a homily delivered by
The Rev Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish in Portland, Maine
Christmas Eve, December 24th, 2008
...and having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road....
We’re all familiar with the story, we’ve heard it many times; in fact, we just heard it again only a moment ago. But unfortunately, the story doesn’t actually end there, does it?
When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what was said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” [Hosea 11:1]
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.” [Jeremiah 31:15]
The First Christmas begins with the birth of an innocent child: a child of humble origins, but with magnificent future potential. But it doesn’t end there; it continues with the slaughter of dozens (and perhaps hundreds or even thousands) of innocent children, because a tyrant feels threatened by a dream. From a child’s contagious laughter to the inconsolable weeping of the mothers of murdered infants...such is the REAL story of the First Christmas, so many centuries ago.
Speaking strictly as an historian, the Truth is that we actually know very little about the details of the birth of Jesus, other than that it probably wasn’t anything like the story the way it has been handed down by Scripture. And even there, we have two very different versions, which are easily harmonized since they don’t really overlap one another at all. Some of the small contradictory details -- for example, that the shepherds find the baby sleeping in a stable, but by the time the Magi arrive (traditionally, twelve days later) the family has apparently moved into a house -- can simply be ignored or rationalized away -- why would anyone remain in a stable any longer than they had to, once a house became available? But other historical discrepancies are not so easily overlooked.
Take something so basic as the actual date of this miraculous event. Luke records that Jesus was born during the census of Quirinius, which we know from external Roman sources took place in the Year 6 of the Common Era. But Matthew’s Magi are said to have spoken with Herod the Great, who we also know from independent sources died a decade earlier, in the year 4 BCE. Knowing that the Magi have traditionally been thought of as astrologers, some scholars have attempted to clarify these discrepancies by linking the birth of Jesus to an appropriately significant astrological event, such as the conjunction between Saturn and a retrograde Jupiter in the sign of Pisces in the 7th year Before the Common Era, or approximately three years prior to Herod’s death. And this would be where most contemporary scholars would date the event as well, the assumption being that Luke was simply mistaken in his information, and therefore dated things incorrectly himself. But we will never really know for certain, which simply adds to the mystery of this already mysterious, miraculous story.
When we begin to look at the events recorded in the Gospels under the cold light of modern historical scholarship, an entirely new set of issues emerge. The question is not so much “what do we know and what will we never know;” rather, the REAL question becomes: Why were these stories written the way they were, and what “Truths” were they intended to preserve?
Personally, I’ve always been particularly interested in the story of the Magi, which has actually evolved considerably from the few simple sentences recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. All Matthew tells us is that they were indeed Magi (whatever that means) and that they came from the East, that they saw a star in the sky, and brought with them precious gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. He doesn’t tell us how many there were, although because there were three gifts it was generally assumed there were (at least) three Magi as well. He doesn’t tell us their names either, although they quickly acquired some: Melchior, Balthasar, and Gasper (who is sometimes also known as Casper or even Jasper). Their promotion from Magi to Kings also takes place sometime during the first four centuries of the Common Era. According to one tradition, the Three Kings are also brothers: Gaspar is the King of Arabia, Melchior the King of Persia, and Balthasar the King of India. According to other traditions, they represent the three continents and the three ages of Humanity. Casper, the youngest king, represents Europe, and his gift of Gold represents worldly wealth and power. Balthasar, the oldest king, is the ruler of Ethiopia and represents Africa; his gift of Frankincense (a resinous perfume that can also be burned as incense) represents the priestly function, and is symbolic of prayer and also of sacrifice. Melchior is the middle-aged king and represents Asia -- perhaps Persia, perhaps India, perhaps even China according to at least one tradition. His gift of Myrrh is the most precious gift of all: an unctuous oil worth its weight in Gold (and six times more expensive than Frankincense), it is symbolic of death and the last rites, when we are anointed with oil and wrapped in a clean shroud of cloth, in preparation for at last meeting our Creator face-to-face.
It’s from the symbolism of the three gifts that all these other details have been extrapolated and made part of the tradition. None of it is historical, strictly-speaking; it is simply the elaboration of a story over time, a story which becomes more interesting with each retelling. The shepherds bring their gifts as well, but they are simple gifts appropriate to shepherds, and are intended to emphasize the humble aspects of Jesus’s origins. Born in a stable, he is destined to rule the world in fulfillment of prophecy. But he will not rule the world in the usual way, through violence and domination, like the Romans. Rather, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Reign of God, represents a very different view of the world, a world in which:
The earth will belong equally to all, undivided by walls or fences. It will then bear more abundant fruits spontaneously. Lives will be in common and wealth will have no division. For there will be no poor man there, no rich, and no tyrant, no slave. Further, no one will be either great or small anymore. No kings, no leaders. All will be on a par together... [Sibylline Oracles, 2.319-24]
Here we have a very different vision of World Peace: a peace unlike the Pax Romana, which was the product of Roman Imperial domination, kept in place for two hundred years by military power, economic exploitation and political hegemony, along with the underlying threat of violence which accompanies these realities. Rather, it is a vision which is grounded in a different kind of ideology, and inspired by ideals of Justice and Compassion. It represents a different kind of relationship to politics and the economy, as well as a society where the swords have been beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. These are the prophecies pointed to in the Gospel narratives of the birth of Jesus. And though they may seem naive in the dangerous and sophisticated world in which we live today, they form the context of the Christmas story as we have come to know it: the final (and as yet unwritten) chapter following the Slaughter of the Innocents.
In their book The First Christmas: what the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth, New Testament Scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan write:
One final point. It is not accurate to distinguish the imperial kingdom of Rome from the eschatological kingdom of God by claiming one is earthly the other heavenly, one is evil the other holy, or one is demonic the other sublime. That is simply name-calling. Both come to us with divine credentials for the good of humanity. They are two alternative transcendental visions. Empire promises peace through violent force. Eschaton promises peace through nonviolent justice. Each requires programs and processes, strategies and tactics, wisdom and patience. If you consider that peace through victory has been a highly successful vision across recorded history, why would you abandon it now? But whether you think it has been successful or not, you should at least know there has always been present an alternative options -- peace through justice.
“That clash of visionary programs for our earth,” Borg and Crossan continue, “is the content and matrix for those Christmas stories, and they proclaim God’s peace through justice over against Rome’s peace through victory...” But from where we sit today, two-thousand-some years after these events probably never took place, the challenges which confront us remain remarkably unchanged. Having now seen the star, having heard the angels sing on high, to which of these competing visions will we now bring our treasured gifts, be they simple (like those of the peasant shepherds), or Royal, like the gifts of the Magi?...
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
NAUGHTY OR NICE?
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday December 7th, 2008
***
“You’d better watch out,
You’d better not cry,
You’d better not pout,
I’m telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He’s making a list.
He’s checking it twice.
He’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice?
Santa Claus is coming to town....”
I suspect that pretty much everyone here as heard this song, and recognize the words; it’s not really a Carol, and it’s certainly not a Hymn.... I suppose it’s best thought of as a Christmas “standard” -- one of those annoyingly repetitive tunes that we will hear over and over again for the next several weeks, until we think that we will never want to hear it again...and then suddenly it will disappear entirely for the next eleven months, only to re-emerge once again at the beginning of a NEW holiday season, to begin the cycle all over again.
But what does it really mean, and where did it come from -- this notion that some semi-mythical, vaguely-super natural, quasi-historical/legendary creature (who lives at the North Pole, of all places) is keeping track of ALL of our behavior (but especially that of little girls and boys) and will in the course of a single evening in the dead of winter visit all of our homes in order to reward or punish each and every one of us, not so much on the basis of whether or not we are good or bad, but rather whether we’ve been “naughty “ or “nice.”
The first part of the legend is about the Turkish Saint Nicholas of Myra, and the gift of gold he left in the stockings of the three beautiful but impoverished daughters.:
Once upon a time there was a father with three beautiful daughters. Although the daughters were kind and strong, the father despaired of them ever making good marriages, because he didn't have enough money to pay their dowries.
One day, Saint Nicholas of Myra was passing through their village and heard the locals discussing the plight of these poor girls. Saint Nicholas knew the father would be too proud to accept an outright gift. So he waited until dark, snuck to the man's house, and dropped three bags of gold coins down the chimney.
The daughters had spent the evening washing clothes, and had hung their stockings by the fireplace to dry. The gold coins dropped into the stockings, one bag for each daughter. In the morning, they awoke to find enough money to make them each a generous dowry, and in time all married well and happily.
As word of Saint Nicholas's generosity spread, others began to hang their stockings by the fireplace, hoping for a similar gift....
Nowadays in place of gold we often see instead a much more affordable and practical gift: fresh oranges, pushed deep down into the toe of the stocking -- a refreshing taste of bright citrus sunshine to be savored in the midst of the midwinter darkness.
But what about the other half of the legend? -- the gift of coal to children who have been naughty. This part of the story seems to have originated in Sicily, in the tale of the so-called “Christmas Witch” La Befana, who according to tradition travels the world on her broomstick for the Feast of the Epiphany or Twelfth Night, searching for the Christ Child and leaving gifts of candy and toys (and sometimes coal) in the homes of every child she visits.
As the legend is told, La Befana was a widow living in a cottage on the outskirts of Bethlehem on the original Christmas Eve, where twelve days later a caravan led by three Kings from the East passed by and asked for directions into the city. They invited Befana to join them, but she begged off, claiming she had too much housework to do. But almost as soon as they had left she began to regret her decision. So later that evening she packed a bag with a few things that had belonged to her own child (for gifts), and set out to follow the Wise Men from the East.
But try as she might she could not find them, or the baby of whom they had spoken. And so for centuries she has wandered the world in pursuit of this elusive goal. And then one year, she noticed inside of a church, right there on the altar, a stable filled with all sorts of animals, and standing nearby were the Kings and some shepherds and angels, and then there in the center a young mother and her husband looking down in adoration at a manger made up into a child’s crib. But as she moved in closer to get a better look, Befana suddenly realized that the crib was empty, and that the figures she had been admiring were all simply statues. And so she sat down right there on the steps of the church and began to weep. The story continues:
[and] when she looked up again the church was empty. She thought she heard the figures laughing, but laughing so kindly that she didn't feel a bit hurt, and the old King beckoned her to approach. Then the man who was nearest to the Mother and Child, he whom the shepherds had seen watching the entrance to the cave, turned toward her. "Poor old Befana," he said, "you have been searching for a very long while but you are just a little mistaken. You want to find the Bambino Gesu as He was that night in Bethlehem when the angels sang in the sky, but that cannot be. The Christ Child cannot now be found in one human child, but in all children; He is in each one to whom you give your gifts, for the One dwells in the many, and the searching never ends nor does the finding. Your place is not here, but among all living children." And the laughter ceased, Saint Joseph and the King fell back into their fixed positions and La Befana hurried away quite happily for she remembered how many children were still waiting for her.... [http://santasletterbox.net/befana.html]
So this explains another part of the legend. But why the coal, and how does she know about who to give it to in the first place? It’s not as if she’s keeping a list, like Santa Claus himself, or his British counterpart Father Christmas. And it may well be that we have misread this portion of the legend. La Befana is said to have a preferential bias toward the poor, and that the greater the level of poverty she encounters, the more compassion she feels, and the more she leaves in the way of gifts. In this context, “Nice” children typically want for nothing: a little fruit, some sweets, a small toy and they are satisfied. It is only the “naughty” children -- those children whose families have nothing and who are therefore in need of everything -- who might appreciate a gift of coal as well as food, so that there might at least be a fire in the hearth, even when there are no stockings to hang by the chimney with care....
Strictly speaking, “Naughty” does not really mean “bad” at all. And “nice” does not necessarily mean “good” either. There are plenty of supposedly “nice” people who are capable of performing great evil when left to their own devices, whereas “naughty” means most precisely having “nought” or nothing. Strictly speaking, naughty children are children who are a little mischievous or disobedient, who push the boundaries of “acceptable “ behavior because “when you ain’t got nuthin’ ya ain’t got nuthin’ ta lose.” Naughty adults are typically those whose attitudes and activities might be considered a little improper, indecent, or even “immoral” by more polite society, whose appreciation of the nicer things in life sometimes trumps every other consideration.
But even more importantly, it’s not just which list you’re on, but WHOSE list that really matters. There are lots of different lists floating around out there, on some of which it is a privilege to be listed, while others you want to try to avoid so far as is humanly possible. Take, for example, the simple difference between being on a “no call” list and a “no fly” list. One of those is going to protect you from a lot of unwanted and intrusive telephone solicitations. The other is almost certain to disrupt your plans or (at the very least) ruin your vacation at a time when you can least afford the hassle.
Furthermore, many times it is impossible for us to know that we are even on a list at all, yet our powerful, computerized list-keeping technology now makes it possible to keep track of almost everything and every one: from the kinds of books we buy or the breakfast cereals we eat to who we gave money to in the last election, and how much. For those of us who are unaccustomed to such high levels of scrutiny, the mere existence of these lists alone can feel very intimidating. And even those of us who have come to accept the reality of these lists as part of the price of 21st century living can feel a little uncomfortable about who is keeping track of our personal information, and whether or not they can really be trusted with such a list.
And then finally, there are the lists we keep ourselves, and the judgments they imply regarding our own opinions of Naughty or Nice. We all keep lists like this somewhere, either formally or somewhere in the back of our head. What we like, and what we dislike; what we value, who we can trust, the things we would like to accomplish in our lives before our lives are over -- the so-called “Bucket List -- or simply a good list of the things we would like To Do today. Sometimes these lists can grow as elaborate as the tasks themselves, while some of the most important lists I have ever made were scribbled down on a paper napkin, or the back of a used envelope. Our lists reflect our values but they also reflect our prejudices -- the things we have made judgments about in advance, and yet hopefully remain curious enough about that we might find the ability to change our minds if the circumstances warrant it. Some things might not be as naughty as at first we thought. They might actually turn out to be kind of nice.
But I hope that sometime in these next few weeks between now and the beginning of the New Year, in between our shopping lists and our “To Do” lists and whatever other lists we may feel the need to keep in this season, that we will each take a moment or two to make a list of the things we truly value: those things that are inherently worthy of our attention, and devotion, and support, and to which we are willing to contribute a significant portion of our “life energy.” It doesn’t have to be an elaborate list. You can write it on an envelope, or a napkin, or even somewhere here on your Order of Service if you can find the room!). But do write it down -- and then contemplate it routinely, until it time it becomes as well a list written upon your heart....
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday December 7th, 2008
***
“You’d better watch out,
You’d better not cry,
You’d better not pout,
I’m telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He’s making a list.
He’s checking it twice.
He’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice?
Santa Claus is coming to town....”
I suspect that pretty much everyone here as heard this song, and recognize the words; it’s not really a Carol, and it’s certainly not a Hymn.... I suppose it’s best thought of as a Christmas “standard” -- one of those annoyingly repetitive tunes that we will hear over and over again for the next several weeks, until we think that we will never want to hear it again...and then suddenly it will disappear entirely for the next eleven months, only to re-emerge once again at the beginning of a NEW holiday season, to begin the cycle all over again.
But what does it really mean, and where did it come from -- this notion that some semi-mythical, vaguely-super natural, quasi-historical/legendary creature (who lives at the North Pole, of all places) is keeping track of ALL of our behavior (but especially that of little girls and boys) and will in the course of a single evening in the dead of winter visit all of our homes in order to reward or punish each and every one of us, not so much on the basis of whether or not we are good or bad, but rather whether we’ve been “naughty “ or “nice.”
The first part of the legend is about the Turkish Saint Nicholas of Myra, and the gift of gold he left in the stockings of the three beautiful but impoverished daughters.:
Once upon a time there was a father with three beautiful daughters. Although the daughters were kind and strong, the father despaired of them ever making good marriages, because he didn't have enough money to pay their dowries.
