Monday, February 16, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
Monday, February 02, 2009
"Rebels with a Cause" - Anniversary Sunday - Mark W. Harris - February 15, 2009
“Rebels With a Cause” Mark W. Harris
February 15, 2009 - First Parish of Watertown
Call to Worship - Philippians 4:8 ; Galatians 5:22
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit. (Galatians)
Reading - from Jamesland by Michelle Huneven
Sermon - “Rebels With a Cause” Mark W. Harris
We are the direct ancestors of a Puritan group who founded Watertown and this congregation in 1630, but they did so on July 30, which as you know is not exactly prime church going time around here. Therefore in recent years, I have suggested we celebrate our church anniversary in mid-February, as this was the time of year in 1835 that we officially became Unitarian in the wake of the split with the Trinitarians, and the disestablishment of the Congregational state church of Massachusetts in 1833. Most of you now that I have more than a passing interest in history, and believe that we can understand ourselves better as people and as a community if we have a good grasp of our past. Where we have come from helps us understand why we are the way we are.
I spend a lot of time thinking about what we call congregational polity. This is another word for church government meaning how we settle ministers, elect church leaders and maintain our finances and buildings. I teach this subject online through the seminary I attended in Berkeley, CA, and have done so for the past 8 years. The subject of polity is much more than what I implied about electing church leaders, though. It also covers things like the whys and wherefores of rites of passage, and internal and external structures of membership, participation and authority. People have some vague idea that First Parish is governed by congregational polity. For some that means that this congregation holds all the power over our own governance, and no authority figures or structures are going to impose any hierarchal imperatives upon us. In other words, we are not only theological heretics, we are also anarchists.
I want to begin with a story from our Watertown Puritan heritage because it will give you a good sense of what our ancestors thought about Congregational polity right from the beginning. Who can read this line on the sign? (“It was the first church in New England to assert and apply the principle of Congregational independence.”) And then (“It was the first to protest against proscription for religious belief. Its refusal in 1631 to pay taxes without representation in a General Court led to the founding of representative government and marked the beginning of constitutional history.”) Wow. So, it is a bit grandiose, but certainly makes us seem important and worthy and good. But look again at those words - independence, protest, refusal. We may think democrats or free thinkers, but while we are cheering them on, what do they imply about authority? Are we likely to listen to those who claim to have some authority over us? The upside of our congregational polity may be a belief in democracy or the freedom to elect our officials, or decide religious questions for ourselves, but the downside is a tendency to be antiauthority.
Now the story - In early 1631, elder Richard Browne, a lay leader of Watertown preached a sermon where he asserted that “the churches of Rome are true churches.” What did he mean by this? It was really a statement of religious tolerance, not a common thing for a Puritan to believe in. Remember the Puritans have not only rebelled against the authoritarian Anglican church back in England that had asserted hierarchal control over congregations, but the Puritans were also quintessential Protestants. For a Protestant religious authority is primarily derived from where? (Bible), and for a Catholic, where is religious authority derived? (the Church). That’s right the hierarchy will tell you what the Bible says, and the idea of you reading the Bible and interpreting it for yourself is heresy. The interesting thing about this is that most Puritans would have said that their Calvinist understanding of the Bible, and the saving experience of God’s grace bestowed upon them excludes Catholicism and every other church except Puritan, from being a legitimate church. Puritans believed that only their pure religion was right, and of all the other wrong religions, Catholicism was most wrong. In fact Catholicism and Unitarianism were both outlawed in England until 1813. Yet Richard Browne said they were legitimate.
Browne’s statement produced repercussions with the religious authorities in Boston. George Phillips, the minister here in Watertown, agreed that Catholic churches were legitimate in the eyes of God. He and Browne were called to account for this variation in belief at a meeting in Boston, and eventually leaders in the Boston church came to Watertown for a second meeting to discuss the issue. In a letter the Boston leaders questioned whether Browne was fit to be an elder. Philips fired back that they would discipline Browne if they were told what was untrue about what he said. The problem is the congregation became split over the issue. Was Browne wrong doctrinally, and further was he wrong to have defied the counsel of the authorities? When the Court stated that Browne be dismissed, Watertown replied that that was a church decision. Then the Governor of the Commonwealth came. Phillips thought they were starting to interfere in what was a local matter, and instructed them only to come as visitors, and not as judges. The meeting ended peacefully, but because of the split in the congregation, Browne was eventually removed from his position as elder. This incident shows the difference between our modern understanding of Congregational polity and that of the Puritans. They assumed that congregational polity meant not the autonomy of each congregation, but the larger community of autonomous churches. By its very actions, the Watertown church set a precedent. It advocated religious tolerance and liberty, but it also refused to take the advice or support of their neighboring churches. They continued to reject authority when the Cambridge church was organized. In 1636 the leaders in Cambridge invited clergy and laity from every town in the Commonwealth, and they all went, except Watertown. Phillips said, “Every church is competent to act alone.” Then when John Knowles was ordained here in 1640, they didn’t invite anybody.
Did they have trouble with the idea of authority? Do any of you? (show of hands) We would expect that this would be true of most Unitarian Universalist churches. It is not just that we are children of the rebellious 1960’s. We can no longer sing My Generation, and intone, “hope I die before I get old,” because we are now nearly the old, and are hoping for a little more longevity. Let’s recall the history. We have already seen that even if most of the Puritans wanted doctrinal conformity, and wanted a more harmonious understanding between the churches than what happened here in Watertown, the Puritans were rebelling against an authoritarian government and church while affirming smaller more local communities that called their ministers out from among them, and elected their officers. While they did agree on harsh Calvinist doctrines, they were not creedal churches. Instead they followed covenants, which were commonly agreed upon statements based on how they would relate to one another, and further how they would look out for one another. So their reason for being was based upon relationships not doctrines. What this meant though was that they believed not in individual liberty, like us, but community liberty. What was best for the community as a whole always took precedent over the individuals, so for instance when someone wanted to join a church, they would not be able to join based upon their free choice, but instead the community would determine whether they were spiritually fit to join. We will come back to this question of whether or not we have spiritual responsibility for each other.
Many of us who join Unitarian Universalist congregations today come as a result of some negative prior experience with a more authoritarian religious denomination. We could not get married or have our baby baptized, or be a member of a particular faith community because they imposed some kind of rigorous rules on us, or expected some kind of belief that simply defied our intellectual curiosity or sound reason. So we came to this faith in rebellion, but not necessarily for any life affirming beliefs other than freedom from that fear, that dogma, that rigidity. I think this is also true for those early Unitarians who had to declare their independence from the congregational church here in Watertown in 1835. They wanted to keep a broad, diverse community without doctrinal restrictions as their reason for being a church community. They rebelled personally against doctrines of original sin, and predestination and the divinity of Jesus because they wanted their religious faith to be based in how they lived their lives rather than in doctrinal conformity. People sometimes quote me as saying that UUism is a faith grounded in deeds not creeds. People have a tough time explaining our free faith to others because they are always trying to define it in traditional terms. Most of us don’t care very much about religious doctrines or beliefs, but we do care about religious living and how we relate with one another in the world.
We know what we don’t like in religious authority - anything narrow, restrictive, dogmatic, or intolerant. The novel Jamesland presents us with a bit of a stereotype of our liberal religious response to authoritarian religious expression. In the reading the minister Helen Harland asks Pete, the former chef, who has had a mental breakdown, how he feels about his church going experience. He wonders why she just can’t say things, but instead needs to apologize every step of the way. Why this word “overarching spirit”, instead of just plain old God. Helen is afraid her congregation will freak out, and think she has gone Baptist on them. Do we have to apologize for any strong statement of faith or religious experience in this skeptical or overly sensitive environment? The issue for Helen may be in Pete’s question of whether she should hit ‘em a little harder. He is questioning perhaps that she does not challenge them to consider deeper powers of being, or be stretched in their comfortable church of no church. She mentions the traumatic experiences many of them have had, and seems accepting of their glorified social club, where, “They just don’t like religion.”
If some of us who are afraid of our experiences of religious authority, want to be free, we still might observe where even Helen’s secular group is finding its meaning. What do we like in religious faith, and how much authority comes with it? If some of the seekers after religious community come here to be healed as individuals from authoritarianism, then freedom helps them make this choice, but individualistic freedom does not help us become grounded in a new transformative faith, it only helps us get away from the old. Even our UUA Principles have this kind of individualistic grounding to them. Read #1 - the inherent worth and dignity of every person - you are worthy. Read #3 - Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations - you are accepted, now grow. Read #4 - a free and responsible search for truth and meaning - you should search for truth, be free. This is suppose to be a congregational covenant within our wider association, and even this, the most overarching covenant of all feels individualistic. Where is our responsibility to use this freedom to grow in faith together? What does it say about the we?
