September 2001
In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain
alive long past the usual date of disintegration, if one is unafraid of
change...
Edith Wharton
Does Religion Have a Future?
by Elizabeth Lerner, minister, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver
Spring, Md.
A few years ago, a television show aired that was spun off from the much
earlier "Star Trek" series. It was called "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
It got a lot of press attention, and became a very popular show. I saw an
early episode, and noticed with interest the make-up of the crew and of the
Enterprise. (The USS Enterprise is a galaxy-class starship of the United
Federation of Planets in the year 2364.) There were the usual captain,
information officer, doctor, and others who paralleled the crew on the
original USS Enterprise. But there were also a few changes that seemed
aimed at helping crewmembers with the issues and stresses of the mind.
For escape, for example, there was a bar/restaurant, called 10 Forward, and
there was a holodeck, a space that could be programmed to represent,
three-dimensionally, any place and people from history, the cosmos, or the
imagination. The holodeck could be inhabited by any person or creature one
desired. In addition, there was a ship's counselor with the handy ability to
read thoughts and emotions. There were trauma, death, miracles,
transformation, celebration, loss, and renewal. What the crew didn't have
was a chaplain to help with any of this-no minister, rabbi, imam, or priest.
And I remember my surprise and interest when that lack was mentioned and
explained by the captain, if I remember rightly. He said that in recent
centuries humanity had outgrown religion. We had evolved beyond it.
Until then I had never considered the possibility that we would or even
could evolve beyond religion. It has been a part of the human experience, in
one form or another, for as long as people have been sentient...Can we ex
ist without religion or spirituality? Without a sense of the sacred or
without caring about awe, prayer, or meditation?
I don't buy it. Whatever you believe about the soul, whether it endures
beyond death, whether or wherever it exists-in our brains, shaped by our
lives-we each have a character, a spirit that requires, and inspires,
attention beyond psychology and recreation. And if there's a circumstance
guaranteed to raise the fundamentally religious questions more than
exploring a fictional outer space, well, I'd like to know what that would
be. To encounter near-death experiences, face constant danger and strange
beings of every conceivable faculty and form, all with their own religious
and cultural traditions and understandings, is to grapple with the
fundamental religious questions of morality, ethics, existence, justice,
life, death, hope, despair, and redemption. I admit I'm biased, but still I
think that the USS Enterprise needed a ship's chaplain in almost every
episode I saw.
I was grateful, however, that the premise made me consider what I thought
chaplains had to offer and why I thought they were helpful. I was also
grateful that it made me think about religion, what it offers, and whether I
believe it has a future. The short answer to that large question is that
religion absolutely has a future. It is as much a part of humanity as our
skin or hair or heart or appendix. We may, of course, wonder why we have
this thing as part of us, this impulse to revere, this drive to question the
reasons for everything. We may well wonder about this need to consider what
is right in and beyond the ordinary circumstances of our world. We may
wonder why we believe in things we cannot see or measure or prove, why we
trust love, or risk hope, why we strive to decipher right and wrong, rightly
or wrongly, in the world and in ourselves. It is human to wonder.
But if we say that religion does have a future, what does that mean? Do we
let it just unfold as time passes or do we need to plan for that future?
Antoine de Saint Exupery, the author of The Little Prince, once wrote, "As
for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it." That's an
interesting and humbling idea-that we should not expect things to unfold as
we plan or anticipate them but rather we should work to make the future
possible. If he is right, that is an interesting charge for religion,
particularly
liberal religion.
The age-old division persists between religions that are oriented toward
tradition and heritage, and others that are focused on change and
contemporary issues. Historically, liberal religion has had an easier time
dealing with the future, with change and innovation, with the development of
technology and science. Liberal religionists are usually oriented toward
change and openness anyway and eager to embrace the ideas of science and
technology. We are also willing to adapt our theology and spirituality to
integrate what we learn.
If anything, we often have an easier time with the future than with the
past. Some of us have difficulty with many aspects of history and tradition
that may be connected to abuses of authority or oppression, cruelty, or
violence. On the one hand, this strengthens our capacity to judge religious
values and practices for their adherence to compassionate, thoughtful
systems of faith and action. Among the liberal western religions, many
denominations and congregations are implementing initiatives to make
congregants and polity more sensitive, inclusive, and just.