One day, Saint Nicholas of Myra was passing through their village and heard the locals discussing the plight of these poor girls. Saint Nicholas knew the father would be too proud to accept an outright gift. So he waited until dark, snuck to the man's house, and dropped three bags of gold coins down the chimney.
The daughters had spent the evening washing clothes, and had hung their stockings by the fireplace to dry. The gold coins dropped into the stockings, one bag for each daughter. In the morning, they awoke to find enough money to make them each a generous dowry, and in time all married well and happily.
As word of Saint Nicholas's generosity spread, others began to hang their stockings by the fireplace, hoping for a similar gift....
Nowadays in place of gold we often see instead a much more affordable and practical gift: fresh oranges, pushed deep down into the toe of the stocking -- a refreshing taste of bright citrus sunshine to be savored in the midst of the midwinter darkness.
But what about the other half of the legend? -- the gift of coal to children who have been naughty. This part of the story seems to have originated in Sicily, in the tale of the so-called “Christmas Witch” La Befana, who according to tradition travels the world on her broomstick for the Feast of the Epiphany or Twelfth Night, searching for the Christ Child and leaving gifts of candy and toys (and sometimes coal) in the homes of every child she visits.
As the legend is told, La Befana was a widow living in a cottage on the outskirts of Bethlehem on the original Christmas Eve, where twelve days later a caravan led by three Kings from the East passed by and asked for directions into the city. They invited Befana to join them, but she begged off, claiming she had too much housework to do. But almost as soon as they had left she began to regret her decision. So later that evening she packed a bag with a few things that had belonged to her own child (for gifts), and set out to follow the Wise Men from the East.
But try as she might she could not find them, or the baby of whom they had spoken. And so for centuries she has wandered the world in pursuit of this elusive goal. And then one year, she noticed inside of a church, right there on the altar, a stable filled with all sorts of animals, and standing nearby were the Kings and some shepherds and angels, and then there in the center a young mother and her husband looking down in adoration at a manger made up into a child’s crib. But as she moved in closer to get a better look, Befana suddenly realized that the crib was empty, and that the figures she had been admiring were all simply statues. And so she sat down right there on the steps of the church and began to weep. The story continues:
[and] when she looked up again the church was empty. She thought she heard the figures laughing, but laughing so kindly that she didn't feel a bit hurt, and the old King beckoned her to approach. Then the man who was nearest to the Mother and Child, he whom the shepherds had seen watching the entrance to the cave, turned toward her. "Poor old Befana," he said, "you have been searching for a very long while but you are just a little mistaken. You want to find the Bambino Gesu as He was that night in Bethlehem when the angels sang in the sky, but that cannot be. The Christ Child cannot now be found in one human child, but in all children; He is in each one to whom you give your gifts, for the One dwells in the many, and the searching never ends nor does the finding. Your place is not here, but among all living children." And the laughter ceased, Saint Joseph and the King fell back into their fixed positions and La Befana hurried away quite happily for she remembered how many children were still waiting for her.... [http://santasletterbox.net/befana.html]
So this explains another part of the legend. But why the coal, and how does she know about who to give it to in the first place? It’s not as if she’s keeping a list, like Santa Claus himself, or his British counterpart Father Christmas. And it may well be that we have misread this portion of the legend. La Befana is said to have a preferential bias toward the poor, and that the greater the level of poverty she encounters, the more compassion she feels, and the more she leaves in the way of gifts. In this context, “Nice” children typically want for nothing: a little fruit, some sweets, a small toy and they are satisfied. It is only the “naughty” children -- those children whose families have nothing and who are therefore in need of everything -- who might appreciate a gift of coal as well as food, so that there might at least be a fire in the hearth, even when there are no stockings to hang by the chimney with care....
Strictly speaking, “Naughty” does not really mean “bad” at all. And “nice” does not necessarily mean “good” either. There are plenty of supposedly “nice” people who are capable of performing great evil when left to their own devices, whereas “naughty” means most precisely having “nought” or nothing. Strictly speaking, naughty children are children who are a little mischievous or disobedient, who push the boundaries of “acceptable “ behavior because “when you ain’t got nuthin’ ya ain’t got nuthin’ ta lose.” Naughty adults are typically those whose attitudes and activities might be considered a little improper, indecent, or even “immoral” by more polite society, whose appreciation of the nicer things in life sometimes trumps every other consideration.
But even more importantly, it’s not just which list you’re on, but WHOSE list that really matters. There are lots of different lists floating around out there, on some of which it is a privilege to be listed, while others you want to try to avoid so far as is humanly possible. Take, for example, the simple difference between being on a “no call” list and a “no fly” list. One of those is going to protect you from a lot of unwanted and intrusive telephone solicitations. The other is almost certain to disrupt your plans or (at the very least) ruin your vacation at a time when you can least afford the hassle.
Furthermore, many times it is impossible for us to know that we are even on a list at all, yet our powerful, computerized list-keeping technology now makes it possible to keep track of almost everything and every one: from the kinds of books we buy or the breakfast cereals we eat to who we gave money to in the last election, and how much. For those of us who are unaccustomed to such high levels of scrutiny, the mere existence of these lists alone can feel very intimidating. And even those of us who have come to accept the reality of these lists as part of the price of 21st century living can feel a little uncomfortable about who is keeping track of our personal information, and whether or not they can really be trusted with such a list.
And then finally, there are the lists we keep ourselves, and the judgments they imply regarding our own opinions of Naughty or Nice. We all keep lists like this somewhere, either formally or somewhere in the back of our head. What we like, and what we dislike; what we value, who we can trust, the things we would like to accomplish in our lives before our lives are over -- the so-called “Bucket List -- or simply a good list of the things we would like To Do today. Sometimes these lists can grow as elaborate as the tasks themselves, while some of the most important lists I have ever made were scribbled down on a paper napkin, or the back of a used envelope. Our lists reflect our values but they also reflect our prejudices -- the things we have made judgments about in advance, and yet hopefully remain curious enough about that we might find the ability to change our minds if the circumstances warrant it. Some things might not be as naughty as at first we thought. They might actually turn out to be kind of nice.
But I hope that sometime in these next few weeks between now and the beginning of the New Year, in between our shopping lists and our “To Do” lists and whatever other lists we may feel the need to keep in this season, that we will each take a moment or two to make a list of the things we truly value: those things that are inherently worthy of our attention, and devotion, and support, and to which we are willing to contribute a significant portion of our “life energy.” It doesn’t have to be an elaborate list. You can write it on an envelope, or a napkin, or even somewhere here on your Order of Service if you can find the room!). But do write it down -- and then contemplate it routinely, until it time it becomes as well a list written upon your heart....
Sunday, November 16, 2008
A Living Faith
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland Maine,
Sunday November 16, 2008
I thought I’d start out this morning by sharing one of my favorite stories from Divinity School, which I noticed that Barack Obama was also telling this past summer out on the Campaign trail.
A chicken and a pig were out walking down the street one morning when they came to a diner with a sign in the window that said “Breakfast Anytime.”
The chicken says to the pig, “you know, you and I should get together and do something like this ourselves.”
And the pig replies “that’s easy for you to say. For you, it’s just a donation. For me it’s a life commitment.”
OK, here’s another variation. A chicken and a pig were out walking down the street when they came to a diner with a sign in the window that said “Breakfast Anytime.” So they went inside and ordered French Toast...in the Renaissance.... [Get it? Anytime... In the Renaissance....]
I feel very strongly that laughter is an essential element of a healthy human spirituality. We all need to be reminded from time to time not to take ourselves too seriously, to keep our grandiose pretensions in balance, and to remember that sometimes the universe surprises us in ways we can’t avoid or control, and which make a mockery of all our attempts to do so. And this is true even when (and maybe even especially when) the world doesn’t seem to give us much to laugh about. Wars and riots and earthquakes and hurricanes, a stock-market crisis and the threat of an economic depression.... So much suffering, and so little we seem to be able to do about it. Our contributions seem like only a drop in the bucket, and even if we were to commit our entire lives to the cause, it just doesn’t feel like it would be enough. Nor do we really have the option of simply walking through an open door and emerging in in a better place and time, no matter how much we may daydream about enjoying French Toast in the Renaissance.
Yet the temptation of attempting to to seal ourselves off from the unwelcome intrusions of the wider world is almost as overwhelming as the events themselves, especially in moments like this, when the entire foundation on which our society has been built no longer seems trustworthy. At times it seems to me as if our entire social economy these days is built around this seductive fantasy: that if we could just somehow acquire enough power, if we could just somehow acquire enough wealth and status and worldly “success,” we might also somehow insulate ourselves behind high walls and locked gates from all life’s suffering and the misery of the world.
Personally, I’ve never been wealthy or powerful enough to know firsthand whether or not this is true, but I kind of doubt it, and everything I’ve ever read on the subject tends to make me skeptical. Wealth (and more to the point, the power that comes with it) can obviously buy a certain degree of physical comfort and security, and perhaps even a measure of envy and respect from one’s less-fortunate neighbors (emotions which unfortunately lead just as often to resentment as they do to admiration). But the obsessive urge to acquire more and more beyond a certain level of safety and comfort might easily be considered a form of mental illness, especially if it done at the expense of the more fundamental social relationships with friends, family, and neighbors which ultimately make life itself both rewarding and meaningful.
Figuring out “how much is enough” is one of those problems that everyone should have. Yet I don’t want to make light of it either. The challenge of balancing our ambitions for worldly success with the spiritual wisdom that teaches us simply “to be the change we hope to see,” and to LIVE our faith rather than merely “believing” it, is a difficult one. It’s more than just an inability to distinguish between our “wants” and our “needs.”’ Rather, this challenge reflects a need to differentiate between our natural but often unhealthy desires to achieve, to acquire, and even to dominate, and the equally-powerful human aspirations to create, to understand, to love and be loved, to achieve inner peace, and perhaps even leave a lasting and meaningful legacy that will endure beyond our lifetimes.
These are the qualities that mark the difference between a life that is only self-serving, and life devoted to the service of others. It’s not just a matter of choosing between selfishness and selflessness. Rather, it’s the recognition that our own happiness is ultimately best served through a life that looks beyond ourselves alone to the safety and prosperity and happiness of others as well. It really is just that simple. And yet how quickly and easily we come to forget it when events in the world around us make us feel anxious and afraid, and our individual efforts to change things for the better seem futile and hopeless.
The subject of altruism -- an unselfish concern for the welfare of others -- is something of interest not only to ethicists and theologians, but also biologists. One of the reasons that 19th century evangelical Christians like William Jennings Bryan (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) were so opposed to the teaching of evolution in schools was their belief that the philosophy of Social Darwinism, with its soulless doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” tended to undermine more traditional religious teachings about compassion for the poor. Ironic when you pause to think about how these respective ideologies have evolved in our own day, especially in terms of the blind faith so many prominent evangelical Christians now seem to place in the Invisible Hand of the Free Market.
When I was a freshman at the University of Washington, I had a biology teacher who was determined to convince us that, in the natural world, so-called examples of real altruism were merely myths, and that animals always instinctively act in their own genetic self-interest. I especially remember him explaining how one of the classical examples of animal altruism from the ancient world, the famous stories about dolphins who rescued shipwrecked mariners from drowning by keeping them afloat and assisting them to shore, was actually just an anthropomorphic misinterpretation of the natural playfulness of these intelligent marine mammals. “We’ll never really know,” he told our class one morning, “how many shipwrecked Greek sailors were almost safely to the beach when a group of dolphins swam along and pushed them out to sea again.”
But it turns out that my freshman biology professor didn’t have it entirely correct either. Many intelligent social animals -- not just dolphins, but also apes, and dogs, and even rats, for example -- demonstrate a fairly well-developed sense of empathy, and at times behave in ways that might even be considered compassionate. Yet these same abilities also make them capable of organized and premeditated violent aggression, as well as acting with both self-sacrificing courage, and self-centered cowardice. “Intelligent” animals can be both generous and duplicitous, both kind and cruel. So it would appear that the so-called “Natural” world is actually a lot more complicated than perhaps at first we thought. And the great insight of biology for theology and social ethics is not so much that human are no different than other animals in our struggle for survival, but rather that, in many ways some animals (at least) are little different from us.
But returning for a moment to the realm of human ethics, Altruism might best be described as coming in at least three distinct “flavors.” The first of these is generally characterized as Enlightened Self-Interest, in which our generous good works also contribute to a greater good from which either we or those close to us also benefit. The second consists of the proverbial “Random Acts of Kindness” where our good deeds may not necessarily benefit us directly, but they don’t really cost us much either. And the third is the genuinely self-sacrificial, that “last full measure of devotion” which we praise so profoundly as a society at times like Veterans Day, and for which we reserve our highest public praise and honor. Biologists may be skeptical, but community, society, even civilization itself, all depend upon a certain degree of altruism -- a spirit of public service in which individuals do not merely seek to serve their own self-interests (whether enlightened or merely avaricious,) but also commit themselves to serving the greater good as well. True Community is built upon a foundation of reciprocal obligation and mutual trust, and without these basic principles of altruistic behavior- “do unto others as you would have others do unto you - Civil Society truly does DE-volve into the law of the jungle, and a Hobbesean war of all against all.
The Ideals of public service and nobless oblige are deeply rooted in both the Universalist and the Unitarian traditions. The Scripture teaches that “from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded;” and back in the 19th century both Universalist farmers and Unitarian merchants and mill owners took these prescriptions very much to heart. Yet “Christian Charity” was not considered merely an activity for the well-to-do. The “genteel poverty” of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, with its family values of service, duty, sacrifice, and love of neighbor, reflects an understanding of “a Living Faith” which places our ability to do good for others squarely at the center of our own self-worth, regardless of our family’s net worth. But my favorite statement of this 19th century “commandment” that faith must be lived in order to become real is the motto of Edward Everett Hale’s “Lend a Hand” Club (which we read to open the service this morning). “I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
These notions of service and usefulness were also intimately connected to the idea of Character, and to the traditional religious doctrine of Vocation. The belief that every individual not only has a general but also a specific “calling” from God -- a potential, a destiny, which is uniquely our own and which it is our duty to fulfill -- is a persistent theme in American religious life, from the days of the Puritans down to our own. Yet sometimes this encouragement to “follow our bliss” becomes disconnected from the more basic responsibilities of love of God and love of neighbor. People find their identity as much in their relationship to a community as they do from the introspective examination of their own souls. Who we are and what we do not only reflect one another, they also shape and define one another, as we grow over time into the individuals our Creator intends for us to be.
In its most basic form, a “Living Faith” is one that expresses our most fundamental beliefs, values, principles and aspirations in every little thing we say and do. It sounds simple, and in many ways, it is. But it is also a challenge that can occupy an entire lifetime....
***
READING: [by Anonymous]
If you can start the day without caffeine;
If you can always be cheerful,
ignoring aches and pains.
If you can resist complaining,
and boring people with your troubles.
If you can eat the same food every day
and still be grateful for it.
If you can understand when your loved ones
are too busy to give you any time.
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
And overlook those times when those you love
take it out on you when,
through no fault of yours,
something goes amiss.
If you can ignore a friend's limited education
and never correct him,
If you can resist treating a rich friend
better than a poor one,
If you can face the world
without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension
without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can honestly say that deep in your heart
you harbor no prejudice
against creed, color, religion or politics....
Then, my friend, you are almost as good a person as your dog!
at the First Parish Church in Portland Maine,
Sunday November 16, 2008
I thought I’d start out this morning by sharing one of my favorite stories from Divinity School, which I noticed that Barack Obama was also telling this past summer out on the Campaign trail.
A chicken and a pig were out walking down the street one morning when they came to a diner with a sign in the window that said “Breakfast Anytime.”
The chicken says to the pig, “you know, you and I should get together and do something like this ourselves.”
