Dr. John Young 8/12/07

UUCJ

Reminder: Sermons are a verbal form of expression. These printed reflections do not usually contain the stories, reference and spontaneous connections that John makes when he does his sermons. The way to experience them is to attend the Sunday service.

Our Shared Spiritual Paths

Poet Robert Frost wrote: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” We are a chapel full of people who have taken a spiritual path less traveled by, and it does make all the difference. No one can travel all of life’s possible paths. Each person has to constantly choose: what to do or to leave undone, who to love, which friendships to nurture, whether to get involved in a particular community or cause or not. Failing to make a choice itself becomes a choice.

Human beings have much in common. Our paths from birth to death are in many ways predictable. All people will be born and will die. Most will spend much of the first generation of their lives with a birth family, and much of the rest of their lives with a chosen family. Most of us will spend much of our lives working diligently, both to make a living and to have a life. Most of us will try hard to make and to keep friends and to become valued members in communities that are important to us. Every one of us will face tragedies, suffer, fail, be vulnerable and afraid about some things, and have secrets. Every one of us will also savor great joys, have moments of ecstasy, succeed, be strong and courageous about some things, and usually be honest.

We are together here because we have chosen, or at least are considering, an unusual spiritual path. Today, many people are not connected with any religious organization. They may have no consciously chosen or conscientiously lived faith. Most of the people that are believers are primarily that, they cling to some specific God concept, prophet or group of holy ones, a particular scripture, perhaps even a narrow interpretation of a single scripture, one concept of what happens after death, and often a whole set of rituals, laws, and hierarchies. They think that the faith that they have been born into or have adopted is the only path to salvation, the only way to truth, the single source of light. This sort of belief may be what most people call religion, but belief, by itself, does not constitute a mature, evolved spiritual path.

Unitarian Universalists are taking a different spiritual path. Our first tradition is: “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder which move us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces which create and uphold life.” The father of American philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who initiated the Transcendentalist movement and was a Unitarian minister, said it well more than 150 years ago: “each human being can be a bard of the holy ghost.” Your foundation spirituality is your own experiences of mystery and wonder. Not what some book or prophet said long ago, not what some hierarchy demands, not even what you say you believe but instead your actual experiences of spirituality, your personal experiences of mystery and wonder, and what you do with those experiences to nurture love among humanity and to sustain nature and life.

Wonder is amazed admiration and mysteries are those aspects of life and our experiences that resist or defy explanation or solution, yet about which we have enduring interest. Our spiritual paths are built on our personal experiences of mystery and wonder, and what we do with those experiences.

Emerson said in our responsive reading: the highest dwells in us, within each human being are the deepest sources of natural reality, what some of us name God. There is no wall between your soul and God or ultimate reality, as long as you and I realize that there is always a higher origin for events than our own will, a deeper power whose beatitude is accessible to us. It comes as insight, serenity and grandeur. Our souls’ health consists in the fullness of its reception by each of us every day of our lives. We all are related to the Eternal. We perceive it through intellect as genius, through will as virtue, and through our affections as love.

Our first Unitarian Universalist principle is not blind faith or shared dogma but an affirmation of the worth and dignity of every human being. This first principle is related inextricably with our first tradition. Our experiences of mystery and wonder are the foundation for our belief in ourselves and in other people, the basis for the human conscience, the rationale for our enthusiasm about accepting one another and nurturing spiritual growth, and the connection with our loyalty to democratic process and our reverence for the interdependent web of all existence. Human and scientific truths are not the enemies of genuine spirituality but its fond allies. We try continually to be on guard about the seductive human tendencies to make unworthy objects into idols, to mistake our own perceptions for the whole truth, and to get lost in selfishness or to lose our lives in rigidity.

So, our shared spiritual path is a firm embrace of a personal spirituality which identifies reality, God, truth, beauty, and goodness with each person’s most profound experiences of mystery and wonder so long as these experiences endure the tests of reason, science, justice, and love, and so long as we remember, as Emerson said, that there is always a higher origin for events than our own will, a deeper power whose beatitude is accessible to us and to all people. In other words, our ‘good news’ is that there is grace in the world, meaning in life, love and justice among humanity, and hope every day of our lives. Unlike many people, we neither perceive life and the world as random or meaningless nor as a vale of tears or simply a testing ground for eternal heaven or hell. Instead, we concentrate on embracing our lives and this world, nurturing humanity and sustaining the good Earth. This is our shared spiritual path, and it makes all the difference between happiness and despair, between fear and hate or courage and love.

A spiritual path is not a heavenly destination but a life-long journey. I want to talk with you for a few minutes about how you may choose to focus your journey so that you are getting to do what you want to do in your lives.