On the other hand, is our growing sensitivity and concern inclining us to
edit the religion out of religion? In trying to be more open-minded,
sensitive, and fair, is liberal religion becoming mundane, superficial, and
political? Are we sacrificing a sense of connection to our beliefs, and
notions of transcendence and the sacred, whether cast in historical
humanistic or theistic language?
If we grow only by becoming broader, more global, but not deeper; if we
renounce our theological and cultural historical threads in order to embrace
our present, we
may diminish our faith by isolating it and turning it inward. Just as
struggle can help people to grow, it can help philosophy and theology to
grow as well. Ironically, if we renounce our varied history because of
beliefs and traditions we have grown beyond, we may jeopardize, rather than
enable, the future, at least for liberal religion. On both the individual
level and the denominational level, we may weaken our belief system by
attending only to the wings of our aspiration and not to the roots from
which we spring. If we only broaden, and do not deepen our faith tradition,
we may render it less able to endure so that it can offer its blessings to
future
generations.
This is one of the main issues confronting liberal religion in the 21st
century. There are two other issues that concern me for liberal religion's
future. Along with the question of how to integrate our past, there is also
the issue of how to handle pluralism-the increasingly complex
multiculturalism affecting us every day, in our food, our families, our
work, our faith. We celebrate pluralism in Unitarian Universalism, but it is
a deep challenge to honor different religious, cultural, and ethnic ways
accurately and respectfully, across boundaries of language, history,
societal norms, and belief systems. It is easy to make mistakes. For
instance, this is a time of year when many UU congregations attend to the
themes of atonement, mindfulness, forgiveness, and redemption, the themes of
the Jewish high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There is a story
about a UU congregation that wanted to celebrate the Jewish New Year but
made the mistake of holding a potluck meal following their Yom Kippur
service. Yom Kippur is a holiday for which fasting is an important part of
usual observance, and this was overlooked or misunderstood.
It is easy to oversimplify themes of religious belief or observance and
present them in a way that can be upsetting or offensive to those who know
the beliefs and holidays as their own. It is also possible to take time to
learn a tradition that speaks to your heart, so that you can honor it
accurately, and then find that though you made no mistakes, those to whom
the tradition is native resent its adoption by others who are not born to
it. We may feel that a faith system, like love, only grows when it is
shared, but others feel quite different. There are those who think that
faith can be stolen, that it is something to be treasured, rather than
shared. We may believe that faith, like knowledge, ought to be communicated
and explored, but others consider it to be like a child who needs to be
protected and cherished by those who know and love it. These problems and
concerns are real; these positions are the source of conflict among people
wrestling with issues of religious pluralism, debated between individuals
and in families, congregations, and at our Association's General Assembly.
Finally, there is the challenge of technology. Many of us remember Alvin
Toffler's phrase, future shock, defined as "the premature arrival of the
future." More and more, religion, which moves slowly in its evolution, is
hard-pressed to keep up with technology as it changes the nature of
fundamental realities. Our capacities to manipulate life, death,
personality, plants, animals, organs, information, and machinery have
already outstripped our religious and ethical understandings of the world,
how it has always worked and how it ought to work. Our capacities are
beginning to outstrip even the imagination. We can influence matter on
levels we never dreamed of, from the most minute to the leviathan, and from
the most singular and unique to the most
numerous and planetary.
We are already capable of cloning a sheep, and cloning organs or growing
them in other animals-we have grown a human ear on the back of a mouse. The
capacity for human cloning is not far away and we still have not assembled a
final policy on this-is human cloning all right? What about the experiments
that don't work out? How do we contend with these while living wills and
organ donations are still complicated religious issues, and most people have
not made provision for either? What can liberal religion do to rise to the
challenges society is beginning to encounter as we strive to deal
responsibly with our new capacities and the decisions they entail at the
onset of the 21st century?
Ray Kurzweil's book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, predicts many more
profoundly complicated issues in the next 50 years-implants that will not
only help with hearing or sight or limb regeneration, but also with memory,
sensation, even religious experiences like prayer and meditation. People
will be able to dictate and direct religious experiences with the aid of
implants that stimulate the centers of the brain that are most active in
people having 'spiritual' experiences. Kurzweil predicts that as we make
computers more like us so that we can interact with them more easily, we
will create computers that are so much like people that they will claim to
have consciousness, emotion, spiritual longing, faith-in
effect-souls.
