March 2000

• Sermon: "Science and Religion - No Contest," by Rev. Ken Read-Brown
• Sermon: "The Bad Mood vs. The Crocus," by Rev. Barbara Merritt
• Sermon: "Tales of the Tribe," by Meg Barnhouse
• From Your Minister, by Rev. Jane Rzepka
• REsources for Living by Betsy Williams

Science and Religion - No Contest
by Rev. Ken Read-Brown, minister, Old Ship Church, Unitarian, Hingham, Massachusetts

I've always had a great interest in astronomy. When I was growing up I had a map of the solar system on my wall and I had the use of a telescope. Sitting on the deck of our suburban home, 20 miles from Manhattan, I could look through that telescope and see valleys and mountains on the moon, the phases of Venus, four of Jupiter's moons, and most spectacular of all, the rings of Saturn. It was wonderful.

At the time, I wasn't aware of the trouble that Galileo had gotten into with a telescope not so different from mine. And it was really not so long ago, in the greater scheme of things, that Galileo struggled against his enemies in the Church, enemies who either refused to look through the telescope or were reduced to claiming that the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and the hills and valleys of the moon were images planted by the devil and not reflective of reality. How could they reflect reality if they contradicted the Bible and Church teaching?

The leaders of the Church had already, some would say, twisted the vibrant teachings of Jesus into an unrecognizable scheme of salvation; they had already turned wine into water, or worse, bread into a stone. So of course they wouldn't look into the telescope for themselves; they had too much invested in the way they said things were. It is important to say that there were also those in the Church at the time who, like Galileo himself, saw no conflict between the new discoveries of science and Christian faith.

And then they won—or so it seemed. It was just about the time that Hingham, Massachusetts was being settled that Galileo was on his knees recanting his views; this, after decades of harassment, after imprisonment by the Church, after threats of torture—all because he claimed to see exactly those phenomena I was looking at as a boy. And he claimed further that all these new discoveries confirmed the theories of Copernicus, confirmed in particular that the Earth was not the stationary center of the solar system. Here is what he said: "I, Galileo, being, in my 70^th year a prisoner and on my knees, and before your Eminencies, having before my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the error and the heresy of the movement of the Earth."

We know of course that this apparent victory of religion over science (or more accurately this victory of apparent religion over science) was short-lived. Truth has been more enduring than superstition and dogmatism. The progress of scientific knowledge could not so easily be stopped. Indeed, legend has it that immediately after he finished speaking the words of his recantation, Galileo—for whom scientific investigation was an expression of religious faith—whispered, "But still, it moves."

Whether that bit of legend is true or not, we know that no Church council, no pronouncement from priest or minister, rabbi or ayatollah, can change scientific fact. The Earth moves. And now we know that everything moves and is subject to change according to natural law, with no need for reference to religious scripture or teaching of any kind. It would seem that the ultimate victory goes to science.

And so much seems to attest to this victory of science over religion— from the light that illuminates the page before me and the computer at which I type my sermons to the sound of aircraft in the skies above and precision-guided journeys to the planets. Science, and the technology spawned by science, have won the day. Science and religion? Clearly, "no contest."

And just as we have the success of science before our eyes each day, so too do we have visible before us the failure of religion. This failure lies in the ruins of religious myth and miracle—from six days for creation to parting seas; from virgin births to water changing into wine, and on and on around the world in every tradition. From the viewpoint of science, we certainly have to throw out all that sort of thing.

No contest. Science has won.

But if that's the case, why, when I was in college, did I walk from my freshman astronomy class to the Friends' Meeting House for our weekly college worship service? And why are we, children of a scientific culture, members of a religious institution?

Science. Religion.

What was that walk from the science building to the Friends' Meeting House all about? Can you be scientific and religious at the same time, or do you have to make sure that two parts of your brain just don't talk to each other very much? Do you have to ignore the contradictions, keep the lab on one side of

the street, the church or meeting house or temple on the other? Or do you simply throw in your lot with one side or the other?

