by Meg Riley, director, Advocacy and Witness, Unitarian Universalist Association, Washington, DC
Some years ago there was a Japanese Zen master who decided to modernize one of the old koans so that his students could more easily relate their spiritual practice to contemporary life. The old koan went something like this: “How can you stop a galloping horse while sitting still?” In place of the galloping horse, the roshi used the image of the Tokyo Express, so that the koan now went, “How can you stop the Tokyo Express while sitting still?”
Koans sometimes drive people to intense grappling with the paradoxical nature of reality, and one of the master’s students in particular found himself engaged in a life or death struggle with the Tokyo Express koan. No matter how hard he tried, or didn’t try—for he tried that too—the master would simply ring his little bell and dismiss the student’s efforts.
Finally, at the end of his rope, the student left the monastery early one morning, made his way to the tracks that carried the speeding commuter trains to Tokyo every morning, and sat down on the tracks, legs crossed in the proper full-lotus position, lowered his eyes just so, and began to sit zazen—right in the path of the 7:05.
He never knew what hit him, and if he did get the answer to the koan, he never got the chance to tell anybody.
In Japan, where people have some experience with such things, there was no scandal, though some people shook their heads. He had acted correctly by throwing himself one hundred percent into his koan. But he had made one mistake, and a fatal one at that: he had taken the teacher’s words literally, and in so doing, missed the point.
Recently a friend came to visit sporting a bumper sticker with this sermon’s title on it, “Metaphors be with you.” It took me several readings to understand its double entendre, “meta-phors be with you…” but I liked it immediately, and made her promise to get me one. It turned out she’d never noticed the double meaning, but had simply liked it! Metaphors be with you. To me, that is about the most wonderful blessing I could offer to drivers behind me, or to anyone. Because a person who has metaphors with them is a person who has some freedom to move and to think, who has perspective, who has an understanding of the paradoxical nature of reality, and who probably has a sense of humor.
I’ve seen the bumper sticker with the opposite sentiment on it many times: “God wrote it, I read it, that settles it.” To me that bumper sticker conveys literalist, fundamentalist, closed, contracted thinking. I don’t fault anyone for reading the Bible as God’s word, though Biblical scholars would say that God has some fairly distinct and separate personalities if that is the case. But I do wonder, having spent a good deal of time reading it myself, just exactly what does it settle?
One of my family members, who is what you might call a fundamentalist, literalist atheist, told me that it was after reading the Bible that he knew there was no God. “It just doesn’t make sense, it’s full of contradictions,” he told me. I replied that he is giving some old texts a great deal more power over his spiritual life than I do if he expects them to convince him whether there is or is not a God. His bumper sticker might read, “God did not write it, I read it, that settles it.” His view, too, might be enriched by a more metaphorical reading of the Bible.
“One property of poetic language,” writes poet Adrienne Rich, “is to engage us with states that themselves would deprive us of language and reduce us to passive sufferers.”
Or, from poet Audre Lorde, “We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so that they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundation for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”
If this seems vaguely true but too large to touch, consider this very concrete example of the magic of poetry in action. It is from Vivian Gussin Paley’s book, Wally’s Stories: Conversations in the Kindergarten. Paley is an amazingly observant kindergarten teacher. She writes:
Most children have learned a language and do make sense by the time they enter kindergarten. Rose, however, was not convinced that words had commonly accepted meanings; she did not always make the connections between words and actions that followed. After several hearings of the Five Chinese Brothers, in which one brother “swallows the sea,” we discovered while acting the story that Rose heard “sea” as “seed.” The picture in the book shows a man kneeling on the beach, drinking the sea. His cheeks fill until his head is huge with water. Soon the sea bed is empty and only shells and fish are visible. Then, unable to contain the sea any longer, he expels it forcefully. Rose observed the pictures as she heard the words. She did not ask herself: how could the swallowing of a seed produce such an effect? For her, words and pictures did not have to be connected. She accepted confusion as a normal state. She didn’t know she had a right to understand. However, acting out a story is a precise enterprise. When Rose put a bead on the rug and pretended to swallow it, the children asked what she was doing. “I’m eating the seed, that’s what,” she said. Eddie saw the error first. “No, that’s for planting. This is water. You know, a sea.” Rose was perplexed. Seeing she had made a mistake, she stopped listening. Wally took the bead out of her hand. “Pretend a fairy changed the seed into a big ocean. They call that a sea sometimes and sometimes they call it an ocean. Now just drink it like the man in the book….Blow up your cheeks like this….” Rose copied every motion Wally made and then did it by herself, grinning at him.
