Bill Gates called me last week and asked, "Where do you want to go today?" to which I replied, "Virtually anywhere." When he wanted something more specific, I said, "Oh, transport me to 220 South Winton Road; I want something real." And so here I am, and here we are, at the start of another church year, and it is good.
At the opening skit at June's Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly, "The Saga of Global Pagan Airlines," the flight attendant announced: "We are now making our final descent, please return to your place in time, bring your hearts forward and put your cynicism away in its upright and locked position."[1]
Those words were prophetic in more ways than one. We celebrate this Homecoming Sunday, recovering from Nature's Labor Day fury, caught up in controversy swirling about the local Roman Catholic Diocese, and reeling from the pain of potential Presidential impeachment proceedings.
We hope this is not our final descent; we know we must learn to live in this place and time; we hope our hearts are large enough for the challenge; but we struggle to keep our cynicism at bay. I had planned on a service of festive mood. Instead we find the nation as depressed as the stock market, and fluctuating as wildly. My preaching predicament only reveals that planning is the substitution of error for chaos.
Still, these are the very times we most need to be together – to center ourselves – to remind ourselves of the difference between that which is transient and that which is enduring in life. In these troubled times we especially need one another.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it well: "Ah, there is only one problem, one in all the world. How can we restore to humanity a spiritual significance, a spiritual discontent; let something descend upon them like the dew of a Gregorian chant.... Don't you see, we cannot live any longer on refrigerators, politics, balance-sheets and crossword puzzles. We simply cannot."[2]
That came unmistakably clear to me this summer on my trip to Israel with an interfaith group from Rochester - Christians and Jews - with me floating somewhere around the periphery. It was fascinating to see the Holy Land from the perspective of those for whom it is truly holy: Jews who see Israel as response to the Holocaust and the Western Wall as their Holy of Holies; Christians who trace the footsteps of Jesus with awe and wonder. Place is vitally important - this is the geography of faith.
In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre I took Communion from Roman Catholic Bishop Matthew Clark - though I really hadn't intended to do so. I was asked to read from Ecclesiastes during Eucharist - a passage with which even a religious humanist could be happy. To have easy access to the podium I was sitting in the front row of the small chapel near the traditional places of crucifixion and resurrection. While I was skeptical of the veracity of the tradition, I was pleased to participate and observe this ritual. Having done my reading I returned to my seat for the rest of the service. Then, as he invited the congregants for bread and wine, I was warmly ushered toward the bishop - the first in line. What to do?!
I had not taken communion since I was a child in the Christian Universalist church in which I grew up. But there I was, a religious humanist being ushered toward the bishop. It was too late to retire to the back benches with my Jewish friends - that would embarrass everyone - so I thought I'd do it for the experience, attaching my own appreciation of the life of Jesus as its meaning. Besides, the bishop had given a very welcoming and inclusive homily in introducing this communion ceremony. It was an interesting moment - made more interesting when I returned to the Corpus Christi controversy, part of which was criticism of Father Jim Callan for giving communion to all who wished it.
There was Jewish worship as well. Friday evenings we visited the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. There we witnessed an incredible variety of Jews in their varied garbs bowing and swaying in prayer almost literally in the shadow of the Mosque Al Aqsa, a holy place for Moslems, and the Dome of the Rock, holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews. Saturday morning I attended a Reform Jewish service at the Hebrew Union Seminary in Jerusalem, a kind of haven for liberals who are smarting under the increasing power of Israel's ultra-orthodox Jews. I felt right at home – after all, Unitarian Universalists are sometimes called "Jews without a history."
There were other high moments. We worshipped in Galilee as pilgrims from around the world did likewise. In a melodic Tower of Babel, along with our own service in English, one could hear a French chant, an Italian prayer, a German homily. At the Jordan River we witnessed baptism by total immersion one hot summer afternoon. It was tempting to join them, but for other than religious reasons.
We walked the hills of Galilee, joining a University of Rochester archeological dig at a village which thrived during the time of Jesus. The late afternoon sun silhouetted that magnificent topography where Jesus walked. No wonder he was an inspired teacher - living in a land so incredibly beautiful. The geography of that place must have shaped his ministry as it shaped the pastoral metaphors that resonate throughout the Bible.
Which brings me to a literal peak experience. The group leaders didn't know quite what to do with me - neither really Christian nor really Jewish - some sort of a hybrid at the margins of these historic faiths. Nevertheless one day I was asked to lead one of the services which we shared as we visited each holy place.
I never refuse the chance to preach. Our locale was the Mount of Beatitudes where tradition says Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. No matter that there probably was no such sermon; that it was really a collection of remembered fragments of his teachings artfully collected. My homily spoke of the importance of place in spiritual life. I began with these words: "I lift up my eyes until the hills, from whence cometh my help." I grew up in the Bristol Hills with these words from Psalm 121. Returning to those hills has always refreshed me. Hills and mountains have played a prominent role in my life. I can understand why psychologist Abraham Maslow called powerful religious experiences "peak experiences," and why Jesus is said to have preached a "sermon on the mount."
I decided to go into the ministry in 1951 at 14 in the hills of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, at a National Boy Scout Jamboree.
In September of 1961, ten years later, I joined 25 members of the St. Lawrence University Theological School community in climbing Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks on a spectacular fall day.
In 1990 on a Unitarian Universalist Service Committee-sponsored tour of a service project our group was detained for 16 yours on a mined hillside by an army unit suspicious of our mission. Being a Unitarian Universalist can take one to dangerous places.
Shortly thereafter we visited Smokey Mountain in Manila - a man-made mountain of garbage, but home to 30,000 poor Filipinos. But as we looked toward the horizon near sunset, we saw a child flying a kite on the top of the debris, an image of hope in a desolate place.
Places and our experiences in them help define who we are. We all need a place to be. A Chinese epigram says as much: "Even ocean needs a place to stand." We need a spiritual place to call home. And so we have mingled our waters in this common crucible in this particular place which we have chosen as our religious community. We have all been on a kind of pilgrimage - seeking we're not quite sure what in far-off places with strange-sounding names which have beckoned to us.
And yet, in the final analysis we come to know that our real spiritual center is within - a sacred place we take with us wherever we go. It sounds very romantic and very spiritual to have gone to the Holy Land - to have swum in the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea - to have taken water from the storied River Jordan. But the real journey, the essential pilgrimage is within - mapping the spirit - exploring the inner geography of faith - finding the source of living waters in our own deep places.
We all need what the Hopi Native Americans of the American Southwest call tuwanasaapi, the centering place, the place where you belong, the spiritual core of the universe.[3]
So it is that we pilgrims of summer take ourselves to the mountain and the shore, the woods and the plains, but we know that we will hasten home - this is our place - our spiritual center. As Herman Melville said of the goal of our spiritual quest: "It is not down on any map. True places never are."[4]
But we need to lighten up as we face a fall fraught with problems. And so I leave you with these words from that great philosopher, baseball great Yogi Berra, which true or not, bring us from our travels to this time and place.
Yogi's teammates were always ribbing him about the decrepit, frayed luggage he carried for out-of-town games, and Yogi told them, "Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel."
On another occasion, a teammate asked him the time, and Yogi replied, "You mean now?"[5]
Well, we have unpacked our bags and traveled here to be with this particular community of people. Where else will be find what we are looking for? If not here, where? If not now, when? Amen.
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