The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

Music by David Berger

It’s one thing to know what your values are, and to have an ethical framework for living. It’s another thing to actually put them into action in the course of everyday life. How do we grow, adapt, and uphold our values?

Religious Exploration: A world religions day, on Buddhism

Opening Words

Story for all Ages

Reading 

To see, simply to look and see, is an ethical act and intentional choice; to see, with open eyes, is a spiritual practice and thus a risk, for it can open you to ways of knowing the world and loving it that will lead to inevitable consequences. The awakened eye is a conscious eye, a wilful eye, and brave, because to see things as they are, each in its own truth, will make you very vulnerable.

Think of yourself as a prism made of glass, reflecting everything exactly as it is, unable to exist dishonestly – reflecting beauty where there’s beauty, violence where there’s violence, loveliness and unexpected joy where there is joy, violation where there’s violation.

Here’s the front page of the paper; here’s that seedy, gossipy conflict at your job; here’s a memory, unblurred by wishful thinking; here’s a perfect afternoon in spring, and buds now on the trees and blackbirds in the marsh. Here’s the world, just as it is – now look!

That kind of seeing is a choice, and it is a sacred practice.

And then there is refraction – taking into yourself, as a prism takes in light, the truth of what you see and hear and transforming it somehow, changing its direction, acting on it, rendering it somehow, anew.

That again is holy work. The spring day, received, comes out again as gratitude (dispersed into a spectrum); a sorrow, yours or someone else’s, fully realized and received, not denied, not covered up, not justified or explained away, ignored – some sorrow clearly, bravely seen is taken in, absorbed and felt, and re-emerges, bent now into compassion. To see clearly is an act of will and conscience. It will make you vulnerable. It is persistent, holy, world-transforming work.

Message

I heard a story once about a woman who was driving while stressed out, as some of us can be…in this case, late for work, talking on her cell phone and trying to organize her many to-do lists all at the same time. The driver in front of her stopped for a yellow light, causing her to miss a chance to sneak through the intersection, and she began screaming in frustration, honking her horn, and making angry gestures of an unseemly nature. You know the kind.

As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked into the face of a very serious police officer. He ordered her to exit the car with her hands up, and took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, she was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects. “I’m very sorry for the mistake,” he said. “You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn and flipping off the guy in front of you. I noticed the ‘Practice Random Acts of Kindness’ bumper sticker and the ‘Hate is not a family value’ bumper sticker …and I assumed you had stolen the car!”

This morning I’d like to talk about...or at least begin to explore...how we can avoid this kind of mistaken identity. How can we live in such away that who we are and how we live is consistent with what we say we believe? How do we take the leap from putting bumper stickers on our car...that is adopting a code of ethics we espouse...to actually driving down the road of life in such a way that we are known for our character and our actions, not only by our bumper stickers?

The phrase “Living Ethically” has come in recent times to be associated with living green and sustainably...in right relationship with the earth. Traditionally ethics is much broader than environmental, but the same sort of picture holds true...living ethically is when our values and our actions are in sync, and when those values guide us to be in right relationship with all that is. Simply put, living ethically is choosing the ‘do the right thing.’ 

Of course, choosing to do the right thing is complicated by the reality that ‘the right thing’ is not always obvious. Sometimes we’re asked to choose between what appears to be the lesser of two evils. Sometimes we are simply not as aware of what we’re doing as we could be, let alone privy to the possible effect of those actions. Sometimes our desires and loyalties get in the way of doing what we know to be right. 

For example, is it right, after suffering an act of violence, to speak out for more compassion, or would it be more just to advocate for tougher sentencing? Should our health care system spend big dollars on research on rare diseases that will benefit only a few? Should I drive my gas-guzzler until it dies a natural death, or buy a more efficient car now? Is it okay to lie when it means my friend won’t get hurt or be implicated? Most of our options in this complex and pluralistic world are neither purely good nor purely bad.   And even when we act with the best intentions, the outcomes can be disastrous. 

Still, we have to decide, or we have to decide not to decide, and that requires having some guidelines. So, we’re going to look at three things today...how we choose the guidelines that we want to direct our lives, how we make decisions based on those guidelines, and finally, how we motivate to take action based on those decisions. 

How do we get our values in the first place? Well, some we inherit, some we learn, some are dictated by society, some we choose.   And all of them, with our without our awareness of them, cause a kind of chain reaction in us…from belief, to thought, to decision, to action. Our values determine our deeds, and those actions determine the quality of our character, and who we are determines the depth and quality of our relationships.   We literally build our lives from our values and what we make of them.   And it goes beyond that. Like building a farm from one hen, our individual lives form the building blocks of our communities and our world. 

It all starts with what we believe. Theology in a Unitarian Universalist context is a construction of meaning and purpose based on what we believe about existence. Last year, Kathryn Waugh and Andrew Dennis led a series of workshops on Building Your Own Theology, and this month I’m facilitating a viewing of a video course called “Theology for a Secular Age.” We hold these classes because to know how to live requires that we know what we believe. Since Unitarian Universalism is a creedless religion, you will not be told here what to believe; rather, each person is expected to formulate hir own beliefs. Classes such as these are meant to help you with that.  

You can decide if there is a god, or many gods, or no gods. You can decide if there is an afterlife that consists of a union of souls or a reincarnation or an eternal punishment. You can choose to believe that life is animated by an ethereal soul or by an as-yet-unknown biological on/off switch. You can believe that the government is ruled by the people or that the government rules the people. You can choose to put your trust in humanity, in the forces of nature or in chaos theory. 