We could say that both science and religion are simply ways that human beings try to make sense of the world and of life, so, in that sense, they explore the same territory using different languages. That's an appealing idea, and there is something to it. But not all ways of making sense of the world are equally valid. The Earth does move. Creation did take place billions of years ago, not 5,000. And so on. How then do we account for the persistence of religion in a world that seems to be increasingly explained and explainable by science? Two ways.

First, some forms of religion persist as a reaction against the very success of science. These religions descend from the religion that persecuted Galileo. Science, for all its benefits, for all the insight it gives us, has also threatened traditional worldviews and cultures and torn them apart. Traditional religious doctrine offers comfort to many in the midst of a changing, uncertain world, and there are ever-new forms of religions-with-all-the-answers, and new superstitions. We can understand the appeal, can't we—the appeal of any system that explains everything, that makes life simple and easy? But such systems only work if we're willing to sacrifice our open mind; to sacrifice the excitement that comes with staying open to the way things really are and to the mysteries still before us.

The continuing effort by some to have so-called creation science taught in the schools side-by-side with (or in place of) the teaching of evolution is one extreme example of this persistence of reactionary religion. And this is a potentially pernicious persistence based on a misunderstanding both of the nature of scientific inquiry and, I would suggest, on the nature of what lies at the heart of all religion.

And this leads me to the second way we account for the persistence of religion in a world dominated by science. If science deals primarily with the world of fact, then religion has to do with the realm of meaning.

If we believe that religion has to do with fact in the same way that science does, then we are doomed to having a fight to the finish—not only between science and religion, but also among the religions. After all, either Jesus is the savior or he isn't; either the Jews are the chosen people or they are not; either we are reborn again and again in a continuing cycle of death and rebirth or we are not. How can we reconcile such competing claims among the religions, not to mention between religion and science?

We can reconcile these claims by going deeper, by looking toward the ethical and mystical dimensions of religion. We can do this provided we work with religion that is firsthand, religion that we have experienced or come to understand ourselves, religion that can be explored with an open mind. And no one has a corner on this kind of religion; it can be found within every tradition.

The great 19t^h century Unitarian preacher Theodore Parker once said, and it was considered controversial, that if Jesus had never lived, the truths of Christianity would still stand. And so it would be with every religion. The stories and myths and creeds are not meant to be facts (at least we no longer need accept them as facts), but are, rather, vehicles or containers for deeper ethical and mystical truths. Science can illuminate the ethical and mystical dimensions of life, but it does not replace them.

At the heart of just about all the world's religious traditions are spiritual disciplines of contemplation, meditation, or prayer; and the claim within every one of these traditions is that if you follow the discipline, the practice, you will have the experience of Spirit or higher Self or God. A further claim is that it is this fundamental experience that gives life to all the apparently conflicting words, words that nevertheless come to strikingly similar conclusions. That is, they are similar when it comes to our ethical lives, to how we should treat one another, how we should seek justice, how we should care for the natural world.

Not incidentally (as Ken Wilber points out in his excellent book, The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion), this is precisely the approach within the inner realm of experience that science takes as it investigates the outer world of experience. "Try it, follow the directions with an open mind, and you will know what we're talking about," say both the scientist and the mystic.

After all, have you ever seen a neutrino or a black hole? No? But we probably all agree that such phenomena exist because we know that a community of scientists trained in their fields, following accepted and agreed-upon procedures, tells us that they exist. And if we are willing to learn some of the procedures and skills of the scientist, we will have something closer to a direct understanding and awareness of such phenomena ourselves. It's as easy (and as hard) as that.

And the Zen master or the Christian contemplative is telling us the same kind of thing. We are in no better position to judge the truth claims of the Zen teacher if we don't practice Zen than we are to judge the truth claims of the physicist if we don't learn the physics. Nor could Galileo's persecutors judge his claims when they refused to look into the telescope.

So religion stands; and science stands. There is no contest between them; the only losers are superstition and dogma.

And as we begin to understand that at the heart of religion lies a scientific approach to religious experience (follow this practice and you will have this experience, come to this knowledge), we might also learn to be inspired to religious or cosmic feeling. That is, if we allow recent scientific discoveries to affect us, to be more than interesting abstractions.