And the pig replies “that’s easy for you to say. For you, it’s just a donation. For me it’s a life commitment.”
OK, here’s another variation. A chicken and a pig were out walking down the street when they came to a diner with a sign in the window that said “Breakfast Anytime.” So they went inside and ordered French Toast...in the Renaissance.... [Get it? Anytime... In the Renaissance....]
I feel very strongly that laughter is an essential element of a healthy human spirituality. We all need to be reminded from time to time not to take ourselves too seriously, to keep our grandiose pretensions in balance, and to remember that sometimes the universe surprises us in ways we can’t avoid or control, and which make a mockery of all our attempts to do so. And this is true even when (and maybe even especially when) the world doesn’t seem to give us much to laugh about. Wars and riots and earthquakes and hurricanes, a stock-market crisis and the threat of an economic depression.... So much suffering, and so little we seem to be able to do about it. Our contributions seem like only a drop in the bucket, and even if we were to commit our entire lives to the cause, it just doesn’t feel like it would be enough. Nor do we really have the option of simply walking through an open door and emerging in in a better place and time, no matter how much we may daydream about enjoying French Toast in the Renaissance.
Yet the temptation of attempting to to seal ourselves off from the unwelcome intrusions of the wider world is almost as overwhelming as the events themselves, especially in moments like this, when the entire foundation on which our society has been built no longer seems trustworthy. At times it seems to me as if our entire social economy these days is built around this seductive fantasy: that if we could just somehow acquire enough power, if we could just somehow acquire enough wealth and status and worldly “success,” we might also somehow insulate ourselves behind high walls and locked gates from all life’s suffering and the misery of the world.
Personally, I’ve never been wealthy or powerful enough to know firsthand whether or not this is true, but I kind of doubt it, and everything I’ve ever read on the subject tends to make me skeptical. Wealth (and more to the point, the power that comes with it) can obviously buy a certain degree of physical comfort and security, and perhaps even a measure of envy and respect from one’s less-fortunate neighbors (emotions which unfortunately lead just as often to resentment as they do to admiration). But the obsessive urge to acquire more and more beyond a certain level of safety and comfort might easily be considered a form of mental illness, especially if it done at the expense of the more fundamental social relationships with friends, family, and neighbors which ultimately make life itself both rewarding and meaningful.
Figuring out “how much is enough” is one of those problems that everyone should have. Yet I don’t want to make light of it either. The challenge of balancing our ambitions for worldly success with the spiritual wisdom that teaches us simply “to be the change we hope to see,” and to LIVE our faith rather than merely “believing” it, is a difficult one. It’s more than just an inability to distinguish between our “wants” and our “needs.”’ Rather, this challenge reflects a need to differentiate between our natural but often unhealthy desires to achieve, to acquire, and even to dominate, and the equally-powerful human aspirations to create, to understand, to love and be loved, to achieve inner peace, and perhaps even leave a lasting and meaningful legacy that will endure beyond our lifetimes.
These are the qualities that mark the difference between a life that is only self-serving, and life devoted to the service of others. It’s not just a matter of choosing between selfishness and selflessness. Rather, it’s the recognition that our own happiness is ultimately best served through a life that looks beyond ourselves alone to the safety and prosperity and happiness of others as well. It really is just that simple. And yet how quickly and easily we come to forget it when events in the world around us make us feel anxious and afraid, and our individual efforts to change things for the better seem futile and hopeless.
The subject of altruism -- an unselfish concern for the welfare of others -- is something of interest not only to ethicists and theologians, but also biologists. One of the reasons that 19th century evangelical Christians like William Jennings Bryan (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) were so opposed to the teaching of evolution in schools was their belief that the philosophy of Social Darwinism, with its soulless doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” tended to undermine more traditional religious teachings about compassion for the poor. Ironic when you pause to think about how these respective ideologies have evolved in our own day, especially in terms of the blind faith so many prominent evangelical Christians now seem to place in the Invisible Hand of the Free Market.
When I was a freshman at the University of Washington, I had a biology teacher who was determined to convince us that, in the natural world, so-called examples of real altruism were merely myths, and that animals always instinctively act in their own genetic self-interest. I especially remember him explaining how one of the classical examples of animal altruism from the ancient world, the famous stories about dolphins who rescued shipwrecked mariners from drowning by keeping them afloat and assisting them to shore, was actually just an anthropomorphic misinterpretation of the natural playfulness of these intelligent marine mammals. “We’ll never really know,” he told our class one morning, “how many shipwrecked Greek sailors were almost safely to the beach when a group of dolphins swam along and pushed them out to sea again.”
But it turns out that my freshman biology professor didn’t have it entirely correct either. Many intelligent social animals -- not just dolphins, but also apes, and dogs, and even rats, for example -- demonstrate a fairly well-developed sense of empathy, and at times behave in ways that might even be considered compassionate. Yet these same abilities also make them capable of organized and premeditated violent aggression, as well as acting with both self-sacrificing courage, and self-centered cowardice. “Intelligent” animals can be both generous and duplicitous, both kind and cruel. So it would appear that the so-called “Natural” world is actually a lot more complicated than perhaps at first we thought. And the great insight of biology for theology and social ethics is not so much that human are no different than other animals in our struggle for survival, but rather that, in many ways some animals (at least) are little different from us.
But returning for a moment to the realm of human ethics, Altruism might best be described as coming in at least three distinct “flavors.” The first of these is generally characterized as Enlightened Self-Interest, in which our generous good works also contribute to a greater good from which either we or those close to us also benefit. The second consists of the proverbial “Random Acts of Kindness” where our good deeds may not necessarily benefit us directly, but they don’t really cost us much either. And the third is the genuinely self-sacrificial, that “last full measure of devotion” which we praise so profoundly as a society at times like Veterans Day, and for which we reserve our highest public praise and honor. Biologists may be skeptical, but community, society, even civilization itself, all depend upon a certain degree of altruism -- a spirit of public service in which individuals do not merely seek to serve their own self-interests (whether enlightened or merely avaricious,) but also commit themselves to serving the greater good as well. True Community is built upon a foundation of reciprocal obligation and mutual trust, and without these basic principles of altruistic behavior- “do unto others as you would have others do unto you - Civil Society truly does DE-volve into the law of the jungle, and a Hobbesean war of all against all.
The Ideals of public service and nobless oblige are deeply rooted in both the Universalist and the Unitarian traditions. The Scripture teaches that “from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded;” and back in the 19th century both Universalist farmers and Unitarian merchants and mill owners took these prescriptions very much to heart. Yet “Christian Charity” was not considered merely an activity for the well-to-do. The “genteel poverty” of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, with its family values of service, duty, sacrifice, and love of neighbor, reflects an understanding of “a Living Faith” which places our ability to do good for others squarely at the center of our own self-worth, regardless of our family’s net worth. But my favorite statement of this 19th century “commandment” that faith must be lived in order to become real is the motto of Edward Everett Hale’s “Lend a Hand” Club (which we read to open the service this morning). “I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
These notions of service and usefulness were also intimately connected to the idea of Character, and to the traditional religious doctrine of Vocation. The belief that every individual not only has a general but also a specific “calling” from God -- a potential, a destiny, which is uniquely our own and which it is our duty to fulfill -- is a persistent theme in American religious life, from the days of the Puritans down to our own. Yet sometimes this encouragement to “follow our bliss” becomes disconnected from the more basic responsibilities of love of God and love of neighbor. People find their identity as much in their relationship to a community as they do from the introspective examination of their own souls. Who we are and what we do not only reflect one another, they also shape and define one another, as we grow over time into the individuals our Creator intends for us to be.
In its most basic form, a “Living Faith” is one that expresses our most fundamental beliefs, values, principles and aspirations in every little thing we say and do. It sounds simple, and in many ways, it is. But it is also a challenge that can occupy an entire lifetime....
***
READING: [by Anonymous]
If you can start the day without caffeine;
If you can always be cheerful,
ignoring aches and pains.
If you can resist complaining,
and boring people with your troubles.
If you can eat the same food every day
and still be grateful for it.
If you can understand when your loved ones
are too busy to give you any time.
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
And overlook those times when those you love
take it out on you when,
through no fault of yours,
something goes amiss.
If you can ignore a friend's limited education
and never correct him,
If you can resist treating a rich friend
better than a poor one,
If you can face the world
without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension
without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can honestly say that deep in your heart
you harbor no prejudice
against creed, color, religion or politics....
Then, my friend, you are almost as good a person as your dog!
Sunday, October 19, 2008
HERE THERE BE DRAGONS
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday October 19th, 20008
OPENING WORDS:
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” --G K Chesterton
All my life, ever since I was a little boy and for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by maps. I’m not sure how or why I became so fascinated, but I suspect it had something to do with the large, free-standing globe next to my grandfather’s chair in the front room of their modest Seattle bungalow, and the hundreds of National Geographic magazines that were carefully shelved in chronological order behind it. A good map is an amazing thing (and even bad ones have their uses). They can take us anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. They can take us back in history to show us how other people lived their lives in times before us; or into the future, say, to predict the outcome of an upcoming election. Electronic maps like Mapquest or Google Earth can give us turn-by-turn driving directions to any location in the database, or show us satellite photographs of virtually any location in the world, in what seems like real-time. Maps can even take us to other worlds: to places like Middle Earth, or Treasure Island, or “over the rainbow” to Oz. It’s no wonder that I should have become so fascinated with them when I was younger, and that this fascination has continued now well into middle age.
Yet those of us who love maps most also quickly discover that “the map is not the territory.” And this is particularly true as we begin to map out the course of our own lives. It’s nice to know the geography of where we’ve been, and the road to where we want to go: which turns to take and how long it’s going to take us to get there traveling at a certain speed over a certain distance. But nothing in real life is ever quite that certain. Perhaps you’re familiar with the old saying: if you want to hear God laugh, tell her your plans. If you actually want to get from where you are now to whatever destination you’ve chosen for yourself, you have to fold up the map, put it in your pocket, get up out of your chair and go. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Our maps can guide us; they can even inspire us, and give us hope and confidence. But the map can’t make the journey for us. We can trace the route with our finger, but we have to walk it with our feet.
Of course, my favorite maps of all are still generally of places where “you can’t get there from here.” These maps are often beautifully illuminated, and contain interesting illustrations and legends around the margins: annotations like Terra Incognita and “Here There Be Dragons” -- the unknown territory where mythical, magical creatures dwell, magnificent creatures who challenge us to explore beyond the same limits of the familiar landscape.
I’ve never seen a real dragon, but I’ve certainly read a lot about them, and seen plenty of pictures of dragons from every corner of the globe. There are some who say that dragons are simply a superstition left over from times when human beings weren’t as knowledgeable as we are today. Others say that they are mythological creatures, who represent metaphorically our collective fear of the unknown, that uncharted territory where no one has ever gone before, and unknown dangers may well await us around every turn.
But I sometimes wonder whether Dragons might just be more real than we think -- and that just because they are figments of our imagination doesn’t necessarily make them any less interesting...or less dangerous.
There are legends about dragons in just about every human culture and society we know of. Perhaps the earliest is the dragon Tiamat from the Babylonian Creation Epic the Eunuma Elish, who was slain by the culture hero Marduk and then reshaped to form the world we know today. Or from the other side of the world, the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl and turquoise “fire serpent” Xiuhcoatl of the Aztecs.
A little closer to home (at least culturally), we have the Draca Wyrm (who both slew and was slain by Beowulf), and Fafnir the evil and avaricious dwarf turned dragon through his own acquisitive greed, slain first by Sigurd in the Volsung Saga, and then twice later on by Siegfried in “Das Nibelungenlied” and “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” Not to mention the unnamed dragon slain by Saint George on his way home from the Crusades, and of course many, many others of both legend and literature.
Even Satan makes a cameo appearance as a Great Red Dragon in the book of Revelation, (although there are some who would say that he was also a Dragon in the Garden of Eden, before God took away his legs and made him crawl upon his belly in the dust). And the Chinese have more dragons than they know what to do with: creatures virtually identical in physical appearance to the dragons we know here in the West, but with VERY different personalities.
But if dragons really are just “Make Believe,” how do we explain the cultural ubiquity of dragons in societies which until relatively recent times have had very little knowledge of one another? Why would the Babylonians, the Aztecs, the Chinese and those old Norse Vikings all imagine the same flying, fire-breathing, rapacious snake-like predator, whose razor-sharp claws are capable of slicing through human flesh as if it were so much lunch meat, and whose armor-like scales make them all but impervious to most pre-industrial human weaponry?
There have been lots of theories put forward, including challenges to the premise that dragons are really all that cross-culturally ubiquitous in the first place. But one of the most interesting is a hypothesis suggested by anthropologist David E. Jones in his book An Instinct for Dragons, in which he claims that dragons represent a residual, instinctive fear, hardwired into our limbic system, of the principal predators (namely snakes, hawks, and big cats) who fed upon our distant biological ancestors as we were evolving as a species: a fear which goes back not only to before the start of human history, but before the beginning of “humanity” itself.
Combining the wings and talons of an eagle with the claws and teeth of a leopard and the tail of a python, dragons represent and symbolize our subconscious, non-rational, instinctive fear of becoming someone’s lunch -- as well as the essential feelings of helplessness and powerlessness which accompany that precognitive sense of vulnerability and victimization. Dragons represent and symbolize our visceral fear of a malevolent power which is both beyond our control and can strike us down at any time without warning. And thus (at least here in the West) they have come to represent not only great power and great danger, but also great appetite: greed, avarice, the insatiable desire to acquire and hoard more and more, without any real sense of need or limitation.
Here’s a little more dragon lore. It is natural, at least in our culture, for us to associate dragons with fire; they do, after all, breath the stuff, and thus fire can be seen as a perfect metaphorical manifestation of a dragon’s reckless and indiscriminate power to destroy. But in many other cultures, dragons have generally been more closely associated with water, and with the destructive power of the ocean, and of storms. And when we toss in their ability to fly, and their penchant for gold, and gems, and other precious stones and metals, it becomes clear that dragons actually embody all four of the ancient elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. What makes Dragons dangerous is not so much the source of their power as its completely random unpredictability. Dragons are chaos incarnate. They represent not only our fear of the unknown, but of the unknowable -- those elements of our human experience which can neither be predicted nor controlled.
A little earlier this morning I mentioned that Chinese dragons look an awful lot like their European cousins, but they actually have very different personalities. Chinese dragons still symbolize great wealth and great power. But they embody as well a sense of prosperity, abundance, and good fortune. Chinese Dragons can be vain, but they are also wise -- as well as bold, heroic, noble, energetic, decisive, optimistic and intelligent creatures, whose ambitions and appetites are far more sophisticated than those of their European counterparts. In Chinese folklore Dragons are closely associated with the Imperial House, and those born in the Year of the Dragon are thought to enjoy superior health, wealth, and long life. Chinese dragons are still capable of great destruction. But they prefer to use their powers to protect and bless those who honor and respect them....
Here There Be Dragons....
“He was a dragonlord, they say. And you say you’re one. Tell me, what is a dragonlord?...”
“One whom the dragons will speak with,” he said, “that is a dragonlord, or at least that is the center of the matter. It’s not a trick of mastering the dragons, as most people think. Dragons have no masters. The question is always the same, with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you? If you can count upon his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you’re a dragonlord....”
There will always be unexplored territory around the margins of our lives, where dragons and other imaginary creatures make their homes and frighten us with the threat of the unknown, and ultimately unknowable. The question is not so much whether we will ever master those dangers: Dragons have no masters. The question is whether we can master our own fear of being eaten alive long enough to learn from the wisdom of Dragons, whose avarice and cruelty have made them hunted monsters in the folklore of the West, but whose kindness and generosity have inspired human beings to worship them as deities in the Far East....
Here There Be Dragons....