Maybe you would conclude that we ground our religious authority in the individual. Sure you have to discover what is meaningful for you, and yes, you ultimately make the choice about whether this free faith is right for you, and make the decision to join, but it is awfully lonely out there being an authority of one, and you could join a church of one, but it would be reminiscent of the women named Sheila, whom the sociologist Robert Bellah once described, who said she followed her own faith, Sheilaism. Her religious authority was herself. Well, frankly, I like more footnotes than that. The reason I became an authority on UU history is that I read all the books, and I engaged all the professors, and I learned from all the churches and all the people in those churches, who told me stories, and made me love this faith. In fact, long ago I learned about a young minister named Joel Foster, who was called to serve the First Parish of New Salem, MA, my home town. Foster was a liberal, and there were members of his parish who differed from him in religious beliefs. They only came to church on those Sundays when Foster exchanged pulpits with a more orthodox colleague. One Sunday, Foster mounted his horse, and rode down the Main Street of town making it appear as though he were leaving town in order to exchange. Then as soon as he was a safe distance from town, he turned his horse, rode cross country on back roads, and sneaked in the back door of the church. He hid until all of his opponents were seated in their pews, and then magically appeared in the pulpit. That is one way to force the issue of ministerial authority. You will listen to me whether you want to or not. On the other hand he was using his authority to say, you should listen to other perspectives then the one you are convinced is the truth, because by listening and stretching all the windows of your spiritual being you will grow as a religious person.
What Helen Harland’s congregation found, even if they disliked religion, was a meaningful community with each other. It was a start because at the least it recognized that there are larger authorities beyond the self we need to pay attention to if we are going to grow as people, as a congregation, as a denomination. Who are our authorities as a religious community? Can you name some? I always ask my ministerial students in the polity class, what are your sources of authority as ministers. We would usually name academic authority, denominational authority and personal faith, and the Bible would be traditionally woven into all three of those strands (perhaps now a loose leaf Bible). We could also look at sources of authority in the context of our community and echo those same strands restated - reason, the tradition, and the community. Our predecessors resisted the structure of congregational churches that had been set up. Perhaps their tolerance of Catholics shows they were far sighted, but we also have to consider where authority lies for us. Do we need an outside system of support? Do we need internal systems of structure where we help one another grow spiritually? If tradition is the authority we invoke, one member may tell the other member who wants him to consider a new way of looking at something, “No, we’ve always done it this way. Or what about community as the authority? Perhaps a new way of running a program has been successful elsewhere, and might strengthen our community, but we may tell the church in Boston the same thing we told them in 1631, “We’ll do it our way.” The problem with authority is that reason can cut off openness to new spiritual experiences, tradition can be the same old same old, and community can be a closed group of friends. Can we balance our minds, our traditions and our community that have been nurtured in individualism with a deeper sense of community? We need to nurture our greater connections if we are to survive and grow. For those who attended Mark Caggiano’s ordination in North Andover, think about how good it felt to be connected to something larger than ourselves.
How much authority does the community have? How much authority does the denomination have? How much authority does the minister have? I think our growing edge is a greater sense of the spiritual responsibility we must nurture in each other. People may come to us because they seek freedom from conformity or dogmas or intolerance. They find a common ground in this free faith, and they like to be together. They share values of freedom, and tolerance, and making the world a better place as they work for peace and justice. But they also need to grow a deeper faith through larger connections. They will use their reason to let everyone speak, and be heard, and share in building up the community. They will be open to new ways of faith, not merely the old easy ones. They will use their tradition so that they look out for one another and live that sense of Puritan covenant so that there is community liberty, and a deeper sense of relationship, so that love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law. Finally, the community would be the authority over the individual, and we each would find security, solace, support and nurture here.
Long ago the Puritans had elders who took spiritual responsibility for each other. In recent decades our congregations have begun to look at the inappropriate behavior of individuals, and then create covenants of right relationships among members. In the long run we will have stronger congregations with stronger leaders rather than groups of individuals who worry they might offend someone, and thus fear acting collectively because someone may be offended, and thus do not develop a strong community presence as a church. For instance, we have a lot of wonderful individuals who are active in our community who happen to be members of this church, but there is little collective presence. We must speak our collective truth in a more powerful, honest, forthright manner. Think about when you speak or act here. How often does it reflect the needs of the whole community rather than your needs or your special interest? UUism sometimes grows in other parts of the country because the congregation has to stand over and against a culture that is unwelcoming. They are rebels from the cultural authority. I sometimes think that we New Englanders UUs are a little too comfortable in our reason, tradition and community. And maybe it is time to let go of rebellious individualism, and embrace rebellious community identity and have a true impact on each other and our community, because we would challenge each other spiritually to grow and assert a little community authority once again. This week one of my polity students quoted an African proverb to me, and it is something members of UU churches would do well to remember, “I am, because we are.” Let us say together: “I am, because we are.”
Closing Words #683 (unison) from Theodore Parker
Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere;
its temple, all space;
its shrine, the good heart;
its creed, all truth;
its ritual, works of love;
its profession of faith, divine living.
February 15, 2009 - First Parish of Watertown
Call to Worship - Philippians 4:8 ; Galatians 5:22
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit. (Galatians)
Reading - from Jamesland by Michelle Huneven
Sermon - “Rebels With a Cause” Mark W. Harris
We are the direct ancestors of a Puritan group who founded Watertown and this congregation in 1630, but they did so on July 30, which as you know is not exactly prime church going time around here. Therefore in recent years, I have suggested we celebrate our church anniversary in mid-February, as this was the time of year in 1835 that we officially became Unitarian in the wake of the split with the Trinitarians, and the disestablishment of the Congregational state church of Massachusetts in 1833. Most of you now that I have more than a passing interest in history, and believe that we can understand ourselves better as people and as a community if we have a good grasp of our past. Where we have come from helps us understand why we are the way we are.
I spend a lot of time thinking about what we call congregational polity. This is another word for church government meaning how we settle ministers, elect church leaders and maintain our finances and buildings. I teach this subject online through the seminary I attended in Berkeley, CA, and have done so for the past 8 years. The subject of polity is much more than what I implied about electing church leaders, though. It also covers things like the whys and wherefores of rites of passage, and internal and external structures of membership, participation and authority. People have some vague idea that First Parish is governed by congregational polity. For some that means that this congregation holds all the power over our own governance, and no authority figures or structures are going to impose any hierarchal imperatives upon us. In other words, we are not only theological heretics, we are also anarchists.
I want to begin with a story from our Watertown Puritan heritage because it will give you a good sense of what our ancestors thought about Congregational polity right from the beginning. Who can read this line on the sign? (“It was the first church in New England to assert and apply the principle of Congregational independence.”) And then (“It was the first to protest against proscription for religious belief. Its refusal in 1631 to pay taxes without representation in a General Court led to the founding of representative government and marked the beginning of constitutional history.”) Wow. So, it is a bit grandiose, but certainly makes us seem important and worthy and good. But look again at those words - independence, protest, refusal. We may think democrats or free thinkers, but while we are cheering them on, what do they imply about authority? Are we likely to listen to those who claim to have some authority over us? The upside of our congregational polity may be a belief in democracy or the freedom to elect our officials, or decide religious questions for ourselves, but the downside is a tendency to be antiauthority.
Now the story - In early 1631, elder Richard Browne, a lay leader of Watertown preached a sermon where he asserted that “the churches of Rome are true churches.” What did he mean by this? It was really a statement of religious tolerance, not a common thing for a Puritan to believe in. Remember the Puritans have not only rebelled against the authoritarian Anglican church back in England that had asserted hierarchal control over congregations, but the Puritans were also quintessential Protestants. For a Protestant religious authority is primarily derived from where? (Bible), and for a Catholic, where is religious authority derived? (the Church). That’s right the hierarchy will tell you what the Bible says, and the idea of you reading the Bible and interpreting it for yourself is heresy. The interesting thing about this is that most Puritans would have said that their Calvinist understanding of the Bible, and the saving experience of God’s grace bestowed upon them excludes Catholicism and every other church except Puritan, from being a legitimate church. Puritans believed that only their pure religion was right, and of all the other wrong religions, Catholicism was most wrong. In fact Catholicism and Unitarianism were both outlawed in England until 1813. Yet Richard Browne said they were legitimate.
Browne’s statement produced repercussions with the religious authorities in Boston. George Phillips, the minister here in Watertown, agreed that Catholic churches were legitimate in the eyes of God. He and Browne were called to account for this variation in belief at a meeting in Boston, and eventually leaders in the Boston church came to Watertown for a second meeting to discuss the issue. In a letter the Boston leaders questioned whether Browne was fit to be an elder. Philips fired back that they would discipline Browne if they were told what was untrue about what he said. The problem is the congregation became split over the issue. Was Browne wrong doctrinally, and further was he wrong to have defied the counsel of the authorities? When the Court stated that Browne be dismissed, Watertown replied that that was a church decision. Then the Governor of the Commonwealth came. Phillips thought they were starting to interfere in what was a local matter, and instructed them only to come as visitors, and not as judges. The meeting ended peacefully, but because of the split in the congregation, Browne was eventually removed from his position as elder. This incident shows the difference between our modern understanding of Congregational polity and that of the Puritans. They assumed that congregational polity meant not the autonomy of each congregation, but the larger community of autonomous churches. By its very actions, the Watertown church set a precedent. It advocated religious tolerance and liberty, but it also refused to take the advice or support of their neighboring churches. They continued to reject authority when the Cambridge church was organized. In 1636 the leaders in Cambridge invited clergy and laity from every town in the Commonwealth, and they all went, except Watertown. Phillips said, “Every church is competent to act alone.” Then when John Knowles was ordained here in 1640, they didn’t invite anybody.