In his fine book, Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion, Stonehill College professor and Boston Globe columnist Chet Raymo challenges religion to embrace and be inspired by the scientific story of the universe. "Scientific knowledge enlivens our every experience and tunes us in to the deepest mysteries of creation, the hidden rhythms of a world that evades our limited senses. Science cannot nor should not be a religion, but it can be the basis for religious experience: astonishment, experiential union, adoration, praise."

After all, isn't our awe in the presence of the night sky increased by our knowledge of the immense distances we know separate us from the stars and galaxies, increased by knowing that there is yet far more out there beyond what we can see

with the naked eye? Isn't our awe as we contemplate our own body increased by our knowledge of the intricate weaving of organs and cells, by our knowledge of the incredible complexity and beauty of the DNA that makes us possible?

And isn't awe the beginning of religious feeling, the experience of being an intimate part of a reality far larger than ourselves? Awe in the presence not of our ignorance but of mystery beyond both ignorance and knowledge; as Lewis Thomas once put it: "The more we learn, the more we are—or ought to be—dumbfounded... Our proper business is to learn more and more and thereby separate our mere ignorance from genuine mystery."

Einstein himself looked in both directions, writing on the one hand that, "cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research..." and on the other hand that, at the same time, "…it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it." Einstein, by the way, said that what he was trying to do in his scientific work was to understand how "the Old One" thinks.

Let's return to our own Unitarian Universalist tradition. In our UU principles is embedded an affirmation of what we might call a partnership of science and religion. Affirming the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning," we assert that "the living tradition we share draws from many sources," including wisdom from all the world's religions and "humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science."

Not only need there be no conflict between the wisdom of religion and the knowledge of science; our principles—and good sense—suggest that an integrated spiritual life embraces both fact and meaning. After

all, whether I am looking through a telescope outward into the night sky or meditating, directing attention to the depths within, I am one person in one world, a world of astonishing breadth and depth. There is no contest between the heart of science and the heart of religion. There is conversation, but no contest. There is, after all is said and done, one heart.

Quest March 2000 Contents

The Bad Mood vs. The Crocus
by Rev. Barbara Merritt, minister, First Unitarian Church, Worcester, Massachusettse

Has anyone done any research on the biochemical origins of a bad mood? What kind of hormone is it that floods my brain when I'm in a terrible frame of mind?

Science has recently discovered the magical affects of endorphins; those wonderful chemicals released through romance or physical exercise, and/or chocolate. But there must be some sort of negative equivalent; some sort of chemical imbalance that causes the brain to be the breeding ground for a kind of free-floating anger that finds expression in strong feelings of self-righteous-ness, self-pity, and narrow-mindedness.

A bad mood is always about externally oppressive conditions. The irritants can range from the behavior of the people you live with, to your neighbors, the way people drive, your employer, or how much you owe in taxes. Something quite small, a minor aggravation, what Rumi calls a "gnat's headache," can set off an avalanche of resentment and exasperation. It is quite upsetting when the world will not conform to our expectation!

I was in just such a foul mood the other afternoon. Knowing that I was not fit company for man nor beast (or for my children or spouse), I decided I would take a walk. To fit my grouchiness, I chose as my destination, my least favorite park. The weather was far too cold for early spring. The dark clouds (that were mostly in my head) allowed me just enough sight to notice garbage in the streets, and the dead vegetation of winter. In the state I was in, there was precious little receptivity for seeing new life or rebirth.

Except I happened to walk by a whole yard full of crocuses, in the silliest colors of yellow and lavender and blue. They were just sprouting up in the midst of the gray-brown leaves of winter; I laughed in spite of myself. What astounding playfulness, and exuberance, in a world that felt much more like winter than spring.

I was certainly not looking for any kind of cheerful promises, or signs of grace, but there they were. Placed right in my path. Undeniable. Challenging everything I believed, at the moment, about the possibilities for a new life.

Beacon Hill

I even noticed buds today
the furry, greeny-gray of
March Magnolias
forced, like me, to city hills.

