his anger and saying, finally, “Alright. But I’m going back.” It’s odd, but I don’t remember anything of what happened then. There was no more hitting.  I would have remembered. No doubt there were threats  about what further disobedience would bring. But my parents must have given it up. Because I did, in fact, go back to play with the Italians  until, one day, they were gone.

That was the end of the story I told my companion at the workshop But it’s not the end of this story. When this part of the workshop exercise was over the leaders asked if anyone wanted to share with the whole group what they had said to their partners. I couldn’t believe myself. What on earth was I doing? My hand was up.  I was going to “share.”

I told the story again and then found myself unfolding what, moment by moment, I was realizing the story meant. It was a story about self-discovery, personal power, and taking a stand that would make a difference. My father’s reaction to my playing with the Italians came out of so many hard, sad, and bitter places within him. Some places he had built for himself out of the stuff a harsh life had handed him. Some of his reaction simply came out of the culture that made him– a culture of colonial pride  that the sun never set on the empire’s flag in a world full of foreigners –foreigners to be fought, hated, feared, ridiculed. There wasn’t a nationality I hadn’t been taught to hate, fear, watch out for, look down on, make fun of.  I remember seeing posters depicting Gandhi:  caricatures of a funny little man in a loin cloth who was making trouble for us in India.

But in that moment of defiance– in that declaration, “Alright. But I’m going back”– in that moment I was confronting all of that with the reality–and the legitimacy– of my own experience. I was separating myself out from the tangled mess  of ingrained bigotry, fear, and self-serving stereotyping. Those men were not the enemy. They were just men. Fathers. Brothers. Sons. They were friends. They were not evil –and, if that laughter, friendship, joy-sharing was evil then I was going to play with it and know it firsthand.

My father was wrong. My parents were wrong. And, if that’s how everybody thought, then “everybody” could be wrong and I would forever have to make up my own mind and trust my own inner sense of “rightness.”

That’s what the workshop leaders were helping us to find, of course –some moment in our lives in which rightness, truth, justice was revealed so crystal-clear and unadorned that acting upon it was a matter of course. After all, the story I recovered was not about courage. The point is not that I had the nerve to defy my father so that I could go back and have fun with my friends. What came to me so clearly as I recounted the story was that I was determined to go back to my friends quite simply because it was the right thing to do. Not only was it right– it was necessary. I was going back to play with the Italians because my parent’s reason for forbidding me –their reason and perhaps the entire adult culture’s reason– was so clearly, so unarguably, wrong. I was not defying my father so much as I was responding to something no less than a revelation. Perhaps a better term would be “illumination.” My experience of the men I played with was the pure experience of relationship,  relationship with people –not as Italians, not as foreigners,  certainly not as “the enemy.”

The poet Wordsworth wrote that we come to earth “trailing clouds of glory.” He was expressing a popular romantic notion of his time that the newborn are embodiments of pure spirits, that we are born with all the inherent power we need to fulfill our possibilities. That power to fulfill our possibilities is what some have called the “true self.”

The Unitarian theologian, Henry Nelson Wieman, referred to that “true self,”  as our “original experience.” Our original experience, Wieman said,  is “…every experience we can have  when we do not conceal it or overlay it  with conventional experience.” Original experience, he said,  “Is the true  self, in contrast to the uniformities  adopted by everyone in

society  to facilitate the routine adjustments of everyday life.” Sadly, among “the routine adjustments of everyday life” are the adjustments to myths of inferiority, prejudices and bigotries,  the division of humankind into “them and us.”

From birth, then, our true self,  our “original experience,” begins to be suppressed by the social demand to conform to conventional experience. Originality, unique individuality, begins to fall under the requirements of the herd. This is disempowerment –the empowerment of the mass and the disempowerment of the individual. Think of the power of those Nazi soldiers amassed at the rally at Nurenburg. Think of how disempowered each of those soldiers had to be to make that power of the mass possible.

The leaders of the workshop I attended knew that each of us has given up much of our power along the way. We have given up much of our individual power in order “to facilitate  the routine adjustments of everyday life.”

My childhood experience, with its illumination of my power to see truths to which my own parents and teachers were blind, that experience did fade from memory. In time the story itself was lost and, perhaps with the lost story was lost something of that awesome, absolute conviction. Like most of us, I had forgotten that I had the power to stand before the world –even before the great, father god– declare what I knew, and vow to act upon it. Somewhere in us is a story in which we are the hero, fearless before gods and giants, girded up as the scriptures say “in the whole armor of God,” knowing for a certainty that right makes might. Each of you has a story, waiting to be remembered, about the power you had and have still to make a difference. Begin to tell your story to someone –even though you may not know yet that you know it. Just begin by saying, “The first time I realized I could make a difference was…” The story will rush forward to be told.

By the way, as it happened, the story of my story had not ended. The people in the workshop were obviously moved. There was a hearty round of applause and the program was over. As I was making my way out of the crowded room, a young woman came up to me and said, “My grandfather was an Italian prisoner of war in your city. He often spoke of playing with the boys in the park. Thank you, for playing with my grandfather.”

THAT YOU, ALAN?

My aunt Edna and uncle George and two cousins, Alan
and Norma, lived in Nuneaton, England, close by Sherwood
Forest. My parents and I visited frequently. I spent a couple
of weeks there in the summers. I can remember us, as toddlers,
all three in the kitchen sink being bathed by my aunt.
When we got older we would be taken to Sherwood
Forest where, naturally, we played at Robin Hood. Alan
and I swapped off being Robin or one of the Merry Men.. Norma,
of course, was Maid Marian. An early feminist, she insisted that
her Maid Marian had a bow and arrow like ours.

We’d go to “The Pictures” on Saturdays. Each given
two sixpences. One sixpence got us in and the
other paid for the usual stuff (though I don’t remember
popcorn until coming over here). We’d stay in the
theater all afternoon.

Alan and I spent a lot of time together until I moved to Ameria.
He joined the army and was killed on his motorcyle while stationed
on Cyprus. I liked to think it was a martyrdom Lawrence of Arabia sort
of thing, swerving to save the lives of two children, but the
circumstances lead more to the guess that he was on his
way back to camp from a pub.

Spooky thing about that. He and I were about 19 at
the time. I lived at home in an 18th century house in a small
town in New England. One evening, I was on the phone with
my girlfriend when I heard the big oak front door open and
footsteps cross the old creaky boards toward the room where
I sat (no mistaking the familiar sound of each board). I said to
my girlfriend, “Hang on. Someone’s just come in.” I went out
to the living room where the footsteps had stopped and I
expected to see a parent of some close friend of the family.
No one there. The following day we learned of Alan’s death.

Now, talk about cynical. Was that Alan? I have to doubt it.
But I knew the sound of that door and of those floorboards.
I’d heard them a thousand times. I knew exactly where “it”
was standing. And, what makes it more curious is that I was
neither dreaming nor daydreaming. My mind was engaged
on the phone. So, if not him–what? Who ya gonna call?

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE COFFEE

My birthday. 73rd. Not a significant number. The folks at the coffee shop I frequent gave me a cupcake but they didn’t have any candles. No charge for the cupcake, though. The place has become a second home of sorts. Recently, I had a serious sugar crash while I was there. Couldn’t even get up from the table. I signaled the manager who kept the large orange juice coming until I recovered and had the good grace not to hover. Wouldn’t accept payment when I recovered enough to make it to the cash register.
The café has become rather like “Cheers” for me. “Where everybody knows your name.” The staff all know me and if they’re new they get told who I am (not that I am “somebody).” They address me as “Dr. Frost” or “hey” and have my coffee mug and muffin ready when I come in the door. My daily visits have become a serious habit though and I suppose I could be doing better things with my time. Can’t think of anything at this moment. I do get a book read there in a week or so.
Today I finished an account of the Restoration reign of Charles II. A young woman barista said, “Now you need to find a book about the reign of William and Mary. You know they followed the short reign of James II.” As it happened, I *did* know that, but I was delighted that *she* knew that. I don’t know why she’s working serving lattes. I suppose that is the lot many college grads (I’m assuming she is) these days. But a knowledge of the reigns of the kings and queens of England is hardly marketable these days. Well, intelligent life forms are it part of the charm of the place.
I do wish some of the younger staff would stop calling me “sweetie,” though. It makes me feel as if I may have dandruff on my collar, need a haircut and am usually confused about where the door is. I lived in Princeton, New Jersey for several years and had my “local” there also, just off Nassau Street. There I heard the story of the server who consistently referred to the elderly gentleman who came in frequently for coffee. Finally, the manager overheard her, took her aside and said, “If Ihear you call Dr. Einstein “sweetie” again you’ll be fired.”
Personally, I don’t think Dr. Einstein noticed and if he did I doubt that he cared. If fact, from what I know of him, he likely appreciated being addressed so kindly by a comely young lady. And it was especially important in that town that everyone pretend not to notice that a world-famous person had come in to join for awhile in an ordinary company of ordinary persons.
The bottom line is, it’s not about the coffee.