Theology in our context is about crafting personal credos, your own creed, that can provide the basis for making daily decisions about how to live. As such, a personal credo often ends up as a kind of desideratum, a list of what is most important to you, or an expression of your desired way to live. A personal credo, or belief statement, reflects your values.

But let me suggest that there is not really all that much wiggle room when it comes to your values and being a Unitarian Universalist.    We have a set of principles that serve as global, or universal, guides in how we choose to be in the world. We affirm that each individual has inherent worth, we support and demand freedom to choose what to believe, we accept responsibility for our actions in the world, we agree to be supportive and accepting of one another, we choose to use the democratic process, we believe that peace and justice are not only possible but worth working for, and we believe that we are part of an interconnected web of relationships where each action has effect.  

Another expression of our values is contained in our chalice lighting words. We say that we choose to use our powers to bless, to heal, and to help.   In our affirmation, we praise the spirits of love, welcome, and freedom. We make the claim that we will care for our earth and cherish each other. All of these express the values of this community.

In theory, this is all great. In daily life, things get complicated. How do we decide what to do when our values conflict? What if caring for someone else means that I have to reduce quality time my own children? What if going green comes at a cost premium that makes it difficult for me to give to a good cause, like Howard Hospital or microlending? What if volunteering is draining my energy and jeopardizing my health? 

Ultimately, I believe that you have both the right and the wisdom to answer such questions for yourself, based on the values that you hold dear. Your answers will be different than my answers, and this makes me wonder who I am to talk to you today about living ethically. And then I remember, again, that I am not here to tell you what to do, nor to tell you what the right thing is. Rather WE are here, together, intentionally, so that we might all learn from one another…to be challenged when our actions don’t match our beliefs, to be supported when doing the right thing feels beyond our ability, and to be encouraged to constantly re-examine our values to ensure that they are the proper guides for life.  

So there you go…we make decisions about what’s right based on our established values, by trusting our own wisdom, and by turning to others, especially here in religious community, for support and guidance.   But now, how to act? 

The simplest and best advice comes from the great oracle, Nike. Just Do It. But that’s not always so easy. I bet I can come up with at least a dozen times in the last week, maybe in the last 24 hours, that I didn’t walk my talk. I mean, okay, maybe I didn’t curse, or harm, or hinder, but I could have been more proactive in the opposites of those. I could have been more understanding of, or even helpful to, the inept store clerk who took ten times longer than necessary to ring up my purchases.   I could have pulled over to see if that person walking in the pouring rain needed a ride. I could have put aside a few hours to write a letter to the editor about some injustice I see in the community. So, why don’t I always act in accordance with my values? 

Here I return to the idea of the ethics police, or rather why our ethics, in fact, can’t really be policed by someone else. I read somewhere that our most true values are evident in what we do when no one is looking, but I don’t believe that. What I do think is that we don’t make our values evident enough to ourselves…we forget to look at them…we forget to live by them. As Victoria Safford writes, seeing clearly is an ethical and spiritual practice, an act of will and conscience. Difficult work. Holy work. 

Still, somehow, along the line, we have learned and abide by all kinds of rules. We know that we ought to stop for red lights, and wait in line for our turn, and file our taxes by April 30th.   We know that we should show up for work on time and that the dog must be walked.   We may resist or resent, but most of us respond to these expectations, perhaps because there are consequences for not doing so. Is living according to our values any different?

You know, back in the late 1700’s, when Universalism was first beginning to be institutionalized, its primary critics claimed that humans could not be good without the fear of punishment. They thought that without a hell, in reality or in one’s cosmology, there was sure to be degradation and moral ruin.  This argument continues, as evidenced in such recent publications as “Can We be Good Without God.” Over the past years the daytime nonfiction book club has read more than one author who believes that altruism is an evolutionary necessity and that humans are indeed evolving toward greater compassion and understanding.    If that’s true, and if there’s no hell, perhaps it doesn’t matter whether or not we focus on living ethically.

But imagine a life like that. Imagine living a life of ‘whatever’. Imagine not caring that what you do is hurtful. Imagine living as if your life was more important that someone else’s. Imagine dropping your litter, wherever. Imagine if others treated you and the world in kind. To live in such a way would proclaim that life is meaningless, that we have no impact on the world or each other. To live in this way is, well, not living…it’s worthless.

I believe that fostering and teaching moral intelligence contains the greatest hope for ourselves and our planet. The good news is that values can be taught and learned, and that we have the capacity to change and grow.   We need to go to the moral gym, together, and build our muscle and capacity by acting ethically, in accordance with our values…and to more often, more consistently, see clearly and live ethically. 

Many of you know that my personal theology is one of process. I believe that life is a journey, that things are in constant motion, that nothing is ever finished. My theology then says that my ‘life of living ethically’ is a work in progress. As Rev. Dr. Galen Guengerich says in his “Theology for a Secular Age” course, in this moment, in every moment, we are heirs of the past, and causes of the future we face. I choose to believe that one hen can make a difference, that my actions matter. My goal is to keep the momentum moving in the right direction…toward ever greater compassion and justice, toward the good, toward a better world.   This is my holy work. 

May it be so for all of us.   Amen. 

Closing Words

Erik Walker Wikstrom