I stare at them the way
a preacher looks at crocuses,
hoping, one more time, to find
spring sermons in their shoots.

I cannot conjure one short phrase
to praise the blooms I know will come.
I snap a bud
to stroke in secret while I climb.

by Noreen Kimball, member,
First Unitarian Society, Newton, Massachusetts

Quest March 2000 Contents

Tales of the Tribe
by Meg Barnhouse, pastoral counselor, traveling speaker and minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, South Carolina

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," says Joan Didion. We tell ourselves stories of remembrance and identity. Where did we come from? What have we seen and felt? Who are we?

The family you grew up in, your church, your town, your nation—all have stories that shape their understanding of where they came from, what they have experienced, and who they are. These stories also serve to carry expectations for the future.

My Uncle Bull was one of the storytellers of consequence in my family. Bill was his name, but ours was a Southern family, and most of us aren't called by our given names. He used to sit on the sofa at family gatherings and tell stories. His was a sonorous preacher's voice, and always, in my memory, the quavering voice of an old man.

"Once, when David and I were at Erskine College…," he would begin, "…we had an Old Testament professor who was a very holy man. A very holy man. We thought we would like to give him a religious experience. We knew the way he walked every day from his rooms to the school building. There was a small bush at the corner of one of the dormitories. One day we put a little gasoline in it and wired it up right. Then we hid. When the man walked by, we set it off. The bush burst into flames. The man took off his shoes, thought he was on holy ground."

I was raised knowing that this story was expected to cause some mischief. Our other stories had to do with how important it was to be smart and productive, and to be involved with the church. Stories about aches and pains, or about being sick or confused were not encouraged, unless they had a good ending having to do with help from the Lord.

Not all family stories are positive. Some families tell stories that let the children know they live in a world where luck is short and likely they can't expect much. Some families tell stories that describe members surrounded by jerks and blowhards who deserve to be tricked and deflated. And some families attach all their energy to stories of sickness. I had a neighbor like that once from deep in the country south of Spartanburg. Whenever she tells a story there is death in it.

"When I wasn't but 16 years old my granddaddy's leg went real bad. It 'us turning blue. The doctor, he came to the house and he took that leg off right there. I helped. He just stood him in a bucket of ice and took it off. Course it didn't go well. We had to take my Granddaddy to the hospital. The doctor there said if we'd got him there an hour later, he'd a died." She told me about working at Hardee's. "One time some robbers come to rob us. They took me hostage. What I did was, I just talked to 'em. They ended up letting me go. When the police came, they said I done exactly the right thing. If I'd a done anything else, I could a died."

"Ten minutes later, and he'd a died." is the ending to every story. Except the one about being abducted by aliens. That one ended with "And the leader said if I gave him a kiss, they would take me home, so I did, and here I am. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't kissed him!"

Churches tell stories. One UU Church I served was telling a story about themselves that they couldn't sing. That story made them feel shy about singing, and it made them hesitate to try. The shyness and hesitation caused by the story itself is what made them sound like they couldn't sing.

Every religion is a tapestry of stories. The stories I grew up on in church were stories of remembrance, and have the quality, in my memory, of tales told around a campfire. The most powerful shaping tale was of the Exodus; we heard over and over how the Hebrew people were enslaved, tricked, and lied to, and how they finally, with God's help, escaped. Then the people were made to wander in circles before reaching the promised land. That provides the shaping metaphor for the stories called Testimonies that are told in some churches. Their shape is this: once I was in an awful place, in awful shape, I decided to get out of there and went in circles for a while. I tried this, I tried that, and nothing seemed to get me anywhere. Now I have crossed the final river into the promised land, the land I knew was mine all along.

Stories on late-night infomercials have that same shape. "Once my hair was dry and brittle. I wanted silky, shiny hair. I tried everything. I put egg on it, I put beer on it. Finally I found this product and now I have the hair I always wanted."