It helps to have a good map before setting out on any journey. It helps to know your destination, and to be aware of what lies upon your way, and to have a good inventory of the equipment you bring with you. But ultimately, the most important discoveries that await us in our traveling never show up on any map, and it is impossible to prepare for every contingency. So we need to learn how to trust our own inner resources, and to rely upon the help of both neighbors and strangers alike; to find our bearings again when we stray off course, and to read that “inner compass” which keeps us true to our own best selves....
Here There Be Dragons....
Ultimately, the most important place we discover on our journey through life is not a place “out there.” It is rather a place “in here” -- that special place “where our own deep yearning meets the world’s great need,” and our desire for personal achievement, and our ability to be of use, come together in often unexpected and even magical sorts of ways. And then we know, in our heart of hearts, that we have become the kind of people our creator intends for us to be, and that our journey, and our destination, are the same....
READING:
[In her novel The Tombs of Atuan, the second in her award-winning “Earthsea” series, fantasy writer Ursula K. LeGuin tells the story of the Wizard “Sparrowhawk,” the Archmage of Roke, who travels to the island of Atuan in order to steal the lost half of the broken amulet of Erreth-Akbe from the underground labyrinth there. But his powers fail him, and he becomes a prisoner of the Priestess of the Labyrinth, a teenaged girl known only as Arha or “the Eaten One,” who secretly keeps him alive in defiance of her superiors in order to learn more about the world beyond the walls of the temple, which in fact now imprison them both.]
“Who was Erreth-Akbe?” she said, sly.
He looked up at her. He said nothing, but he grinned a little. Then as if on second thoughts he said, “it’s true you would know little of him here. Nothing beyond his coming to the Kargish lands, perhaps. And how much of that tale do you know?”
“That he lost his sorcerer’s staff and his amulet and his power -- like you,” she answered. He escaped from the High Priest and fled into the west, and dragons killed him. But if he’d come here to the Tombs, there had been no need of dragons.”
“True enough,” said her prisoner.
She wanted no more talk of Erreth-Akbe, sensing a danger in the subject. “He was a dragonlord, they say. And you say you’re one. Tell me, what is a dragonlord?”
Her tone was always jeering, his answers direct and plain, as if he took her questions in good faith.
“One whom the dragons will speak with,” he said, “that is a dragonlord, or at least that is the center of the matter. It’s not a trick of mastering the dragons, as most people think. Dragons have no masters. The question is always the same, with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you? If you can count upon his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you’re a dragonlord.”
“Dragons can speak?”
“Surely! In the Eldest Tongue, the language we men learn so hard and use so brokenly, to make our spells of magic and of patterning. No man knows all that language, or a tenth of it. He has not time to learn it. But dragons live a thousand years.... They are worth talking to, as you might guess....”
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday October 19th, 20008
OPENING WORDS:
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” --G K Chesterton
All my life, ever since I was a little boy and for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by maps. I’m not sure how or why I became so fascinated, but I suspect it had something to do with the large, free-standing globe next to my grandfather’s chair in the front room of their modest Seattle bungalow, and the hundreds of National Geographic magazines that were carefully shelved in chronological order behind it. A good map is an amazing thing (and even bad ones have their uses). They can take us anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. They can take us back in history to show us how other people lived their lives in times before us; or into the future, say, to predict the outcome of an upcoming election. Electronic maps like Mapquest or Google Earth can give us turn-by-turn driving directions to any location in the database, or show us satellite photographs of virtually any location in the world, in what seems like real-time. Maps can even take us to other worlds: to places like Middle Earth, or Treasure Island, or “over the rainbow” to Oz. It’s no wonder that I should have become so fascinated with them when I was younger, and that this fascination has continued now well into middle age.
Yet those of us who love maps most also quickly discover that “the map is not the territory.” And this is particularly true as we begin to map out the course of our own lives. It’s nice to know the geography of where we’ve been, and the road to where we want to go: which turns to take and how long it’s going to take us to get there traveling at a certain speed over a certain distance. But nothing in real life is ever quite that certain. Perhaps you’re familiar with the old saying: if you want to hear God laugh, tell her your plans. If you actually want to get from where you are now to whatever destination you’ve chosen for yourself, you have to fold up the map, put it in your pocket, get up out of your chair and go. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Our maps can guide us; they can even inspire us, and give us hope and confidence. But the map can’t make the journey for us. We can trace the route with our finger, but we have to walk it with our feet.
Of course, my favorite maps of all are still generally of places where “you can’t get there from here.” These maps are often beautifully illuminated, and contain interesting illustrations and legends around the margins: annotations like Terra Incognita and “Here There Be Dragons” -- the unknown territory where mythical, magical creatures dwell, magnificent creatures who challenge us to explore beyond the same limits of the familiar landscape.
I’ve never seen a real dragon, but I’ve certainly read a lot about them, and seen plenty of pictures of dragons from every corner of the globe. There are some who say that dragons are simply a superstition left over from times when human beings weren’t as knowledgeable as we are today. Others say that they are mythological creatures, who represent metaphorically our collective fear of the unknown, that uncharted territory where no one has ever gone before, and unknown dangers may well await us around every turn.
But I sometimes wonder whether Dragons might just be more real than we think -- and that just because they are figments of our imagination doesn’t necessarily make them any less interesting...or less dangerous.
There are legends about dragons in just about every human culture and society we know of. Perhaps the earliest is the dragon Tiamat from the Babylonian Creation Epic the Eunuma Elish, who was slain by the culture hero Marduk and then reshaped to form the world we know today. Or from the other side of the world, the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl and turquoise “fire serpent” Xiuhcoatl of the Aztecs.
A little closer to home (at least culturally), we have the Draca Wyrm (who both slew and was slain by Beowulf), and Fafnir the evil and avaricious dwarf turned dragon through his own acquisitive greed, slain first by Sigurd in the Volsung Saga, and then twice later on by Siegfried in “Das Nibelungenlied” and “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” Not to mention the unnamed dragon slain by Saint George on his way home from the Crusades, and of course many, many others of both legend and literature.
Even Satan makes a cameo appearance as a Great Red Dragon in the book of Revelation, (although there are some who would say that he was also a Dragon in the Garden of Eden, before God took away his legs and made him crawl upon his belly in the dust). And the Chinese have more dragons than they know what to do with: creatures virtually identical in physical appearance to the dragons we know here in the West, but with VERY different personalities.
But if dragons really are just “Make Believe,” how do we explain the cultural ubiquity of dragons in societies which until relatively recent times have had very little knowledge of one another? Why would the Babylonians, the Aztecs, the Chinese and those old Norse Vikings all imagine the same flying, fire-breathing, rapacious snake-like predator, whose razor-sharp claws are capable of slicing through human flesh as if it were so much lunch meat, and whose armor-like scales make them all but impervious to most pre-industrial human weaponry?
There have been lots of theories put forward, including challenges to the premise that dragons are really all that cross-culturally ubiquitous in the first place. But one of the most interesting is a hypothesis suggested by anthropologist David E. Jones in his book An Instinct for Dragons, in which he claims that dragons represent a residual, instinctive fear, hardwired into our limbic system, of the principal predators (namely snakes, hawks, and big cats) who fed upon our distant biological ancestors as we were evolving as a species: a fear which goes back not only to before the start of human history, but before the beginning of “humanity” itself.
Combining the wings and talons of an eagle with the claws and teeth of a leopard and the tail of a python, dragons represent and symbolize our subconscious, non-rational, instinctive fear of becoming someone’s lunch -- as well as the essential feelings of helplessness and powerlessness which accompany that precognitive sense of vulnerability and victimization. Dragons represent and symbolize our visceral fear of a malevolent power which is both beyond our control and can strike us down at any time without warning. And thus (at least here in the West) they have come to represent not only great power and great danger, but also great appetite: greed, avarice, the insatiable desire to acquire and hoard more and more, without any real sense of need or limitation.
Here’s a little more dragon lore. It is natural, at least in our culture, for us to associate dragons with fire; they do, after all, breath the stuff, and thus fire can be seen as a perfect metaphorical manifestation of a dragon’s reckless and indiscriminate power to destroy. But in many other cultures, dragons have generally been more closely associated with water, and with the destructive power of the ocean, and of storms. And when we toss in their ability to fly, and their penchant for gold, and gems, and other precious stones and metals, it becomes clear that dragons actually embody all four of the ancient elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. What makes Dragons dangerous is not so much the source of their power as its completely random unpredictability. Dragons are chaos incarnate. They represent not only our fear of the unknown, but of the unknowable -- those elements of our human experience which can neither be predicted nor controlled.
A little earlier this morning I mentioned that Chinese dragons look an awful lot like their European cousins, but they actually have very different personalities. Chinese dragons still symbolize great wealth and great power. But they embody as well a sense of prosperity, abundance, and good fortune. Chinese Dragons can be vain, but they are also wise -- as well as bold, heroic, noble, energetic, decisive, optimistic and intelligent creatures, whose ambitions and appetites are far more sophisticated than those of their European counterparts. In Chinese folklore Dragons are closely associated with the Imperial House, and those born in the Year of the Dragon are thought to enjoy superior health, wealth, and long life. Chinese dragons are still capable of great destruction. But they prefer to use their powers to protect and bless those who honor and respect them....
Here There Be Dragons....
“He was a dragonlord, they say. And you say you’re one. Tell me, what is a dragonlord?...”
“One whom the dragons will speak with,” he said, “that is a dragonlord, or at least that is the center of the matter. It’s not a trick of mastering the dragons, as most people think. Dragons have no masters. The question is always the same, with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you? If you can count upon his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you’re a dragonlord....”
There will always be unexplored territory around the margins of our lives, where dragons and other imaginary creatures make their homes and frighten us with the threat of the unknown, and ultimately unknowable. The question is not so much whether we will ever master those dangers: Dragons have no masters. The question is whether we can master our own fear of being eaten alive long enough to learn from the wisdom of Dragons, whose avarice and cruelty have made them hunted monsters in the folklore of the West, but whose kindness and generosity have inspired human beings to worship them as deities in the Far East....
Here There Be Dragons....
It helps to have a good map before setting out on any journey. It helps to know your destination, and to be aware of what lies upon your way, and to have a good inventory of the equipment you bring with you. But ultimately, the most important discoveries that await us in our traveling never show up on any map, and it is impossible to prepare for every contingency. So we need to learn how to trust our own inner resources, and to rely upon the help of both neighbors and strangers alike; to find our bearings again when we stray off course, and to read that “inner compass” which keeps us true to our own best selves....
Here There Be Dragons....
Ultimately, the most important place we discover on our journey through life is not a place “out there.” It is rather a place “in here” -- that special place “where our own deep yearning meets the world’s great need,” and our desire for personal achievement, and our ability to be of use, come together in often unexpected and even magical sorts of ways. And then we know, in our heart of hearts, that we have become the kind of people our creator intends for us to be, and that our journey, and our destination, are the same....
READING:
[In her novel The Tombs of Atuan, the second in her award-winning “Earthsea” series, fantasy writer Ursula K. LeGuin tells the story of the Wizard “Sparrowhawk,” the Archmage of Roke, who travels to the island of Atuan in order to steal the lost half of the broken amulet of Erreth-Akbe from the underground labyrinth there. But his powers fail him, and he becomes a prisoner of the Priestess of the Labyrinth, a teenaged girl known only as Arha or “the Eaten One,” who secretly keeps him alive in defiance of her superiors in order to learn more about the world beyond the walls of the temple, which in fact now imprison them both.]
“Who was Erreth-Akbe?” she said, sly.
He looked up at her. He said nothing, but he grinned a little. Then as if on second thoughts he said, “it’s true you would know little of him here. Nothing beyond his coming to the Kargish lands, perhaps. And how much of that tale do you know?”
“That he lost his sorcerer’s staff and his amulet and his power -- like you,” she answered. He escaped from the High Priest and fled into the west, and dragons killed him. But if he’d come here to the Tombs, there had been no need of dragons.”
“True enough,” said her prisoner.
She wanted no more talk of Erreth-Akbe, sensing a danger in the subject. “He was a dragonlord, they say. And you say you’re one. Tell me, what is a dragonlord?”
Her tone was always jeering, his answers direct and plain, as if he took her questions in good faith.
“One whom the dragons will speak with,” he said, “that is a dragonlord, or at least that is the center of the matter. It’s not a trick of mastering the dragons, as most people think. Dragons have no masters. The question is always the same, with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you? If you can count upon his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you’re a dragonlord.”
“Dragons can speak?”
“Surely! In the Eldest Tongue, the language we men learn so hard and use so brokenly, to make our spells of magic and of patterning. No man knows all that language, or a tenth of it. He has not time to learn it. But dragons live a thousand years.... They are worth talking to, as you might guess....”
Sunday, October 12, 2008
“TO CROSS THE WIDE, WILD OCEAN”
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish in Portland, Maine
Sunday October 12, 2008
****
OPENING WORDS:
I am standing on the sea shore,
A ship sails in the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty and I stand watching her Till at last she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says: “She is gone.”
Gone! Where?
Gone from my sight - that is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her.
And just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “She is gone,” there are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout: “There she comes”
-- and that is dying.
An horizon and just the limit of our sight.
Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further. --Bishop Charles Henry Brent 1862 - 1926
************
I know this may come as a surprise to many of you given everything I’ve just read, but I never really cared that much for dogs when I was younger. I always saw myself as more of a cat person. In fact, when I was a teenager, I figured that you could pretty much divide up the entire world according to these two categories. Cat people were graceful and free and independent, while dog people were sort of dull and stupid and noisy. Cat people went on to become artists and poets and musicians and (of course) sailors, while dog people owned “stinkpots,” and became cops and used car salesmen and Junior High School Vice Principals. Cat people liked to do their own thing, and go their own way, and mind their own business; while dog people were always sniffing around (and sticking their noses in where they really didn’t belong), digging things up, barking for attention, slobbering EVERYWHERE, and generally hounding us cat people up a tree.
My father was a dog person. As those of you who have met him may already know, when I was growing up my father worked as a regional sales manager for a large pharmaceutical company; and then later in his career became a sales trainer and process improvement consultant for several different large, multinational corporations. He knew how to sit up and fetch and roll over and shake hands, and qualities like loyalty, discipline, tenacity and obedience were very important to him. I didn't really appreciate that when I was a teenager. I just thought it was rather ridiculous of him to try to get a cat like me to wear a leash like his.
Of course, now that I am older (and have been the parent of two teenaged children of my own), I understand these things a lot better. And my estimation of cats has fallen considerably in that time. They say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but in my experience you can't teach a cat of any age much of anything at all, except maybe when to eat and where to excrete, two things that most dogs learn far more quickly than do human children. The reason that curiosity killed the cat was that the cat was too stupid to get out of harm's way. No dog that I've ever known has managed to get itself stuck up a tree and out on a limb, unable to get down of its own volition!
Dogs are courageous where cats are cowardly; dogs are affectionate where cats are aloof; dogs come when they're called and stay where they're told and only very rarely bite the hand that feeds them. There are some archeologists who estimate that dogs have been part of human society for as long as 25,000 years, and all 400-plus breeds you see today are still members of a single species. A cat may occasionally catch a bothersome rodent and deposit it in your bed where you'll be sure to find it and appreciate it most first thing in the morning; but dogs can be trained to bring you your slippers and your newspaper, to protect your home from intruders, to guide the blind, herd sheep, hunt ducks, and do hundreds of other useful jobs in exchange for their bed and board.
Of course, I'm speaking of dogs in general now; not all dogs live up to the promise of their species. And unlike my good friend and Harvard classmate Gary Kowalski, I'm not quite ready yet to ordain dogs to the ministry, whatever their virtues as spiritual advisors. "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine" saith the Scripture. I don’t know about you, but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable about going for counseling to a therapist who growled, barked, whimpered and whined for a fifty-minute hour, and then licked my face when the session was over. A dog may well be "a man's best friend," but somebody has got to draw the line somewhere!