UNBELIEVER’S EASTER (probably offensive to Christians, for which I apologize)

UNBELIEVER’S EASTER
by Edward Frost

In a newsletter column a few years ago I castigated our denominational bookstore in Boston for selling little chalices made of chocolate–little replicas of what is perhaps the primary symbol of our faith our symbol of the light of truth, of sacrifice and hope, little chocolates stamped with a chalice and wrapped in tinfoil. I was incensed that, once again, our religious movement had managed to shoot itself in the foot and once again actually be as silly as Garrison Keillor says we are. That done, I mounted Rocinante, holstered my lance and rode on to right other wrongs.
Then, lo and behold, what did I see on a supermarket shelf a day later but boxes of chocolate crosses! And, in the Faith and Values section of my local paper was a lead article extolling the comparative virtues of hollow or solid chocolate crosses. They make wonderful centerpieces, the article said, or you can just enjoy the sinfully sweet taste of chocolate.
Perhaps there is one true religion after all.
Think of it, millions of Christians who were brought to tears by the ghastly gore of Mel Gibson’s perversion of the Passion of Christ who will then buy chocolate replicas of that infamous barbaric instrument of torture as an Easter dinner centerpiece. One hardly knows whether to laugh or despair. Now that I’ve drifted in to retirement from my decades of laughing, ruminating and despairing over American religion,
I can confess that I have for decades struggled with Unitarian Universalism’s inability to pull both feet out the mire of holidays long since morphed into more cultural than religious celebrations and I can just decide that Christmas and Easter have nothing to do with me.
As for the UUA’s bookstore selling chocolate crosses –I don’t know if I would charge off on that horse again. Having been retired from full time ministry for five years now, A little bit of interest about how the UUA amuses itself slips away little by little, year by year. Maybe, too, a little bit of that once-clarion call to defend the commercial cultural phenomenon of Easter and mold it somehow into a Unitarian Universalist Festival has also faded to a disappearing point on the horizon.
What would have happened, I’ve wonder, if this morning we had sung hymns about how wonderful it is that the planets align themselves as they do and suppose I had preached on the moral significance of quantum theory. Well, not that— but I might have preached more productively this morning on the right to choose, the right to die, the right of every child to health and happiness.
What is Easter all about anyway? Well, it’s about what the Apostle’s Creed says:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; The third day He arose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.

That’s really it. That’s what Easter is all about –and anything else any group makes of it is, well, is making something else out of it. Now, if I believed that the Teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, who was executed by the Romans for sedition, had been dead, buried in a cave for three says, and had then come alive again–if I did believed that, I assure you, I would celebrate it. Of course I would. Maybe not with chocolate eggs. And certainly not with chocolate chalices. And I probably wouldn’t understand what rabbits have to do with it. But I would celebrate such an extraordinary event as a great Teacher brutally killed–and rising bodily from death. And so I fully understand—fully understand—why those who do believe that about Jesus rising up from the dead celebrate Easter.
But, I have to be honest with you–and don’t think I have ever actually come right out and said this to a congregation—I don’t believe that happened. I know millions of good people believe it–and sometimes I wish I did. But I just don’t. I believe there was a Jesus from the town of Nazareth, who was a Teacher—perhaps a rabbi, but maybe not. He had a following. I believe he did say some of the things the Christian scriptures say he said.
He said beautiful things. He spoke to the demons within us. I believe he healed some who were sick. He spoke truth to justice. He gave hope to the poor and oppressed. And I do believe he died at the hands of the Romans under the urgings of the Sadducees and Pharisees who considered him a threat to established doctrine. The Romans allowed their conquered nations to administrate many of their own laws but they did not allow them to execute. So the enemies of Jesus got the Romans to do it for them. Jesus was crucified, dead and buried. That’s what I believe.
I think that’s what most Unitarian Universalists believe–or what most Unitarian Universalistdo not believe—so why do we continue to refer to “Easter Sunday?”
A wise and good Unitarian Universalist minister, The late Max Coots, heard the question often enough and offered and explanation. He wrote poetically–

We need a celebration that speaks the Spring
-inspired word about life and death,
And us as we live and die,
Through all the cycling seasons, days and years,
we need the sense of deity to crack our own hard, brown December husks
and push life out of inner tombs and outer pain.
Unless we move the seasons of the self,
And Spring can come for us, The winter will go on and on.
And Easter will remain a myth,
and life will never come again, despite the fact of Spring.

I’ve always liked that piece by Max Coots; I particularly approve the idea that “We need a celebration that speaks the Spring-inspired word about life and death, And us as we live and die. I heartily agree that, after weeks of clouds, rain, cold, and snow, days like those we enjoy in the past week–days of sunshine and warmth—make me feel like celebrating something momentous; Oh, Spring. Hallelujah. O blessed daffodils and forsythia, hellebores and Japanese magnolias. O Holy fruit trees ablaze all over the towns and cities. Bring me my lyre and tamborine my flute and horn. For “Spring has now unwrapped the flowers..” Tra la la la la la la lah.” Coots was right. There should be Celebration of all that. And we should call it something.
But I’ve become philosophically, theologically and ministerially tired of calling it “Easter,” I don’t believe that all that wonderful Springness is just a metaphor for a religious dogma. The joys of Spring are worthy of its own celebration.
My lover’s quarrel with Max Coot’s ode to Spring is that he seems to insist that the celebration we need at this time of year must be Easter. He says if we don’t celebrate Spring winter will go on and on (and I could not live where winter goes on and one) but then he goes on to say that if we do not celebrate Spring “…Easter will remain a myth, and life will never come again, despite the fact of Spring.
Well, Easter will remain a myth—in my belief at least— because that’s what it is. The resurrection of a flesh and blood human being, is a myth. It’s a story invented by the early church to maintain the faith of the faithful. And it has definitely done that. And I’m happy for them. I’m glad for their hope and faith in victory of death. But in spite of spring and spring after spring and Easter after Easter after Easter I have continued to believe that resurrection is a myth…and my disbelief has not dulled my love of Spring one little peep of a baby mockingbird.
I happen to be a fan of the TV series “Seinfeld.” One of my favorite episodes is when George’s father, Frank, gets tired of all the celebrations he doesn’t believe in. So he invents one of his own. He calls it Festivus.
“Festivus For The Restofus” The celebration involves a pole. Just a pole. A plain, undecorated pole. Frank says the pole is sacred. And when people ask him what it means, he says, “Nothing.”
So, maybe that’s it. Festivus. Whatever. “The Celebration Formerly Known as Easter.” Celebrate it in Spring.
There is much to be said for remembering, if not the bodily resurrection, then the martyrdom of one who–even if he never lived, might as well have, for the life and teachings attributed to him set the ground for the best of western religion’s teaching. And, Unitarian Universalist preachers can be glad that there is the story of beautiful Persephone, daughter of Demeter, who was kidnapped by the god Hades and taken to the underworld. But every Spring she was allowed to return to Demeter and the sunlit world. That makes for a great Easter sermon metaphor. Equinox and the budding everywhere. Alleluia, indeed. The earth does awaken again and our thoughts do rise with the spring.
For me, it is enough.

CAN UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM SURVIVE?