Most children have learned a language and do make sense by the time they enter kindergarten. Rose, however, was not convinced that words had commonly accepted meanings; she did not always make the connections between words and actions that followed.
After several hearings of the Five Chinese Brothers, in which one brother “swallows the sea,” we discovered while acting the story that Rose heard “sea” as “seed.” The picture in the book shows a man kneeling on the beach, drinking the sea. His cheeks fill until his head is huge with water. Soon the sea bed is empty and only shells and fish are visible. Then, unable to contain the sea any longer, he expels it forcefully.
Rose observed the pictures as she heard the words. She did not ask herself: how could the swallowing of a seed produce such an effect? For her, words and pictures did not have to be connected. She accepted confusion as a normal state. She didn’t know she had a right to understand. However, acting out a story is a precise enterprise. When Rose put a bead on the rug and pretended to swallow it, the children asked what she was doing.
“I’m eating the seed, that’s what,” she said. Eddie saw the error first. “No, that’s for planting. This is water. You know, a sea.”
Rose was perplexed. Seeing she had made a mistake, she stopped listening. Wally took the bead out of her hand. “Pretend a fairy changed the seed into a big ocean. They call that a sea sometimes and sometimes they call it an ocean. Now just drink it like the man in the book….Blow up your cheeks like this….” Rose copied every motion Wally made and then did it by herself, grinning at him.
Paley’s reflection follows:
I would not have ‘explained’ the difference between sea and seed by magically turning a sea into a seed. And yet, why not? Wally’s magic released Rose from her fear and embarrassment. Now she could listen and understand….Wally used the word pretend as a teaching tool.
“The language of power-from-within,” writes the Wiccan theologian Starhawk, “is poetry, metaphor, symbol, ritual, the language of magic, of ‘thinking in things,’ where the concrete becomes resonant with mysteries that go beyond its seemingly solid form.”
I think that, at this particular juncture in UU history, more metaphor and less literalist identification with various theological identities could be a healing force in our congregations’ spiritual lives.
I visit a lot of churches. And as I do, I am troubled by what seems to me an increasing tension between Unitarian Universalists of various theologies—particularly between UUs with the self-identity of “humanists” and UUs with the self-identity of “theists.” I guess it troubles me particularly because, having grown up in this faith, it seems to me that the whole point of our faith is to be more committed to religious metaphors than to religious labels. Yet I see UUs on both sides of what seems to me a non-existent fence digging in trenches and feeling increasingly intolerant of one another.
Buddhism, as I currently understand it, is a metaphoric system holding the kindness of Wally’s statement: “Let’s pretend a fairy turned the seed into a big ocean.” Only the Buddhist’s statement might look something like this: “Let’s pretend a fairy turned your heart into the heart of the universe. Let’s pretend that by knowing our own hearts, we know the heart of the universe and touch freedom.”
Couldn’t Christianity’s story be explained as, “Pretend that God has already been tortured and murdered, but that God was even bigger than death. Pretend that identifying with the bigness that can’t be killed frees us to be with God.”
Humanism’s metaphoric statement might be: “Pretend that everything that is divine resides right inside us as human beings! By really harvesting all of the wonderful bounty right in our own flawed, imperfect selves, we can be free to live as strong, powerful, spiritual beings.”