Whether Dr. Kurzweil's predictions come true to the degree that they did for
his first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, two things seem evident.
One is that technology is currently outstripping our ethical and religious
systems for dealing with the human experience of life. Another is that
liberal religion, which has a history of embracing scientific and
technological advances, must work now with intentionality and energy to get
in step with the ever-faster pace of developments in medical and computer
science that are increasingly pervading the realm of religion. Otherwise we
are ignoring our responsibilities. Or perhaps we will take Luddite positions
simply because we have not responded to opportunities and taken the time to
make informed decisions about the challenges that will soon confront us.
Market pressures and litigation must not be the forces that determine the
role of technology in the expansion of our lives, bodies, minds, or souls.
Religions have influenced and informed each other for millennia and they
will continue to do so. We can learn from and honor the traditions within
and beyond our own backgrounds. Really, we must do that if we are going to
continue increasing our sensitivity and respect for issues of
multiculturalism and justice in the world. We can move beyond the values and
traditions of our past, but we cannot escape them. As liberal religious
people, we do not need to escape or deny our religious roots, even if, like
the crew of the Enterprise, we have outgrown them. We are rooted, not
defined, by our heritage, and the firmer our roots, the stronger our wings
can become. History, multiculturalism, technological capacities-these are
resources and responsibilities. We who are religious liberals, we who have
always heralded the future with the positions we have taken-we must make
them our resources and responsibilities. Living what we profess is
ever-engaging and it is not always easy, but it is endlessly fascinating and
worthwhile. We have a precedent to live up to, and a future to enable, and
exciting work to do that we must not shirk and should not fear.
Quest September 2001 Contents
CLF Seeks Directors, Officers and Nominating Committee Members
by Linda Melski, chair, CLF Nominating Committee
The Nominating Committee of the Church of the Larger Fellowship seeks
nominations of CLF members to fill the following positions on the Board of
Directors for the year
beginning June 2001.
four directors for three-year terms
treasurer for a one-year term
clerk for a one-year term
Board members are responsible for setting CLF policy and approving the
annual budget. About her experience of serving on the CLF Board, Valerie
White says, "I am a long-time UU and a Humanist minister. I joined CLF "by
accident" when the UUA bookstore responded to my inquiry about liturgical
materials by referring me to the Church of the Larger Fellowship. The CLF
staffer who answered the phone said she'd be happy to send me a copy of the
booklet for a fee, or I could just join and it would be included in my
membership packet. So I did that, and then I began to enjoy Quest, and then
I responded to an appeal for board candidates-just like this one.
"Am I glad? Yes. For a number of reasons. One, joining the CLF board got me
started going to GA, which is now the highlight of my year. Two, the
people-other CLF board and staff members are among the finest people in the
world, and I get to know them. Three, helping CLF do "the business of
religion" reminds me that "everywhere we stand is holy ground, and
everywhere we dare to look, religion can be found."
Members of the Board meet twice annually in the Boston area, at General
Assembly, and periodically by telephone conference calls. CLF reimburses
Board members for some travel expenses according to the Board of Directors
Travel Reimbursement Policy. Nominations are also sought to fill the following
position on the Nominating Committee.
member for a three-year term
The Nominating Committee is responsible for nominating new board members and
conducts most meetings by telephone.
You may nominate yourself or another CLF member for any of these positions
by sending the name, address, and phone number of the person you nominate in
the envelope inserted in this issue of Quest and mailing it to CLF or by
mailing it in a plain envelope to CLF, Unitarian Universalist Association,
25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108.
Or e-mail your nomination to CLF@uua.org.
Quest September 2001 Contents
Mirage on the Half Shell
by Jane Rzepka, minister, the Church of the Larger Fellowship
Maybe you had grand plans for Labor Day weekend. Maybe you were finally
finally going to get to the beach nearby, the summer having gotten away from
you, and you were going to sit outside at the little tables at the ice cream
place and pick up one of those real estate brochures with all the tiny
pictures of vacation property and imagine what it would be like. Or you were
having that huge family barbecue you have every year, where the relatives
come up from L.A. Or you were taking the weekend to drive your college kid
to Toronto to school. Or you would get some serious sailing in, or golf, or
you'd take the children to a parade. Or you were working over the weekend,
but you had Labor Day itself off, and it would be your day alone, in the
sun, in the backyard.