In a recent Facebook post, my life-long UU grandson wrote that he believes Unitarian Universalism will die because its members need to adopt another defining form of spirituality (as in Unitarian Universalist-Buddhist–the hyphenated UU).
He’s right, of course. Years ago, the theologian Henry Nelson Wieman said that unless Unitarians could come up with a unifying faith they will never have what he called “The Power of Assembly). Unitarian Universalism will die eventually because UUs cannot now and I doubt they ever will be able to answer the question “What do UUs believe?” “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound who shall prepare for battle?” (I Corinthians). Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, etc. do not have to spend their time and energy debating about what they believe or why they exist. “Freedom of belief,” is not a faith. When we UUs speak of our “faith” what exactly are we referring to?
We would do best do accept the fact that we are a loosely bound association of congregations which actually have very little in common apart from a history (from which we have far departed) and a similarity of polity with which we are constantly meddling, often for the want of anything else that compels us. I think we would do far better in many ways if we would refer to our congregations as “Centers For Spiritual Growth (or something like that).” UUs “hyphenate themselves” obviously, again, –as in UU-Buddhist, “UU-Jew”–(what my grandson calls “The UU need to claim another defining form of spirituality as divine without following all aspects of that faith”–because for most of them UUism does not appear to have the spiritual strength to stand alone. It is my observation that newcomers to UUism are far most interested in the communal aspects of a congregation than they are in its roots, tradition or “faith.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that–that is, there would not be anything wrong with that if we were to accept the fact, develop it and publicize that we are, as I say, a Center For The Development of Spiritual Growth.”
Albert Einstein said, “I am a very religious unbeliever. That must be some new kind of religion.” Now that’s the kind of religion–the kind of religious community–that I believe would live long and prosper, one that is dedicated to helping persons become very religious non-believers or believers if they so choose.

A colleague asks on Facebook  if I think that all “hyphenated” faith designations. such as “Jewish Unitarian” are a “bad thing.”

HYPHENATED UNITARIANS

THIS PIECE IS A CONTINUATION OF “CAN UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM SURVICED? FOUND IN THE CATEGORY “RELIGIOUS COMMENARY/MINISTRY.”

A colleague asks on Facebook  if I think that all “hyphenated” faith designations. such as “Jewish Unitarian” are a “bad thing.”

SECULAR CROSS?

The following piece by Prof. Martin Marty, one of my heroes of theology and social ethics is, I think, well worth sharing (and I share it with expressed permission).  It refers to the Supreme Court decision that a huge cross in the Mohave Desert can stay as it stands because, in the view of the majority of the court, it is accepted as a “secular symbol” representing all religion (this, of course, was astounding news to several rabbis) I find the comments of the judges mind-boggling, such as the judicial comment that the monument is “a cross-shaped secular symbol.  Such ignorance brought us the latter Bush years and bodes ill for the future:  Herewith, Martin Marty’s article, appearing online on May 3, 2010:

The Mojave Cross – Religious or Not?
– Martin E. Marty

Days ago, the Supreme Court’s currently-standard 5-4 majority ruled that “the Mojave Cross,” a contested war memorial in the desert of California, may stand.  The case itself is too complicated – it involved lower court rulings on a land transfer, and more – to be treated in the short scope of a Sightings column.  But two justices framed what is at issue.  Justice Anthony Kennedy won the favor of many religious citizens by broadening the meaning of the cross and in effect secularizing it.  It is wrong, he said, to see the cross solely as a religious symbol; this “one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion.”  Justice John Paul Stevens, in dissent, won the disfavor of many citizens by trying to re-religiocify the symbol.  The government is endorsing a “starkly sectarian message,” he said, a judgment which Jews, Muslims, other-religious, or non-religious citizens would affirm.  Justice Samuel Alito in effect spoke for both sides:  “[I]t is likely that the cross was seen by more rattlesnakes than humans,” and snakes are presumably secular.  Then he admitted that Easter services have often been held at the site, and such services are presumably and specifically religious.

I happened to be lecturing last week at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, under sponsorship of the University, the endowment of historian Walter Shurden and spouse Kay, and, most of all, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.  Score three for Baptists, in my book.  The BJC deployed a half-dozen staffers, and I eavesdropped as they discussed responses to the Court ruling, which, again because of the complications of the case, were measured.  The responses and the context brought to my mind a case that too seldom gets made:  that many who are nervous about “sectarian” messages and symbols in public settings are so for principled religious reasons.  That is, despite some media portrayals and populist reactions, those who oppose public privileging of Christian symbols are not all atheists, secularists, humanists, and liberal non-believers.  Some are dedicatedly Christian.  What supports their case?

First, the argument of the Jewish War Veterans and others, that the cross is “a powerful Christian symbol,” would restore it to the place where it evokes awe, wonder, the need for decision, and attention from more than rattlesnakes.  Second, while the majority of justices are rightly sympathetic about the placement of the cross on graves of thousands who gave their life for their country, the current debates also recall the New Testament understandings, projected into the future, that while believers are saved by the cross, it is “a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (I Cor. 1:23, Gal 5:11).

My text for the BJC lecture on “not privileging” a particular religion or religion itself was from a James Madison favorite, Montesquieu, who observed that the way “to attack a religion is by favor, not by what drives away, but by what makes men lukewarm.”  The fact that Montesquieu said it does not necessarily make it true.  But the evidence – for example, of lukewarm Christendom in Europe as it lingers in favor of and after fourteen centuries of legal establishment and privilege – needs to be reckoned with.

When Baptists were Baptist, they knew this, which is why they found the United States Constitution so protective and congenial.  Many of their heirs continue to regard the Cross (and particular symbols of Jews, Muslims, Baha’i, Wiccans, and all the rest) as symbols of more than “religion in general.”  Some court cases treat the monuments as “cross-shaped” secular symbols.  It is also more and other than that.

LIFE WITH OUR FATHERS



LIFE WITH OUR FATHERS

I have not forgotten –nor will I forget until all memory fades– the day, the moment, in which my father and I parted. We did not put an ocean between us, or a country. He did not disown me nor I him. We parted, as a cloud passed between our hearts, shadowing what we had been, shadowing what we would be henceforth.

In this time, I was barely fifteen years old. We had come recently to America from England. There, he and I had been pals, chums,  co-conspirators in fictions and fantasies. For as long as I could remember, each Sunday, my father and I would set out together for tramps down village lanes, across meadows, through churches, churchyards, and burial grounds. We explored ruined castles,  fought off Norman invaders, Vikings, Black Knights. We rowed the rivers curling through the countryside, rose in and out of locks,  scrambled up and down brambled banks, slipped reverently past fallen abbeys.

In the woods, we eluded the archers of bad King John. Beneath old oaks, my father pointed out where, in the moonlight, elves and fairies held their meetings, fairs and dances. Plain for anyone to see who cared to see, was the highest toadstool where the Fairy Queen held court. And there, amidst the roots, undoubtedly the entrance to an entire elfin land beneath our feet.

In a break along the hedgerows, a cow draped over a gate, munching, would draw my father into conversation. He would ask her about the quality of grass, how’s the family, looks like rain. And there across the field might bounce a rabbit who, my father might say on that day, was Charlie. Charlie, he would say, was going home after work to his wife, Mabel, and the kids, Alice and George. I have never hunted or killed any creature deliberately. How could one harm Charlie on his way home?

This was who we were before the cloud passed between. Wizard and trusting apprentice. Storyteller and credulous listener. Teacher and student (my father taught me how to read and write  before I started school). With him I interned in woodworking. Dabbled  in cooking (he had been a short order cook on Cape Cod during a sojourn to America in his youth).

Lest it seem he neglected his fatherly duties in those days, I suffered an occasional sore backside for whatever broken law, for some boy-word slipping carelessly from my lips, for once snitching a couple of shillings set aside on the mantle for the gas or light meters. After one such spanking, I happened to catch the tears in his eyes.

All this we brought to America and, for awhile, attempted to nurture though there were no hedgerows, ruined abbeys, no hairy Vikings, certainly no sniveling Normans. And, perhaps most telling of a coming closure, there was hardly a trace, even in that New England, of fairies, elves or anything extraordinary. We had come, it seemed, to a prosaic land of insufficient age. Each Sunday, as in former times,  we set out on a quest to keep us as we were, to hold back my years.

Then, that Sunday morning,  my father came out to where I shuffled in dread in the gravel drive. I didn’t know how much damage I was about to do, but I knew I was about to cast us away. He came to me, sandwiches for us, and a thermos in his bag, and asked if I was ready to go. “Gee, Dad,” I said, “A couple of my friends are picking me up and we’re going to go over to the baseball game.” “Oh. alright.” he said. “Goodbye,” his face could not hide. He turned and walked away, the golden cord unraveling as he went. Somewhere on a distant sheep-grazing hill, in the tower of an ancient parish church, a bell tolled.