In each case, I am looking at the metaphors offered by given religious symbol systems with the intention of finding liberation and freedom, just as Wally’s intention in pretending that a seed became a sea was to free Rose from embarrassment and fear.
We need to open up every kind of metaphor—religious, scientific, artistic—to look for hints of freedom if Unitarian Universalism is to be a vital, pluralistic, liberating religious movement. That is the beauty of our abiding belief in the ongoing nature of revelation: that truth and beauty can be more fully known each day of our lives.
Metaphor is a vehicle for bearing larger, deeper meaning. We can do ourselves harm if we take religious language of any kind literally, like the man sitting on the tracks of the Tokyo Express. But if we, rather, use metaphor to carry us across chasms of fear, of uncertainty, of despair, then religion can offer us, for a moment at least, the gifts we need in order to be free.
Let’s pretend! Let’s pretend that we need each other, that each of us has unique and complex understandings of the world which are made stronger by sharing them in contexts where others, who are unthreatened by diversity, will put forth their own. Let’s pretend that we really have the power to imagine and then to create justice. Let’s pretend that in so doing, we will re-imagine and re-create our very souls.
In the words of Adrienne Rich:
Any truly revolutionary art is an alchemy through which waste, greed, brutality…and anger are transmuted into some drenching recognition of the WHAT IF? The possible. WHAT IF? The first revolutionary question, the question the dying forces don’t know how to ask.
Metaphors be with you!
by David O. Rankin, free lance writer, Moscow, Idaho
My father was a Zen master. He never graduated from high school. He never left western Pennsylvania. He never studied religion. But he could instruct with a single word, or a facial expression, or a slap on the table with a heavy hand. If there was any content to the teaching, I do not have the slightest memory; and since he was a big, tough bear of a man, I did pay strict attention.
In the early years, it was extremely frustrating. I could not understand what I took to be his negative approach to life. When I rushed into the house, wanting to talk, share, or gain approval, he responded all right.
“Dad, the minister talked about heaven today!”
“WAS HE EVER THERE?”
“Dad, I got an A in history and geography!”
“BUT DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING?”
“Dad, my picture is on the sports page!”
“WHY DID YOU MISS THE SHOT?”
“Dad, Karl Marx has a great theory on exploitation!”
“DID HE EVER WORK FOR A LIVING?”
“Dad, a professor says I should go to graduate school!”
“WILL IT BUY YOU A CUP OF COFFEE?”
“Dad, what is your opinion on the presidential election?”
“WHY LISTEN TO ME?”
As with Zen, every statement was greeted with a question. It required that I probe more deeply into what I was feeling or thinking. I was forced back upon myself (a scary, frightful, unappealing proposition).
All along, of course, I was being taught an important lesson. Gradually, because I was a slow learner, I began to put together the bits and pieces of the curriculum: experts are fallible. Mere words do not describe experience. Ideas should be tested. Fame is fleeting. Saviors are human. A book is not reality. Control your enthusiasms. Develop strong discipline. Seek the larger meaning. Wisdom is hard labor. Not even fathers know everything. And then there was the central tenet of the teaching: that I am a responsible human being, that I am called upon to fashion and enlighten myself, that the ultimate locus of authority is always lodged in my own soul. It is the message of Buddhism.
Obviously, there is more to this ancient faith. Born in India, it claims more than 500 million people. It spread through the south from Ceylon to Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam; and through the north from Tibet to Mongolia, China, Korea, Formosa and Japan—with no bloodstains of force, crusades, or inquisitions.
Born out of Hinduism, it was a protestant revolt. It accepted the ideas of cycles, karma, reincarnation, and the bliss of nirvana, but it vigorously rejected the ideas of caste, priests, ritual, gods and exterior authority, with a special feeling against fraud and corruption.
Born more than 2,500 years ago, it is surprisingly modern. It adheres to science, reason, and psychology (while encouraging art and gardening), and offers to the individual believer a realization of freedom and democracy—with an enviable record of opposing both kings and communists.