Did they have trouble with the idea of authority? Do any of you? (show of hands) We would expect that this would be true of most Unitarian Universalist churches. It is not just that we are children of the rebellious 1960’s. We can no longer sing My Generation, and intone, “hope I die before I get old,” because we are now nearly the old, and are hoping for a little more longevity. Let’s recall the history. We have already seen that even if most of the Puritans wanted doctrinal conformity, and wanted a more harmonious understanding between the churches than what happened here in Watertown, the Puritans were rebelling against an authoritarian government and church while affirming smaller more local communities that called their ministers out from among them, and elected their officers. While they did agree on harsh Calvinist doctrines, they were not creedal churches. Instead they followed covenants, which were commonly agreed upon statements based on how they would relate to one another, and further how they would look out for one another. So their reason for being was based upon relationships not doctrines. What this meant though was that they believed not in individual liberty, like us, but community liberty. What was best for the community as a whole always took precedent over the individuals, so for instance when someone wanted to join a church, they would not be able to join based upon their free choice, but instead the community would determine whether they were spiritually fit to join. We will come back to this question of whether or not we have spiritual responsibility for each other.
Many of us who join Unitarian Universalist congregations today come as a result of some negative prior experience with a more authoritarian religious denomination. We could not get married or have our baby baptized, or be a member of a particular faith community because they imposed some kind of rigorous rules on us, or expected some kind of belief that simply defied our intellectual curiosity or sound reason. So we came to this faith in rebellion, but not necessarily for any life affirming beliefs other than freedom from that fear, that dogma, that rigidity. I think this is also true for those early Unitarians who had to declare their independence from the congregational church here in Watertown in 1835. They wanted to keep a broad, diverse community without doctrinal restrictions as their reason for being a church community. They rebelled personally against doctrines of original sin, and predestination and the divinity of Jesus because they wanted their religious faith to be based in how they lived their lives rather than in doctrinal conformity. People sometimes quote me as saying that UUism is a faith grounded in deeds not creeds. People have a tough time explaining our free faith to others because they are always trying to define it in traditional terms. Most of us don’t care very much about religious doctrines or beliefs, but we do care about religious living and how we relate with one another in the world.
We know what we don’t like in religious authority - anything narrow, restrictive, dogmatic, or intolerant. The novel Jamesland presents us with a bit of a stereotype of our liberal religious response to authoritarian religious expression. In the reading the minister Helen Harland asks Pete, the former chef, who has had a mental breakdown, how he feels about his church going experience. He wonders why she just can’t say things, but instead needs to apologize every step of the way. Why this word “overarching spirit”, instead of just plain old God. Helen is afraid her congregation will freak out, and think she has gone Baptist on them. Do we have to apologize for any strong statement of faith or religious experience in this skeptical or overly sensitive environment? The issue for Helen may be in Pete’s question of whether she should hit ‘em a little harder. He is questioning perhaps that she does not challenge them to consider deeper powers of being, or be stretched in their comfortable church of no church. She mentions the traumatic experiences many of them have had, and seems accepting of their glorified social club, where, “They just don’t like religion.”
If some of us who are afraid of our experiences of religious authority, want to be free, we still might observe where even Helen’s secular group is finding its meaning. What do we like in religious faith, and how much authority comes with it? If some of the seekers after religious community come here to be healed as individuals from authoritarianism, then freedom helps them make this choice, but individualistic freedom does not help us become grounded in a new transformative faith, it only helps us get away from the old. Even our UUA Principles have this kind of individualistic grounding to them. Read #1 - the inherent worth and dignity of every person - you are worthy. Read #3 - Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations - you are accepted, now grow. Read #4 - a free and responsible search for truth and meaning - you should search for truth, be free. This is suppose to be a congregational covenant within our wider association, and even this, the most overarching covenant of all feels individualistic. Where is our responsibility to use this freedom to grow in faith together? What does it say about the we?
Maybe you would conclude that we ground our religious authority in the individual. Sure you have to discover what is meaningful for you, and yes, you ultimately make the choice about whether this free faith is right for you, and make the decision to join, but it is awfully lonely out there being an authority of one, and you could join a church of one, but it would be reminiscent of the women named Sheila, whom the sociologist Robert Bellah once described, who said she followed her own faith, Sheilaism. Her religious authority was herself. Well, frankly, I like more footnotes than that. The reason I became an authority on UU history is that I read all the books, and I engaged all the professors, and I learned from all the churches and all the people in those churches, who told me stories, and made me love this faith. In fact, long ago I learned about a young minister named Joel Foster, who was called to serve the First Parish of New Salem, MA, my home town. Foster was a liberal, and there were members of his parish who differed from him in religious beliefs. They only came to church on those Sundays when Foster exchanged pulpits with a more orthodox colleague. One Sunday, Foster mounted his horse, and rode down the Main Street of town making it appear as though he were leaving town in order to exchange. Then as soon as he was a safe distance from town, he turned his horse, rode cross country on back roads, and sneaked in the back door of the church. He hid until all of his opponents were seated in their pews, and then magically appeared in the pulpit. That is one way to force the issue of ministerial authority. You will listen to me whether you want to or not. On the other hand he was using his authority to say, you should listen to other perspectives then the one you are convinced is the truth, because by listening and stretching all the windows of your spiritual being you will grow as a religious person.
What Helen Harland’s congregation found, even if they disliked religion, was a meaningful community with each other. It was a start because at the least it recognized that there are larger authorities beyond the self we need to pay attention to if we are going to grow as people, as a congregation, as a denomination. Who are our authorities as a religious community? Can you name some? I always ask my ministerial students in the polity class, what are your sources of authority as ministers. We would usually name academic authority, denominational authority and personal faith, and the Bible would be traditionally woven into all three of those strands (perhaps now a loose leaf Bible). We could also look at sources of authority in the context of our community and echo those same strands restated - reason, the tradition, and the community. Our predecessors resisted the structure of congregational churches that had been set up. Perhaps their tolerance of Catholics shows they were far sighted, but we also have to consider where authority lies for us. Do we need an outside system of support? Do we need internal systems of structure where we help one another grow spiritually? If tradition is the authority we invoke, one member may tell the other member who wants him to consider a new way of looking at something, “No, we’ve always done it this way. Or what about community as the authority? Perhaps a new way of running a program has been successful elsewhere, and might strengthen our community, but we may tell the church in Boston the same thing we told them in 1631, “We’ll do it our way.” The problem with authority is that reason can cut off openness to new spiritual experiences, tradition can be the same old same old, and community can be a closed group of friends. Can we balance our minds, our traditions and our community that have been nurtured in individualism with a deeper sense of community? We need to nurture our greater connections if we are to survive and grow. For those who attended Mark Caggiano’s ordination in North Andover, think about how good it felt to be connected to something larger than ourselves.
How much authority does the community have? How much authority does the denomination have? How much authority does the minister have? I think our growing edge is a greater sense of the spiritual responsibility we must nurture in each other. People may come to us because they seek freedom from conformity or dogmas or intolerance. They find a common ground in this free faith, and they like to be together. They share values of freedom, and tolerance, and making the world a better place as they work for peace and justice. But they also need to grow a deeper faith through larger connections. They will use their reason to let everyone speak, and be heard, and share in building up the community. They will be open to new ways of faith, not merely the old easy ones. They will use their tradition so that they look out for one another and live that sense of Puritan covenant so that there is community liberty, and a deeper sense of relationship, so that love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law. Finally, the community would be the authority over the individual, and we each would find security, solace, support and nurture here.
Long ago the Puritans had elders who took spiritual responsibility for each other. In recent decades our congregations have begun to look at the inappropriate behavior of individuals, and then create covenants of right relationships among members. In the long run we will have stronger congregations with stronger leaders rather than groups of individuals who worry they might offend someone, and thus fear acting collectively because someone may be offended, and thus do not develop a strong community presence as a church. For instance, we have a lot of wonderful individuals who are active in our community who happen to be members of this church, but there is little collective presence. We must speak our collective truth in a more powerful, honest, forthright manner. Think about when you speak or act here. How often does it reflect the needs of the whole community rather than your needs or your special interest? UUism sometimes grows in other parts of the country because the congregation has to stand over and against a culture that is unwelcoming. They are rebels from the cultural authority. I sometimes think that we New Englanders UUs are a little too comfortable in our reason, tradition and community. And maybe it is time to let go of rebellious individualism, and embrace rebellious community identity and have a true impact on each other and our community, because we would challenge each other spiritually to grow and assert a little community authority once again. This week one of my polity students quoted an African proverb to me, and it is something members of UU churches would do well to remember, “I am, because we are.” Let us say together: “I am, because we are.”
Closing Words #683 (unison) from Theodore Parker
Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere;
its temple, all space;
its shrine, the good heart;
its creed, all truth;
its ritual, works of love;
its profession of faith, divine living.