Actually, my dog, The Adorable Parker, although named for a famous 19th-century Unitarian theologian, possessed very few of the spiritual qualities enumerated by Gary. But compared to her predecessors, Calvin and Luther, she was a saint! Those two “Big Dawgs” certainly had healthy enough appetites, liked to exercise, and got at least eight hours of sleep a day (usually on the couch); but they lived for junk food (pizza was their favorite), and one Christmas they stole a 20 pound turkey out of our kitchen where it was thawing overnight. Of the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, dejection, avarice, gluttony, and lust — I knew them to be relatively free only of the last, and that due to a surgical procedure performed by the veterinarian when they were still puppies, and not because of any special piety on their part.
Over the years, my dogs have proven amiable enough companions: loyal, friendly, and reasonably obedient if I'm there to keep an eye on them; but they were hardly saints, and even Parker loved nothing better than to tear through the garbage in search of a tasty tidbit the moment I let her out of my sight.
Martin Luther once wished that he "could only pray the way this dog looks at meat;" while the 17th century English metaphysical poet George Herbert insightfully noted that "He who lies with the dogs, riseth with fleas." Samuel Butler observed that "The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too."
Yet perhaps no one learned more about life from dogs than the "dog philosopher" himself, Diogenes of Sinope, the original Cynic, whose philosophy of cynicism takes its name from the Greek word for dog. Diogenes believed that one could obtain spiritual liberation by minimizing one's physical needs and freeing oneself from the foolish pleasures and conventions of society. In this respect, he was very much like Henry David Thoreau, who in his day was sometimes called the “Diogenes of Concord,” and who learned to measure his own wealth by the things he could afford to do without.
But Diogenes went far beyond Thoreau in his effort to achieve self-realization through the rejection of the "artificial" values of human society. He literally lived like a dog in a tub on the outskirts of Corinth, where his acerbic criticism of pretense and vanity soon gained him quite a reputation throughout Greece. It is said that Diogenes was once visited by the Epicurean philosopher Aristippus, who through his skill at flattery had earned himself a comfortable place at the court of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. Seeing Diogenes preparing a meager meal of lentils, Aristippus told him "if you would only learn to [pay a] compliment, you wouldn't have to live on lentils." "And if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysius," retorted the Cynic.
Alexander the Great likewise sought out Diogenes, and found him sunning himself, just as a dog might, there near his tub on the outskirts of town. When Alexander asked whether there was any way which he, the conqueror of the known world, might serve the philosopher, Diogenes asked him to "Stand out of my sun." But when Alexander's entourage began to ridicule the Cynic, Alexander reportedly silenced them with the comment "If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes."
In yet another story, Alexander comes upon Diogenes examining a heap of human bones. "What are you looking for?" the king inquires. "I am looking for the bones of your father," replies the Cynic, "but I cannot distinguish them from those of his slaves."
Nowadays we think of Cynicism as that attitude which sees the worst in every situation, which questions the sincerity of people's motives, sneers at the hint of goodness or compassion, and assumes that most folks act out of their own narrow self-interest, with little concern for the happiness or well-being of those around them. To the cynic all politicians are liars, all businessmen are crooks, (I hesitate to repeat the things they say about the clergy); and anyone who believes otherwise is a fool, deserving of whatever injustice they may suffer.
Yet dogs, as a rule, are loyal, honest, trusting creatures, eager to please and devoted to a fault, whatever cynical motives we may attribute to them. I can't really blame them for preferring Pizza to Purina or the the living room couch to a crate in the garage; I suspect I'd feel exactly the same way if the choice were left to me. What is truly amazing about dogs is their capacity for near-unconditional love, an instinctive affection for human kind engraved upon their souls by ten thousand years of breeding and training. A dog WANTS to love its owner, more than anything else in the world, and will often do so in defiance of its own best interests.
Calvin came into our household as a death camp survivor, literally rescued from the Midland County Pound seconds before he was scheduled to be euthanized. An AKC registered Weimaraner who had been badly abused by its previous owners, and then abandoned when they moved away, he was a good twenty to thirty pounds underweight when he came to live with us -- his ribs were clearly visible beneath his flesh, and a mere movement of the hand was enough to send him cowering in a corner. He barked all night, he peed in the house, he chewed up everything he could get his teeth on; but his one great fear was the fear of being abandoned again, and once that fear was set at ease, as we fattened him up with scraps from our table and allowed him to sleep on the floor at the foot of our bed, he became as devoted a house pet as anyone could ask for.
Luther had a slightly different story. Luther was what you might call a "puppy of a lesser dog" — a congenitally deaf Dalmatian who somehow managed to turn his head at precisely the moment the veterinarian snapped his fingers, and thus escaped the fate which ordinarily awaits "defective" purebred dogs. It's tempting, I suppose, to feel pity for Luther, living as he did in a silent world all his own. But being deaf wasn’t something that Luther generally lost any sleep over; as far as he was concerned, he was just another dog, who didn’t know or care much about what he might have been missing. And he didn’t miss much, at least not in the way of trouble: he could bark and chew and dig and strew garbage with the best of them. Moreover, sirens, thunderstorms, and Fourth of July firecrackers were no big deal for that hearing-impaired canine; and I swear he could smell the Pizza truck coming up the street long before Calvin heard it pull into our driveway.
Parker was, is, and in many ways shall always be my “forever dog." A “pet-quality” Boston Terrier (although we sometimes refered to her as a Boston Terroist), whose non-standard markings imperfect gait had likewise caused her to be rejected by her original owners, in many ways she represented to us the best of all possible worlds: a cat-sized critter with the heart and personality of a full-sized Canis Lupus Familiaris. For over thirteen years she was my near-constant companion: we slept in the same bed, often ate from the same plate (only after I was FINISHED, of course), and for many years pretty much spent every waking moment together (which sounds a lot more impressive than it was, considering the amount of time she slept). I loved her as a puppy; learned to appreciate her more fully as a fully-grown dog; and in her final days she taught me once again the essential truth of Forrest Church’s definition of religion as ‘our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.”
She reminded me as well of Forrest’s more trenchant theological observation (which I have quoted now at practically every Memorial Service I have conducted since I first read it more than a decade ago), that “knowing that we are going to die not only places an acknowledged limit on our lives, it also lends a special intensity and poignancy to the time we are given to live and love. The fact that death is inevitable gives meaning to our love, for the more we love the more we risk losing. Love’s power comes in part from the courage required to give ourselves to that which is not ours to keep: spouses, children, parents, dear and cherished friends, [of course, dogs...] even life itself. It also comes from the faith required to sustain that courage, the faith that life, howsoever limited and mysterious, contains at its margins, often at their very edges, a meaning that is redemptive.”
Proverbs 26:11 reads "Like a dog that returns to his own vomit is the fool that repeats his folly." Yet as unappetizing as it may sound, this is precisely the genius of dogs: their eagerness to please, the tenacity of their love, their willingness to try again and again to do what is asked them in exchange for the smallest token of our affection. The cynics may find this a foolish virtue, but within it, perhaps, lies a lesson for the spirit: a lesson in loyalty, discipline, tenacity and obedience which leads to a larger liberty of the soul, a tolerance for difference and diversity, the courage to devote ourselves to that which is not ours to keep, and a reward of unconditional acceptance that transcends the limits of our understanding, yet still awakens deep within us our own capacity for love.
READING(S)
[I’ve known Gary Kowalski for about 30 years now; he was a classmate of mine at the Harvard Divinity School, and currently serves as the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Burlington Vermont. He is without a doubt one of the smartest people I’ve ever known; in fact, I sometimes like to joke that I have only had three good ideas in my lifetime, and that two of them started out as Gary’s. In addition to his work as a Unitarian Universalist minister, Gary has also developed a whole second career as an author and an animal rights activist. Two of his books in particular touch on my topic for today: Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet is the 7th-best selling book in its catagory at Amazon this week, while his earlier book The Souls of Animals is now in a second edition, and contains a widely-quoted passage about the virtues of dogs as spiritual advisors which has always been a particular favorite of mine. But even before Gary published that book, I’d seen (and saved) an earlier draft of that particular passage from one of his church newsletter columns, and since we have a little extra time today, I thought I’d read them both....]
CLICK HERE TO LINK TO GARY'S BLOG, "REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITS"
from The Souls of Animals by Gary Kowalski
My dog has deep knowledge to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn’t hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master, he eats when he’s hungry and sleeps when he’s tired. He’s not hung up about sex. Best of all, he befriends me with an unconditional love that human beings would do well to emulate.
Chinook does have his failings, of course. He’s afraid of firecrackers and hides in the clothes closet whenever we run the vacuum cleaner, but unlike me he’s not afraid of what other people think of him or anxious about his public image. He barks at the mail carrier and the newsboy, but in contrast with some people I know he never growls at the children or barks at his wife.
So my dog is a sort of guru. When I become too serious and preoccupied, he reminds me of the importance of frolicking and play. When I get too wrapped up in abstractions and ideas, he reminds me of the importance of exercising and caring for my body. On his own canine level, he shows me that it might be possible to live without inner conflicts or neuroses: uncomplicated, genuine, and glad to be alive.
“FROM THE STUDY” by Gary Kowalski
My dog is my therapist and my spiritual advisor. He models healthy values for me. He has a sound appetite, gets plenty of exercise, and sleeps at least eight hours a day. He doesn't drink or smoke. He makes friends easily, doesn't carry a grudge, and has a healthy and uninhibited expression of sexual needs. He doesn't eat junk food. He doesn't worry excessively or hang on to regrets, but pretty much takes each day as it comes. He doesn't know the meaning of life, but he enjoys almost every minute of it.
I believe the essentials required for happiness are not too complicated: nutritious food, fresh air, going for walks, and someone to pat us on the tail when we go to sleep at night. These basics are within the reach of most people. If you're seeking a fulfillment that eludes you consider: contentment may be a bone buried in your own back yard.
at the First Parish in Portland, Maine
Sunday October 12, 2008
****
OPENING WORDS:
I am standing on the sea shore,
A ship sails in the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty and I stand watching her Till at last she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says: “She is gone.”
Gone! Where?
Gone from my sight - that is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her.
And just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “She is gone,” there are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout: “There she comes”
-- and that is dying.
An horizon and just the limit of our sight.
Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further. --Bishop Charles Henry Brent 1862 - 1926
************
I know this may come as a surprise to many of you given everything I’ve just read, but I never really cared that much for dogs when I was younger. I always saw myself as more of a cat person. In fact, when I was a teenager, I figured that you could pretty much divide up the entire world according to these two categories. Cat people were graceful and free and independent, while dog people were sort of dull and stupid and noisy. Cat people went on to become artists and poets and musicians and (of course) sailors, while dog people owned “stinkpots,” and became cops and used car salesmen and Junior High School Vice Principals. Cat people liked to do their own thing, and go their own way, and mind their own business; while dog people were always sniffing around (and sticking their noses in where they really didn’t belong), digging things up, barking for attention, slobbering EVERYWHERE, and generally hounding us cat people up a tree.
My father was a dog person. As those of you who have met him may already know, when I was growing up my father worked as a regional sales manager for a large pharmaceutical company; and then later in his career became a sales trainer and process improvement consultant for several different large, multinational corporations. He knew how to sit up and fetch and roll over and shake hands, and qualities like loyalty, discipline, tenacity and obedience were very important to him. I didn't really appreciate that when I was a teenager. I just thought it was rather ridiculous of him to try to get a cat like me to wear a leash like his.
Of course, now that I am older (and have been the parent of two teenaged children of my own), I understand these things a lot better. And my estimation of cats has fallen considerably in that time. They say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but in my experience you can't teach a cat of any age much of anything at all, except maybe when to eat and where to excrete, two things that most dogs learn far more quickly than do human children. The reason that curiosity killed the cat was that the cat was too stupid to get out of harm's way. No dog that I've ever known has managed to get itself stuck up a tree and out on a limb, unable to get down of its own volition!
Dogs are courageous where cats are cowardly; dogs are affectionate where cats are aloof; dogs come when they're called and stay where they're told and only very rarely bite the hand that feeds them. There are some archeologists who estimate that dogs have been part of human society for as long as 25,000 years, and all 400-plus breeds you see today are still members of a single species. A cat may occasionally catch a bothersome rodent and deposit it in your bed where you'll be sure to find it and appreciate it most first thing in the morning; but dogs can be trained to bring you your slippers and your newspaper, to protect your home from intruders, to guide the blind, herd sheep, hunt ducks, and do hundreds of other useful jobs in exchange for their bed and board.
Of course, I'm speaking of dogs in general now; not all dogs live up to the promise of their species. And unlike my good friend and Harvard classmate Gary Kowalski, I'm not quite ready yet to ordain dogs to the ministry, whatever their virtues as spiritual advisors. "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine" saith the Scripture. I don’t know about you, but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable about going for counseling to a therapist who growled, barked, whimpered and whined for a fifty-minute hour, and then licked my face when the session was over. A dog may well be "a man's best friend," but somebody has got to draw the line somewhere!
Actually, my dog, The Adorable Parker, although named for a famous 19th-century Unitarian theologian, possessed very few of the spiritual qualities enumerated by Gary. But compared to her predecessors, Calvin and Luther, she was a saint! Those two “Big Dawgs” certainly had healthy enough appetites, liked to exercise, and got at least eight hours of sleep a day (usually on the couch); but they lived for junk food (pizza was their favorite), and one Christmas they stole a 20 pound turkey out of our kitchen where it was thawing overnight. Of the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, dejection, avarice, gluttony, and lust — I knew them to be relatively free only of the last, and that due to a surgical procedure performed by the veterinarian when they were still puppies, and not because of any special piety on their part.
Over the years, my dogs have proven amiable enough companions: loyal, friendly, and reasonably obedient if I'm there to keep an eye on them; but they were hardly saints, and even Parker loved nothing better than to tear through the garbage in search of a tasty tidbit the moment I let her out of my sight.
Martin Luther once wished that he "could only pray the way this dog looks at meat;" while the 17th century English metaphysical poet George Herbert insightfully noted that "He who lies with the dogs, riseth with fleas." Samuel Butler observed that "The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too."
Yet perhaps no one learned more about life from dogs than the "dog philosopher" himself, Diogenes of Sinope, the original Cynic, whose philosophy of cynicism takes its name from the Greek word for dog. Diogenes believed that one could obtain spiritual liberation by minimizing one's physical needs and freeing oneself from the foolish pleasures and conventions of society. In this respect, he was very much like Henry David Thoreau, who in his day was sometimes called the “Diogenes of Concord,” and who learned to measure his own wealth by the things he could afford to do without.
But Diogenes went far beyond Thoreau in his effort to achieve self-realization through the rejection of the "artificial" values of human society. He literally lived like a dog in a tub on the outskirts of Corinth, where his acerbic criticism of pretense and vanity soon gained him quite a reputation throughout Greece. It is said that Diogenes was once visited by the Epicurean philosopher Aristippus, who through his skill at flattery had earned himself a comfortable place at the court of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. Seeing Diogenes preparing a meager meal of lentils, Aristippus told him "if you would only learn to [pay a] compliment, you wouldn't have to live on lentils." "And if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysius," retorted the Cynic.
Alexander the Great likewise sought out Diogenes, and found him sunning himself, just as a dog might, there near his tub on the outskirts of town. When Alexander asked whether there was any way which he, the conqueror of the known world, might serve the philosopher, Diogenes asked him to "Stand out of my sun." But when Alexander's entourage began to ridicule the Cynic, Alexander reportedly silenced them with the comment "If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes."
In yet another story, Alexander comes upon Diogenes examining a heap of human bones. "What are you looking for?" the king inquires. "I am looking for the bones of your father," replies the Cynic, "but I cannot distinguish them from those of his slaves."