If you are down, disillusioned, or perhaps suffering a pain, a loss, a failure, but still wish to retain your dignity, rationality, and sovereignty—try drinking from the well of Buddhism.
The legend insists that when Siddhartha Gautama arrived in the world, in 560 BCE, the lame walked, the blind received their sight, the deaf and dumb conversed in ecstasy, and the fires of hell were quenched. But when he was later asked: “Are you a god?” he responded, “No.”
“An angel?”
“No.”
“A saint?”
“Then what are you?”
“I am awake!” he replied, and the answer became a title. A great religion began when a man shook off the doze of ordinary awareness. Buddha means “the Awakened, or Enlightened, One.”
The event is crucial to an understanding of Buddhism. Gautama was the son of a king in northern India. He was wealthy, handsome, pampered, and destined for a life of power and prestige.
In order to protect the heir to the throne, strict orders were issued that no ugliness intrude on the prince’s courtly pleasures.
At the age or 29, however, Gautama took a chariot ride through the countryside. He saw an old man, a decrepit man, and a dead man. After witnessing age, disease, and death, he could not return to luxury. “Is it not right that I should feel horror, repulsion, and disgust when I see another in such plight? All the joy of life died within me.”
Sneaking out of the palace, shaving his head and beard and throwing away his princely garments, Gautama donned the yellow robe of a monk. For six years, he was immersed in the yoga disciplines: solitude, prayer, philosophy, and a long, rigorous fasting until, when he reached for his belly, it was the backbone he grasped.
“With all those severe austerities I fail to rise to the heights of noblest understanding and vision. Could there be another path to Enlightenment?”
What is the cause of human misery? Where is the release of eternal salvation? Gautama was looking for a Middle Way between the extremes of self-indulgence and strict renunciation. Alone, for 49 days, sitting in the shade of a Bo tree, he achieved his goal.
The Sermon at Bernares was the first description of Buddhism. It explains the essentials of the faith:
The basic reality of life is pain and suffering;
The cause of this suffering is material craving and egotistical desire, and the solution is to seek liberation from attachments;
The specific steps for a release from pain are contained in the Eightfold Path of right views, right intentions, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration;
The objective of Buddhism is to experience the ultimate reality, to escape the wheel of rebirth, to dissolve into total awareness, to enter into the bliss of nirvana.
Half a century followed, as Buddha trudged the dusty paths of India. He founded an order of monks, preached daily, encouraged the faithful, and comforted the distressed. When his hair turned white, his body infirm, he still pronounced the original, ego-shattering, life-redeeming message: “And what have I explained? Suffering have I explained, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering, and the path that leads to the destruction of suffering have I explained. For it is useful.”
Calm, simple, modest, tender, analytical, democratic, and peaceful; a master of dialectic, an artist of renown, but with a cosmic mission to perform, the traits of Buddha were permanently etched on the religious movement.
He asked: “Do you not seek a light, ye who are surrounded by darkness?” Other religions provide a light, but Buddhism counsels self-enlightenment. No god will help. There is no miracle or secret ritual, or magic charm or esoteric philosophy or creedal test. “Be ye lamps unto yourselves; be your own confidence. Hold to the truth within yourselves as to the only lamp.”
Are you up to it? Truth is not far away. It is very near. Other people search among sacred books, or cling to a holy leader or endlessly repeat institutional proclamations but, as a Buddhist, you are the answer to your own realization. It lies within.
It is arduous work. Self-reliance is always difficult. An intense effort of will and concentration is required. Even your desire for enlightenment will be an obstacle.
Nan-in, a Japanese master, received a professor who came to inquire about Zen Buddhism. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
As the professor watched the overflow he could no longer restrain himself: “It is overfull! No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in replied, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
It was Buddha himself who refused to identify the ultimate truth with verbal expressions. To say that something exists is one thing, but to experience it is another. When Zen asks to hear the sound of one hand clapping it is demanding actual impressions, a clarity of pure being, nothing else.