You would never hear someone tell a story that was too realistic. It doesn't have the right shape. "Well, I was a drug addict, and I knew I had to get out. I tried yoga, I tried acupuncture, I tried will power, but nothing would avail. Then I found the Way. It was great! For a while. Now I'm back doing yoga again, and that helps some. Of course, I do relapse once in a while, but by and large I'm better off than I was before." That is not soul-satisfying like an exodus story. You wouldn't find a story on an infomercial of someone who said, "I used to be fat and out of shape. I tried lots of fad diets, then I found the Barley Plan. It took off 80 pounds in eight months! Then I gained back about 15 pounds, but I'm trying to exercise more. Of course, it's hard to do it every day, and lots of times I feel discouraged,

but I'm going to keep trying." That is not the story whose shape is carved into our psyche.

Another story whose shape is carved into the psyche of someone who grew up on the tales of the Christian tribe is the story of sacrifice and redemption through love and suffering. "Yeah, it was hard," we say, "…but I learned from the difficulty." You hardly ever hear someone say: "I have a wonderful family and a great love life. I have a good job, and my children are well. I have learned so much from all this happiness." You can learn from happiness, but since it doesn't fit the pattern, you won't hear about it. Sometimes you will hear someone who is outraged because the story hasn't worked for them the way it was supposed to: "I don't know why my children went wrong, I sacrificed everything for them!"

You hear people tell this story: "If we didn't have suffering, we wouldn't know joy!" Maybe. Maybe we would know joy anyway.

Even in fairy tales, the one who sacrifices is the one who is rewarded in the end. Fairy tales and folk tales are other tales of a tribe, most of ours are full of people whose humility eventually makes them a winner; people whose ability to be sweet and brave and helpful is what wins the day. Tales of other cultures seem to most European Americans to be odd and unfinished. The tricky one is the one who gets the reward in some folk tales from those other cultures. That doesn't seem right to my mind, imprinted as it is with the tales of the European tribe.

We have individual stories that shape our understanding of where we came from and who we are.

In The New Yorker magazine, probably eight years back, there was a piece by a horse trainer who used the new, more gentle methods of taming wild horses. She talked about the horse's idea of itself, using this language: "This one tells

herself a story that she is a wild horse. I help her change the story she tells about herself. That one tells himself he is a startled horse. I help him change the story he tells about himself."

I began listening to the stories I told myself about myself, and to the stories other people tell about themselves. "Wouldn't that be just my luck?" is a very common one. Some people go through life with the wry belief that they don't get the breaks other people do. People tell themselves they have bad luck, so they don't notice the good that happens. They allow good to feel like a fluke. Your story shapes what you take note of, what you mark in the flow of your life's experiences.

How different would their life's experience be if they were to tell themselves for a while that they were luckier than the average person? How long would it take before they started noticing the good that happened more often than they noticed the bad? People who tell themselves they are stupid are always on guard against looking stupid. When a mistake is made, as mistakes always are made, they chalk it up to their stupidity, and their story is reinforced. How different would their lives be if they were to tell themselves they were as smart as the next person? Could they shrug off mistakes better? Learn from criticism, instead of balling up into a defensive knot?

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live... we look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices; we live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience." [The White Album,Joan Didion.]

Our stories are the filters through which we experience our lives and our memories. They amplify experiences that support their point of view, and they discount experiences that do not. We tell ourselves stories about our parents, about the opposite sex, about other races of people, about the meaning of life.

What do I want to say today? Watch the stories you tell, the stories others tell. Watch the blaming stories, the victim stories, the victory stories, the sickness stories, the healing stories. You might want to tell yourself the truest stories. If you can't really tell what's true, tell yourself the story that will be most helpful to you, most healing for you. Tell yourself stories that will shape your life in a better way. Stephen Sondheim wrote a song that says it perfectly, "Your tale is your spell. Watch the tale you tell. Watch the spell you cast. The children will listen and learn." The children around us—and the child within us.

Meg Barnhouse is the author of Best of Radio-Free Bubba, available wherever books are sold. Ms. Barnhouse also wrote the UUA Meditation Manual, Rock of Ages at the Taj Mahal: Unquiet Meditations, which is available at the UUA Bookstore as item #5796.