To what do you pay attention? To what do you give respect? What do you do with your experiences of mystery and wonder? Emerson’s young protégé, Henry David Thoreau, reminded us that “most people live lives of quiet desperation.” Every human life has times of desperation and despair, but no one needs to live their life that way. Contemporary American life provides the most limited of us with an incredible array of opportunities that most of humanity throughout human history would have willingly died for. So, let’s not waste our time with nonsense, trivia, ignorance, hate, or cultivated despair and cynicism.

If something is not worthy of your attention, stop paying attention, stop giving it time, money, effort, or even inertia. Take your precious time and effort and pay attention to what you consider important and worthy. If you are not going to do anything about it, if it will not help you nurture love among humanity or sustain the good Earth, why waste your attention?

The Buddhists call this reverent attention mindfulness. Both Western religious people and Western secular people call it living gracefully. We cannot do everything. We must constantly choose what we are going to do and leave undone; so, I invite you to take the time to choose carefully to what you are going to give your attention, and, then, having chosen, I urge you to give these worthy objects of your attention, genuine attention. Make your attention into a meditation, a sacrament, a daily ritual that celebrates the mysteries and wonders you have discovered in your lives.

With other people, we have to decide to whom and how we are going to give them our respect. You may love everyone in the abstract, although few of us ever manage that successfully, but we all need to choose the people we are going to invest time, energy, friendship, and love with. We don’t have an unlimited amount. Most of us do have a lot more than we think that we have. I have generally found that the more I effectively give nurtures a miracle because it gives me more. The more I wisely give, the more it comes back in abundance to me and energizes me, empowers me, and nurtures me. But the operable words are giving effectively or wisely. We all know what it feels like to waste our respect, to invest the best of ourselves and find it spurned or misunderstood, abandoned or perverted.

Our liberated spirituality often misleads some people because they do not realize that just as we pair our intellectual freedom with reason and shared experience, and our spiritual tolerance with dialogue and democracy, so we pair our individual liberation with individual responsibility. We do not think that people can be truly liberated without becoming and remaining truly responsible. For us, it is not sufficient to forsake obvious evils or to learn from our mistakes and outgrow unnecessary errors. These are vital aspects of human maturity, and we are conscientiously engaged in them. However, we think that people need to do good, to become ethical activists, to be proactive in making the world a better place and humanity a more loving and peaceful species.

My lessons about figuring how to be effectively and wisely respectful include: 1. finding communities where you can grow, find comfort, and nurture love and justice, 2. making systematic efforts your whole life to be empathetic with and loving to the people you care about, 3. learning how to minimize violation, curb violence, and nurture a more peaceful world, and 4. making an effort to be fair, and whenever possible to do justice to the rest of the people you encounter or significantly impact. We all will fail or at least fall short in many of our human encounters. We will fail to pay appropriate attention, or to properly understand. We, or the other people, will not proceed with respect or compassion. I am proposing that you risk being respectful in every human encounter. Sometimes, your respect will be misplaced, but seldom will your respect not prove to be more prudent than failing to be respectful. Whenever you can, I hope you will be fair, do justice, even love, but at least begin by risking respect. It is almost always what we seek from others; so, it is the best way to receive it ourselves.

Each of us treasures our own experiences of mystery and wonder. The life long path of spirituality is figuring out what to do with these treasures. How do we give them the attention they deserve, the overwhelming respect they evoke? We each need to take quiet time everyday so that we do not lose the past experiences of mystery and wonder which we have been given or the present and future experiences we might miss. You may find that meditation is the best space or that you need the conceptual cues of prayer, or the organizing power of journaling or writing poetry. You may evoke the transcendent by art or gardening, exercise or dialogue, caring for those with more pressing needs than your own, making music, or helping nurture a better world. Everything you do could be done in such a way that it would become a spiritual practice. Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn taught me years ago that everything I genuinely needed to do could become a meditation, it could become a sacred act, and as it does, I am opening myself to ultimate reality, to Creation itself, to the God of my understanding.

So, these are my little lessons about our shared spiritual path. Savor your experiences of mystery and wonder, your insights into the infinite. Figure out daily ways to give them your careful attention and respect. When you do, you empower yourself to more wisely choose what you are doing to do and leave undone. Where are you are going to focus your significant but finite attention? Once you have decided; then use all your wisdom and ingenuity to attend mindfully. To who are you are going to genuinely pay your respects? This is more than simply a cosmic affirmation. This is whom you are going to invest your life in besides yourself. If this congregation is or will become your spiritual home; then, you need to give the people here the respect of your time and attention, your wisdom and best efforts. We are your spiritual family, your portal to nurturing a more loving humanity and a more sustainable world. We are a central community where you will discover, celebrate, create, and nurture your experiences of mystery and wonder.