A new monk approached the master in the monastery. “Would you kindly give me some instruction?”
“Have you eaten your breakfast yet?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Then go wash your bowls.” Either the truth is in the simple act of doing the dishes, if done properly, or it is nowhere.
Yet self-enlightenment is not a selfish enterprise. Although Buddhists are bent on their own release from woe, they are charged to love everyone without exception. In the scriptures, Buddha’s preaching is primarily ethical. Reminiscent of another founder, he wrote: “Let people overcome anger by love, let them overcome evil by good, let them overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth.”
The prototypical Buddhist is clean, generous, and cheerful. He speaks the truth, controls his tongue, and does not envy. She is tolerant, respectful, and free from bondage. Many are vegetarians. Most are strict pacifists. All are responsible for the welfare of humanity.
One of my favorite notions is that of the bodhisattva. It is a special category of Buddhists, distinguished by pity, mercy, and compassion. They refuse to accept a personal salvation until all creatures share it. Zen explains: “In their wisdom they see no persons in their compassion, but they are resolved to save them.”
So they will not live in solitary grandeur, nor enter the bliss of nirvana. Even when assured the highest reward of the faith, they renounce the prize in order to return to the world. How long will they stay? A sutra says, "Until the grass itself be enlightened.”
But mainly, I appreciate the locus of authority. The singular strength of Buddhism, I believe, is the autonomy of the individual. It is said: “By one’s self the evil is done, by one’s self one suffers; by one’s self evil is left undone, by one’s self one is purified. The pure and the impure stand and fall by themselves: no one can purify another.”
It is the echo of Dad, which bangs in my head like a drum: own up to your own life; master your own body; cultivate your own mind; fashion your own decisions. For to walk freely, to exist authentically, to be confident of Being, and to know that wherever you stand is the soil of truth—is to attain enlightenment.
In the end, when Buddha addressed the multitude of converts, he could have taken advantage of their enthusiasm by posing as the authority, or imposing an institutional dogma. Instead, he relayed a gospel for the ages: “Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it…or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings—that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.”
by Victoria Safford, minister, White Bear UU Church, St. Paul, Minnesota
A child I know, when asked whether she would answer the call of her elementary school principal to wear red, white and blue clothes on Thursday for her school’s Patriot’s Day, was in a quandary. She put down the crayon with which she was painstakingly trying to squeeze the words Peace is Possible onto the white bars between the red bars on the small American flag she had made and said, with what I like to think is a remarkable command of the idiom of the heartland as well as an uncanny awareness of the subtlety of language (but actually I know it’s just the way she talks), “Well, it is a pretty good country ?so it’s hard to know what to wear.” Not exactly mindless nationalism, but provocative, nonetheless.
The United States is a pretty good country. It is one of hundreds and hundreds of pretty good countries, lightly layered relatively recently onto the skim of topsoil or desert sand or water which covers the thin skin of our globe; hundreds of pretty good countries filled with millions of pretty good and proud and worthy people, other lands with sunlight, too, and
The child in the quandary found her own remarkable response. When asked on Wednesday night what she thought she’d like to do, she did say, “It’s a pretty good country,” and she looked up then for confirmation of that claim, for some assurance that this guess might in fact be true, and this I gave her. (She knows I have my doubts, but needs to be reminded, just as I do, that they go hand in hand with hopes and dreams so passionate, so powerful.) And then she said, deeply serious, without seeking my collaboration or permission, “I think I’m gonna wear turquoise, pink and beige for now.” And so she did, and I don’t know if she knows what risk may be entailed there, what wrath she may incur among her playground comrades or her teachers or her principal, or how her own chosen symbols of ambivalence might be misunderstood. I don’t know what confidence she may inspire, in this country to which she has not yet even learned, at her young age, to pledge allegiance. For now she is a turquoise patriot; she’s proud and scared and questioning. Her allegiance is to her own conscience, and her trust is still, for now, with the adults, in whose clumsy hands her entire future is contained.