“If We Come From Apes, How Come Apes Are Still Around? - Darwin at 200” by Mark W. Harris - February 8, 2009
“If We Come From Apes, How Come Apes Are Still Around? - Darwin at 200”
by Mark W. Harris - First Parish of Watertown, MA - February 8, 2009
Call to Worship (Responsive) “We Live By the Sun” by Stephanie Kaza
Response: We Live in All Things, All Things Live In Us”
We live by the sun
We feel by the moon
We move by the stars
We live in all things
All things live in us
We eat from the earth
We drink from the rain
We breathe of the air
We live in all things
All things live in us
We call to each other
We listen to each other
Our hearts deepen with love and compassion
We live in all things
All things live in us
We depend on the trees and animals
We depend on the earth
Our minds open with wisdom and insight
We live in all things
All things live in us
We dedicate our practice to others
We include all forms of life
We are grateful for all beings and companions
We live in all things
All things live in us
Reading - from Darwin’s Worms by Adam Phillips
Sermon - “If We Come From Apes, How Come Apes Are Still Around? -
Darwin at 200” by Mark W. Harris
If We Come From Apes, How Come Apes Are Still Around? These were the words on a Building 19 store sign that I noticed the last time my family was looking for salvaged sneakers, drapes, and sports equipment over in Burlington. This very question was put to the commercial test over the past couple of years in a series of Geico commercials. I remember one that depicted a caveman riding on a moving walkway at an airport, gliding by a sign for Geico auto insurance that shows a computer, and a sign emblazoned with the words, “So Easy A Caveman Can Do It.” In the background a song is struck up, “Everywhere I go, there is always something to remind me of another place and time.” These successful commercials led to a television series for the caveman, who also made a series of appearances on talk shows reminding us of how many cavemen are still around. Many women would confirm that conviction. Apes and Cavemen are branches on the evolutionary ladder that we have stereotypically placed lower down the chain from we humans, who we usually humbly think of as being the highest and most important part of evolutionary progress. Evolution and progress are words that have often been paired in the ladder of human development. It is the commonly accepted view of evolution, but it is patently wrong. Neanderthals, for instance, were probably a separate species from us, who in fact, had bigger brains than us. As Stephen Jay Gould once wrote, “Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.” We humans, scientists would remind us, are only here by accident.
Yet most of us prefer the ladder. It is human centered, it is predictable, and we can even fantasize that this was the plan God intended all along. An ordered plan of creation ordained by a loving, but inscrutable God, who wanted us to obey, and punished us when we did not, ruling from heaven through a revealed text. This had been the generally accepted view of the beginning and development of life for centuries. It was the creation story generations learned as children. Then 200 years ago this week, on February 12, 1809, Charles Darwin was born in England. He is one of the few figures in the history of the world, who we can say, changed the course of the way we think about the universe and life as it has developed on earth. In addition to a predictable and progressive creation, we have also preferred an ordered universe, especially one where nature is beautiful and calm. Yet we have no theological explanation for who lives and dies, or who succumbs to disease, and similarly we have no God who is sending hurricanes or floods because he is angry, or rain storms because he feels sorry about the drought. While human actions may affect the weather, there is no relationship between our longing for nature to have some meaning to it, when in reality it is morally neutral
In the fight to survive in nature and in culture, we would summarize with the simple words, “It’s a jungle out there.” Many of you have heard me speak about my encounter with an ocean wave off the coast of Maine fifteen years ago. I may have talked about confronting death or recovering from a serious injury, but there is also the role of nature in this accident. Gigantic waves can appear out of nowhere in the ocean and crush human life in a flash. There is no moral compunction in nature. I have this vague memory of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where one of the characters remarks that nature is out to get us. In my case you can juxtapose the beauty of the ocean waves spanking the rocks at Pemaquid with the crush of bones and flesh as a human life is plucked from the safety of shore into the chaos of potential death.
This year not only marks the 200 th birth anniversary for Darwin, and Abraham Lincoln, but Edgar Allan Poe as well. Poe writes his own version of a wave story in his “Descent into the Maelstrom.” In that story there is a amazing fishing spot off the coast of Norway, but only two brothers ever dared to fish there. Twice a day a terrible whirlpool would form and suck down every object or living thing within several miles. One day the brothers thought the weather was going to be perfect, and so they set sail for this fishing area between the shore and the islands. They envisioned a successful day of fishing, and getting home before the pool ever formed. Then suddenly the winds changed, and they were trapped. They couldn’t row to the islands, and then they began to be tossed around so violently that the mast snapped. The younger brother grabbed a ring bolt near the front of the boat, and the older sibling held on to an empty water barrel attached to the rear. They rode this way for a time, but then saw they were headed straight for a large whirlpool that was forming. In his terror the older brother lunged forward and forced his brother's hand from the ring bolt. The younger did not fight his brother, but went to the back and held on to the water cask.
Then the worst happened. The boat careened into the whirlpool. The younger brother closed his eyes, said a prayer, and waited for the whirlpool to suck him down to his death. When he did not die, he opened his eyes to see that the boat was on the edge of the pool, circling around, and going down slowly towards the abyss. As he was watching the other objects in the pool, he noticed that lighter, cylindrical things went down slowly, while heavier objects dropped more quickly into the center. He realized that the only way to survive was probably if they lashed themselves to the water cask, and threw themselves out of the boat. He motioned to his brother who was now holding on to the ring, but he refused to respond, dropped his head, and held on more tightly to the boat, choosing the familiarity of the boat over the uncertainty of the waters. At last the younger brother cut the cask free, and tied himself to it. As it turned out, he was right. The barrel stayed up higher in the pool while the boat sank, and his brother was lost. The pool changed as the whirl subsided, becoming calmer, and the younger brother soon found himself on the surface of the water with his home in view in the distance. The local fishermen soon picked him up, but they did not know him, because his hair which was once as black as a raven, was now white as snow.
Like the story of evolution, this story reminds us that we must let go of the familiar in order to evolve and change, as life around us evolves, and we must do this in order to save our lives. This story about adapting, changing, and surviving might have been appropriate for last week’s sermon on risks, but it also fits our understanding of how evolution transformed our understanding of life itself. First, from the distance of our own day, we forget how difficult it was to accept the challenge of Darwin’s ideas. People believed that all species were fixed and unchangeable, and that God had created everything perfectly and without error the first time. But then there were an incredible number of fossil discoveries. What were these, God’s mistakes? Darwin with some trepidation in the wake of his discoveries made during his five year voyage on the Beagle, decided to reject independent creation. His findings supported others theories that species adapt, or proliferate, or are wiped out by local environmental changes. Nature would choose those who were able to survive. This had serious religious implications. It appeared that humans were no longer a special creation in God’s image, and even that God was not controlling the process. Was the Bible one big lie? Darwin was attacked from the start, as the seeming purposeful nature of creation was removed, along with God’s design. We were merely another animal that had survived. This caused a great uproar in the Anglican church to which Thomas Huxley responded, “I’d rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop.”
If nature was not benign, then it was a fight for survival against indifference. And if God was not in charge, then the implication is life is what we make it. This is why liberals put so much of their hopes and energy into politics. Their faith is based in a society where politics must be the order we create that will save us from ourselves. Most of us are aware that there have been a few perversions of Darwin's ideas of nature’s adaptations coming from struggle and change. The idea of stronger races killing off weaker ones, and the blood theories of eugenics have meant that with no God to control the order of nature, certain people have presumed their own prerogative to determine who deserves to live and who shall die. Darwin had shown that human society and biological nature were one. Competition, conflict and aggression were played out not only in the fight of animals to survive, but also in the fight of nations and races to control who was on top. Moral law was subject to biology, and so the life of an individual was secondary to the interest of the community. The march of progress and the individual striving for perfection became part of this idea about what life was meant to be, and for good or ill, it has stayed with us.
Like the fisherman, we have to deal with our whirlpool of problems, and it is up to us to stay afloat. In this context it is interesting how Darwin was so interested in worms. He came to this fascination late in late. I make my own association with earthworms to early in my life. My father was an avid fisherman who was always getting us up at the crack of dawn to go fishing at nearby Lake Mattawa. This was before the days when everyone fished with lures, and so our regular fish food was fat juicy worms that we dug from our large vegetable garden. I can recall pushing the shovel into ground, sifting through the black earth, finding the wiggly little critters, who were about to be sacrificed, and then placing them in an old metal coffee can that was filled with dirt in order to preserve the worms in life until we could skewer them on the hook for bait. It was an object lesson of one creature eating another, who was then eaten by another in a less than romantic image of the cycle of life. So worms became our fish bait, that became our food, that live in our historical memories as the fertilizer for the Pilgrim’s corn, when the Natives taught them the ways of surviving in this cold, barren wilderness we now call home. We think of locally grown, and compost piles, and the fertility of the earth to maintain ecological balance and potential for growth.
No one would have predicted that Darwin would change the world. While his father was a doctor, and his mother was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, Charles was a below average student of whom his father had said: “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and to all your family.” He preferred chemistry experiments in the tool shed to going to school. His father sent him to university in Edinburgh to be a doctor, but Charles preferred riding, shooting, and collecting over watching surgery. Then his father wanted him to be a minister, but he preferred riding, shooting, and collecting over theology. He liked walking around Wales, and botany. Then came the invitation to go on this trip. This trip that changed the world. One hundred and fifty years ago, On the Origin of Species was published. The book led to a explosion of change. Darwin had drawn the very tree of life, and how its branches grew. But these branches were not predetermined by God, but were an ever changing , ever reproducing, ever adapting and growing tree that seemed almost endless with branches falling off, and new ones growing in search of forms that could survive, adapt, and prosper as life forms. And winners were not merely bigger and better with language and thought, but others forms of life won, too, and survived by other criteria. These include miniscule bacteria, who have evolved just as much as us, but their mechanism for survival was not big brains, but rapid reproduction. Life came from the tree in many forms, and success is measured in many ways, but it is all one in its branch back to the trunk of the life spark itself. In the Origin, he wrote, “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed [by the Creator ] into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
Darwin worried about publishing these findings. What would the world think? Some thought the religious underpinnings of the world had been destroyed, and we were cut adrift to float into the maelstrom. School administrators said things like, how can teachers tell students they come from apes and expect them not to act like apes? We would be out of control. Did it mean atheism was the only alternative? Some liberals cast themselves as being more highly evolved than their opponents. At the Scopes trial, Unitarian minister Charles Francis Potter said the author of the antievolution bill in Tennessee was nearer in mental development to the nomads of Biblical times than he was to the intelligence of the school teacher. For many of the liberals evolution meant progress. It reaffirmed the liberal belief that the mind must be open and free to truth whencesoever it comes. For some the teaching of evolution did not need to conflict with Biblical understanding. They said it was a constantly creating universe with God at the helm, and that was what they believed all along. The problem is no one can discern God’s purposes or what the nature of our destiny really is, and never will. What really struck Darwin, the man who loved to observe and record, was the incredible complexity of creatures produced by the laws acting around us. There is growth with reproduction. There is inheritance. There is variability and adaptability grounded in the conditions of life. There is struggle. There is divergence. All of it taken together is a fascinating stew of life. It was different than a world of soft green scenery with romantic vistas, it was an explosion of violent energies, and a multiplicity of possibility. It was far from staid and calm and predictable.
