I have had two interesting sets of conversations recently.
One is a common conversation among Unitarian Universalists and it goes
something like this: When someone asks you about Unitarian Universalism, what
do you say? This morning I want to take just a few minutes, exploring the
very best parts of our possible answers. Those will come from a variety
of sources. The second part of this morning’s sermon will involve the
second set of conversations I have had recently. And those involve a
conversations that occur within a family or among loved ones when one announces
that they are leaving the faith of their upbringing.
Let’s imagine that you are in an elevator. Seven floor
building. You are on floor six. You are going down to floor one with
another individual. And she turns to you and says, I think I saw you
leaving the Unitarian Church the other day. What is a Unitarian
Universalist. Six floors. Could you do it?
You could say what Professor David Bumbaugh says, “We are a
peculiar religious tradition in that what binds us is not so much a shared
theology, or even a shared response to the experience of the sacred, as it is a
shared history. We are one people because of our inchoate understanding
of the journey through time which we share. We are enraptured by a mythic
sense of having shared a journey which began by rejecting conventional views
and has been defined by a continuing struggle toward a personally satisfying
understanding of the self, of the nature of the human venture, of the meaning
of existence.” Oops, first floor.
You could say what Bill Schultz, former president of the
Unitarain Universalist Association, says: “We are people who affirm that:
Whatever we think holy be, Creation itself is holy. WE
make no distinctions between the secular and the sacred. That life’s
gifts are available to everyone. That which is divine or ultimate is made
evident, not in the miraculous or otherworldly, but in the simple and everyday.
We look to the exuberance of life’s unfolding. That human beings
themselves are responsible for the planet and its future. That everyone
of us is held in Creation’s hands--we share its burdens and its radiance--and
hence we affirm that strangers need not be enemies. That though death
confronts us all, we embrace life all the more though we lose it in this
form.” I would add one: That we come from love, are grounded in love and
will return to love. Oops, Floor one!
You could say what historian Earl Morse Wilbur said: “When the
Unitarian movement began, the marks of true religion were commonly thought to
be belief in the creeds, membership in the church, and participation in its
rites and sacraments. To the Unitarian of today, the marks of true
religion are SPIRITUAL FREEDOM, ENLIGHTENED REASON, BROAD AND TOLERANT
SYMPATHY, UPRIGHT CHARACTER, and UNSELFISH SERVICE.” The beauty of this
one is that you are probably only on Floor 3, so you can actually leave time
for a follow up conversation or the more common elevator stance of awkward
silence!
An even shorter suggestion is from a friend of mine, the Rev.
Kim Beach. He answers the question in this way: “Unitarian Universalism
is an open invitation to enter into a shared quest for the truth that makes us
free.”
The answer that I like the best is one that came from Vera
Tilson, choir director at the church in Arlington, Virginia. “Our
religion,” she said, “is regular attendance.” Vera was serious. She
came to join that church through regular attendance at worship, at socials and
celebrations. You get it, if you get it at all, by osmosis more than by
explanation. As Robert frost said of education, “You hang around until
you catch on!”
There’s of course much more to be said about how to talk about
Unitarian Universalism to the causual inquirer. But what about when the
situation is difficult and divisive?
The call came on a Sunday afternoon. The setting was
Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury Maryland. That is the
hospital where I did my hospital chaplaincy training-CPE as it is called--in
the summer of 2000. I was on the “pager” that afternoon. Sunday
afternoons in that eastern shore of Maryland hospital were notoriously
quiet. Because we were thirty minutes away from a major beach, Friday and
Saturday nights in the summer time were hopping, and even Sunday evenings with
the busy traffic heading back to D.C., Baltimore or Philly.
Sunday afternoons, typically, were a breeze. I could walk
around and find older fellows, recovering from heart attacks and so on, and
watch football together. Or talk to new mothers. Rare, that kind of
pace.
The call came in the middle of my shift. “Chaplain
Butts.” It was the volunteer at the front desk. “Yes.” Her
voice was a bit tentative, though I think we had spoken before. “Um, I
have a request here for, an Orthodox priest or a Unitarian.” I made her
repeat that line, not because I didn’t hear her, but simply because it was too
rich to not hear again. “I’m on it.”
I went up to the room. Two women were there. One in her
late 70s or early 80s was in the bed, looking very frail indeed. And her
daughter, maybe in her early 50s. You know, I must have had that look on
my face. I suspect, even in our short time together, that you have seen
that look on my face: Puzzled. It sort of says, Can you give me some
clues as to what is happening here? The daughter introduced herself and
said, “I’m the Unitarian. She’s the Orthodox Ukranian. Her priest
lives two hours away, and covers Baltimore, the eastern shore and Delaware.”
Our conversation began. She said something along the lines of “pray for
her. And if it is at all possible, pray for me too.”
Having ample time, I listened to her as she told of her deep
sadness at the prospect of losing her mother, of her fatigue around caring for
her, of her deepest appreciation for her mother’s faith. “My mom never
understood that I left the Orthodox church. But we’ve worked through it.” That
was about all she said on that subject. I prayed with her and her mother. I
went down to the chapel office and got two books of prayers, one of a very
orthodox nature, and this one, which was mine, from Powell Davies, Unitarian
minister. “O God,” one of Davies prayers go, “in our darkened hours, help us to
see that all of the dark never put out one light.”
“My mom never understood that I left the Orthodox church.”
That stayed with me. And I have thought about this story
as I have heard any number of such stories in the last few weeks. My
parents don’t understand that I want to get married by a Unitarian Universalist
minister. My mother says that she prays for my soul. My brother and
I fight all the time about religion.