Surprise. Maybe Labor Day weekend didn't turn out to be Labor Day weekend.
Perhaps you had the threat and promise of a major storm, and you weren't
sailing your boat, you were desperately trying to get it out of the water;
you weren't eating ice cream at the beach, you were in headline-news-type
traffic, headed for home. The relatives had to go back to L.A. before the
barbecue, and you are left with six watermelons and a freezer full of
hamburger buns. Presto, without summer's official, big, last weekend, the
season of the sun and the fun is over. Sure, a few days still feel like
summer, but in your heart of hearts, you know better. The author Annie
Dillard confirms that feeling: "[Summer] is mirage on the half shell. It
vanishes like any fun, and the empty winds resume."
I always thought that everybody had seen a mirage: You're out on the
highway, and way up ahead you seem to see a pool of water in the road. You
approach it, and you approach it some more, and you never get to it: It
disappears. It wasn't real. It was, as the dictionary tells me is legitimate
...it was "mirageous."
I've come to learn that some people don't ever see bona fide mirages because
they're inclined to see what they're used to seeing. But once the mirage is
pointed out, the skeptic acknowledges the illusion, grabs the binoculars or
the camera to prove it false, and finds, surprisingly, that the camera and
the binoculars only make the mirage look more crisp and clear than ever. In
any ordinary sense of the word, the mirage is not "real."
My little visit to the Sahara Desert a few years ago qualifies me as an
expert in "mirageology"-I feel anyway. It's just the way it is in the
cartoons, or in the movies, where you're in the middle of the desert-in my
case in a Land Rover, luckily, not crawling along on my belly gasping for
water-you're in your Land Rover with those great, big tires, in an area
without roads or even tracks, navigating by compass. The sun is bright. It
is very windy. And sure enough, there's an oasis up ahead, with a shimmering
lake, and you know that with that water will be palm trees and shade and
shelter and, these days, a little village. You approach that oasis and you
finally come to grips with the fact that it simply isn't there. You knew
that. You'd studied your map. If you're traveling in the Sahara you'd jolly
well better know ahead of time what's there and what isn't. But the mirage
seems so real and then it disappears: Poof. Just like our Labor Day,
dissolved in the hype about the storm. Just like Annie Dillard's summer as
"mirage on the half shell." It vanishes, "and the empty winds resume."
Well that's a heck of a note! What kind of message is that for September?!
What am I saying, that "summer's over, pals, it was all a mirage, it's time
for real life now, so live with it?" No.
Point number 1 (of 2): The summer was real. Annie Dillard's phrase, "mirage
on the half shell" captured my attention not because I agree with a view of
summer as fleeting and ephemeral and mirageous; but because I don't.
Let's look at the summer just gone by. Some of us saw marvelous sights,
others saw the same old stuff. Some made plans and got a lot done; for
others, the projects are still waiting. For some, summer dragged along in a
low-key miserable way; for others, the summer months were as close to heaven
as it gets.
One doesn't inevitably have what is called "a good summer." Personal
problems, impossible family dynamics, illnesses, layoffs, fret and worry,
these things don't take July and August off. On the other hand, the
priceless moment on a bench sipping an iced coffee made just the way you
like it, entering an air-conditioned building when you're feeling
unbelievably hot and sticky, watching the baby birds fly out of the nest,
falling in love on a vacation, these are all the stuff of a real summer,
too. It never was mirage on the half shell.
For Unitarian Universalists, life is made of moments. Moments of insight.
Moments of transforming emotion. Moments of hilarity. Moments of tenderness,
of longing, of satisfaction, of love. Moments of awakening. Moments of
memory. Moments of clarity. Moments of peace. Most of us are not aiming in
any intentional way for the traditional afterlife of Western culture, most
of us do not believe that the meaning of our lives will be handed to us on a
silver platter, most of us do not count on eternal reward. For us, the time
is now.
Robbie Walsh, our minister in Duxbury, Mass., tells this story in his book,
Noisy Stones. He says, "I had lunch with a person who had just passed her
second birthday. Her vocabulary included ketchup, salt, pickle, mustard, and
spoon-but she could not yet name the Worcestershire sauce. She could count
to ten with confidence-but when she got into the teens she began to rattle
off numbers at random. Her curiosity was boundless. I knew that her
knowledge of the world would grow apace, and her ability to manipulate the
symbols of language would expand.