As a boy I remember earthworms as the food for fish. As adults we sometimes morbidly remark that once we die we become food for earthworms. There in the lowly worm, Darwin constructed his moral universe, particularly as he faced the complexity of life that was such an explosion of random energy. Where is the meaning? There it was, he said, in my two favorite things: food and history, as dramatized through the life of the earthworm. They eat to create the conditions for the future. Together we create a society that makes a future possible. They bury to preserve the past. We learn how to create that society by understanding where we have come from. On the car trips to Lake Mattawa my family would go by this ramshackle cottage just before we got to the lake. They had a sign on the peeling shingles, “Earthworms and Fudge.” We would all echo in unison, “Mmm, tasty.” Silly signs make us think about apes and worms, and the meaning of life. Out of the history that has brought us here, and the food that keep us in life, we remember Darwin and his world changing ideas. If evolution has lessons to teach us, it is these: It is a miracle we are here in all this randomness -how precious we are. It is amazing how many possibilities are given over to life - how remarkable life is. Finally, it is truly fulfilling to uphold and celebrate the number of gifts we have received. May we take the freedom we have to use those gifts, and implement them wisely.
Closing Words - from Herman Hesse
Sometimes, when a bird cries out,
Or the wind sweeps through a tree,
Or a dog howls in a far-off farm
I hold still and listen a long time.
My world turns and goes back to the place
Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,
The bird and the blowing wind
Were like me, and were my brothers and sisters.
My soul turns into a tree,
And an animal, and a cloud bank.
Then changed and odd it comes home
And asks me questions. What should I reply?
by Mark W. Harris - First Parish of Watertown, MA - February 8, 2009
Call to Worship (Responsive) “We Live By the Sun” by Stephanie Kaza
Response: We Live in All Things, All Things Live In Us”
We live by the sun
We feel by the moon
We move by the stars
We live in all things
All things live in us
We eat from the earth
We drink from the rain
We breathe of the air
We live in all things
All things live in us
We call to each other
We listen to each other
Our hearts deepen with love and compassion
We live in all things
All things live in us
We depend on the trees and animals
We depend on the earth
Our minds open with wisdom and insight
We live in all things
All things live in us
We dedicate our practice to others
We include all forms of life
We are grateful for all beings and companions
We live in all things
All things live in us
Reading - from Darwin’s Worms by Adam Phillips
Sermon - “If We Come From Apes, How Come Apes Are Still Around? -
Darwin at 200” by Mark W. Harris
If We Come From Apes, How Come Apes Are Still Around? These were the words on a Building 19 store sign that I noticed the last time my family was looking for salvaged sneakers, drapes, and sports equipment over in Burlington. This very question was put to the commercial test over the past couple of years in a series of Geico commercials. I remember one that depicted a caveman riding on a moving walkway at an airport, gliding by a sign for Geico auto insurance that shows a computer, and a sign emblazoned with the words, “So Easy A Caveman Can Do It.” In the background a song is struck up, “Everywhere I go, there is always something to remind me of another place and time.” These successful commercials led to a television series for the caveman, who also made a series of appearances on talk shows reminding us of how many cavemen are still around. Many women would confirm that conviction. Apes and Cavemen are branches on the evolutionary ladder that we have stereotypically placed lower down the chain from we humans, who we usually humbly think of as being the highest and most important part of evolutionary progress. Evolution and progress are words that have often been paired in the ladder of human development. It is the commonly accepted view of evolution, but it is patently wrong. Neanderthals, for instance, were probably a separate species from us, who in fact, had bigger brains than us. As Stephen Jay Gould once wrote, “Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.” We humans, scientists would remind us, are only here by accident.
Yet most of us prefer the ladder. It is human centered, it is predictable, and we can even fantasize that this was the plan God intended all along. An ordered plan of creation ordained by a loving, but inscrutable God, who wanted us to obey, and punished us when we did not, ruling from heaven through a revealed text. This had been the generally accepted view of the beginning and development of life for centuries. It was the creation story generations learned as children. Then 200 years ago this week, on February 12, 1809, Charles Darwin was born in England. He is one of the few figures in the history of the world, who we can say, changed the course of the way we think about the universe and life as it has developed on earth. In addition to a predictable and progressive creation, we have also preferred an ordered universe, especially one where nature is beautiful and calm. Yet we have no theological explanation for who lives and dies, or who succumbs to disease, and similarly we have no God who is sending hurricanes or floods because he is angry, or rain storms because he feels sorry about the drought. While human actions may affect the weather, there is no relationship between our longing for nature to have some meaning to it, when in reality it is morally neutral
In the fight to survive in nature and in culture, we would summarize with the simple words, “It’s a jungle out there.” Many of you have heard me speak about my encounter with an ocean wave off the coast of Maine fifteen years ago. I may have talked about confronting death or recovering from a serious injury, but there is also the role of nature in this accident. Gigantic waves can appear out of nowhere in the ocean and crush human life in a flash. There is no moral compunction in nature. I have this vague memory of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where one of the characters remarks that nature is out to get us. In my case you can juxtapose the beauty of the ocean waves spanking the rocks at Pemaquid with the crush of bones and flesh as a human life is plucked from the safety of shore into the chaos of potential death.
This year not only marks the 200 th birth anniversary for Darwin, and Abraham Lincoln, but Edgar Allan Poe as well. Poe writes his own version of a wave story in his “Descent into the Maelstrom.” In that story there is a amazing fishing spot off the coast of Norway, but only two brothers ever dared to fish there. Twice a day a terrible whirlpool would form and suck down every object or living thing within several miles. One day the brothers thought the weather was going to be perfect, and so they set sail for this fishing area between the shore and the islands. They envisioned a successful day of fishing, and getting home before the pool ever formed. Then suddenly the winds changed, and they were trapped. They couldn’t row to the islands, and then they began to be tossed around so violently that the mast snapped. The younger brother grabbed a ring bolt near the front of the boat, and the older sibling held on to an empty water barrel attached to the rear. They rode this way for a time, but then saw they were headed straight for a large whirlpool that was forming. In his terror the older brother lunged forward and forced his brother's hand from the ring bolt. The younger did not fight his brother, but went to the back and held on to the water cask.
Then the worst happened. The boat careened into the whirlpool. The younger brother closed his eyes, said a prayer, and waited for the whirlpool to suck him down to his death. When he did not die, he opened his eyes to see that the boat was on the edge of the pool, circling around, and going down slowly towards the abyss. As he was watching the other objects in the pool, he noticed that lighter, cylindrical things went down slowly, while heavier objects dropped more quickly into the center. He realized that the only way to survive was probably if they lashed themselves to the water cask, and threw themselves out of the boat. He motioned to his brother who was now holding on to the ring, but he refused to respond, dropped his head, and held on more tightly to the boat, choosing the familiarity of the boat over the uncertainty of the waters. At last the younger brother cut the cask free, and tied himself to it. As it turned out, he was right. The barrel stayed up higher in the pool while the boat sank, and his brother was lost. The pool changed as the whirl subsided, becoming calmer, and the younger brother soon found himself on the surface of the water with his home in view in the distance. The local fishermen soon picked him up, but they did not know him, because his hair which was once as black as a raven, was now white as snow.
Like the story of evolution, this story reminds us that we must let go of the familiar in order to evolve and change, as life around us evolves, and we must do this in order to save our lives. This story about adapting, changing, and surviving might have been appropriate for last week’s sermon on risks, but it also fits our understanding of how evolution transformed our understanding of life itself. First, from the distance of our own day, we forget how difficult it was to accept the challenge of Darwin’s ideas. People believed that all species were fixed and unchangeable, and that God had created everything perfectly and without error the first time. But then there were an incredible number of fossil discoveries. What were these, God’s mistakes? Darwin with some trepidation in the wake of his discoveries made during his five year voyage on the Beagle, decided to reject independent creation. His findings supported others theories that species adapt, or proliferate, or are wiped out by local environmental changes. Nature would choose those who were able to survive. This had serious religious implications. It appeared that humans were no longer a special creation in God’s image, and even that God was not controlling the process. Was the Bible one big lie? Darwin was attacked from the start, as the seeming purposeful nature of creation was removed, along with God’s design. We were merely another animal that had survived. This caused a great uproar in the Anglican church to which Thomas Huxley responded, “I’d rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop.”