Greetings. My name is Linda Berez. I’m pleased to have the opportunity to introduce myself as your ministerial intern from September 2004 through June 2005. I’m looking forward to an exciting ten months working with all of you, the staff here at CLF, and the Rev. Jane Rzepka. For the past two years I’ve been attending Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago, Illinois. My partner Cris Melena and I moved to Chicago from San Diego, California. Yes, we are slowly inching our way across the country. Cris is a massage therapist and has two sons. Between them we have four grandchildren whom we visit as often as possible in California and Texas.
Prior to attending seminary I was involved as a lay leader in my home congregation of First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego. This large, vibrant congregation provided me opportunities to serve in ways that extended from president of the congregation to religious education leader. I have been involved in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender activities from the local to the continental levels. Currently I serve the UUA on the new Information Technology Committee.
Professionally, I have been in the computer field for 20 years. My last job was as a systems administrator at the University of California, San Diego. I love fixing PCs and have a great interest in the Internet and the possibilities it can open up for connecting with wider communities such as the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Having the opportunity to be your intern this year and working with our cyberminister, Jone Johnson Lewis, will, I hope, provide us many ways, some familiar and some new, to come together via this web of interconnectedness. I am excited to be with you as we venture forth this year, and look forward to getting to know you.
Our minister, Jane Rzepka, is on sabbatical. She has invited a series of colleagues to write the minister’s column in her absence. We hope you enjoy them.
by William Sinkford, president, Unitarian Universalist Association
What a pleasure to be able to “fill in” for Jane Rzepka, your minister, while she is on a well-earned sabbatical. It’s a bit like being the “guest preacher” for our largest congregation. I’m honored.
You may have joined the Church of the Larger Fellowship because Quest nurtured your spirit. Or perhaps you found uu&me! helped you lead a spiritually centered family life. Perhaps you are a lone (and lonely) religious liberal who needs support on your spiritual journey. Your personal situation may make physically attending a typical church impossible.
Whatever your reasons for joining, you may not know that when you joined CLF you were connecting with other religious liberals in over a thousand Unitarian Universalist congregations in the United States and, indeed, with Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist communities around the world.
Let me bring you greetings from that larger family of faith of which CLF, and you, are a part. Today Unitarian Universalism is vital and growing. We are beginning to claim our own Good News and we are offering our liberal religious voice as an alternative to the strident voice of the fundamentalist Religious Right in more and more effective ways. Women’s Rights. Marriage Equality. Separation of Church and State. Civil Liberties. Voter Participation. On these and other issues we are raising our liberal religious voice. I especially hope that you have found a way to work for voter registration and voter participation this year. Regardless of your politics, we are called to make our democracy real by helping more and more Americans take part in it.
What do I mean when I say that we are religious liberals? Like religious people everywhere, we strive to know and name the holy in our lives and to listen when the holy calls us to the making of justice. But we know that the holy has many names: Spirit of Life, God, Allah and many, many more. In the words of one of our favorite hymns: “Bring many names, beautiful and good.” Or as UU minister Forrest Church writes, “God is not God’s name.”
We value the individual spiritual journey. We celebrate and draw on the wisdom of all the world’s great faith traditions. To be a religious liberal is to know that there is not just one way to be religious. In the words of the Negro spiritual, there are “Twelve Gates to the City, Hallelujah.”
Religious Fundamentalists, regardless of the tradition they proclaim, see the world quite differently. They say that there is only one way to be religious, only one scripture which holds the truth. Fundamentalists see only one moral path (theirs), and only one way to be a loving family. Too often, Religious Fundamentalists work to have their religious path enshrined in our nation’s (or other nations’) laws. Fundamentalists seem afraid of differences and seem to yearn for the safety and certainty of a single path.