We were not the same again, of course. We continued to grow apart in the years that followed until, at his death–now years ago– it seemed we were barely acquainted. My adolescence was beyond him. He watched, as if helpless,  as I tried out various foolish and dangerous ways to become what passed for manliness. As I continued in my education,  pursued my own dreams and ambitions, I left his knowledge and his understanding far behind.

He had left school at the age of twelve to help support his mother and sister after his father gave up and ran away. He educated himself and was often mistaken for an Oxford man. But my journey left him by the wayside–as, so he felt, had life and all hope and possibility; and there he rooted in anger, regret and self-destruction.

He was a man who, had he had a fathering father, had he not been born into abject poverty, had it not been for this or that, for fate or happenstance–had all that beside-the-point not been so, he would have been a man whom all the world knew by name. But the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons from generation unto generation.

What did I expect from my father, I wonder? What was it I so desperately needed, after it was too late, after he could no longer give it? Robert Bly, that poet-guru of the men’s movement–whatever happened to the men’s movement?–Robert Bly said  that what boys and young men need from older men is blessing because too few are blessed by their fathers. Blessing is the bestowal of approval and encouragement. Blessing, says Webster’s dictionary, “Is a thing conducive to happiness or welfare.” And without the blessing of the father all else, it seems, fails to be conducive to happiness or welfare.

For some of us, without the father’s blessing, his approval and encouragement, nothing fully satisfies. Always there is the rising urge to take the small or large success and burst with it through memory’s door shouting, “Hey, Dad, guess what?” And if he is not home, or occupied with his failings, or deep in his despair, his hopeless anger,  his envy of his children, where, then, shall we go for blessing?

Sons, daughters longing hopelessly for the father’s blessing seek blessing in mismatched marriages, some in furious and soul-killing jobs, others into the brief safety of aloneness.

Of course, parenting is an impossible undertaking–fathering or mothering. The expectations, always changing on us, can never be fully met. But it seems to me that, in general, we judge our fathers to have fallen short more than we judge our mothers. Some explain that that’s because a mother’s love is unconditional and a father’s love is not. Maybe so. When I was a practicing marriage and family therapist, I spent hours with a client, sometimes weeks and months, listening to accounts, real and imagined, of the sins and shortcomings of the fathers. Many times I would finally have to shift the focus and say something like, “Tell me about your mother.”

What is it about fathers  that has them brought so often and kept so late in the court of their children’s judgment? I’m not talking about the obvious failures, the drunks, abusers, and the runaways. I mean what we call the “ordinary Joe;” your father; my father. You. Me. What is it about the task of fathering  so many fumble with and finally put aside?

Well, I have a theory about fathering. It needs work and, like any good theory, many will find good reason to find it implausible. But I propose that much of what makes fathering so difficult is that fathers are men. That’s not the whole of the theory. That’s the reality, the ground on which the theory is built. I’ll go on to propose that men– most men, the vast majority of men– focus the greater part of their attention, their mental and emotional energy, and their time and attention on achieving and maintaining  what they have been led to believe it means to be a man.

From the beginning, it has been required of men that they be strong. Dependable. In charge. Be all that Rudyard Kipling in his poem “If” says one must grow to be to be a man. Man is a Viking. A Hannibal. A Caesar. A hero.  Invincible.  Man stands like the king of creatures in the veldt, unmoved by whatever threatens.

I mentioned Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If.” I believe it to be one of the most frightening poems in the English language.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

That’s only half the poem. Those are only half of the requirements for manliness. What do I find frightening about Kipling’s poem? Well, I remember one of my psychology professors,  talking about all these “ifs” for becoming a man and saying, “Your work, ladies and gentlemen,” is to be done among those who whisper to themselves, “But what if I can’t?”

Kipling’s man was the idealized Victorian model. He was epitomized by the British Officer, ramrod straight on his white horse, buttoned up to his beard in a wool uniform in the middle of the desert prepared to show those ragged beggars screaming before him how an Englishman dies. “Mad dogs and Englishmen,” wrote Noel Coward, “go out in the noonday sun.” If, by some chance, this quintessential male  did not die out there buttoned up with his boots on, he went home to teach his children how to be just like him–endeavoring not to get too close to them in the process. His children, like those ragged beggars out there, were in need of being civilized.

Obviously, most of our fathers and most of us have not come home fresh from gifting the world with civilization at the point of our ceremonial swords. But what all that really boils down to is–Success.

It is impressed upon the male–which is what fathers are made of– that, whether they live in the age of Hannibal or Hank, they must, above all, be successful. And they must be successful at everything from running companies, preaching sermons,  playing basketball in the driveway, earning a living, staying alive, and obviously, above all, not failing. For some men, successfully cutting in line at the exit is about the only hope for self-esteem they’ll have today.

I contend that that’s a lot to handle and that, for most fathers, it doesn’t leave much left over for blessing our children, for being a successful father, or for even being conscious of what that might mean.

I never met my father’s father. To the best of my recollection, my father never mentioned him. Certainly, there had been no blessing there, no approval, encouragement, nothing conducive to happiness or welfare. And so my father strove to succeed without blessing, and always success eluded him and with that, he failed to bless his son.

And so, again and again, the sins of the fathers, visited upon the sons, from generation unto generation.

Well, a sad story–mine, maybe yours. I’ll claim some hope of redemption. There is a poem by David Ray. It’s called “Thanks, Robert Frost.” I repeat it here, by way of the redemption of fathers.

Do you have hope for the future?Someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end. Yes, and even for the past, he replied, that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was. Something we can accept,  mistakes made by the selves we had to be, not able to be, perhaps, what we wished, or what looking back half the time it seems we could so easily have been, or ought . . . The future, yes, and even for the past, that it will become something we can bear. And I too, and my children, so I hope, will recall as not too heavy the tug of those albatrosses I sadly placed upon their tender necks. Hope for the past, yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage and it brings strange peace that itself passes into past, easier to bear because  you said it, rather casually, as snow went on falling in Vermont years ago.

That’s what redemption is. That’s a way of thinking about what redemption is: giving the past hope where the past itself held none. How do we redeem the past? Surely what was, was? No. What was always is, blessing the present or reliving its sin generation after generation. A book that has stayed with me many years is called “The Dead Father,” written by Donald Barthelme. It is, essentially, one long metaphor in which the dead father has become enormous, a veritable giant of a corpse, who must be dragged about on a long, long journey by his children.

The only hope for breaking the cycle, for our children’s sake, is for us to redeem the past,  which is to forgive it all, to bless it–a thing conducive to happiness or welfare.

For whatever else it may have been worth, I have made some beginning  in doing that for myself: saying, yes he did those things, did not do those things, and he suffered this at the feet of his father–bless him, too–and carried all he suffered into the present, as do we all. And it is not too late for me, still, in frequent tears and much puzzlement, still  putting it all together and finding it not too late, now even past fathering and into grandfatherly-age, it is not too late to bless my children seek their blessing  upon the self he and I and he before him had to be, was not able to be, perhaps, what we wished or, looking back, what we could so easily have been.

To those early into fathering and yet-to-become fathers, I say this:

Nothing is required of you by the past.

Never read Rudyard Kipling.

Never wonder what it means to be a man.

If you think your father was a good father, he probably was.

Above all, continually give your children your blessing, that is to say,  your approval and your encouragement. This is a thing conducive to happiness and welfare. And it is what your children seek when they turn and look at you.

THE TELEPHONE

I got my old phone back today–the one that only makes and receives phone calls.  I’ve hated my “new” phone since the day I bought it a month or so ago and was disgusted with myself that, given the way *my* and *the* economy is, I allowed myself to be talked into it (obviously the salesperson’s fault that I bought it).  I had no use for the email or web feature.  Or the camera.  Or any of the other stuff.  I have all that right here on my computer.  And it would take me close to half an hour to write an email.  I could never get my big, clumsy thumbs on the right letters.  Darwin would have said that the capacity for your people to let fly with the fingers across those tiny keys is further proof of evolution.