Nowadays we think of Cynicism as that attitude which sees the worst in every situation, which questions the sincerity of people's motives, sneers at the hint of goodness or compassion, and assumes that most folks act out of their own narrow self-interest, with little concern for the happiness or well-being of those around them. To the cynic all politicians are liars, all businessmen are crooks, (I hesitate to repeat the things they say about the clergy); and anyone who believes otherwise is a fool, deserving of whatever injustice they may suffer.
Yet dogs, as a rule, are loyal, honest, trusting creatures, eager to please and devoted to a fault, whatever cynical motives we may attribute to them. I can't really blame them for preferring Pizza to Purina or the the living room couch to a crate in the garage; I suspect I'd feel exactly the same way if the choice were left to me. What is truly amazing about dogs is their capacity for near-unconditional love, an instinctive affection for human kind engraved upon their souls by ten thousand years of breeding and training. A dog WANTS to love its owner, more than anything else in the world, and will often do so in defiance of its own best interests.
Calvin came into our household as a death camp survivor, literally rescued from the Midland County Pound seconds before he was scheduled to be euthanized. An AKC registered Weimaraner who had been badly abused by its previous owners, and then abandoned when they moved away, he was a good twenty to thirty pounds underweight when he came to live with us -- his ribs were clearly visible beneath his flesh, and a mere movement of the hand was enough to send him cowering in a corner. He barked all night, he peed in the house, he chewed up everything he could get his teeth on; but his one great fear was the fear of being abandoned again, and once that fear was set at ease, as we fattened him up with scraps from our table and allowed him to sleep on the floor at the foot of our bed, he became as devoted a house pet as anyone could ask for.
Luther had a slightly different story. Luther was what you might call a "puppy of a lesser dog" — a congenitally deaf Dalmatian who somehow managed to turn his head at precisely the moment the veterinarian snapped his fingers, and thus escaped the fate which ordinarily awaits "defective" purebred dogs. It's tempting, I suppose, to feel pity for Luther, living as he did in a silent world all his own. But being deaf wasn’t something that Luther generally lost any sleep over; as far as he was concerned, he was just another dog, who didn’t know or care much about what he might have been missing. And he didn’t miss much, at least not in the way of trouble: he could bark and chew and dig and strew garbage with the best of them. Moreover, sirens, thunderstorms, and Fourth of July firecrackers were no big deal for that hearing-impaired canine; and I swear he could smell the Pizza truck coming up the street long before Calvin heard it pull into our driveway.
Parker was, is, and in many ways shall always be my “forever dog." A “pet-quality” Boston Terrier (although we sometimes refered to her as a Boston Terroist), whose non-standard markings imperfect gait had likewise caused her to be rejected by her original owners, in many ways she represented to us the best of all possible worlds: a cat-sized critter with the heart and personality of a full-sized Canis Lupus Familiaris. For over thirteen years she was my near-constant companion: we slept in the same bed, often ate from the same plate (only after I was FINISHED, of course), and for many years pretty much spent every waking moment together (which sounds a lot more impressive than it was, considering the amount of time she slept). I loved her as a puppy; learned to appreciate her more fully as a fully-grown dog; and in her final days she taught me once again the essential truth of Forrest Church’s definition of religion as ‘our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.”
She reminded me as well of Forrest’s more trenchant theological observation (which I have quoted now at practically every Memorial Service I have conducted since I first read it more than a decade ago), that “knowing that we are going to die not only places an acknowledged limit on our lives, it also lends a special intensity and poignancy to the time we are given to live and love. The fact that death is inevitable gives meaning to our love, for the more we love the more we risk losing. Love’s power comes in part from the courage required to give ourselves to that which is not ours to keep: spouses, children, parents, dear and cherished friends, [of course, dogs...] even life itself. It also comes from the faith required to sustain that courage, the faith that life, howsoever limited and mysterious, contains at its margins, often at their very edges, a meaning that is redemptive.”
Proverbs 26:11 reads "Like a dog that returns to his own vomit is the fool that repeats his folly." Yet as unappetizing as it may sound, this is precisely the genius of dogs: their eagerness to please, the tenacity of their love, their willingness to try again and again to do what is asked them in exchange for the smallest token of our affection. The cynics may find this a foolish virtue, but within it, perhaps, lies a lesson for the spirit: a lesson in loyalty, discipline, tenacity and obedience which leads to a larger liberty of the soul, a tolerance for difference and diversity, the courage to devote ourselves to that which is not ours to keep, and a reward of unconditional acceptance that transcends the limits of our understanding, yet still awakens deep within us our own capacity for love.
READING(S)
[I’ve known Gary Kowalski for about 30 years now; he was a classmate of mine at the Harvard Divinity School, and currently serves as the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Burlington Vermont. He is without a doubt one of the smartest people I’ve ever known; in fact, I sometimes like to joke that I have only had three good ideas in my lifetime, and that two of them started out as Gary’s. In addition to his work as a Unitarian Universalist minister, Gary has also developed a whole second career as an author and an animal rights activist. Two of his books in particular touch on my topic for today: Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet is the 7th-best selling book in its catagory at Amazon this week, while his earlier book The Souls of Animals is now in a second edition, and contains a widely-quoted passage about the virtues of dogs as spiritual advisors which has always been a particular favorite of mine. But even before Gary published that book, I’d seen (and saved) an earlier draft of that particular passage from one of his church newsletter columns, and since we have a little extra time today, I thought I’d read them both....]
CLICK HERE TO LINK TO GARY'S BLOG, "REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITS"
from The Souls of Animals by Gary Kowalski
My dog has deep knowledge to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn’t hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master, he eats when he’s hungry and sleeps when he’s tired. He’s not hung up about sex. Best of all, he befriends me with an unconditional love that human beings would do well to emulate.
Chinook does have his failings, of course. He’s afraid of firecrackers and hides in the clothes closet whenever we run the vacuum cleaner, but unlike me he’s not afraid of what other people think of him or anxious about his public image. He barks at the mail carrier and the newsboy, but in contrast with some people I know he never growls at the children or barks at his wife.
So my dog is a sort of guru. When I become too serious and preoccupied, he reminds me of the importance of frolicking and play. When I get too wrapped up in abstractions and ideas, he reminds me of the importance of exercising and caring for my body. On his own canine level, he shows me that it might be possible to live without inner conflicts or neuroses: uncomplicated, genuine, and glad to be alive.
“FROM THE STUDY” by Gary Kowalski
My dog is my therapist and my spiritual advisor. He models healthy values for me. He has a sound appetite, gets plenty of exercise, and sleeps at least eight hours a day. He doesn't drink or smoke. He makes friends easily, doesn't carry a grudge, and has a healthy and uninhibited expression of sexual needs. He doesn't eat junk food. He doesn't worry excessively or hang on to regrets, but pretty much takes each day as it comes. He doesn't know the meaning of life, but he enjoys almost every minute of it.
I believe the essentials required for happiness are not too complicated: nutritious food, fresh air, going for walks, and someone to pat us on the tail when we go to sleep at night. These basics are within the reach of most people. If you're seeking a fulfillment that eludes you consider: contentment may be a bone buried in your own back yard.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
SALVATION BY...BIBLIOGRAPHY?
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday September 28th, 2008
Opening Words: from the Tao Te Ching
Cultivated in the individual,
Character will become genuine;
Cultivated in the family,
Character will become abundant;
Cultivated in the village,
Character will multiply;
Cultivated in the state,
Character will prosper;
Cultivated in the world,
Character will become universal.
***
[Extemporaneous Introduction]
As I mentioned a little earlier, this is Banned Books Week, which is always a good time to check in to see how I’m doing. On the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most Frequently Challenged Books of the 90’s, I’ve sad to say I’ve only read a total of 40 -- although my total would probably be a lot higher if I still had school-aged children around the house, or was a bigger fan of Stephen King’s. I do a little better with the Pelham Public Library’s Fahrenheit 451 Banned Book Club Reading list for 2008 -- 81 out of 175. But when I finally got around to that classic list of the Standard Sixty-Five Banned Books of All Time (you know, the one that starts out with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and finishes up with Ulysses Uncle Tom’s Cabin and A Wrinkle in Time) I found I had read all or part of all but seven.
Which I guess just goes to show that not all banned books are really worthy of being read. Some of these titles remind me a lot of a review written by Dorothy Parker about a now long- (and probably well-) forgotten volume: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force.” But the quality of the literature itself is really a secondary consideration when compared to the more fundamental “right to read” in the first place. When the act of reading itself is placed under suspicion through the use of tactics like book challenges and attempts to characterize whole catagories of literature (like Harry Potter, for instance) as “anti-religious,” then it is time for religious liberals like ourselves to step up and tell the other side of the story....
***
I also want to say just a word or two about the title of my sermon this morning -- “Salvation by Bibliography.” This is actually a turn of phrase that was first shared with me by a more-experiencced, senior colleague when I was still young and relatively new to the ministry, in an attempt to explain to me why so many UU ministers have such huge personal libraries, and why whenever someone comes to us with a problem, more often than not one of the very first things we do is recommend a book about it. It was a tongue-in-cheek remark (with a sharp edge of tooth about it), all based on an attempt to communicate to me the plain and simple truth that none of us in this line of work really feels like we are smart enough to do the job the way it really ought to be done.
And so we surround ourselves with the wisdom of the ages, hoping that perhaps some of it will rub off and sink in. Among the many other things it is, Parish Ministry is in many ways a lifetime Spiritual Discipline of Reading & Reflection, Prayerful Meditation, and Thoughtful, Contemplative Composition and Action. It is a weekly engagement, as Emerson put it, with “Life -- Life passed through the Fire of Thought;” and the DISCIPLINE of doing it every week -- or even every other week -- quickly begins to define everything else preachers say or do as living human beings.
During his own lifetime, Theodore Parker (the 19th century Unitarian minister for whom my dog is named) had a private library of some fifteen thousand volumes -- it was the largest library of its type anywhere in North America at the time, or (just for purposes of comparison) about five times as large as mine, which (as some of you know) is already overflowing the available shelf space I have to devote to it. Bibliomania is an obsession not only tolerated, but actively encouraged among Unitarian Universalist ministers, “...an innocent habit” the Rev. John Haynes Holmes wrote in his autobiography I Speak for Myself, “to be indulged, I believe, to the limit of ambition.”
My library proliferated like a biological organism. It grew into hundreds, then into thousands of books. Each new volume, like a newborn infant, was classified and then placed upon the shelves, there to produce a little library of its own, in its own proud field of learning. Just to look at this collection of books, lined up like soldiers at drill, was to be instructed, inspired, uplifted by the discipline of imagination and order. To handle them by taking them one after another haphazardly from the shelves, if only to caress their handsome bindings, and consult afresh their learned indices, is to feel the gates of wisdom swing wide to our approach. Then there are the first editions to be sought out once again, the authors’ inscriptions and signatures to be re-examined, the classics to be consulted for fresh study and delight. “Have you read all these books, Grandpa?” asked a skeptical young miss on a certain day of intimate disclosure. “No, my dear,” was my reply, “I don’t believe I have read half of them. But I know what’s in them all, and why they are here.” I count this the real justification of the private library. To have the great books on hand, and the current books as they pass by, to be used when needed or desired!
I can also still remember the first time I ever read that passage, shortly after receiving a copy of Holmes’ autobiography as a gift from the personal library of the retired Universalist minister Tracy Pullman, when I was still a divinity student at Harvard. Tracy actually gave me two huge paper grocery sacks full of books, which I had to carry home with me on the Red Line in the dead of winter. But when I was finally able to unpack them and put them up on the shelves of my snug little room in Divinity Hall, they warmed the place better than even a fire in the grate, and made me feel cozy and at home. It was more than just a gift of paper. It was an intellectual legacy being passed down from generation to generation: an act of faith and trust that I would use those books to help me carry on the good work which Tracy had done for an entire lifetime.
It used to be that “erudition and personal piety” were the two principal criteria on which aspiring ministers were examined prior to being approbated for ordination. Nowadays we’ve changed the labels somewhat, but the baseline qualifications are still pretty much the same: an appropriate academic credential, plus good “people skills” and a somewhat vaguely-defined quality known as “ministerial presence” (which, as best I can tell, is a delicate balance of gravitas and levity which allows good clergy to take their work seriously without necessarily taking themselves TOO seriously).
Good ministers need to be sensitive, but not thin-skinned; smart but not arrogant; confident, but also humble. And since none of these combinations really comes naturally to a normal human being, it takes lots of practice and a lot of self-discipline just to get them kind of close to right. The very best ministers I know have all learned how to lead by listening, which is also why the clergy I respect the most consider it such an honor and a blessing to serve generous, tolerant, and forgiving congregations, especially early in our careers.
Like any seriously devoted religious or spiritual lifestyle, Ministry is a form of Discipleship: a specialized kind of apprenticeship, or disciplined learning, where the learner/apprentice/disciple is not only expected to master a particular body of knowledge and set of professional skills and techniques, but also to develop certain insights, personal beliefs, and ethical values to accompany those skills, as well as a profound and deeply-internalized sense of principled moral integrity -- qualities which educate the Soul as well as the Mind. Discipleship is about both Doing and Being: not just how well we perform, but who we ARE and how well we express that identity in every other aspect of our lives.
Our 19th century Unitarian and Universalist ancestors used to talk about this process of educating one’s conscience in terms of two closely related ideas. The first was the notion of “Self-Culture.” And the second was a doctrine known as “Salvation by Character.” Both of these beliefs shared the understanding that the human soul was something organic, like a flowering plant, which if properly cultivated (or “cultured”) would blossom into something at once both beautiful and useful.
The “fruit” of this process of cultivation was Character: a distinctive and essential pattern of personal attributes which embodied moral strength, self-discipline, and the various other exemplary characteristics of a principled and virtuous life. By educating the moral sentiment, through (for example) “exposure to uplifting works of literature;” and by exercising their moral fiber through acts of charity and the performance of other good works, our liberal religious forebearers attempted to transform their lives into living testaments of their religious values.
Of course, sensitivity, intelligence, confidence, humility, a thick skin and an open-minded, non-defensive attitude are not merely attractive qualities for ministers only. Together they also describe a style of spiritual wisdom which represents an important asset for any person of faith. And it’s not necessarily something that can be learned exclusively from books. Academic scholars in this field often differentiate between formal theology and what is known as “lived religion” -- the kinds of spiritual beliefs and practices which shape and inform the everyday experiences of ordinary people’s lives.
The two are obviously related, but they can also be quite distinct. You don’t need to have a graduate degree in theology in order to live an ethical and meaningful life. Most of the values by which we live our day to day lives we learned from our parents, or from our peers...from friends, family, mentors, colleagues, teachers, coaches, neighbors, perhaps even ministers...and certainly our Sunday school instructors!
These lessons may have started out in books, but now they have made their way into the very fabric of our lives and our society. Be honest. Tell the truth, and be as good as your word. Don’t take advantage of those who are weaker than you, but do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Think for a moment about what other lessons like this you have learned. Where did you learn them? And why does “reality” sometimes tempt us to compromise our “childish” or naive beliefs about right and wrong? We all know that life isn’t always fair, and that often the experience of frustration, disappointment or betrayal can leave us feeling wounded, bitter and cynical. Often we may feel that our innocence makes us vulnerable, and that we need to protect ourselves by acting in ways that we know under “normal” circumstances wouldn’t be right. But it’s EXACTLY at times like those when it takes a lot of moral courage to refrain from doing something we just know deep down in our hearts is wrong, even though we can rationalize it in our minds as necessary and justified.