"I thought, the little person I see before me, lining up the restaurant
condiments and counting and naming them, exists only for this moment. Even
in the course of this meal she is growing and changing. If I meet her again
in a month, she will be learning something else, and saying other words.
She-and I-will have left this day behind.
"I knew that the moment I had across the table from her was irreplaceable.
There could be no other meeting between that particular her and that
particular me. The experience could not be saved up or stored. So I was
there with her as she spooned milk into the mouth of her stuffed bear.
"And I think I loved her, when she held my hand as her mother unlocked the
car."
No mirages here. It's real. It's all real.
But that this summer was real was only the first of the two points. The
second is the religious point: It matters. We can list the pivotal moments
in our summers: blueberry picking, mountain vistas. One could, I suppose,
treat those moments as photo opportunities, fleeting snapshots that wind up
in a scrapbook, the covers closed. But the moments of our lives are so much
more. When you lay in the emergency room this summer, as technology
deciphered what was indigestion and what was a heart attack; when you fell
asleep in the hammock, dreaming the relief of finally changing jobs; when
you were mowing the lawn and you realized how desperately you wanted to
write that letter and ask for forgiveness; when you harvested your first
tomato of the season, or tasted the first Concord
grape-those were not just Kodak moments, much less a mirage. They
were-are-your soul and your spirit, and without them, Annie Dillard would be
right: Our summers, indeed our lives, would become a mirage on the half
shell, that vanish like any fun, and the empty winds would resume. That's
the second point: It all matters.
If the moments of our lives are so important, summer and otherwise, you'd
think we'd pay better attention. I was thinking this way when I came across
a press announcement from Air New Zealand informing us that it's going to
allow cockpit crews on international flights to nap during periods of low
activity. The airline said that it thus hopes to end "unofficial and
uncontrolled" napping, which it claims pilots on all airlines do. Air New
Zealand also issued instructions on how to awaken a pilot: It should be
done, "in a normal tone of voice. An attempt should be made not to startle
the awakening flight crew member."
Flying airplanes is important. Living life is important. I don't like the
notion of sleeping through either one. To be sure, I don't suppose clanging
symbols or dumping a bucket of cold water on the head of the sleeper is
helpful in either situation, but gradually awakening to the flight plan and
the signals flashing and the joys and concerns of the flight, has got to be
all to the good for both pilot and livers of life.
Awake, you start to notice what's around you, you start to care more, to
calm down. And you begin to realize that what you are doing and feeling and
thinking now are what you are becoming. You kick the autumn leaves along as
you walk your child to kindergarten, and the smell, and the memory of the
child's hand, and the feelings of a parent whose child is going off to
kindergarten travel into your bone marrow and stay there. And you draw on
that later, when that child turns 14 and calls you names.
In "Tintern Abbey," William Wordsworth says,
"While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years."
Life and food for future years. He talks about...
"...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..."
We know what Wordsworth is talking about. It's hard not to sound
sentimental, because the truth is, in Wordsworth's clichéd setting suns and
oceans and the like, we really do find that sense of "something far more
deeply interfused," and we know that in those moments there is "life and
food for future years."
And so Annie, for me, the mirage metaphor is all wrong. Mirage on the half
shell? Not our summers. As Unitarian Universalists, we walk toward the
summers and the rest of the year too. We walk toward life. We walk into the
seasons and through them and we savor their reality. They form us and
sustain us. And after Labor Day, such as it was, we begin again.
Quest September 2001 Contents
The Library That Comes to You
by Noreen Kimball, Quest managing editor
According to librarian Giovanna Spadaro, CLF's is a very "used" little
library-and it has an interesting mix of materials to borrow. Items like the
"Month of Sundays" notebooks are not only borrowed by individual members but
are also regularly requested by small groups and fellowships. These
notebooks contain four easy-to-use worship services in large print. Services
may contain a sermon by a leading UU minister, opening words, children's
story, meditation or prayer, benediction or closing words, and questions for
discussion. The library has more than 50 Month of Sundays notebooks (200
services). In addition there are books, videotapes, audio tapes-all kinds of
music and
religious education materials.
The quality and variety of our resources are important because actually,
many CLF members depend on the library's materials for historical
information on our Association and for spiritual guidance as well as advice
for personal problems. Though the budget is very limited, minister Jane
Rzepka is committed to purchasing worthy materials every year and she and
the staff and board members are always looking for ways to add to the
library's
resources.
