The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

You are the future,

the red sky before sunrise

over the fields of time.

 

You are the cock's crow when night is done,

you are the dew and the bells of matins,

maiden, stranger, mother, death.

 

You create yourself in ever-changing shapes

that rise from the stuff of our days---

unsung, unmourned, undescribed,

like a forest we never knew.

 

You are the deep innerness of all things,

the last word that can never be spoken.

To each of us you reveal yourself differently:

to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

 

The seed of the Blessed One is planted in us but we have trouble accepting this reality. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,” writes Marianne Williamson. “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. “
Nicaraguan Catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal adds: “God has been thinking of me since before I was born, for all eternity. God loves us more than we love ourselves.” 

Why is it so hard to accept the good news? Perhaps because we are our own worst enemies. Perhaps because others make us feel like damaged goods. Perhaps because we think it’s too much of a burden to bear.

“Do you know what you are?” Spanish cellist Pablo Casals asks. “You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the world there is no other...exactly like you.” 

We are each a unique blend of good and evil. This choice is ours in every moment which parts of ourselves to put out into the world. 

“The world needs all of our power and love and energy, and each of us has something to give,” essayist Merle Shain reflects. “The trick is to find it and use it, to find it and give it away, so there will always be more. We can be lights for each other, and through each other’s illumination we will see the way. Each of us is a seed, a silent promise, and it is always spring.” 

I was really impressed, when at last weekend’s Board retreat, our congregational president, Jeff Payne, shared with us a spreadsheet about our finances that was done in Microsoft Excel. I’ve used Excel pretty extensively, but more for data collection than for financial functions, and I was wow’d by the ease of manipulating and recalculating financial possibilities.  (By the way, I think you’ll have a chance to see this spreadsheet at the canvass kickoff lunch on Oct 18.) 

 

One of the Excel functions with which I am quite familiar is the ‘sort’. With that tool, you can ask for a list to be re-sorted in any manner that you choose...by name, by postal code, by date, by any other identifier. You can sort sections of a list, without moving the rest, and frankly, because it works so quickly and easily, it’s possible to really mess it up...to lose the connections between entries. I was never so happy to have a back up file, when, as a Realtor, I realized that somehow I had rearranged my whole database of clients in a way that put names with the wrong properties, birthdays with the wrong people, even children with the wrong parents! 

 

So, perhaps it was my familiarity with Excel that made my eye to catch on a recent comment from a colleague. He wasn’t talking about Excel spreadsheets. He wasn’t even talking about our topic for today, How Shall We Live... at least not directly. He was talking about UUs and how we build our personal theologies.   I quote Peter Richardson here: “We do not scissors and glue our way into a multi-faith orientation. We expose ourselves to the world of religion and experience a sorting process within; we live the sort." 

 

We experience a sorting process within; we live the sort. I love that. We live the sort. We take in all the input, internal and external, nature, nuture and experience, and we sort it all out somehow to make a life and to determine how we shall live. We live the sort. 

 

For me, the concept of living the sort helps to explain how we can make such different choices. We each have both different input and a different method of sorting. Even when we ask the same questions, we get different answers. Like, why, in today’s story, did Nikolai listen to the old turtle’s wisdom rather than the wisdom of his friends? How did he determine that his friends’ answers were not quite right for him? 

For me, the sorting process explains how Sunday services and sermons come into being. I get input...direct suggestions, tangential conversations, observed behaviours, world and community events, expressed desires...and they come together into a topic. The Sunday Services committee looks at the topics, and sometimes adds ideas and perspectives. The service co-leader has some input into what is said and read and shared during the service. And then, if I’m as lucky as I was this past week, I have conversations with some of you that put more into the hopper, give me more grist for the mill, give me something to put in my pipe and smoke.  