For most traditional Christians, of course, discipleship is ultimately about following and imitating Jesus, and the list of uplifting books begins with the Bible. Character is formed by overcoming adversity and resisting temptation, as we grow to spiritual maturity transformed by the knowledge of the Truth that sets us Free. The 19th-century Unitarians and Universalists who practiced Self-Culture would have agreed with all of this. But they also looked for inspiration beyond just the Christian tradition, to the scriptures and sacred writings of the world’s other great faith traditions, such as the passage I read earlier this morning to open our service from the Tao Te Ching:
Cultivated in the individual,
Character will become genuine;
Cultivated in the family,
Character will become abundant;
Cultivated in the village,
Character will multiply;
Cultivated in the state,
Character will prosper;
Cultivated in the world,
Character will become universal.
And just as frequently, they looked within themselves, and created their own Scripture from the Law they found there written upon their hearts. Here’s one of my favorites: a brief credo written by the Reverend William Henry Channing (nephew of the much more well-known William Ellery Channing), which he titled simply “My Symphony:”
To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never;
To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
And writing at roughly the same time, the then much-less-renown Henry David Thoreau composed these two lines of verse: “My Life has been the poem I would have writ/But I could not both live and utter it.”
[extemporaneous conclusion]
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday September 28th, 2008
Opening Words: from the Tao Te Ching
Cultivated in the individual,
Character will become genuine;
Cultivated in the family,
Character will become abundant;
Cultivated in the village,
Character will multiply;
Cultivated in the state,
Character will prosper;
Cultivated in the world,
Character will become universal.
***
[Extemporaneous Introduction]
As I mentioned a little earlier, this is Banned Books Week, which is always a good time to check in to see how I’m doing. On the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most Frequently Challenged Books of the 90’s, I’ve sad to say I’ve only read a total of 40 -- although my total would probably be a lot higher if I still had school-aged children around the house, or was a bigger fan of Stephen King’s. I do a little better with the Pelham Public Library’s Fahrenheit 451 Banned Book Club Reading list for 2008 -- 81 out of 175. But when I finally got around to that classic list of the Standard Sixty-Five Banned Books of All Time (you know, the one that starts out with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and finishes up with Ulysses Uncle Tom’s Cabin and A Wrinkle in Time) I found I had read all or part of all but seven.
Which I guess just goes to show that not all banned books are really worthy of being read. Some of these titles remind me a lot of a review written by Dorothy Parker about a now long- (and probably well-) forgotten volume: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force.” But the quality of the literature itself is really a secondary consideration when compared to the more fundamental “right to read” in the first place. When the act of reading itself is placed under suspicion through the use of tactics like book challenges and attempts to characterize whole catagories of literature (like Harry Potter, for instance) as “anti-religious,” then it is time for religious liberals like ourselves to step up and tell the other side of the story....
***
I also want to say just a word or two about the title of my sermon this morning -- “Salvation by Bibliography.” This is actually a turn of phrase that was first shared with me by a more-experiencced, senior colleague when I was still young and relatively new to the ministry, in an attempt to explain to me why so many UU ministers have such huge personal libraries, and why whenever someone comes to us with a problem, more often than not one of the very first things we do is recommend a book about it. It was a tongue-in-cheek remark (with a sharp edge of tooth about it), all based on an attempt to communicate to me the plain and simple truth that none of us in this line of work really feels like we are smart enough to do the job the way it really ought to be done.
And so we surround ourselves with the wisdom of the ages, hoping that perhaps some of it will rub off and sink in. Among the many other things it is, Parish Ministry is in many ways a lifetime Spiritual Discipline of Reading & Reflection, Prayerful Meditation, and Thoughtful, Contemplative Composition and Action. It is a weekly engagement, as Emerson put it, with “Life -- Life passed through the Fire of Thought;” and the DISCIPLINE of doing it every week -- or even every other week -- quickly begins to define everything else preachers say or do as living human beings.
During his own lifetime, Theodore Parker (the 19th century Unitarian minister for whom my dog is named) had a private library of some fifteen thousand volumes -- it was the largest library of its type anywhere in North America at the time, or (just for purposes of comparison) about five times as large as mine, which (as some of you know) is already overflowing the available shelf space I have to devote to it. Bibliomania is an obsession not only tolerated, but actively encouraged among Unitarian Universalist ministers, “...an innocent habit” the Rev. John Haynes Holmes wrote in his autobiography I Speak for Myself, “to be indulged, I believe, to the limit of ambition.”
My library proliferated like a biological organism. It grew into hundreds, then into thousands of books. Each new volume, like a newborn infant, was classified and then placed upon the shelves, there to produce a little library of its own, in its own proud field of learning. Just to look at this collection of books, lined up like soldiers at drill, was to be instructed, inspired, uplifted by the discipline of imagination and order. To handle them by taking them one after another haphazardly from the shelves, if only to caress their handsome bindings, and consult afresh their learned indices, is to feel the gates of wisdom swing wide to our approach. Then there are the first editions to be sought out once again, the authors’ inscriptions and signatures to be re-examined, the classics to be consulted for fresh study and delight. “Have you read all these books, Grandpa?” asked a skeptical young miss on a certain day of intimate disclosure. “No, my dear,” was my reply, “I don’t believe I have read half of them. But I know what’s in them all, and why they are here.” I count this the real justification of the private library. To have the great books on hand, and the current books as they pass by, to be used when needed or desired!
I can also still remember the first time I ever read that passage, shortly after receiving a copy of Holmes’ autobiography as a gift from the personal library of the retired Universalist minister Tracy Pullman, when I was still a divinity student at Harvard. Tracy actually gave me two huge paper grocery sacks full of books, which I had to carry home with me on the Red Line in the dead of winter. But when I was finally able to unpack them and put them up on the shelves of my snug little room in Divinity Hall, they warmed the place better than even a fire in the grate, and made me feel cozy and at home. It was more than just a gift of paper. It was an intellectual legacy being passed down from generation to generation: an act of faith and trust that I would use those books to help me carry on the good work which Tracy had done for an entire lifetime.
It used to be that “erudition and personal piety” were the two principal criteria on which aspiring ministers were examined prior to being approbated for ordination. Nowadays we’ve changed the labels somewhat, but the baseline qualifications are still pretty much the same: an appropriate academic credential, plus good “people skills” and a somewhat vaguely-defined quality known as “ministerial presence” (which, as best I can tell, is a delicate balance of gravitas and levity which allows good clergy to take their work seriously without necessarily taking themselves TOO seriously).
Good ministers need to be sensitive, but not thin-skinned; smart but not arrogant; confident, but also humble. And since none of these combinations really comes naturally to a normal human being, it takes lots of practice and a lot of self-discipline just to get them kind of close to right. The very best ministers I know have all learned how to lead by listening, which is also why the clergy I respect the most consider it such an honor and a blessing to serve generous, tolerant, and forgiving congregations, especially early in our careers.
Like any seriously devoted religious or spiritual lifestyle, Ministry is a form of Discipleship: a specialized kind of apprenticeship, or disciplined learning, where the learner/apprentice/disciple is not only expected to master a particular body of knowledge and set of professional skills and techniques, but also to develop certain insights, personal beliefs, and ethical values to accompany those skills, as well as a profound and deeply-internalized sense of principled moral integrity -- qualities which educate the Soul as well as the Mind. Discipleship is about both Doing and Being: not just how well we perform, but who we ARE and how well we express that identity in every other aspect of our lives.
Our 19th century Unitarian and Universalist ancestors used to talk about this process of educating one’s conscience in terms of two closely related ideas. The first was the notion of “Self-Culture.” And the second was a doctrine known as “Salvation by Character.” Both of these beliefs shared the understanding that the human soul was something organic, like a flowering plant, which if properly cultivated (or “cultured”) would blossom into something at once both beautiful and useful.
The “fruit” of this process of cultivation was Character: a distinctive and essential pattern of personal attributes which embodied moral strength, self-discipline, and the various other exemplary characteristics of a principled and virtuous life. By educating the moral sentiment, through (for example) “exposure to uplifting works of literature;” and by exercising their moral fiber through acts of charity and the performance of other good works, our liberal religious forebearers attempted to transform their lives into living testaments of their religious values.
Of course, sensitivity, intelligence, confidence, humility, a thick skin and an open-minded, non-defensive attitude are not merely attractive qualities for ministers only. Together they also describe a style of spiritual wisdom which represents an important asset for any person of faith. And it’s not necessarily something that can be learned exclusively from books. Academic scholars in this field often differentiate between formal theology and what is known as “lived religion” -- the kinds of spiritual beliefs and practices which shape and inform the everyday experiences of ordinary people’s lives.
The two are obviously related, but they can also be quite distinct. You don’t need to have a graduate degree in theology in order to live an ethical and meaningful life. Most of the values by which we live our day to day lives we learned from our parents, or from our peers...from friends, family, mentors, colleagues, teachers, coaches, neighbors, perhaps even ministers...and certainly our Sunday school instructors!
These lessons may have started out in books, but now they have made their way into the very fabric of our lives and our society. Be honest. Tell the truth, and be as good as your word. Don’t take advantage of those who are weaker than you, but do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Think for a moment about what other lessons like this you have learned. Where did you learn them? And why does “reality” sometimes tempt us to compromise our “childish” or naive beliefs about right and wrong? We all know that life isn’t always fair, and that often the experience of frustration, disappointment or betrayal can leave us feeling wounded, bitter and cynical. Often we may feel that our innocence makes us vulnerable, and that we need to protect ourselves by acting in ways that we know under “normal” circumstances wouldn’t be right. But it’s EXACTLY at times like those when it takes a lot of moral courage to refrain from doing something we just know deep down in our hearts is wrong, even though we can rationalize it in our minds as necessary and justified.
For most traditional Christians, of course, discipleship is ultimately about following and imitating Jesus, and the list of uplifting books begins with the Bible. Character is formed by overcoming adversity and resisting temptation, as we grow to spiritual maturity transformed by the knowledge of the Truth that sets us Free. The 19th-century Unitarians and Universalists who practiced Self-Culture would have agreed with all of this. But they also looked for inspiration beyond just the Christian tradition, to the scriptures and sacred writings of the world’s other great faith traditions, such as the passage I read earlier this morning to open our service from the Tao Te Ching:
Cultivated in the individual,
Character will become genuine;
Cultivated in the family,
Character will become abundant;
Cultivated in the village,
Character will multiply;
Cultivated in the state,
Character will prosper;
Cultivated in the world,
Character will become universal.
And just as frequently, they looked within themselves, and created their own Scripture from the Law they found there written upon their hearts. Here’s one of my favorites: a brief credo written by the Reverend William Henry Channing (nephew of the much more well-known William Ellery Channing), which he titled simply “My Symphony:”
To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never;
To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
And writing at roughly the same time, the then much-less-renown Henry David Thoreau composed these two lines of verse: “My Life has been the poem I would have writ/But I could not both live and utter it.”
[extemporaneous conclusion]
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Flaming Chalice Images
My job during the worship service this morning was to lead our "Moment for All Ages," during which each Sunday School class was presented with a new ceramic "Flaming Chalice" commissioned from a local artist. This seemed like a great opportunity both to talk a little bit about the symbolism of the Chalice, as well as share some of the history behind it. With all of the various forms and examples this symbol of our movement has taken on over the years, I'm still a sucker for this "classic" version: the off-center stylized cross with flame, bounded by two circles. The flame represents the dynamic spirit of our community, as well as the element of Fire; the chalice itself the element of Earth, and the historical traditions and institutions which ground our community and contain it in the here and now. The two circles represent the Unitarian and Universalist traditions, as well as the Arc of the Heavens and the Great Circle of the Horizon, and more specifically the remaining two elements of Air and Water respectively.
This new Chalice design, introduced just within the last few years as the official logo of the UUA, is supposed to give the symbol a little more "pop" than the earlier version, because of its simplified designs and sunburst motif. Sorry -- call me anachronistic, but I'm still a sucker for the older one.
The flaming chalice was originally commissioned by the Unitarian Service Committee during the Second World War, to assist them in their work of resettling refugees out of Nazi-occupied Europe. The Czech artist Hans Deutsch is said to have taken his inspiration from the martyrdom of the Bohemian Heretic Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415. This particular version of the flaming chalice has been the logo of the UUSC for as long as I can remember, and is one of the most familiar flaming chalice icons.
What organization do you suppose this chalice on a red maple leaf represents?
[The Canadian Unitarian Council]
I like this one -- it reminds me of a dancing person....
This Yin and Yang is also very nice.
The chalice incorporated into a peace sign...
From the UK -- Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance are indeed core values of our movement
A pink-triangle, rainbow theme chalice
Another clever chalice designed by Peter Bowden (the creator of "Alice the Chalice")
This is actually a photograph of a wrought iron chalice similar to the one used at General Assembly (or perhaps even the self-same item), and hanging on the wall behind it is a banner which, when photographed from this angle, creates the impression of an actual flame. Clever AND impressive....
A stained-glass window with a world religions theme similar to the decorations behind the pulpit at First Parish
A cake....
Or if that's too much, cookies....(You can actually purchase these cookie cutters HERE)
Two bumper stickers. One from the Church of the Larger Fellowship
And another from the UUCF. Notice how the helping hands have been added into the overall design?
The Original Hans Deutsch design
Sunday, September 14, 2008
PROGRESS, NOT PERFECTION
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday September 14th, 2008
INVOCATION: Matthew 5: 43-48
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
***
[Extemporaneous Introduction] -- I just want to reassure everyone that that didn’t hurt nearly as much as it probably looked, but it still hurt a whole more than I would have liked. And I’ve been telling myself all this past week that once people had seen me climb those stairs, it wouldn’t really matter much what I had to say -- I would have made my point, and all that will be left would be to share a few folksy illustrations. Which is probably a good thing, since I think I left my manuscript down there on the table! (no, no -- I’m just kidding! )
But now that I’m up here and getting settled in, I thought I’d also draw your attention for a moment to the patch here in the ceiling to your left. Awhile back, we had leak in the slate roof which covers the Meetinghouse, which resulted in water getting down into the plaster and causing it to collapse. It’s one of those unexpected things that no one really thinks will ever happen to them, until it does happen -- and last spring the Trustees generously offered to juggle some funds around in order to have it repaired before my formal installation....
So I thought about it for awhile, and I asked them to wait. I thought it might be a good idea instead to leave the patch in place for awhile, as a visible, tangible sign, a little like the intentional flaw that is woven into every Navajo rug -- something that we might look at every week, that would remind us that despite our proud heritage and all of the history and traditions that are associated with this congregation, and the important role we have played for centuries here on the Peninsula and in the larger Portland community; and notwithstanding all of our many strengths and resources (not the least of which is all of you), we’re still not “there” yet, and we’re probably not going to be “there” any time soon.
We ARE going to repair the roof, by the way, so that it doesn’t leak again. But at the same time, I think it’s important for us to remind ourselves from time to time that in spite of all the wonderful things that DO happen here, First Parish still isn’t Perfect, not by a long ways. We also have our flaws and our shortcomings; we have many, MANY things we aspire to that are still beyond our grasp. And this will doubtlessly still be true no matter how much progress we may make toward achieving the ambitious goals we set for ourselves each year.
I also want to say just a word specifically about the title of today’s sermon. This motto, “Progress, not Perfection” was something one of my oncology nurses wrote on the white board in my room on my first day as a patient at the Gibson Center, so I basically looked out at it and reflected on it several times a day, every day, for more than a month. And in that time, I came to appreciate the wisdom of this motto in ways that are often difficult to articulate. In a very real sense, I’ve ended up trying to live this motto for the past six months, and whatever progress I’ve been able to make in that time has been grounded in the understanding that it’s NOT going to be perfect again right away...but that those little baby steps add up over time, provided one keeps on moving in the right direction.