I talked to a customer service person last night who said if I still had my old phone I could just have it re-activated and the new phone would be shut down–along with the cost of all the doodles.  Something had told me not to throw the old phone away.  I was at the door of Verizon when the store opened at noon today.  Mission accomplished.  You will no longer receive  almost immediate answers to your emails apparently written as if in Welsh.

What I do with a telephone is sometimes I call someone and sometimes someone calls me.

I’m reminded of the telephone my family had at one time that did only that.  It hung on the wall of the hallway at our c. 1780 house in Sterling, Massachusetts back in the 50’s (that’s the 1950s, young folk).  It was really quite lovely.  It was solid oak.  Hung on the wall.   There was an ear piece which one lifted off and held to one’s ear while cranking the handle on the side (equipped with a nicely turned oak knob).  Then one spoke into the black metal “speaking tube” and said some like “Elsie, would you give me 234, please).  It would not be unusual for “Elsie” to say something like, “Well I will but she’s not home you know.”  It was what was called a four party line.  Each party on the line shared a ring, like one-short, one-long or two-longs. The upside was that only one of the other three parties could listen in on your conversations.

So now we carry access to the world on our belts.  I’m not going to attempt to make a case for those “good old days” of the oak phone and the four part line and more than I would attempt to make a case for the romance of going out to the stable on a bitter cold morning and hitching  old dobbin up to the shay. Much of the “good old days” is made of fading and very selective memories.  I will be trite enough to say this, though–thinking of the family I read of the other day who have six TVs in their house and can watch the same show as they go from room to room–I’ll say, when it comes to our personal lives, at what point and in relation to what do we finally say, “I don’t need that.”

Again, Happy Fathers Day.  And, if you are a dad and you really needed one, I hope your kids gave you an iPad or Pod or whatever.

ANDREW JACKSON & BARRACK OBAMA

FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS, SUNSHINE PATRIOTS

ANDREW JACKSON AND BARRACK OBAMA

Reading Jon Meacham’s biography of Andrew Jackson, I was struck by some disturbing similarities between the atmosphere of Jackson’s aim for a second term and the present attitude of a great many former avid supporters toward President Barrack Obama.  As I read of the vitriolic and mindless attacks on President Jackson, ranging from lack of knowledge to lack of rationality, I seem to be reading of the tenor of our own time and what I consider to be the near-abandonment of our own president.

Though broadsides of insult and villainous fiction were common to political campaigns of the early Republic (thinking here of the campaigns of Jefferson and Adams), the attacks on Jackson by such opponents as Calhoun and Clay were unprecedented (attacks including the gleeful revival of the dishonoring of the morality of Jackson’s first wife and the juicy missteps of his friends).

Jackson was early known as “The American Lion.” “The hero of New Orleans.”  Swept into office by his glorious and fearless feats on the battlefield.

Leading unbowed with a British bullet between his heart and his lung.  Revered, honored, idolized: the crowds all but demolished the White House during the riotous “celebration” of his Inauguration to his first term.

But soon, age advancing,  illness and pain sapping his strength, tired—and his often pitiless megalomania wearing thin (Jackson might well have turned the phrase “My way or the highway), the crowds turned against him. Old friends drifted away.  Many who would have (and did) push and shove their way into his glorious presence merely to say they had laid eyes upon him (or to gain some post in government as reward for their adulation) now either sought his downfall or stood by to watch..  The mighty were near to fallen after one term.

As we know, Jackson did not fall but shuffled uncertainly into a second term.  But the crowds were smaller, quieter.  The friends more cautious.  Fewer risked being seen to grasp for his coat-tails.  “Fair weather friends” and, as Meacham writes, “sunshine patriots.”

No one could have been more surprised than Roger Taney himself when Jackson reached out to him appoint him Attorney General.  Taney was glad of the office and pleased to serve but was pained personally and vicariously by the ugliness of the opposition now being faced hourly by the man who had called him.  As I read an excerpt from Taney’s memoirs, I could not help but think of how the light in which Barrack Obama gleamed in those heady days of his triumph so quickly has dimmed.  Taney wrote of those who had dimmed the light and decided it prudent to turn their backs on Jackson,

It seemed to me that every man who by his support of him in 1824 had made him so prominent in the canvas of 1828 and by that means brought on his this vindictive rivalry , was bound to do more than give him a mere cold political support; was bound to make personal sacrifices if they were necessary to support his administration while he continued to deserve his confidence and continued to be unjustly assailed.  Such sacrifices seem to me to be necessary where new enemies were combining with the old ones to wage war against him in the same fierce spirit of hostility.

I cannot but think in those same terms of those who now mutter about a president who played a round of golf, who has not stopped a flow of oil as might a king commanding the waves to turn, who has not stopped the wars or single-handedly brought prosperity upon the  land.  Where are they now, those hundreds of thousands of cheering, joyfully weeping

crowds of worshippers on that night of the welcome of a new god?

It is now “mere cold support” as the multitude wakens from its dreaming of a new day and turns toward the sound of other promises, perhaps to see if something better, easier, less politically and personally costly might lie in that direction.  Is that a “Tea Party” over there? And will those who attend be given what their former hero, briefly acclaimed. seems to withhold?

John Meacham writes to Jackson’s followers and surely to each of us who hailed Obama’s seeming Deus ex machina onto the political stage;

In a way Taney was calling for followers to play a more consistent and demanding role in politics than might be comfortable for them.  If a mass representative democracy were to work well, a leader’s troops could not be…sunshine patriots.  They would have to be vigilant, keeping abreast of the shifting calculus of politics through the newspapers and standing read to argue the party line with passion and conviction.

And Meacham writes that Taney was urging the emerging political troops of the 1830s “to wage constant partisan combat, no matter what the issue.”

Our “troops” are all-too-quiescent.  All too willing to let the leader andthe government they elected take the onslaught alone.  I read every day in
“Facebook” of calls to join the “Coffee Party.”  Where is it?  Who leads it?  I know where the “Tea Party” in my area will be held next week—but where Oh Where is the Coffee Party?  At my house?  Would you come?  Probably not.  Busy.  Where is the passion and conviction to support the values and principles of that young man who amazed the world by taking leadership in such times as these.  Did we think that his passion and conviction would bring about the age of peace and plenty we so desired?  Has he not worked the miracles we assumed he could and would work?  Has change not come fast enough for those who waited as long as tomorrow for the world to be changed?

The voices of those who would turn back the clock, turn out the destitute and the sick, make quick work of enemies (and continue to makemore) and turn back the stranger at the gates—those voices are loud, passionate and organized.  Most of us are letting those voices take  the day.

Fair weather friends.   Sunshine patriots.“If a mass representative democracy were to work well, a leader’s troops could not be…sunshine patriots.”  Hear him!  Hear him!

Edward Frost

FROM A MENTOR TO OBAMA

FROM A MENTOR TO OBAMA

Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, was tutored by his teacher(whose name happened to be “Mentor).”  Telemachus was brooding on the injustices and difficulties a ruler faces.  Mentor replied to him patiently: “You must count on the ingratitude of humankind, and yet not  be discouraged by it from doing good: you must study their welfare, not so much for their own sake, as for the sake of the gods who have commanded it.  Further, if the bulk of humankind are ungrateful. there are always some good people who will have a due sense of your virtue.  Even the multitude, though fickle and capricious, does not fail sooner or later to do justice, in some measure, to true virtues.”

Let’s hope Telemachus was right.