Later that summer, I came across a pastoral care journal which
was describing a particular exercise that you can do with patients around their
faith journeys. A line with a gash through it from the parents faith to
the child’s faith is a harsh reminder that one of the difficult transitions
around one’s faith journeys involves the scenario when there is little or no
support for the choice that one has made around religion when one ends up in a
faith tradition other than the parents’.
And so this morning I want to take up a conversation about how
to talk about Unitarian Universalism when things get rough--and it truly is a
conversation because in this setting we can only begin to explore the
possibilities and because I will ask you later to reflect and possibly share
your experiences around these issues.
The first thing to say about this whole scenario is that the
conversation about religion is not happening in a vacuum and that a number of
other emotional dynamics will be at play. It may be that religion is the
topic that is chosen by you and your parents, you and your child, to act as a
carrier for lots of other conversations that might be possible. Feelings
of disloyalty, feelings of judgment, feelings of abandonment, feelings of
control all might be conjured up in the process of what on one level might be a
simple argument about religion. My sense is that arguments about religion
tend to be the public face of a lot of other private conflict. So the
first question to ask yourself when an argument or disagreement is occurring
around religion is this: Is the argument we are having covering the right
topic? Or is this covering up some other, larger or just different,
conversation that this person and I have been avoiding by talking about
doctrinal differences.
The second thing I want to say about the whole topic of
conflicts around faith journeys is this: What is being communicated around the
issue of acceptance? You have heard it said that, I suppose, that we Unitarian
Universalist bless you on your journey, that if you leave this place for
another place that fits you better, so be it. But what that doesn’t get
to is a scenario that I came across in one of my internship sites while in
seminary. A beautiful family, having raised all of their children in UU
church school, lost a high school student to a kind of conservative
congregation that had a snazzy youth group with all kinds of resources and so
on. He wreaked havoc on the family by quoting scriptures, threatening
them with prayer and speaking of their eternal souls with all the fervor and
passion that comes with that age and temperament. It is one thing to say
that your journey is blessed in the abstract, but this stretched the limits of
acceptance. But they provided an accepting presence nonetheless and were
patient with that boy and were clear that they loved him but thought he might
be missing the boat. They communicated both acceptance and disagreement
lovingly and beautifully. One of the key determinants in the success of a
difficult negotiation around issues of religion is ensuring that the other
party, no matter what, feel at the bottom of your conversation a strong sense
that disagreement might be part of this scenario but unacceptance is not.
So the second question to ask yourself when an argument about religion is
occurring with a loved one is this: Am I conveying a sense of acceptance in my
words and deeds?
The last question I think worth asking yourself in difficult
times is this: Am I communicating with both compassion and clarity? Look,
all conversations about faith revolve around a sense of understanding and being
understood, it is all tied up in the narrative of one’s life and more than that
the ultimate concerns of one’s life. The one thing in all of this that
you can control is your response. If you feel misunderstood by a loved
one, it may be worth your while to seek first to understand where that person
is coming from. Before responding, attempt to listen without
interrupting, attempt to ask clarifying questions, attempt to summarize back
what you are hearing from this person.
This is the great prayer of St. Francis: That I might seek to
understand more than to be understood.
And then when you have a feel for where that person is coming
from--attempt to be as clear as possible about where you stand, knowing that
you will have spent a good bit of time reflecting a listening, compassionate
attitude toward the other. So the third question to ask is this: Have I
listened as well as I can to both this person with whom I am in a disagreement
AND the promptings of the teacher within me, the spirit within me. The
reason, frankly, that I have introduced the labyrinth walk here, though only
one time, and the idea of an open sanctuary on special days for reading and
reflection and meditation and the reason that I have introduced Essential
Spirituality is to invite into our lives opportunities to be reflective in a
quiet setting so that the wisdom of the ages might be heard within the sound of
our own breathing, if only on occasion. Out of that silence, clarity of
speech. Out of clear speech, hopefully, understanding and reconciliation.
Ultimately, though, the way to talk about Unitarian Universalism
is through talking about this place and what it means to you. In what
ways have the people of this place nurtured and supported you, along the ways,
overcoming adversity, feeding your spirit, walking with you.
I heard a story the other day about a youth minister who saw a
beautiful sight at a graduation. He was the youth minister of a large
congregation and he had been to a lot of graduations that year and about his
sixth or seventh, he devised a system. He was going to witness the
graduation of a girl whose last name started with an S, so he figured he could
be an hour or so late and still be on time. He got there but they were
still on the awards--academic person of the year, sports person of the year and
so on. They finally got to person of the year and the principal
started describing this boy, born in Russia at which point the doctor said he
might not walk but he ran on the track team of this school. He came to
America without knowing one word of English and he graduated with honors.
After graduation, he planned to move to Israel to a Kibbutz and become a rabbi.
The crowd started clapping. This minister is in the back
left corner of the balcony, a balcony that is designed to be right on top of
the stage. If you are in the center front of the balcony, you are
basically eye level with the stage. As this young man’s name was called,
a huge man in the center front row jumps up, throws his arms in the air.
A long white beard, a Yakima and he tilts his head up and closes his eyes and
you just knew that this was not the first time this fellow, this Jewish
grandfather, had been in this position for this boy. As that boy walks
across the stage, he looks up at his grandfather and a smile crosses his
face. That is what the church is called to be. Not just our youth
advisors--though we are blessed this year to have junior and senior high adults
committed to such a posture--but all of us, for one another.
We don’t know how to agree about the language of what is holy,
but we know that we have one another in this church, and should you tell and
hear stories like that, in a kind of mutual embrace, my guess is that the
doctrinal disagreements may, over time, dissipate.
We will enter a period of silence, after which we will have
opportunity to reflect with each other. I want you to know, however, that
I am available to speak about any of this if you’d like to have a pair of
listening ears…
January 12, 2003, Unitarian Church, Davenport, Iowa. Roger
Butts