We try to live differently. We do not force the individual spirit into a single mold, nor insist on a single set of beliefs. At our best, we know that differences can be blessings and not curses. And we try to live in the faith that our differences need not divide us.
Unitarian Universalism, this liberal faith that nurtures our spirits, has much to offer our wounded world. The United States has become the most racially, culturally and religiously pluralistic society the earth has every known. Not only are there Methodists, but also Muslims and Mormons. Not only Baptists, but Buddhists—and Baha’is, Hindus, Humanists, Atheists, Jains, Sikhs and many more. Our liberal faith helps us welcome this diversity. The fact that liberal religious communities exist is a beacon of hope in our hurting, and increasingly violent, world.
We don’t do this perfectly. Far from it. But we are committed to offering our witness for the possibility of pluralistic community to our hurting world.
Being a religious liberal is challenging. No easy creeds are given to us, no doctrines which guarantee a good life. Individual religious liberals must take responsibility for their own spiritual lives.
But we can offer one another community. We can companion one another on our journeys. And by covenanting, promising to walk together, we can find both the support and the challenge to help us on our way. I hope that CLF is such a community for you. Though we religious liberals value our individualism highly, we do not have to walk alone.
I am so glad that you have found the Church of the Larger Fellowship. CLF has a vision, a mission and a ministry that the Association needs. The Unitarian Universalist Association, which I am privileged to serve as President, is nothing more than the coming together of the congregations. I can say without any doubt that the Association needs you, because the reality is that “the Association” is all of us.
by Helen Zidowecki, acting minister of religious education, Church of the Larger Fellowship
When I was about seven years old, my family moved from Canada to the United States. On the first July 4th that we lived in “the States” people were flying flags to celebrate Independence Day. I hung my Canadian flag—and couldn’t understand why that wasn’t OK. Sure, the United States was my home, but Canada and my Canadian relatives were part of my heritage, too.
What does it mean to be patriotic? A patriot defends a country, but also works to make that country a better place. The roots of the word are old French, Latin and Greek, going back to patrios, meaning father, or forefathers, or people who started the culture that we have. So how do we honor those who came here before us? For some of us, our parents and grandparents, going back many generations, may have been in the country where we now live. Others of us, or our parents and grandparents, may have lived in other countries or only recently have come to the country where we now reside. And we may have relatives in other countries. My mother’s family came from England, Scotland, and Germany many generations ago. My father’s family had been in the US at the time of the American Revolution and had gone to Canada because they wanted to remain loyal to England. My husband’s grandparents came from Lithuania, so my children have a mixture of stories about their heritage as United States citizens.
One of my favorite books is Who Belongs Here: An American Story, by Margy Burns Knight, and illustrated by Anne Sibley O’Brien (Tilbury House, Publisher, Gardiner, Maine, 1993). For Nary, a Cambodian child who comes to the United States to live, life is not always easy. He cannot always understand what people are saying to him, and sometimes people tell him to “go home.” In addition to the story, Margy Burns Knight adds back-ground notes about immigration. CLF members can borrow this book from the CLF Library.
For those who live in the United States, here are some questions for families to contemplate. If you live elsewhere, you might think about how these questions apply to your location and language.
Patriots can love their own country and the rest of the world all at the same time. Indeed, one of the most patriotic songs that I know is “This is My Song,” #159 in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition. The second verse states:
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine; but other lands have sunlight too, and clover, and skies are every-where as blue as mine. Oh hear my song, thou God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and for mine.
For me, this is true patriotism.
So, if I am a patriot of the world, am I being patriotic toward my own country? Definitely. Patriots need both questioning and courage to make their community, their country, and the world, better places. Patriots come in all ages. Let us engage as people of all ages to strive to sing a “song of peace for their land and for mine.”
(Source Unknown)
Last updated June 12, 2005
Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2823 Phone: (617) 948-6166 · Fax: (617) 523-4123 · E-mail: clf@clfuu.org