If nature was not benign, then it was a fight for survival against indifference. And if God was not in charge, then the implication is life is what we make it. This is why liberals put so much of their hopes and energy into politics. Their faith is based in a society where politics must be the order we create that will save us from ourselves. Most of us are aware that there have been a few perversions of Darwin's ideas of nature’s adaptations coming from struggle and change. The idea of stronger races killing off weaker ones, and the blood theories of eugenics have meant that with no God to control the order of nature, certain people have presumed their own prerogative to determine who deserves to live and who shall die. Darwin had shown that human society and biological nature were one. Competition, conflict and aggression were played out not only in the fight of animals to survive, but also in the fight of nations and races to control who was on top. Moral law was subject to biology, and so the life of an individual was secondary to the interest of the community. The march of progress and the individual striving for perfection became part of this idea about what life was meant to be, and for good or ill, it has stayed with us.
Like the fisherman, we have to deal with our whirlpool of problems, and it is up to us to stay afloat. In this context it is interesting how Darwin was so interested in worms. He came to this fascination late in late. I make my own association with earthworms to early in my life. My father was an avid fisherman who was always getting us up at the crack of dawn to go fishing at nearby Lake Mattawa. This was before the days when everyone fished with lures, and so our regular fish food was fat juicy worms that we dug from our large vegetable garden. I can recall pushing the shovel into ground, sifting through the black earth, finding the wiggly little critters, who were about to be sacrificed, and then placing them in an old metal coffee can that was filled with dirt in order to preserve the worms in life until we could skewer them on the hook for bait. It was an object lesson of one creature eating another, who was then eaten by another in a less than romantic image of the cycle of life. So worms became our fish bait, that became our food, that live in our historical memories as the fertilizer for the Pilgrim’s corn, when the Natives taught them the ways of surviving in this cold, barren wilderness we now call home. We think of locally grown, and compost piles, and the fertility of the earth to maintain ecological balance and potential for growth.
No one would have predicted that Darwin would change the world. While his father was a doctor, and his mother was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, Charles was a below average student of whom his father had said: “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and to all your family.” He preferred chemistry experiments in the tool shed to going to school. His father sent him to university in Edinburgh to be a doctor, but Charles preferred riding, shooting, and collecting over watching surgery. Then his father wanted him to be a minister, but he preferred riding, shooting, and collecting over theology. He liked walking around Wales, and botany. Then came the invitation to go on this trip. This trip that changed the world. One hundred and fifty years ago, On the Origin of Species was published. The book led to a explosion of change. Darwin had drawn the very tree of life, and how its branches grew. But these branches were not predetermined by God, but were an ever changing , ever reproducing, ever adapting and growing tree that seemed almost endless with branches falling off, and new ones growing in search of forms that could survive, adapt, and prosper as life forms. And winners were not merely bigger and better with language and thought, but others forms of life won, too, and survived by other criteria. These include miniscule bacteria, who have evolved just as much as us, but their mechanism for survival was not big brains, but rapid reproduction. Life came from the tree in many forms, and success is measured in many ways, but it is all one in its branch back to the trunk of the life spark itself. In the Origin, he wrote, “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed [by the Creator ] into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
Darwin worried about publishing these findings. What would the world think? Some thought the religious underpinnings of the world had been destroyed, and we were cut adrift to float into the maelstrom. School administrators said things like, how can teachers tell students they come from apes and expect them not to act like apes? We would be out of control. Did it mean atheism was the only alternative? Some liberals cast themselves as being more highly evolved than their opponents. At the Scopes trial, Unitarian minister Charles Francis Potter said the author of the antievolution bill in Tennessee was nearer in mental development to the nomads of Biblical times than he was to the intelligence of the school teacher. For many of the liberals evolution meant progress. It reaffirmed the liberal belief that the mind must be open and free to truth whencesoever it comes. For some the teaching of evolution did not need to conflict with Biblical understanding. They said it was a constantly creating universe with God at the helm, and that was what they believed all along. The problem is no one can discern God’s purposes or what the nature of our destiny really is, and never will. What really struck Darwin, the man who loved to observe and record, was the incredible complexity of creatures produced by the laws acting around us. There is growth with reproduction. There is inheritance. There is variability and adaptability grounded in the conditions of life. There is struggle. There is divergence. All of it taken together is a fascinating stew of life. It was different than a world of soft green scenery with romantic vistas, it was an explosion of violent energies, and a multiplicity of possibility. It was far from staid and calm and predictable.
As a boy I remember earthworms as the food for fish. As adults we sometimes morbidly remark that once we die we become food for earthworms. There in the lowly worm, Darwin constructed his moral universe, particularly as he faced the complexity of life that was such an explosion of random energy. Where is the meaning? There it was, he said, in my two favorite things: food and history, as dramatized through the life of the earthworm. They eat to create the conditions for the future. Together we create a society that makes a future possible. They bury to preserve the past. We learn how to create that society by understanding where we have come from. On the car trips to Lake Mattawa my family would go by this ramshackle cottage just before we got to the lake. They had a sign on the peeling shingles, “Earthworms and Fudge.” We would all echo in unison, “Mmm, tasty.” Silly signs make us think about apes and worms, and the meaning of life. Out of the history that has brought us here, and the food that keep us in life, we remember Darwin and his world changing ideas. If evolution has lessons to teach us, it is these: It is a miracle we are here in all this randomness -how precious we are. It is amazing how many possibilities are given over to life - how remarkable life is. Finally, it is truly fulfilling to uphold and celebrate the number of gifts we have received. May we take the freedom we have to use those gifts, and implement them wisely.
Closing Words - from Herman Hesse
Sometimes, when a bird cries out,
Or the wind sweeps through a tree,
Or a dog howls in a far-off farm
I hold still and listen a long time.
My world turns and goes back to the place
Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,
The bird and the blowing wind
Were like me, and were my brothers and sisters.
My soul turns into a tree,
And an animal, and a cloud bank.
Then changed and odd it comes home
And asks me questions. What should I reply?
"Risk Aversion" by Mark W. Harris - February 1, 2009
“Risk Aversion” by Mark W. Harris
First Parish of Watertown, Unitarian Universalist - February 1, 2009
Call to Worship - “Risks” Anonymous
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your dreams before a crowd is to risk ridicule.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure
But to risk we must, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing is one who does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrows, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow, or love.
Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave - he has forfeited his freedom.
Only a person who takes risks is FREE
Reading - “Courage” by Anne Sexton
It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
Sermon - “Risk Aversion”
I was trying to recall a certain story for this sermon, but I was having trouble coming up with the source. My memory is that Mark Twain tells a story about a cat, who in search of a little warmth, leaps up on a hot stove and burns herself, and immediately jumps off. The wisdom Twain gleans from this is that while the cat will never jump on a hot stove again, she will also never jump on a cold one either, and thus will never take the risk of enjoying the possibility of warmth again. Once bitten, twice shy, I guess. The cat becomes afraid of stoves forevermore. Yet I could not verify the source of this story. When I googled Twain and hot stove’s, I either went off to explore Huck Finn, or found myself with lots of websites for baseball’s hot stove league, the discussion of what’s happening with player signings and trades during the winter months. Let me take the chance of declaring that the story is Twain’s, and perhaps you will take the chance of believing me. For as our opening words imply, all of life is about taking chances, and if we are afraid of all those things life offers, then we probably won’t go many places, or do many things, or experience many people, or learn very much.
Having said that, you need to know that I am a high anxiety person. Over the years here if you have ever felt that I was not listening to you at a conversation during social hour, it was probably because my anxiety meter was on overdrive about where my boys were, and whether they were ok. It happened just last week when Andrea was away, and Asher was here but sick, and I could not find him after the service. I ended up asking Martha Scott if she would run over to my house and see if the boys were there, and were ok. I am not the kind of person who says, oh, things will be fine. Last Sunday we had a missing microphone. How do you think a preacher with high anxiety about everything going right feels about a missing microphone on Sunday morning? The problem is you probably think the most important part of my job is coming up with some inspirational words for you on Sunday morning, and yet if I have to occupy the time before the service with some kind of technical issue, then it takes away from my focus on what is meaningful.
While my genetic inclination to worry about the whereabouts of children probably comes from my mother who was constantly reassuring herself that I, her baby, was within shouting distance, it did not prevent me from taking certain risks, physical, emotional and vocational, with my own life. These included exploring the forest behind my childhood home, playing football, experimenting with drugs, or moving to California or England. Those were all things that involved a degree of risk, but they meant learning to have independence to explore the world about me, or making friends, or trying to find meaning, or experiencing other cultures and ways of being in the world. In each case we may weigh the risk against the advantage of what we would gain, and choose the risk (or not). They were all attempts to make life more interesting and fulfilling. My father once told me that if I ever got lost in the forest, I should find a stream or brook, and follow it, because rather than leading me in circles, it would take me in one direction and eventually out to safety. I am not sure this is true, but I took it as a reassuring guide to uphold my own willingness to risk getting lost in the forest because I wanted to explore the wild place where I could pretend play to my heart’s content. It was like the idea that the river flows to the sea, and will eventually take me home.