 

It turns out today’s topic...or the theme for the year...How Shall We Live, along with my September newsletter article about being a better person...had sparked a lively dialogue among some. That small group asked me to come meet with them to talk about it some more. And the ensuing conversation played an incredible role in my discerning just what to say today.   (In fact, it makes me think that we should plan weekly lunches or teas where we talk together about the sermon topic for the coming Sunday!)

 

Anyway...just as we live the sort as we build our own theologies, just as a Sunday service is a manifestation of a communal sorting process...it occurs to me that there is a similar process that happens as we try to answer the important questions of our lives. How shall we live, how shall I live, is one such question. 

 

I want to start with a crucial part of my learning from the conversation earlier this week. There I heard that our theme, How Shall We Live, is not universally seen as inspirational. For some it feels Puritanical, grounded in a doctrine of original sin, with the ‘shall’ word strictly instructing one in right and wrong behaviour. For some, it contains an inherent assumption that who we are is not only not good enough, but even downright depraved. 

 

It had never occurred to me that this theme might be interpreted, sorted out, to imply an “ought” or “must” message. Nor had I considered that the concept of being a better person might be heard as a berating voice that assumes that one is not good as one is.   I really had to ponder this. Does my worldview in fact contain the remnants of a doctrine of ‘original sin’? Do I expect that what I say here ‘ought to’ be heard as a mandate or a directive?   I’m pretty sure that I can answer no to both of those questions, but the conversation reminded me that I need to keep a watch out for hidden agendas within myself. It also reminded me that there are always equally legitimate yet differing perspectives.

 

So, let me suggest that in a Unitarian Universalist context, the sermon is never the final word. Don’t give me the authority to decide what is right for you. At the same time, I’d like to encourage you to be open to learning, especially from those things that might rub you the wrong way. And just so you know...the people who were part of this conversation know that my message today will contain ideas from them, but I’m not going to name names. If they want to ‘out’ themselves to you, that’s completely up to them. 

But here’s the thing....while this conversation gave me food for thought, it didn’t, or hasn’t so far, changed my mind about the importance or direction of this theme. On the other hand, the conversation did encourage me to become very clear that I believe there to be no conflict between honouring value, that is, a person’s inherent worth and dignity, and having a conviction that we can improve, become better, learn. While each of us is a perfect person just as we are, we could all be better human beings.  Or, while each of us is a perfect being, we could all be better persons...? It’s a matter of semantics.

 

I understand the power of feeling judged. I’ve done a lot of personal work with the concept of measuring sticks. I have railed against them, tried to deny their existence, struggled to know which measuring sticks are worthy of my time...I’ve even had nightmares that involve measuring devices. And what I’ve learned, albeit imperfectly, is that measuring sticks are very handy tools if we use them to our own advantage. We cannot live without judgment; some kind of judgment is present in every decision we make. But we can control by what standards we judge, and we can decide who and what we will allow to judge us.  Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Likewise, outside of courts of law, no one can be your judge or measuring stick unless you give them that authority. 

 

And that’s what this theme is about really...self-determining which values we will choose to sit as the judge and jury in all the choices we make, and then figuring out how to give those choices the power to make a difference in how we live. How do we sort them out so that what’s most important to us influences us the most? 

 

 Again, this is not about value as a person. Your value is a given. This is about praxis. This is about turning the invaluable being you are toward greater humanity. It is about how, in the daily-ness of life, we make choices that move us toward more generosity, more gratitude, more openness, more compassion, more love. 

 

There is some negative response, as I’ve already mentioned, to the use of the word “shall”; it can be heard as a ‘should’ or ‘must’ word.   I didn’t choose the wording (we adopted word for word the CUC’s theme for the annual conference in Victoria next May); even so, I hear the word ‘shall’ as intending something that will happen. As used in the song, ‘we shall not be moved’, I hear it is a word of determination, coming from within, a setting of a goal toward certain values and behaviours, and that too is a part of this theme. 