AMAZING GRACE

AMAZING GRACE

Watching the dancer leaping and turning, seemingly weightless, his movements apparently effortless. He made it look so easy that anyone could do it. I could do it! The term that came to mind as I watched was, of course, “graceful,” the art of being at ease, all parts of the whole in perfect accord and balance. The apparent ease deceptive. Perhaps one has achieved grace when the struggle beneath it is not apparent. On reflection, the complexity, the discipline by which ease is achieved, becomes obvious. Every muscle has been trained, every movement practiced to the point of exhaustion. The artist has devoted life itself to coming to terms with the lack of ease, with the common state of dis-ease, with imbalance. The artist is in command of time, of event, of self–trusts both the event and the self to be as one. And that is grace.
Grace, when we see it, appears so simple, so natural, so “as it ought to be.” It seems that grace should be our common state. Yet we know that grace is rare, a triumph over awkwardness, a victory over dis-ease. Human existence–in its civilized state–is not normally graceful, harmonious, or in balance but is at odds with itself and the universe. Humanness is divided against itself. Mind against body. Passion against restraint. Thought hunting down feeling to deny it. Spirit against material. Civil demands against private virtue. Future hope against past experience. We live awkwardly, gawkily, in tension, pulled by opposites, struggling to be free; sometimes surrendering to one tug or another just to ease the tension. It was James Thurber who said that just as we find our hearts in a close embrace we discover that our foot is caught in the piano stool.
These thoughts grew from watching a ballet dancer–thoughts of disharmony from an experience of rare grace.
When the term “grace” came to my mind thoughts flew down the memory channels to relive again the days of the theology student, of grizzled, homeless-looking professors mumbling into their yellowing notes about the “mystery of grace.” I thought of my young self, a then-unbearded Methodist student minister preaching against “cheap grace” in the wood-cutting country of northern Maine–a well-intended preacher of the gospel finally giving up on the doctrine of grace, deserting Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, clerical collar, bishop, and holy communion, fleeing to the then-presumed simplicity of Unitarianism and the freedom of sweet reason untinged with mystery.
Grace had been one of the tools of my trade long-since laid down in favor of modernist machinery, in favor of streamlined, short-cut religion with no room for troublesome parts like “grace” and “salvation” which take too much time to think about, too much thought, perhaps too much trust and faith to handle. It was certainly too much for the children who thought “Amazing Grace” was a circus lady who worked with “Gladly” the cross-eyed bear.
So I fell to preaching about “how to be happy,” from the latest pop psych book, and, here and there, I made some harmless call to save some part of the world or other, which made us all feel good and changed nothing. But it couldn’t last. Religion, as Channing said, is all or nothing. True religion is about ultimate things. It is necessary for us to decide what things are of passing interest, what things are of the moment, and what things are, in our personal and communal existence, ultimate and inescapable. Grace, then, returned to the vocabulary of my existence through the gracefulness of a dancer, but it came with theological language-baggage that needed to be sorted out.
Grace, in the Christian tradition, has seemed to be such rare thing that its occasional evidence in a human being came to be supernaturally explained. What the Christian doctrine-makers saw in humanity in general was not the ease and harmony of grace but quite the opposite–what they saw in humankind was chaos, what they called “sin.” It was assumed that humanity had the possibility of graceful existence, life without chaos, without sin, but that it had lost that possiblity through Adam’s fall. “In Adam’s fall,” they stitched on the needlework, “In Adam’s fall we sinned all.” Humanity, through the disobedience of those fabled first parents, then must live gracelessly, awkwardly, in conflict and alienation from self, god, and nature, which is to say, because of the hasty, furtive scarfing down of a forbidden fruit, we have forever after lived gracelessly.
The Christian church recognized no way that human beings could save themselves from this state, this graceless, separated, sinful condition. In what was called “the first dispensation”–that is, the age of human history known through the Hebrew scriptures–God had given the Hebrews the law through which at least they would not offend him. But this, surely, was not grace, but a mere going through the motions. Correct behavior is not the same as graceful being.

Jesus Christ, according to the arrogance of Christianity, was “the new dispensation,” or “the new Adam.” Through him, grace, salvation, came to human beings as an unearned gift from God. Human beings, according to sacred doctrine, can do nothing to earn or deserve God’s gift of grace. It was a gift of love. “For God so loved the world,” they said, “That he gave his only begotten son.”
And how did the world recognize and know the saved, those in a state of grace? What does grace look like? The saved, those in a state of grace, live, first of all, in faith–not with mere belief, not by merely agreeing to some doctrine or dogma. Belief is merely religion and religion is not faith. Faith is basic trust in the dependability of the universe. Faith is trust that the ground in which we have our being is firm and reliable: is as it should be.
Faith, then, is living as if life is worth living. In faith we declare that a life of sufficient meaning can be carved out of mere existence. Our faith is the structure, the framework, within which our personal existence makes sense–if only to us.
For Christians, that sense, that meaning and purpose, is grounded in the knowledge of God as revealed to them through his son, Jesus Christ. For the Apostle James, writing in the Christian scriptures, the saved person, the person living in a state of grace, can be known by behavior, by what he or she does, by how he or she lives. James was the pragmatic one. “By their fruits,” he said, “You shall know them.” James was not one for a lot of esoteric theologizing. “Faith by itself,” James said, “If it has not works, is dead.” He was quite specific. The person in faith, living in a state of grace, can be seen caring for widows and orphans, visiting the sick, being merciful, living justice, peacefully, with humility. James said, “Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for that person it is sin.” That’s clear enough. And the meaning of grace for James is clear enough. The person who lives in grace knows what is good and does it.
It was another James, William James, who, centuries later, said that the difference between good religion and bad religion can be determined by observing the kind of life the believer lives.
Grace, in traditional Christian terms, then, is the unearned, undeserved gift of God by which people are lifted out of a life of sin, ushered into a life of faith in which they live and act consistently with that faith. They are known by their faith and works to be living in grace.
But what can grace mean to those who doubt this fabled God who reaches from far out there and imposes his gift of salvation from sin on an undeserving humanity? Is there grace for the humanist, the agnostic, the atheist—the theologically befuddled Unitarian? In traditional terms, grace is the antidote to the state of sin. “Amazing Grace” that saved a wretch like me. Do we need this salvation from sin?
I’m not talking about “sins,” doing bad things, lying, cheating, stealing– calling lying, cheating, and stealing something else. By “sin” I mean a state of being, a state in which we are less than what we could be, fallen short of our possibility, a state in which we are in disharmony, in which we are, to put it simply, dis-grace-ful. Living in sin is living a gawky, awkward, ungrace-ful kind of existence caused by being too cheap, too greedy, or too cowardly to know what good is and to do it.
This state of “sin,” this state of being in the space between where we are and where we could be, drives us to seek ease in strange quarters, to be “free” at the cost of true freedom, to have answers, however easy, which will resolve the conflicts of our being. Emerson taught us to beware laying down our reason –which, he said, is our oneness with God–and denying our intellect, the means to knowing that oneness. We lay down our reason and intellect for cheap grace, false gods, mad prophets. The state of dis-ease, of un-ease, disharmony, propels many to cults, to gurus and the mind-games of the moment, to pseudo-philosophies and psychologies, to all manner of single-minded dogma and fanaticism.
The awareness of our state of being is also part of what brings us to gather here. Who will deliver us? We have wanted to believe what we were taught before. Most of us here were raised in beliefs of various sorts. We have felt the need to believe, but could not believe. We have been left with unanswered questions, left with questions in a lonely place, without clear simple meaning or purpose absolute and conclusive.
Christian doctrine was formulated in an age much like ours, an age which had little or no faith in independent human possibility. Human beings were seen as the puppets of God: all meaning and all events to be interpreted in the light of the will of God or the gods. When the early doctrine-makers perceived that some people lived grace-fully–in a state of grace–in spiritual ease, they assumed that such a state was a divine, unearned, undeserved gift from beyond the world of human possibility.
We, too, perceive that some live in that state of grace-fulness. But we can come to understand that what some have created out of the givens of human existence, exists as possiblity for us all with or without a boost from the gods. For us, such remarkable human beings as Jesus of Nazareth were not models of supernatural perfection but are models of human possibility. The 19th century Unitarians in America argued that Jesus did not “save” us by dying as a god, but saves us, transforms us, by being a powerful example of human possibility. Jesus did not come to be worshipped, Emerson and Parker and Channing said, but to be emulated. We are not “saved” by his death, the New England preachers said, but by the example of his life.
In my experience, those people who live the graceful life, living in and with the givens of their existence, rather than living as victims of existence, have not been the undeserving recipients of the gifts of gods or fateful coincidence. They have shaped and formed their place in life by deliberate effort, using the realities in which they live to achieve a balance, an integration, a wholeness –which is grace.
The Unitarian theologian, James Luther Adams, said that human existence “is always comprised of both the given fact and the responsible act.” That is, we are responsible for what we do with what we have.
We have the givens of our birth in time, in place, society, and culture. We have the givens of our genetic limitations and possibilities. And we have what Christian doctrine called “God’s will” and which I simply call “Mystery.” Which is to say that–add up everything that goes to make us who we are and we find that we are more than the sum of the parts.
The dancer is more than a practiced technician. The dance is clearly more than learning how to move one’s body, as music is more than knowing where the notes are, and poetry more than making rhymes. What we see in art and beauty requires a special word. That word is grace. The word “grace,” relieved of its old traditional baggage, is still needed to describe that state of being which is “more than” mere skillful techniques for living.
Baryshnikov moves, acts, dances in confidence in his skill, because he has practiced it, and he has practiced it in the trust and acceptance that, whatever else the realities of life may be what he does is beautiful, and good, and true. To trust the context–the place we are– the place in which we must live out our lives, to trust in spite of the chaos and the tragedy, rather than living in terror of what we have not made and cannot control. This is to live gracefully.
To accept the givens of our personal existence and to act responsibly, to act purposefully, in trust, this is to achieve and to experience a state of grace, a graceful being. The old Christian doctrine of grace insists that this way of graceful, trusting, accepting, being cannot be achieved, learned—or taught. It can only come as an undeserved gift of God.
Yet I have not know anyone who has lived grace-fully who has not struggled to live in that way, struggled to learn from pain that has no meaning, and borne the cost of letting go and letting be. When I think of grace, I imagine myself at my sacred place, high above the desert floor. The blackbirds intermittently screech at the circling hawks. Otherwise there is only the sound of the mountain breeze hissing through the ancient up-heaved stones. I seek grace: harmony, unity. I focus on a place far below on the desert floor and breathe deeply, slowly, consciously. Here I am no priest. Here I am a brother, a penitent, a supplicant seeking the graceful presence of God. Time passes and with time passing comes a dimming of the memory of all I must do, of all it is demanded I be. The outer world begins to enter and unite with the inner.
Then I think–how shall I describe, set this down later? One thought leads to another: how can I accomplish that project, how can I pay that debt, how can I defend against that shortcoming. The fall from grace is rapid.
But, I assure you, there is grace. I have felt it at times, almost engulf me, restore me, bless me with a passing vision of harmony and balance. I do not believe that grace is a gift imposed on us from above. I believe that grace is a standing invitation, the universe outstretched as a hand we beat against until we are finally able to rest into it. ‘Tis grace has brought us safe this far, ‘Tis grace will bring us home.”

INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

I attended the Memorial Service for the fifteen-year-old son of a member of a congregation I was serving. A soccer player, ROTC cadet, just proclaimed “most physically fit” at an ROTC leadership camp, he literally fell dead of heart failure during a training exercise. The day before, a young member of our congregation told me he has been diagnosed with lymphoma. These intimations of mortality come shortly after reading Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade,” in which one wakens in the small hours to the terror of death–

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

Later, the poem says that being brave about death doesn’t help much. “Being brave,” it says,
“Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.”

Having emerged from some months of something less than death-defying illness myself, had I fallen into morbid obsession with death? No; but neither, I insist, morbid nor obsessive, “unresting death” has not been far from my thoughts. I have thought what form faith takes–or its sister, hope–when faith will not include a happy–yea, happier–carrying on, immortal consciousness, eternal spirit.
I think of that Dylan Thomas Poem with it’s insistent, “…rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Thomas, it would seem, takes a view contrary to Larkin, demanding that death withstood is different. Death whined about or simply unresisted, going off gently led, is for Thomas a meaner, in the sense of smaller, kind of death.
The Memorial Service for that young boy was, for the most part, a humanist “celebration of life.” There was almost a denial of death in it, a repeated insistence through that pale proffering of succor we liberal ministers call “the immortality of influence,” that “he is not dead.”
Counterpoint to the more humanist “death happens” approach of some in the service was the largely-unconscious denial of mere happening in the recurring theme, “We don’t know why this has happened.” Not, then, “mere” happening but with purpose, with meaning veiled. To admit ignorance of the meaning of death is to assume there is some meaning, is to assume some ongoing, higher purpose than Alexander Pope’s abrupt “We cease.”
From the mixture of cultures represented in the Memorial Service there came also the songs which promised answers by-and-bye, when Jesus would answer why. Those whose hearts warm to these songs can live with the questions in the conviction that the answers are only a lifetime away.
The effect of all this, for me–the message conveyed to me–was, “We are not bowled over by this boy’s death. We are sad, yes. But we are not stopped. We are not stupefied. We are not frozen in a world bottomed out, senseless.” I couldn’t help thinking as I left, “Why not? Why not be stopped, stupefied, flat-out struck dumb and likely to remain so? The child was fifteen years old—and he died before your eyes.”
As I drove away from the church, I came behind a car with a bumper sticker which read, politely, “Incidents Happen.” Yes. Incidents like stopped hearts. Unstopping trucks. Slips. Falls. Death happens. I haven’t a faith to respond to it, whine at it or withstand it. I’m a plumber without a wrench. A dentist without a drill. A minister without a death-defying answer. I am myself gripped, scared incidentless, …”by the dread of dying and being dead.”
I have only one halting, most often barely-adequate response to these startling reminders, harsh intimations of mortality–and that is life. One day at a time life. This butterfly. This hand. This breeze. This–even this, dread, this pain. To say that isn’t faith or that it isn’t faith enough is to come from somewhere else, of course. One whose faith proffers so much more than mere appreciation of this moment’s grace can say that isn’t enough. I could wish for so much more but, somehow, it eluded me at this boy’s death and leaves me just this, this day. As the good book says, “Look well, therefore, to this day.”

“To Be Or Not To Be”

“Whether ‘Tis Better To Suffer”
by
Edward Frost

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.

In this perhaps most often quoted of what is perhaps Shakespeare’s best known play Hamlet considers the fragility of life; the all-too-brief light, brief as a spark, ending inevitably in death’s nothingness–or perchance to pass into eternal dreams. “Ah ,there’s the rub.”
As Hamlet speaks of death, he begins to muse on suicide–to consider if ending one’s life rather than enduring life’s pain might be the better course.“ To be or not to be; that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? ‘tis a consummation,” Hamlet says, “devoutly to be wished.”
On the other hand, is it perhaps more “noble” to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that flesh is heir to?” In his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” the existentialist philosopher, Albert Camus, plays on the theme of Hamlet’s musing of “To be or not to be” as he wrote:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest-whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories–comes afterwards. These are games. One must first answer [the question of suicide].

These are the questions that lie at the heart of the continuing civic, philosophic and religious struggle with the issue of suicide–particularly the issue of assisted suicide. If we are suffering the agonies of illness and disease for which there is no cure, suffering most of us cannot imagine which, after months or years inevitably ends in death–should we not have the right to by taking action “take arms against them and by opposing end them? Should we not have the right to choose for oneself when it is good, and moral and timely to die and to seek the help of those who are prepared to help us die in dignity ,in peace, safety and in the company of friends, loved ones and compassionate helpers?
At the present time, assisted dying is legal in only three states. Oregon was the first state to pass a “Death With Dignity” act. which authorizes physicians to provide lethal drugs. Washington and Montana have a similar laws.

An article in “CNN Health” says,

The idea of allowing someone to end his or her own life is undoubtedly controversial.The article points out that in Gallup’s 2011 Values and Beliefs poll conducted in March of this year45% of Americans consider doctor-assisted suicide morally acceptable, –and 48% believe it’s morally wrong; The article reported that the split was closer than on other hot-button issues such as abortion, having a child out of wedlock and cloning animals.

Frankly, I was surprised to read that almost half those surveyed considered doctor-assisted suicide morally acceptable, given the fact that only three states in any way condone it. Of course, I don’t know where the survey was conducted: it might have been in those three states in which it is legal. What are the objections to assisted suicide? Obviously, not everyone believes that ending one’s own life is “devoutly to be wished for.”
One of the objections is that suffering is somehow “redemptive.” We often read of someone’s death as one who “suffered heroically” in his or her “battle” with a terrible illness. Here the wish to not suffer “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” but to oppose them, to end them, seems to be judged by some to be a selfish and even cowardly–ignoble choice–to end a life which, though lived in the fog of drugs and in terrible pain when the drugs wear off with shorter and shorter periods of relief which can only end in death prolonged. Either choice, “To be or not to be,” to cling to life with all the palliative care that science and medicine can offer or by choosing to end the suffering–either choice may be courageous. It is not for us to judge the choice of others. We can only work to assure that those who suffer have the choice to bear it for their own reasons or to end it in their own time and by their own means.
Shortly after leaving the congregation I served in Atlanta the Associate Minister who had worked with me, The Rev. Suzanne Meyer, developed inoperable and terminal cancer. Another colleague was a constant companion to Suzanne in her last days. She writes, “Suzanne was in unbearable pain whenever the morphine wore off, and it was hell for those of us who loved her to have to bear it as witnesses from the outside, let alone how it must have felt to her.” This, by the way, is another objection to assisted suicide–that the suffering person will be persuaded by that “hell” of those who can only stand by helplessly to end their lives, not for their own sake, but for the sake of their loved one.
But Suzanne’s companion, The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger, s writes,

Everything in me screams out that that pain was not in any way redemptive. It was, instead, the exact opposite–it was reductive. A person in that kind of intense, unrelieved pain, with no end in sight except death, is not gaining character or spiritual power or anything else. They are losing their humanity and their personhood, they are struggling without meaning and without purpose and with no end except death.