We all make decisions about life that weigh risk versus benefit, and anxiety sometimes impinges. Some people are so afraid of flying, they will not go anywhere by that mode of transportation. If that means they never go overseas, so be it. We may even feel we reap a benefit from something that is very risky, the thrill of rock climbing without ropes for instance, may be a risky challenge that some cannot resist. We all have different anxieties about what might befall us, and we all handle them in different ways. Fear of personal disaster is prevalent in our culture. I heard lots of stories in seminary about people with mental health issues disrupting services, and then it actually happened to me the very first time I preached. This past summer there was a horrifying incident where a gunman killed two people at our UU Church in Knoxville. Yet is that kind of thing going to prevent us from going to church? It is not something I ever consider because its likelihood seems so remote. Perhaps we end up more cautious, but we don’t stop living for fear that something might befall us. We would then never walk down the street, or go to bed at night. This winter one of our own community members has been reminded how dangerous the ice can be, and we have heard other similar tales. While we may be more cautious, we still need to take that step out of the house to live again, and experience all those things that make life so interesting and intriguing. I recall my mother’s fear many years ago after she broke her hip. It was traumatic, and even though she recovered, she never walked right again, and I wish that we had said, “Mom push yourself, and don’t be afraid.” But it’s not always so easy when you are the one who is afraid.
One problem we have to overcome is that our current cultural climate makes us afraid. The genesis of this sermon was a conversation with my colleague Mike Clark, the minister of the Methodist Church in town. On Christmas Eve, a member of our church came to me and reported that she had heard that there was an explosion at the Methodist Church. This report made me think that the church was in rubble or something. This seems to have been the general response, even though it was far from the truth. When I called Mike to make sure everything was ok, he said there had been a back draught on the stove, and a couple of people had been burned. While it was serious, it was not exactly a major disaster. Mike then went on to describe how the response from media, and most particularly from some disaster relief company tried to fuel the fires of fear. He said, “you know how there are lawyers who are ambulance chasers, well, now there are disaster chasers.” Mike was immediately visited by this person who had brochures to give out to help people cope with all the issues, and he was ready to quote a hefty clean up price, assuming high toxicity, of course. Mike said he was merely looking to make a buck off someone else’s pain.
It could be that we are just emerging from the culture of individual fear into a new culture of hopeful community. But just a couple of weeks ago the Sunday Parade Magazine was headlined by a lead article “You Can Survive: 9 Way to Stay Alive When the Worst Happens. My first reaction was, Does somebody actually think about these things? They must have worse anxiety than I do. Could you live through a fall into icy water? Endure a bear attack? A lightning bolt and a growling bear introduce you to the survival quiz. Could you pass? This is no way to live if you want to enjoy life, by filling yourself with anxiety about all that can go wrong. I suppose the most prevalent fear is escaping a plane crash. I suspect this is a control issue because you are far safer in a plane than in your automobile. And as to who is driving, give me this pilot who crashed landed into the Hudson any day. Does anyone actually calculate which is the safest seat for them to sit in, or figure out how they are going to get off a plane? In fact, most any seat is good, and your chances of surviving are pretty good. The best thing would be not to think about these kinds of things at all, but go to the places you really want ot go to when you can afford it, and relax and enjoy yourselves. If we spend our hours in a hotel calculating how we are going to get out in a fire, we are simply building up largely unfounded fears. Sure a disaster can happen, and we should not dash across a major highway in order to invite it, but nevertheless, one should never calculate things like the chances of success in marriage, how much fun something can be, or the potential for disaster. As the Nike commercial used to say, “Just Do It.” This may be hard especially after we have endured a test. Still we are much better off living our lives with a commitment to moving ahead, taking responsibility for ourselves, and openness to trying something new, and not with a ticking clock of fear that will prevent us from enjoying anyone or anything or fully engaging with life and all that if offers.
I mentioned before how my fears about the well being of my children has often heightened my anxiety. When the television show “Without a Trace” first came on, I didn’t want to watch it because I thought it was going to be about children who are kidnapped. Yet I plunged forward, and now it is my favorite show. Those who share this fear can calculate by knowing that the chances of your child being snatched by a stranger are remote. While the culture exacerbates certain fears, we actually make it worse when we make our kids fearful. This can be extended to older children in other ways. Last fall there was an article in the New Yorker on “Overparenting.” Also called “Helicopter parenting,” this is not so much anxiety about losing your kids physically, but instead parent’s own anxieties about success or achievement. The other day my son Dana was commenting about how every kid in his sixth grade class has a cell phone. While this use is partly cultural pressure, it is certainly not based in need. I think some of it may be anxiety driven. It is a way to keep track of kids, especially in this age when parents cannot be with kids as much physically. We compensate by being in touch symbolically. Parents exhibit anxiety over what college the child will get in to, and they start hyperventilating over it when the child is in preschool. Some say this is a dependency of the parent on the child , and a transfer of their identity to the child. One thing that our testing and achievement oriented culture has led to is a lot more cheating in school, and even plagiarizing application forms from material found on the web. Like our other anxieties, perhaps the first best response is to cool it. Parents are often overreacting with anxiety about their kids. We begin loving them by letting go of our fears, and listening to theirs. Sometimes we worry too much, and often we worry about the wrong things. Perhaps we could worry a little more about those children below the poverty line We could worry if our children are happy, and not successful, or another common fear today, germ free.
We hear a lot more these days of how we are vulnerable to disasters. Floods destroy New Orleans, and terrorists threaten attacks. Over the last few years, people have been encouraged to develop disaster plans for their families, and assemble supplies. I think it is good to be prepared, but I sometimes feel that obsessions about this can drive our fears, and make us feel worse. Earlier when I spoke of fear of flying, I said it was a control issue. Who is in the drivers seat? Confronting our fears is a control issue, but we must be in charge of our fears. Otherwise the fears become the controlling factor in our lives, and we have lost the freedom to live. We have recently inaugurated the first African American president in our history. He is charismatic and hopeful, and a unifier. Many of us probably fear that a leader like this is a likely target for an assassin's bullet. Like Martin, Obama may not get to fulfill his dream, but also like Martin, he knows we cannot be prisoners of our fears. One must live with self-confidence and openness to what is possible. I think he exudes that, and is an example for us.
Virgil, the Roman Poet, once wrote “Fortune sides with him who dares.” There are everyday risks we all take, like walking down the street or driving, but we willingly take those chances. But there are also the risks we can take when something exciting comes along - a new job, a new focus, a new friend. We always weigh pros and cons, but we also have to ask when we are accepting presumed security fueled by fear, and when do we risk trying something new. It is the difference between calculating what can go wrong, and living out what is possible or envisioning something new. Churches too often live by counting every penny, or calculating what they cannot do. This is not a good way for us to imagine a greater future or a stronger community. We must believe in our hearts that we are a great church, and so you must believe as a person that the risks you take will be rewarded commensurate with your willingness to change and grow. The true security comes not from the job you hold or the home you own, but from an inner security you have about yourself. This security says you will not be trapped by fears but are able to face life’s circumstances with courage and fortitude.
Our reading today was Anne Sexton’s poem on courage, which reminded us that courage is an everyday occurrence in each life. It takes courage to confront physical infirmities, and it takes courage to meet our family’s needs. It takes courage to raise children with a sense of self grounded in an ability to know who they are and what they want to do. Fear is often invoked by external forces. We are fearful of how others define us. We were all called fatty or crybaby. We took risks when our loyalty was tested, or despair laid us low. We are fearful of all the world challenges us with, and so much of our action is reaction. Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote of striding toward freedom. When we trust ourselves and our own worth then we have a better chance of striding forth with courage in the face of our fears. When we risk defining ourselves then we have an abiding truth in which our hearts can rest. That truth is formed in our love and trust for others, and they for us in the communities that support us, and in life itself which beckons us to enjoy and experience and engage with all that life offers. The great theologian Paul Tillich once wrote: “He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.” Risk taking is a manifestation of an inward truth we all possess that we can act on and express with our love, our gifts, and our insights.
Closing Words - from Seneca
“It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”
First Parish of Watertown, Unitarian Universalist - February 1, 2009
Call to Worship - “Risks” Anonymous
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your dreams before a crowd is to risk ridicule.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure
But to risk we must, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing is one who does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrows, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow, or love.
Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave - he has forfeited his freedom.
Only a person who takes risks is FREE
Reading - “Courage” by Anne Sexton
It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
Sermon - “Risk Aversion”
I was trying to recall a certain story for this sermon, but I was having trouble coming up with the source. My memory is that Mark Twain tells a story about a cat, who in search of a little warmth, leaps up on a hot stove and burns herself, and immediately jumps off. The wisdom Twain gleans from this is that while the cat will never jump on a hot stove again, she will also never jump on a cold one either, and thus will never take the risk of enjoying the possibility of warmth again. Once bitten, twice shy, I guess. The cat becomes afraid of stoves forevermore. Yet I could not verify the source of this story. When I googled Twain and hot stove’s, I either went off to explore Huck Finn, or found myself with lots of websites for baseball’s hot stove league, the discussion of what’s happening with player signings and trades during the winter months. Let me take the chance of declaring that the story is Twain’s, and perhaps you will take the chance of believing me. For as our opening words imply, all of life is about taking chances, and if we are afraid of all those things life offers, then we probably won’t go many places, or do many things, or experience many people, or learn very much.