 

There is a Puritan part of me, I admit, that believes it does take effort and determination to be better people. It would be wonderful if our lives and choices were as effortless as the lives of flowers and trees appear to be. A seed is germinated, and if the right conditions exist, that seed grows and blossoms into something beautiful and unique. This is true for humans as well.   We are each living beings that unfold in miraculous ways. Yet there is one way in which we are unlike plants...we have consciousness and agency. We can pick ourselves up and replant ourselves in healthier soil. We can choose the nutrients that will feed us. We can even choose the fruits that we will grow and pass on. 

 

Daily, even by the minute, we are bombarded with messages and input that we need to sort out. Some of it is healthy; some can be harmful. Some input has the potential to move us more toward the human beings we want to be; some moves us away from that potential. Some messages we lay aside and ignore. Some messages we swallow whole without question.   Some messages slide in and colour our thinking and our doing without us even recognizing it’s happening. 

 

Again, this is what this theme is all about. It’s about more intentionally sorting through all the input and from that creating and shaping the lives we were meant to live. 

One of the pieces of input that comes to us is the observation of and experience of lives that inspire us. About ten days ago, the Rev. Dr. Forrest Church died of oesophageal cancer at the age of 61. He had been the senior minister at All Souls UU Church in New York City. He was the author of many insightful books, including a book on dying.  I have quoted him repeatedly in services here, including at John Hart’s memorial service. His son, Frank, said this of him, “My father wasn’t beloved because he was a larger than life pulpit-legend; it was because he battled and accepted his failures, successes and his humanity with such transparency and inclusion despite the obvious pain, suffering and trials he endured, [and in this way] he was healed emotionally, spiritually, and personally by everyone around him.” 

 

Forrest Church had a mantra; it was...”want what you have, do what you can, be who you are.” This was his answer to how he should live... ”want what you have, do what you can, be who you are.” This mantra was his personal measuring stick for making decisions in his daily life. 

 

Forrest Church lived a ‘sort’ that included recognizing the ways in which he was broken, living into the ways in which he could make a difference, all in the context of, and with the support of, a community he intentionally included in his journey. I admire that. I would like to be more like that. 

 

“An unexamined life is not worth living,” opined Socrates. Well, Socrates doesn’t get to decide that any life unworthy, and if I interpret ‘examine’ to mean navel gazing, or a merely critical exploration of one’s life, then I disagree with him even more. But even so, if I interpret ‘examine’ to mean an intentional consciousness of choices and agency to act in the world, then I rather understand his point.   If I can interpret ‘examine’ to mean a process of carefully choosing what will influence us and what won’t, then I agree with him. One of the reasons to celebrate and affirm our very being is because of our incredible potential to grow and learn and, frankly, to become better persons. 

 

As Forrest Church said, be who you are, but also do what you can. Over the next nine months, we will be exploring all kinds of ways that we can be better at who we are by doing what we can...through living gratefully, generously, and creatively. We’ll look at our potential to live with commitment and amazement and courage. We’ll ponder how to live justly and ethically and in these too-human bodies. We’ll think about what it means to live with hope and in community.   Please let me know if there are specific ideas you’d like to include in this journey toward more examined lives, or if you’d like to have a conversation with me about an upcoming sermon topic. I want to live in a way that welcomes input because it can only enrich the sorting process. 

 

I love that line from Merle Shain, quoted in the reading earlier: “Each of us is a seed, a silent promise, and it is always spring.” Each of us is a seed that holds the promise of growth. Each of us exists in a climate where our innate, and examined, unfolding is made possible. Each of us contains a promise that need not be silent. 

 

How shall we live? I encourage you to walk with that question...putting it to friends and wise ones...turning it over and exploring it again...sorting it all out to create yourself in ever-changing shapes, like a forest never known before. 

 

You are beautiful and perfect. Within you lies the promise. So may it be.

 

We have been sailing all our lives now, making our way by the lights of the heavens.

We give thanks to the waves upholding us, even as the great winds urge us on. 

May those winds guide us in this wide ocean we travel together, helping us to create and re-create ourselves in ever more beautiful shapes.