The library is used by a diverse group of individuals from a single parent
who wants materials on Paganism for religious education purposes to an
administrator in a major metropolitan area who wants materials on inner
peace. And there are many people who use the library on a regular basis.
"Some folks," says Spadaro, "use the library to keep in touch with what's
out there, and they also seem to like to keep in touch with us here at the
CLF office. Others use the library a lot for a short period of time, say
three to four months, when they're dealing with a particular subject-e.g.,
the young, recently unemployed member who wanted materials on making
transitions in order to prepare for a new job search.
"Up until about four months ago, the library resources were kept in a number
of different Word documents on the computer here in the office-one file for
each medium. When I got a call from a member requesting materials, I needed
to log into each different file to check availability and, though I could
enter the member's name to keep track of materials, I could not enter other
useful information such as an address or telephone number. It was a tedious
process-very time-consuming for us and clunky for members. They have been
wonderfully patient with us but we've been seeking a better way," Spadaro
said.
The CLF staff was looking for a database that would combine all the resource
information needed to trace availability and that would link it with
borrower information and the information needed to have an ongoing waiting
list. "We have tried several times," Spadaro said, "without success, to get
help writing a database that we could manage easily. We especially wanted
one that our members could access themselves through our web site. With
members in every time zone, it's very hard to provide the kind of service we
'd like to give. Empowering members to search the library by category,
title, author, or medium would make it much easier for our members.
"I was finally introduced to Charles McNulty," Spadaro said. He is a
technician at UUA headquarters at 25 Beacon Street. "Charles not only
understood what I was trying to accomplish," she said, "but he was also able
to tailor the database to meet our needs. We now have a wonderful database
that makes it much easier to locate an item for the borrower and I can track
who needs material and who has material, in seconds. Better yet, I can make
changes easily, add or delete material continually, and I can locate and log
information and send out a loan in very little time," she said.
"Now that the library has been integrated as one central database, and the
web page was converted from static HTML pages to dynamic, database-based
pages," says Charles McNulty, database specialist in the UUA department of
Information Technology Services, "things will be better for both the office
staff and the members. Though we're not finished," McNulty said, "the CLF
staff has met its major goal-members will always have access to the most
up-to-date information available in the CLF member library. One of the
coolest features," McNulty says, "is that members can now navigate directly
from subject to subject. For instance, for a report about the history of
Unitarian Universalism, you could go directly to the subject "UU History and
Biography." Here, the book Black Pioneers in a White Denomination might
capture your interest. You could then follow a link to more materials about
the
African American experience."
Future plans for the web site include incorporating borrowing requests
directly into the web site (now they're simply e-mailed to the office). This
will make for even faster turn-around of requests. It will also allow
members to know instantly if the material they request is available and how
long the waiting list is. "I'm also working on making the search more
powerful," McNulty said, "by allowing members to filter requests by the type
of media (book, video, audio), to sort by different criteria, and to supply
more complicated 'and/or' searches." Another feature in the works is a "New
Resources" page that will show all newly available CLF materials.
"Individual members can search the library and make requests," says Spadaro,
"by going to the CLF website at http://www.uua.org/clf. Go to the first
page, to the left column under Services, and click on
Library."
Quest September 2001 Contents
REsources for Living by Betsy Hill Williams, Director of Religious Education, CLF
This is big. Just when I thought I'd run out of life events to write about,
my first-born graduates from high school and leaves home! Not an unexpected
or unusual event, this experience-shared by millions in every generation-is
still huge when it happens to you. And luckily, this time, ours was an
"easy" one: high school completion followed by a summer job and then off to
college. In the days leading up to graduation, I rode a roller-coaster of
emotions from giddy happiness to tearful sadness. But here's a feeling I
didn't have-I didn't feel scared. For me, letting go has been more about
sadness than fear, more about acceptance than anxiety. And I believe I have
my Unitarian Universalist faith to thank for this.
Of course, there have been lots of times in my children's growing-up years
when I have felt scared and anxious. Most of those times have involved cars
or going too fast. But as I think ahead to my son's future, I am not afraid
of the changes it will bring. I am sad at the loss of "family" as we have
come to know and love it. But I trust the future will bring a new definition
of family that we will come to know and love equally. I can accept the
inevitable separation of parent and child as part of life's journey, knowing
that he will grow and learn and keep becoming who he is without me.