Quest March 2000 Contents

From Your Minister
by Rev. Jane Ranney Rzepka, minister, CLF

Sometimes I just can't believe it. One minute I'm making real progress on the stack of papers on my desk, the next minute the piles of paper are about to keel over—perhaps they feel the vertigo. But the papers on our desks in the Church of the Larger Fellowship's office aren't just papers, most of the time, they are lives.

The other day, for example, some legal papers showed up. Nicely stapled, very official. Notification of a bequest. Even at first glance the papers reminded me that as your minister, I need to encourage you all to remember the CLF in your wills—and I had better get busy and add the CLF to my own!

And then I read the papers. The man who had died was named Walter Bergman. I wondered who he was. Among the thousands of CLF members' files, Mr. Bergman's was one of the oldest. I pulled it out and opened it up.

Out came carbons of correspondence with ministers from decades before. Photographs. Articles from the press. Copies of orders for books, and later, when his vision failed, for audio tapes. Notes about Unitarian Universalist fellowships and churches he affiliated with over the years. Change-of-address forms. Reviews of the book about him. I had no idea.

And of course there were letters in the file, letters in Walter's own hand. Just as one example, he made modest mention of his work with Unitarians and Universalists in the 1920's in Detroit, trying to stem the tide of rising unemployment.

He was 100 years old when he died, but even in his earliest letters, his writing was unusually shaky. I wondered why.

And this is why: Walter Bergman was a Freedom Rider in the Civil Rights Movement. During their trip on public buses in May of 1961, after having dinner with Martin Luther King, Jr., the Freedom Riders headed south to Alabama. The next day, on Mother's Day, in Anniston, the Ku Klux Klan and four police officers waited for them. According to later court testimony, the police sergeant told the Klansmen, "We're going to allow you 15 minutes. You can beat 'em, bomb 'em, maim 'em, kill 'em—I don't give a damn." Along with others, Walter was savagely beaten. His injuries resulted in a stroke, and though he learned to speak again, and write, he did not walk again. He would have been about 62 years old at that time.

The members of the CLF are full of surprises. Unitarian Universalist theology calls for focus on "the here and now," so it's not that we're busy doing good works to get into Heaven! We are committed to working in small ways and large to ease humanity's pain and promote well-being in general for both now and the future. You don't have to be a Freedom Fighter to make the grade as a Unitarian Universalist. Some of you write poetry, others grow food, or run for mayor, or teach the kids. A few, in prison or out, work for reform. Whatever it is you do—the compassionate gesture, the donation of cash to an organization you believe in, the original song, persistence in the tiresome job that feeds your family, the Peace Corps work, the spiritual quest—please know that your church is most appreciative. The CLF is full of heroes.

Jane Rzepka, Minister

About Walter Bergman:

"The attack and its aftermath were emblematic of a life lived at the barricades of social activism. By profession an educator, Dr. Bergman over the years took such controversial stands as declaring in a public debate in 1935 that the New Deal was too timid in its attack on poverty, and that the United Auto Workers was wrong to bar officials from claiming their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when asked about Communist leanings. He was founder of both the Michigan chapter of the ACLU and the Michigan Federation of Teachers."

"Years after he was beaten by Klansmen, Dr. Bergman revisited the Anniston bus station. He noticed four nail holes that had once been used to hold a sign segregating two drinking fountains: now both black and white people were drinking freely from the fountains. 'I had a part in pulling out those nails,' he said."

—Douglas Martin, The New York Times, Oct. 10, 1999

"Nowadays, they do not search for new ways to join today's movement, whatever it is. For the Bergmans never left. Least of all, they don't protest for show."

—Steve Goolian, Grand Rapids Press, December 12, 1976

Quest March 2000 Contents

REsources for Living
Betsy Hill Williams, Religious Education Director, CLF

Last October I was invited to be the theme speaker at the European Unitarian Universalist (EUU) Fellowship retreat in Paris. The list of former EUU speakers (including UUA presidents and other notable UU authors and ministers) was so daunting that it took the retreat organizers several conversations to convince me that they really wanted my everyday, no-frills, no-degree-required brand of religious leadership for this weekend. They, like so many of you, find themselves pulled to think about, talk about, and live religious values every day. And they, too, do this without theological degrees or Sunday sermons and while living among people with very different religious beliefs and values from their own.