This certainly wasn’t the first time I’d been exposed to this concept, although it is probably the most intense. And there’s even a French proverb from Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique that expresses almost the exact same sentiment: "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." A literal translation would be "The best is the enemy of good," but we might also take advantage of the vast lexicon of twenty-five cent words available to us in the English language and translate it a little more loosely as "Perfection is the Antagonist of Excellence." Or “opponent” or “adversary” or even “enemy” if your prefer... the meaning is still clear, and sometimes it cuts both ways.
Before my illness, the last time I really had to wrestle with this idea, at least in a serious way, was when I was writing my doctoral dissertation, and coming to grips with the realization that I was never going to write the PERFECT dissertation I had imagined myself writing when I had first started out, but that the BEST dissertation I could write under the circumstances (as my faculty advisor kept reminding me) was the one that could be approved if only I would turn it in.
But this was also one of those situations where the proverb was also working in the opposite direction: where “good enough” becomes the enemy of one’s own best work. Why should any of us be willing to settle for anything LESS than perfection, or at the very least the very best of which we are capable in the moment? Isn’t that kind of what the Scripture is calling us to do, when it tells us “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect?”
I’m pretty certain that just about everyone here today has struggled with these same issues in your own lives, on some level or another. When does our desire for perfection get in the way of our doing the best work we are capable of doing RIGHT NOW? When does Pride become a sin rather than an incentive to improve? How do the virtues of humility and forgiveness help us to accept not only the flaws and shortcomings of others, but our own as well?
I think it’s in this context that we need to take a little closer look at that word, “perfection,” just so that we might have a little better grasp on what it does and does not mean. One of the most common connotations of the word, for example, is “flawless.” Something is “perfect” when there is absolutely nothing wrong about it, and absolutely nothing that can be improved about it either. It’s complete; it’s “perfect.”
And yet in many ways this narrow view of perfection actually limits our understanding and can be improved upon a great deal. Short of our imaginations, where do we find ANYTHING in this world that is truly “flawless?” Or at least that cannot somehow be improved? In fact, the Greek word teleios (which we translate as “perfect”) has exactly this opposite connotation: it refers to something which is mature and therefore fulfilled, because it has reached fruition (and thus its “perfection”) only at the end of a long process of growth and maturity.
In much this same vein, the philosopher Socrates knew that he knew nothing, and that this knowledge alone made him the wisest man in Athens. Awareness of one’s own ignorance is a very precious knowledge indeed, which is no doubt why Socrates himself was also so committed to the principle “Know thyself.” And in the passage I read a moment ago from the writings of James Freeman Clarke, this notion of “perfection” becomes transmuted into an idea of Progress, or “the Continuity of Human Development” onward and upward forever.
Clarke went on to write:
The divine word, revealed in creation, embodied in Christ, immanent in the human soul, is a fuller fountain than has been believed. No creed can exhaust its meaning, no metaphysics can measure its possibility. The teaching of Jesus is not something to be outgrown; for it is not a definite system, but an ever unfolding principle. It is a germ of growth, and therefore has no finality in any of its past forms. "Of its fulness," says John, " we have all received, and grace added to grace." The Apostle Paul regarded his own knowledge of Christianity as imperfect and partial. "We know in part," said he, "and we teach in part." Christianity in the past has always had a childlike faith, which was beautiful and true. But its knowledge has also been that of a child. It has spoken as a child, it has understood as a child, it has thought as a child. This was all well while it was a child. The prattle of an infant is sweet, but in a youth or [an adult] it is an anachronism. Let us have a childlike faith, but a [mature] intelligence.... Let us endeavor to see God and nature face to face, confident that whoever is honestly seeking the truth, though [they] may err for a time, can never go wholly wrong.
Perhaps the hardest lesson I have EVER had to learn is very closely related to this insight...and it was something that I had to do wrong dozens, if not hundreds of times, before I finally figured out that “Success” is generally something that one discovers atop a heaping MOUNTAIN of Failure, and that you simply HAVE to do it wrong a few times before you are finally going to get it right.
How does the saying go? -- “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” Because unless you are willing to take the risk of failure -- of doing something less than perfectly in order to make progress to toward your goal -- you are never going to move forward at all. Perfection is merely the target on the horizon. Excellence is the Objective, and the real Goal is simply Progress -- to do it a little bit better today than you did the day before.
I can still remember how it felt a year ago now to climb into this high pulpit for the FIRST time as your regularly called and settled minister, and all of the emotions of hope and expectation that were here in this room that day as we began together a new ministry here at First Parish: a ministry both to one another, and to the larger community in which we dwell. Of course, things were a little different that day too. (I recall, for instance, that there was a huge gaping hole in the ceiling over here where the plaster had gotten wet and fallen in...) and also how impressed I was with the banners that are still hanging here along the gallery: “Open the Windows + the Doors” “And Receive Whosoever is Sent.”
This still is the mission of this church, you know. It’s a place where we come to make our own lives better, and to help out others it times of crisis or challenge, to greet both neighbors and strangers alike, and to slowly improve the world where we live, often one human soul at a time. And at the time I observed that: “This Meeting House is indeed a sacred place, a safe and welcoming ‘sanctuary’ in the heart of this city, which we make Holy through our presence here, and by filling it with our warmth, and our love for one another, our hospitality to strangers, and our devotion and commitment to the values and principles of our shared Unitarian and Universalist faith traditions. We come from many different places, we travel many different paths. But in this place, we mingle our lives together like the waters of many rivers flowing to the ocean, perhaps in time rising as fog, falling as rain, even freezing as ice, but always, always flowing back once more into the sea from whence we all have come.”
So was it then; and so may it be again today....
***
READING: “The Five points of Calvinism and the Five Points of the New Theology” from Vexed Questions in Theology by James Freeman Clarke (Boston: 1886) [LINK to complete text of Clarke's essay]
The fifth point of doctrine in the new theology will, as I believe, be the Continuity of Human Development in all worlds, or the Progress of Mankind onward and upward forever.
Progress is the outward heaven, corresponding to the inward heaven of character. The hope of progress is one of the chief motives to action. Men [and women] are contented, not matter how poor their lot, so long as they can hope for something better. And...[they] are discontented, no matter how fortunate their condition, when they have nothing more to look forward to. The greatest sufferer who hopes may have nothing, but ...possesses all things; the most prosperous soul who is deprived of hope may have all things, but...possesses nothing....
If hope abides, there is always something to look forward to, -- some higher attainment, some larger usefulness, some nearer communion with God. And this accords with all we see and know: with the long processes of geologic development by which the earth became fitted to be the home of [human beings]; with the slow ascent of organized beings from humbler to fuller life; with the progress of society from age to age; with the gradual diffusion of knowledge, advancement of civilization, growth of free institutions, and ever higher conceptions of God and of religious truth. The one fact which is written on nature and human life is the fact of progress, and this must be accepted as the purpose of the Creator....
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday September 14th, 2008
INVOCATION: Matthew 5: 43-48
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
***
[Extemporaneous Introduction] -- I just want to reassure everyone that that didn’t hurt nearly as much as it probably looked, but it still hurt a whole more than I would have liked. And I’ve been telling myself all this past week that once people had seen me climb those stairs, it wouldn’t really matter much what I had to say -- I would have made my point, and all that will be left would be to share a few folksy illustrations. Which is probably a good thing, since I think I left my manuscript down there on the table! (no, no -- I’m just kidding! )
But now that I’m up here and getting settled in, I thought I’d also draw your attention for a moment to the patch here in the ceiling to your left. Awhile back, we had leak in the slate roof which covers the Meetinghouse, which resulted in water getting down into the plaster and causing it to collapse. It’s one of those unexpected things that no one really thinks will ever happen to them, until it does happen -- and last spring the Trustees generously offered to juggle some funds around in order to have it repaired before my formal installation....
So I thought about it for awhile, and I asked them to wait. I thought it might be a good idea instead to leave the patch in place for awhile, as a visible, tangible sign, a little like the intentional flaw that is woven into every Navajo rug -- something that we might look at every week, that would remind us that despite our proud heritage and all of the history and traditions that are associated with this congregation, and the important role we have played for centuries here on the Peninsula and in the larger Portland community; and notwithstanding all of our many strengths and resources (not the least of which is all of you), we’re still not “there” yet, and we’re probably not going to be “there” any time soon.
We ARE going to repair the roof, by the way, so that it doesn’t leak again. But at the same time, I think it’s important for us to remind ourselves from time to time that in spite of all the wonderful things that DO happen here, First Parish still isn’t Perfect, not by a long ways. We also have our flaws and our shortcomings; we have many, MANY things we aspire to that are still beyond our grasp. And this will doubtlessly still be true no matter how much progress we may make toward achieving the ambitious goals we set for ourselves each year.
I also want to say just a word specifically about the title of today’s sermon. This motto, “Progress, not Perfection” was something one of my oncology nurses wrote on the white board in my room on my first day as a patient at the Gibson Center, so I basically looked out at it and reflected on it several times a day, every day, for more than a month. And in that time, I came to appreciate the wisdom of this motto in ways that are often difficult to articulate. In a very real sense, I’ve ended up trying to live this motto for the past six months, and whatever progress I’ve been able to make in that time has been grounded in the understanding that it’s NOT going to be perfect again right away...but that those little baby steps add up over time, provided one keeps on moving in the right direction.
This certainly wasn’t the first time I’d been exposed to this concept, although it is probably the most intense. And there’s even a French proverb from Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique that expresses almost the exact same sentiment: "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." A literal translation would be "The best is the enemy of good," but we might also take advantage of the vast lexicon of twenty-five cent words available to us in the English language and translate it a little more loosely as "Perfection is the Antagonist of Excellence." Or “opponent” or “adversary” or even “enemy” if your prefer... the meaning is still clear, and sometimes it cuts both ways.
Before my illness, the last time I really had to wrestle with this idea, at least in a serious way, was when I was writing my doctoral dissertation, and coming to grips with the realization that I was never going to write the PERFECT dissertation I had imagined myself writing when I had first started out, but that the BEST dissertation I could write under the circumstances (as my faculty advisor kept reminding me) was the one that could be approved if only I would turn it in.
But this was also one of those situations where the proverb was also working in the opposite direction: where “good enough” becomes the enemy of one’s own best work. Why should any of us be willing to settle for anything LESS than perfection, or at the very least the very best of which we are capable in the moment? Isn’t that kind of what the Scripture is calling us to do, when it tells us “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect?”
I’m pretty certain that just about everyone here today has struggled with these same issues in your own lives, on some level or another. When does our desire for perfection get in the way of our doing the best work we are capable of doing RIGHT NOW? When does Pride become a sin rather than an incentive to improve? How do the virtues of humility and forgiveness help us to accept not only the flaws and shortcomings of others, but our own as well?
I think it’s in this context that we need to take a little closer look at that word, “perfection,” just so that we might have a little better grasp on what it does and does not mean. One of the most common connotations of the word, for example, is “flawless.” Something is “perfect” when there is absolutely nothing wrong about it, and absolutely nothing that can be improved about it either. It’s complete; it’s “perfect.”
And yet in many ways this narrow view of perfection actually limits our understanding and can be improved upon a great deal. Short of our imaginations, where do we find ANYTHING in this world that is truly “flawless?” Or at least that cannot somehow be improved? In fact, the Greek word teleios (which we translate as “perfect”) has exactly this opposite connotation: it refers to something which is mature and therefore fulfilled, because it has reached fruition (and thus its “perfection”) only at the end of a long process of growth and maturity.
In much this same vein, the philosopher Socrates knew that he knew nothing, and that this knowledge alone made him the wisest man in Athens. Awareness of one’s own ignorance is a very precious knowledge indeed, which is no doubt why Socrates himself was also so committed to the principle “Know thyself.” And in the passage I read a moment ago from the writings of James Freeman Clarke, this notion of “perfection” becomes transmuted into an idea of Progress, or “the Continuity of Human Development” onward and upward forever.
Clarke went on to write:
The divine word, revealed in creation, embodied in Christ, immanent in the human soul, is a fuller fountain than has been believed. No creed can exhaust its meaning, no metaphysics can measure its possibility. The teaching of Jesus is not something to be outgrown; for it is not a definite system, but an ever unfolding principle. It is a germ of growth, and therefore has no finality in any of its past forms. "Of its fulness," says John, " we have all received, and grace added to grace." The Apostle Paul regarded his own knowledge of Christianity as imperfect and partial. "We know in part," said he, "and we teach in part." Christianity in the past has always had a childlike faith, which was beautiful and true. But its knowledge has also been that of a child. It has spoken as a child, it has understood as a child, it has thought as a child. This was all well while it was a child. The prattle of an infant is sweet, but in a youth or [an adult] it is an anachronism. Let us have a childlike faith, but a [mature] intelligence.... Let us endeavor to see God and nature face to face, confident that whoever is honestly seeking the truth, though [they] may err for a time, can never go wholly wrong.
Perhaps the hardest lesson I have EVER had to learn is very closely related to this insight...and it was something that I had to do wrong dozens, if not hundreds of times, before I finally figured out that “Success” is generally something that one discovers atop a heaping MOUNTAIN of Failure, and that you simply HAVE to do it wrong a few times before you are finally going to get it right.
How does the saying go? -- “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” Because unless you are willing to take the risk of failure -- of doing something less than perfectly in order to make progress to toward your goal -- you are never going to move forward at all. Perfection is merely the target on the horizon. Excellence is the Objective, and the real Goal is simply Progress -- to do it a little bit better today than you did the day before.
I can still remember how it felt a year ago now to climb into this high pulpit for the FIRST time as your regularly called and settled minister, and all of the emotions of hope and expectation that were here in this room that day as we began together a new ministry here at First Parish: a ministry both to one another, and to the larger community in which we dwell. Of course, things were a little different that day too. (I recall, for instance, that there was a huge gaping hole in the ceiling over here where the plaster had gotten wet and fallen in...) and also how impressed I was with the banners that are still hanging here along the gallery: “Open the Windows + the Doors” “And Receive Whosoever is Sent.”
This still is the mission of this church, you know. It’s a place where we come to make our own lives better, and to help out others it times of crisis or challenge, to greet both neighbors and strangers alike, and to slowly improve the world where we live, often one human soul at a time. And at the time I observed that: “This Meeting House is indeed a sacred place, a safe and welcoming ‘sanctuary’ in the heart of this city, which we make Holy through our presence here, and by filling it with our warmth, and our love for one another, our hospitality to strangers, and our devotion and commitment to the values and principles of our shared Unitarian and Universalist faith traditions. We come from many different places, we travel many different paths. But in this place, we mingle our lives together like the waters of many rivers flowing to the ocean, perhaps in time rising as fog, falling as rain, even freezing as ice, but always, always flowing back once more into the sea from whence we all have come.”
So was it then; and so may it be again today....
***
READING: “The Five points of Calvinism and the Five Points of the New Theology” from Vexed Questions in Theology by James Freeman Clarke (Boston: 1886) [LINK to complete text of Clarke's essay]
The fifth point of doctrine in the new theology will, as I believe, be the Continuity of Human Development in all worlds, or the Progress of Mankind onward and upward forever.
Progress is the outward heaven, corresponding to the inward heaven of character. The hope of progress is one of the chief motives to action. Men [and women] are contented, not matter how poor their lot, so long as they can hope for something better. And...[they] are discontented, no matter how fortunate their condition, when they have nothing more to look forward to. The greatest sufferer who hopes may have nothing, but ...possesses all things; the most prosperous soul who is deprived of hope may have all things, but...possesses nothing....
If hope abides, there is always something to look forward to, -- some higher attainment, some larger usefulness, some nearer communion with God. And this accords with all we see and know: with the long processes of geologic development by which the earth became fitted to be the home of [human beings]; with the slow ascent of organized beings from humbler to fuller life; with the progress of society from age to age; with the gradual diffusion of knowledge, advancement of civilization, growth of free institutions, and ever higher conceptions of God and of religious truth. The one fact which is written on nature and human life is the fact of progress, and this must be accepted as the purpose of the Creator....
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