Having been with so many people in that struggle personally I don’t need to be convinced of what has seemed to me be to be “struggle without meaning.” If there is some kind of heroism or nobility in it I cannot imagine what it could be. “What’s wrong with lying peacefully in bed,” my colleague writes, “Saying good-bye to loved ones, listening perhaps to music or sounds of nature, and then quietly and with full humanity letting go as the breath stops? Why,” she asks, “is struggling in pain, crying out, face distorted, tears flowing, family members helpless and distraught, considered more authentically human?”
In a powerful, deeply compassionate PBS documentary called “The Suicide Tourist” (which you can access online),a man suffering in the final stages of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) says “As you experience yourself draining inexorably away you come to see yourself as an empty shell, existing mostly to take in and excrete fluids.” He finally made arrangements with one of the four legal assisted suicide organizations in Sweden and died peacefully with their help with his wife by his side.
There are, of course, many people–that fifty percent or so–who believe that there is a lot wrong with ending one’s own life–assisted or not. There are powerful and perhaps immutable religious objections that, like the issue of abortion may never be resolved..For many people, the answer to the question “Whose life is it anyway?” Is simple and beyond question. For believers, our lives are not ours alone but belong to God–and it is the gravest of sins to deliberately end them.
The Roman Catholic Council of Bishops does not object to palliative care and supports patient’s final directives that no “heroic measures” (an interesting way to put it) be taken to prolong their lives. But the bishops draw the line at suicide, reaffirming the doctrine that suicide is a sin, that life, no matter how unbearable, is a gift of God which no one can set aside without fear of sin from which there may be no redemption. Other religious bodies support palliative care but most also embrace the doctrine that life belongs to God and no one has the right to end it–or to assist in ending it.
The man with ALS, in discussing his decision to end his life, said “I have decided that it is my time–my time to die. I know there are some who object to my decision, but, then, who’s life is it?” I find it interesting that in Hamlet’s soliloquy he does not include God in the dilemma “To be or not to be.” “That is the question,” he says, and he apparently assumes that it requires a human answer. But the traditional religious conviction is that since God breathed life into Adam the breath of our life is the gift of God–even when that breath is noisily drawn by a machine, whether the sufferer would choose to have that breath drawn or not.
Generally speaking, I believe it is pointless to argue against belief–unless that belief involves violence or oppression against others. But I find it difficult to understand the nature of a God who demands that a person of faith continue to prolong life into weeks and months of excruciating pain. The traditional answer to questions of “God’s will” is either that we have no answer–that God has his reasons and that we cannot always know them; Or, that God requires the prolongation of suffering to prove or demonstrate the faith of the sufferer.
In the play, “J. B.” by Archibald MacLeish based on the biblical book of Job, God has inflicted all manner of suffering on Job. He strips Job of all that he had possessed as a formerly rich man and afflicts him with horrendous sores that caused him to sit on an ash heap and scrape at them in agony. All his suffering, according to the narrative, is for God to prove to Satan and to Job’s skeptical friends that Job will remain faithful to God no matter what abominations God piles on him. Finally, J.B.’s long-suffering wife has had enough of this contest between divine and human will and says to her husband, “Curse God and die.”
We should note that the biblical story of Job is derived from one of the oldest narratives in human history. In the ancient narrative the story ends with the faithful one continuing in his agony. But the Hebrew writers, in adapting the story, gave meaning and purpose to enduring suffering by providing an alternative ending in which Job is redeemed from his suffering and all his possessions are multiplied ten-fold as reward for his faithfulness.
“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…” In my mind, there is no nobility in such suffering.
But if it eases the minds of the dying and their loved ones to believe God has some purpose in it, in their presence I can only keep my deeply religious objection to it to myself and minister as best I can. Some object to any form of assisted suicide, whether by the assistance of compassion in dying organizations or, even where the law allows, by physicians, because they fear that assisting the terminally ill and suffering to die we would be stepping on that proverbial “slippery slope”and the reasons for choosing to die would become less and less compelling. In time, so the objection goes, assistance in suicide could become easily available to anyone who simply wants to die.
But those of us who argue for change in the laws against assisted suicide are not by any means arguing for helping people to die who are simply literally “bored to death” with life. We are not even speaking of helping people to die who, they feel, have lived long enough and want to end it before the infirmities of aging take their toll. We are not even considering helping people to die who suffer from mental illness–perhaps persistent and life-sapping depression. Organizations such as “Final Exit” and “Compassion and “Choices”are not going to consider helping people to die who have decided they cannot answer Camus’ question of whether or not life has sufficient meaning to endure it. The issue of assisted suicide is by no means a contention that suffering or disabled people ought to die. The issue, again, has to do with whether or not one suffering greatly from a terminal illness ought to have the right to choose to die–to perhaps die with the assistance of a physician or with the assistance of such organizations as Compassion & Choices, Final Exit or the Hemlock Society.
A compelling reason for working toward legalizing these organizations is that it really is not as easy to end ones life as one might think. I recall the tragedy of an aging theology professor and his wife who decided to end their lives together. They shared a lovely candlelit dinner then lay down on their bed side by side and drank what they believed to be a lethal poison. Sadly, the poison did end the life of the professor but did not end the life of his wife who survived with irreversible brain damage.
Assistance in dying by compassionate and knowledgeable people is essential because suicide is not easy,as the theme song of the movie “Mash” claims and the consequences of botching the task can be tragic. What we wish for those who are convinced that their lives have become unbearable is that they have the right to choose to be assisted in dying, dying peacefully with compassionate befriends and perhaps with loved ones by their side as their journey ends.
In 1988 the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association adopted a “Death With Dignity” Resolution. The Resolution began in relation to the first of Unitarian Universalism’s Seven Principles: “That we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person and that we are] Guided by our belief as Unitarian Universalists that human life has inherent dignity, which may be compromised when life is extended “beyond the will or ability of a person to sustain that dignity; and believing that it is every person’s inviolable right to determine in advance the course of action to be taken in the event “that there is no reasonable expectation of recovery from extreme physical or mental disability.”
There are several “Whereases” and “Be It Resolved” in the Resolution but I believe the essence of it is: “That Unitarian Universalists advocate the right to self-determination in dying, and the release from civil or criminal penalties of those who, under proper safeguards, act to honor the right of terminally ill patients to select the time of their own deaths; And–BE IT RESOLVED: That Unitarian Universalists, acting through their congregations, memorial societies, and appropriate organizations, inform and petition legislators to support legislation that will create legal protection for the right to die with dignity, in accordance with one’s own choice.”
Again, the issue here is choice. And it is every bit as profound a religious choice as it is for the Roman Catholic Council of Bishops–because the choices before us, whether they have to do with choosing to die or a woman’s right to choose have to do with our theological and philosophical convictions about the nature, source and, literally in the end, the “ownership” of human life. I insert here a passage from a letter Rev. Meyer wrote to her friends in her final days:

My health failed me in the end,” she says, but my friends did not. I never felt abandoned by God, or punished; in fact, my cancer brought me closer to God by bringing me closer to other people’s suffering. My greatest life-long fear was that I would die sick and alone in some indifferent institution. Thanks to my loving friends, I never felt alone or isolated. I was overwhelmed by the love of friends. Through them I caught a glimpse of heaven.

To be or not to be.That is the question.”

May we stand for the right and freedom to freely choose the answer for ourselves.