So we went on a treasure hunt to find religious values and principles in our everyday relationships and activities, and to develop new (or strengthen old) personal resources for living a religious life. This month and next, I'd like to share the basic outline of my theme talk with you in Quest, in hopes that you, either on your own or with family or friends, will take a similar treasure hunt through your life. What do you and your children do, consciously and unconsciously, that expresses your religious values, expresses your faith? How can you strengthen your commitment to your beliefs and values—build on them, pay tribute to them, share them with the world?

What is faith?

Many people use the words "faith" and "belief" synonymously. Though to "have faith" commonly means to believe in something, faith is often spoken of as if it were a possession—something we either have or we don't. But mid-Twentieth Century theologian Paul Tillich wrote in Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, that faith is much more than believing. He understood faith to encompass three dimensions: 1. assent, or believing with conviction; 2. emotional surrender, or trusting; and 3. obedience, or doing. Faith is not just believing. It is believing, trusting, and doing all in dynamic relation.

Believing is the cognitive dimension. Individual Unitarian Universalists build their own beliefs—concepts they understand, agree with, and hold as their own. Trusting is the affective dimension of faith. It involves feelings—feelings of wonder, gratitude, reverence, hope, surrender. We experience these feelings in relationship with everything around us: other people, all of nature, and all that we produce as people. Doing is the practical dimension; it is our response to believing and feeling. Our beliefs help us decide what to do, what for us is right and wrong, how to respond. Our trust and our feelings ground our doing.

Unitarian Universalists share with all religions, with all people of faith, in Tillich's words, the goal of strengthening our response to our believing and trusting. But, while some religions are filled with prescriptions of how to do that—read the Bible, pray five times a day, go to confession, take communion weekly—our religion employs certain principles to guide us. It does not tell us what to do—what to read, how to pray, how to worship. Rather, we covenant to affirm and promote certain principles as guides in finding our own spiritual path. It's a wonderful freedom, a deeply respectful approach to individuality. And, it can be a lot of work.

Treasure Hunting

The first task I set before the EUU group was to articulate for themselves the beliefs and values they hold. Next, I asked them to look closely at the activities of their everyday lives to find situations or relationships where these beliefs and values made a difference. Each person put words to his or her beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about: 1. questions of authority—how do we decide what is right and wrong? 2. questions of human nature—good and evil, compassion, justice and 3. questions of spirituality—what do we believe about God? How do you feel most connected to others and the universe? Participants also listed activities and relationships that are part of their daily lives, both those they enjoy and those they find challenging. Pairing off, they then discussed what they learned about their beliefs, values, and feelings and, in discussion, discovered connections between these and their everyday lives.

One woman commented that she's been frustrated and unhappy learning the native language of her new home, Sweden. In this exercise, she was reminded of how much she values cross-cultural communication and understanding and felt that her lessons might be less frustrating if she kept this important value in mind. Another woman spoke of how she never even considered that her religion impacted her daily life. For her, religion was a Sunday or weekend retreat thing, with a large component of socialization and community. Doing this exercise made her aware of connections she hadn't made before and she vowed to pay closer attention. Another participant, who finds himself in several difficult work relationships, realized how these relationships challenge his basic belief that all people are just trying to do the right thing and that we are all equally frail and capable of error or misjudgment. Trusting these core beliefs and feelings helps him find respect and compassion for others.

Maybe you and your family would like to do a similar treasure hunt through your lives. What connections can you find between what you believe and trust and how you do your daily activities and relationships? This might be an interesting thread for discussion among CLFers on our newly created online RE email list. If you are not online, or would prefer a private discussion, I'd love to hear from you by phone or through the mail. How does your faith make a difference in your life?

Quest March 2000 Contents

Last updated June 12, 2005