Having said that, you need to know that I am a high anxiety person. Over the years here if you have ever felt that I was not listening to you at a conversation during social hour, it was probably because my anxiety meter was on overdrive about where my boys were, and whether they were ok. It happened just last week when Andrea was away, and Asher was here but sick, and I could not find him after the service. I ended up asking Martha Scott if she would run over to my house and see if the boys were there, and were ok. I am not the kind of person who says, oh, things will be fine. Last Sunday we had a missing microphone. How do you think a preacher with high anxiety about everything going right feels about a missing microphone on Sunday morning? The problem is you probably think the most important part of my job is coming up with some inspirational words for you on Sunday morning, and yet if I have to occupy the time before the service with some kind of technical issue, then it takes away from my focus on what is meaningful.
While my genetic inclination to worry about the whereabouts of children probably comes from my mother who was constantly reassuring herself that I, her baby, was within shouting distance, it did not prevent me from taking certain risks, physical, emotional and vocational, with my own life. These included exploring the forest behind my childhood home, playing football, experimenting with drugs, or moving to California or England. Those were all things that involved a degree of risk, but they meant learning to have independence to explore the world about me, or making friends, or trying to find meaning, or experiencing other cultures and ways of being in the world. In each case we may weigh the risk against the advantage of what we would gain, and choose the risk (or not). They were all attempts to make life more interesting and fulfilling. My father once told me that if I ever got lost in the forest, I should find a stream or brook, and follow it, because rather than leading me in circles, it would take me in one direction and eventually out to safety. I am not sure this is true, but I took it as a reassuring guide to uphold my own willingness to risk getting lost in the forest because I wanted to explore the wild place where I could pretend play to my heart’s content. It was like the idea that the river flows to the sea, and will eventually take me home.
We all make decisions about life that weigh risk versus benefit, and anxiety sometimes impinges. Some people are so afraid of flying, they will not go anywhere by that mode of transportation. If that means they never go overseas, so be it. We may even feel we reap a benefit from something that is very risky, the thrill of rock climbing without ropes for instance, may be a risky challenge that some cannot resist. We all have different anxieties about what might befall us, and we all handle them in different ways. Fear of personal disaster is prevalent in our culture. I heard lots of stories in seminary about people with mental health issues disrupting services, and then it actually happened to me the very first time I preached. This past summer there was a horrifying incident where a gunman killed two people at our UU Church in Knoxville. Yet is that kind of thing going to prevent us from going to church? It is not something I ever consider because its likelihood seems so remote. Perhaps we end up more cautious, but we don’t stop living for fear that something might befall us. We would then never walk down the street, or go to bed at night. This winter one of our own community members has been reminded how dangerous the ice can be, and we have heard other similar tales. While we may be more cautious, we still need to take that step out of the house to live again, and experience all those things that make life so interesting and intriguing. I recall my mother’s fear many years ago after she broke her hip. It was traumatic, and even though she recovered, she never walked right again, and I wish that we had said, “Mom push yourself, and don’t be afraid.” But it’s not always so easy when you are the one who is afraid.
One problem we have to overcome is that our current cultural climate makes us afraid. The genesis of this sermon was a conversation with my colleague Mike Clark, the minister of the Methodist Church in town. On Christmas Eve, a member of our church came to me and reported that she had heard that there was an explosion at the Methodist Church. This report made me think that the church was in rubble or something. This seems to have been the general response, even though it was far from the truth. When I called Mike to make sure everything was ok, he said there had been a back draught on the stove, and a couple of people had been burned. While it was serious, it was not exactly a major disaster. Mike then went on to describe how the response from media, and most particularly from some disaster relief company tried to fuel the fires of fear. He said, “you know how there are lawyers who are ambulance chasers, well, now there are disaster chasers.” Mike was immediately visited by this person who had brochures to give out to help people cope with all the issues, and he was ready to quote a hefty clean up price, assuming high toxicity, of course. Mike said he was merely looking to make a buck off someone else’s pain.
It could be that we are just emerging from the culture of individual fear into a new culture of hopeful community. But just a couple of weeks ago the Sunday Parade Magazine was headlined by a lead article “You Can Survive: 9 Way to Stay Alive When the Worst Happens. My first reaction was, Does somebody actually think about these things? They must have worse anxiety than I do. Could you live through a fall into icy water? Endure a bear attack? A lightning bolt and a growling bear introduce you to the survival quiz. Could you pass? This is no way to live if you want to enjoy life, by filling yourself with anxiety about all that can go wrong. I suppose the most prevalent fear is escaping a plane crash. I suspect this is a control issue because you are far safer in a plane than in your automobile. And as to who is driving, give me this pilot who crashed landed into the Hudson any day. Does anyone actually calculate which is the safest seat for them to sit in, or figure out how they are going to get off a plane? In fact, most any seat is good, and your chances of surviving are pretty good. The best thing would be not to think about these kinds of things at all, but go to the places you really want ot go to when you can afford it, and relax and enjoy yourselves. If we spend our hours in a hotel calculating how we are going to get out in a fire, we are simply building up largely unfounded fears. Sure a disaster can happen, and we should not dash across a major highway in order to invite it, but nevertheless, one should never calculate things like the chances of success in marriage, how much fun something can be, or the potential for disaster. As the Nike commercial used to say, “Just Do It.” This may be hard especially after we have endured a test. Still we are much better off living our lives with a commitment to moving ahead, taking responsibility for ourselves, and openness to trying something new, and not with a ticking clock of fear that will prevent us from enjoying anyone or anything or fully engaging with life and all that if offers.
I mentioned before how my fears about the well being of my children has often heightened my anxiety. When the television show “Without a Trace” first came on, I didn’t want to watch it because I thought it was going to be about children who are kidnapped. Yet I plunged forward, and now it is my favorite show. Those who share this fear can calculate by knowing that the chances of your child being snatched by a stranger are remote. While the culture exacerbates certain fears, we actually make it worse when we make our kids fearful. This can be extended to older children in other ways. Last fall there was an article in the New Yorker on “Overparenting.” Also called “Helicopter parenting,” this is not so much anxiety about losing your kids physically, but instead parent’s own anxieties about success or achievement. The other day my son Dana was commenting about how every kid in his sixth grade class has a cell phone. While this use is partly cultural pressure, it is certainly not based in need. I think some of it may be anxiety driven. It is a way to keep track of kids, especially in this age when parents cannot be with kids as much physically. We compensate by being in touch symbolically. Parents exhibit anxiety over what college the child will get in to, and they start hyperventilating over it when the child is in preschool. Some say this is a dependency of the parent on the child , and a transfer of their identity to the child. One thing that our testing and achievement oriented culture has led to is a lot more cheating in school, and even plagiarizing application forms from material found on the web. Like our other anxieties, perhaps the first best response is to cool it. Parents are often overreacting with anxiety about their kids. We begin loving them by letting go of our fears, and listening to theirs. Sometimes we worry too much, and often we worry about the wrong things. Perhaps we could worry a little more about those children below the poverty line We could worry if our children are happy, and not successful, or another common fear today, germ free.
We hear a lot more these days of how we are vulnerable to disasters. Floods destroy New Orleans, and terrorists threaten attacks. Over the last few years, people have been encouraged to develop disaster plans for their families, and assemble supplies. I think it is good to be prepared, but I sometimes feel that obsessions about this can drive our fears, and make us feel worse. Earlier when I spoke of fear of flying, I said it was a control issue. Who is in the drivers seat? Confronting our fears is a control issue, but we must be in charge of our fears. Otherwise the fears become the controlling factor in our lives, and we have lost the freedom to live. We have recently inaugurated the first African American president in our history. He is charismatic and hopeful, and a unifier. Many of us probably fear that a leader like this is a likely target for an assassin's bullet. Like Martin, Obama may not get to fulfill his dream, but also like Martin, he knows we cannot be prisoners of our fears. One must live with self-confidence and openness to what is possible. I think he exudes that, and is an example for us.
Virgil, the Roman Poet, once wrote “Fortune sides with him who dares.” There are everyday risks we all take, like walking down the street or driving, but we willingly take those chances. But there are also the risks we can take when something exciting comes along - a new job, a new focus, a new friend. We always weigh pros and cons, but we also have to ask when we are accepting presumed security fueled by fear, and when do we risk trying something new. It is the difference between calculating what can go wrong, and living out what is possible or envisioning something new. Churches too often live by counting every penny, or calculating what they cannot do. This is not a good way for us to imagine a greater future or a stronger community. We must believe in our hearts that we are a great church, and so you must believe as a person that the risks you take will be rewarded commensurate with your willingness to change and grow. The true security comes not from the job you hold or the home you own, but from an inner security you have about yourself. This security says you will not be trapped by fears but are able to face life’s circumstances with courage and fortitude.
Our reading today was Anne Sexton’s poem on courage, which reminded us that courage is an everyday occurrence in each life. It takes courage to confront physical infirmities, and it takes courage to meet our family’s needs. It takes courage to raise children with a sense of self grounded in an ability to know who they are and what they want to do. Fear is often invoked by external forces. We are fearful of how others define us. We were all called fatty or crybaby. We took risks when our loyalty was tested, or despair laid us low. We are fearful of all the world challenges us with, and so much of our action is reaction. Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote of striding toward freedom. When we trust ourselves and our own worth then we have a better chance of striding forth with courage in the face of our fears. When we risk defining ourselves then we have an abiding truth in which our hearts can rest. That truth is formed in our love and trust for others, and they for us in the communities that support us, and in life itself which beckons us to enjoy and experience and engage with all that life offers. The great theologian Paul Tillich once wrote: “He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.” Risk taking is a manifestation of an inward truth we all possess that we can act on and express with our love, our gifts, and our insights.
Closing Words - from Seneca
“It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”