Maybe these feelings are shared by all parents, across all faiths, but I can
identify at least two fundamental and defining aspects of Unitarian
Universalism that informed my thoughts and feelings as I sat at graduation
ceremonies last June. Both (coincidentally?) are found in this month's Quest
sermons.
The first is that Unitarian Universalism is a religion that does not fear
change. In fact, change-as in reform based on revelation of new truths and
personal transformation-is what Unitarian Universalism is all about. "We are
rooted," writes Liz Lerner, "not defined, by our heritage." This is very
different from orthodox and conservative religions, where rules and rituals
are practiced intentionally to keep the status quo, keep out change, keep
defining the religious life. In these traditions, roots bind one to the past
and to the promise of salvation in the future. Unitarian Universalism
teaches quite the opposite: The firmer the roots, the freer we are. In Liz
Lerner's words, "the firmer our roots, the stronger our wings can become."
We expect change; our religion expects change. We'll attain our highest
aspirations, become our best selves because our wings, not our roots, take
us there. I welcome the changes ahead as opportunities for us all to stretch
those wings.
But welcoming change isn't enough. Times of transition can be chaotic and
anxiety-ridden if we let them happen around us without paying attention. To
make the most of change we must welcome it and be present in it. And that's
the second point: Unitarian Universalism is a here-and-now religion-a
religion that teaches us to stay present and to value each moment. As Jane
Rzepka writes, "Most of us are not aiming in any intentional way for the
traditional afterlife of Western culture, most of us do not believe that the
meaning of our lives will be handed to us on a silver platter, most of us do
not count on eternal reward. For us, the time is now." Our lives are filled
with moments-moments of awakening, moments of insight, of joy, of longing,
of wonder, of peace. For us, the religious life is one in which attention is
paid to here-and-now moments, care is given to make them the most just, the
most honest, the most loving they can be, and then-whether they prove good
or bad, whether they continue to influence us or recede in importance-they
are honored with a place in the make-up of who we are and who we are
becoming.
Change is not always welcome; it is not always what we expect or want. The
one thing we can count on is that it will always challenge us-even the
"easy, happy" ones like your first child's high school graduation. So I'm
paying attention: a moment of sadness, a moment of wonder, a moment of deep
gratitude for the gift of life. Through it all we are stretching our wings
and becoming ourselves anew. I am grateful for a religious faith that
invites, no, encourages me to welcome this change and participate in it as
fully as I can. And I urge you, whatever life transitions you face, to lean
into these two fundamentals of Unitarian Universalism: change is our future
and the moment to bless and savor it is now.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
To love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
And, when the time comes to let
it go,
to let it go.
Mary Oliver, #606, Singing the Living Tradition, Skinner House.
Quest September 2001 Contents
Hello & Goobye
CLF's new intern for the 2001-2002 church year, Amber Beland, writes that
she is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist and is "...excited to
participate in such a great part of our movement." Raised in New England,
Amber received her undergraduate degree in anthropology from Ithaca College,
New York. She is beginning her third year at Harvard Divinity. Her favorite
leisure-time activities are French Canadian genealogy, reading, and doing
cross-stitch embroidery. Amber is "looking forward to jumping in with both
feet."
As we say hello to her, we say goodbye to our friend, CLF intern Kathy Reis.
In her year with us Kathy created the prison ministry pen pal project, gave
skilled editorial assistance with Quest, compiled a number of new Month of
Sundays packets and taught our first online course for members. We send our
best wishes to her in her new role as interim assistant minister at the
Unitarian Universalist Church in Marblehead, Mass.
Quest September 2001 Contents
As the Crow Flies
by the Rev. Elizabeth Tarbox from her 1998 UUA meditation manual, Evening
Tide, available from the CLF library
A crow is said to fly in a straight line from point of departure to
destination, but that is not what I see. Crows fly in sweeping circular
arcs across the apron of the sky, using all the available space from horizon
to horizon before settling on the top-swaying branch of the tallest tree.
You may think crows caw, that their voices are harsh. But I tell you a crow
can whisper to its mate across a density of pines, and its voice is
comfortable and reassuring. A crow is mighty in its flight. So I aspire to
live as the crow flies and stretch my soul to meet the sky.
Quest September 2001 Contents
Last updated June 12, 2005
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