Unitarian Universalism has Won. . .Now What?!
Three or four Christmas's ago, on a Friday date night, Kaaren and I went to see "Far From Heaven," a movie that received a lot of attention when it came out. It was set in the 1950's and starred Dennis Quaid and Julianne Moore as the supposedly perfect 1950's couple. But as the movie title implies, their lives were far from perfect. Quaid's character turns out to be gay and Moore's character falls in love with an African-American man. Ugliness ensues. Intolerance and oppressive conformity crush love, authenticity and individual freedom.
It was a moving and thought-provoking film, but it was the audience that made the greatest impact on me. As we left, I looked around and saw the most diverse audience I've ever encountered. Interracial couples all around, holding hands and kissing on the way out. Numerous lesbian couples were also laced through the crowd, unapolegetically in close embrace. After sitting through two hours of actresses in bouffant hairdos, I couldn't help but notice the grandmother with short, spiked, bleached-white hair, who got a thumbs up from the gang of teenagers she passed-the most mismatched group of teenagers you could have put together: a jock, two Goth kids with black eyeliner and spiked neck bands, one girl plainly dressed with a cross around her neck and another girl with what looked like pants made out of duct tape. In short, diversity, freedom and self-expression everywhere I looked.
And not just that. Triumph. Triumph was there too. It was subtle, but absolutely clear. "Just appalling!" "Hard to believe that was only 50 years ago." "What your mother must have gone through back then." Such phrases floated through the crowd. It was all tinged with an odd positive energy that made me realize this crowd hadn't just watched a movie warning them of a dangerous threat; they had watched a defeated foe. This wasn't for them a movie about what HAPPENS to people living under oppressive conformity; this was for them a movie about what HAPPENED to people living under oppressive conformity. They had just experienced a documentary about how awful the past was, not an artistic statement about a danger lurking in their present.
And that's the first time it hit me. We've won! The scales have tipped in our favor. Our Unitarian Universalist message of personal and spiritual freedom is no longer just Unitarian Universalism's message; it's now our culture's message. And while my first thought about this was "hooray," my second thought, frankly, was "Uh oh." The question that followed has stuck with me ever since: "If our message is now the culture's message, does this mean we've become redundant?"
Burger King encourages us to "Have it your way!" Bumper stickers tell us to "Question Authority" and "Do Your Own Thing." One hybrid I saw recently said "Sorry to have missed church, I was busy at home teaching my daughter to become a witch." Not as noble, but equally committed to individualism, a fancy Lexus sports car pulled out in front of me with a bumper sticker that read, "I owe it to myself."
Dennis Rodman's been out of the limelight for a while. But remember how this outrageous basketball star was lifted to the status of culture hero? Not only kids, but parents loved him. Tattoos all over his body, married in a wedding dress, open about his bi-sexuality, and not hesitant to publicly mock intolerant religious leaders. "I decided years ago," he said, "to let the person inside me be free to do what he wanted and needed to do, no matter what anybody else said or thought. Ignore the uptight few. Be yourself!" For this he was cheered by young and old, black and white, rich and poor.
And not only does our culture promote freedom, individualism and self-expression, it caters to it. Did you know that a magazine called Self now outsells People magazine? Prudential Insurance has changed its slogan from "We are your Rock" to "Let us help you be your own Rock." The Army is even in on the act. The Kennedy-esque, service-oriented "Uncle Sam needs you" has been replaced by the personal growth, self-actualizing slogan "Be all you can be."
Last year in Syracuse I did a survey. I checked out our mainline "competition." Here's what I found. The Presbyterian church down the road was showing a video series of Joseph Campbell's talks on mythology. The blurb in their brochure read: "Come hear about the wisdom from the myths of all people and let us help you learn how to identify and follow your personal bliss." The Lutheran church nearby invited me to speak to their interfaith adult education class. My host explained to me, "Our hope is to expose our members to a variety of faith perspectives so they can supplement their Lutheranism with a more complete religiosity that fits them best." The neighboring Methodist church put in a brand new outdoor sign. For two months, it read: "Welcome seekers! We make room for what you think!"
Over lunch, I told an Episcopal minister friend of mine about all this. I was shocked. "When did you all become Unitarian?" I teased. He teased back, "When did you stop looking around? You UUs don't own freedom and tolerance you know. Not nearly as many folks arguing with you anymore, Scott."
Not nearly as many folks arguing with us anymore. Maybe that's the best way to frame our challenge as UUs. What do you do when there are not nearly as many folks arguing with you anymore? What do you do when your core message--your bread and butter, so to speak--is something that most people agree with and already have? What do you do when you are on your way to becoming redundant?
Well, I think you consider yourself lucky.
You see, I believe that our redundancy is actually a gift to our movement. And I mean that in two ways.
First, awareness of our redundancy enables us to see the danger of our faith, our shadow side. It is great that America is growing more tolerant and encouraging of personal expression, but it is also true that individualism in our culture frequently devolves into a kind of adolescent and self-indulgent "me-ism." Given that UUs are much more skilled at articulating the upside of individualism than the down-side, it seems we are very much in danger of unwittingly reinforcing this ugly self-centeredness that characterizes too much of society and religion today.
Which leads to the second gift. Noticing that our message of personal choice and self-expression is not so needed today as it once was offers us the chance to change, to refocus our mission and reason for being. Or to put it most starkly: It invites us to become a religion again.
I realize that's a loaded phrase, so let me explain. I'm grateful for and proud of the way UUs have fought and even died for personal and spiritual freedom. It's been one of our greatest gifts to the world -- an important hallmark of our movement for hundreds of years. But in the last 100 years, our focus on freedom has become so intense and singular that it's caused us as a movement and as individuals to get mixed up. Somewhere along the line we've confused our means with our end. We've gotten ourselves so wrapped up in the fight to protect individual freedom that we've lost sight of the fact that freedom is a necessary condition of the spiritual search, not the goal of the spiritual search. The goal--as all great spiritual teachers agree and as we UUs once saw clearly--is to discover something greater than yourself to which you can devote your life.
This is what makes religions religious. This is what has always made religions religious. And this is what I believe our current circumstances are inviting us to reclaim.
As noble and important as defending a person's right to think for and be themselves is, this commitment alone results only in the creation of a community of individualists. I trust and hope that all of us want to be so much more than that. I know that the world needs us to be so much more than that.
Mary Pipher, UU writer and therapist, tells of working with a man named Ken. He was successful, content and confident on the surface, but in private, addictions ran the show. His life had become a manic race to devour as much alcohol, work, money, success and sex as he could. The breakthrough in their therapy occurred when Pipher one day proposed that, as serious as his addictions were, maybe his root problem was distraction. This opened a window for this young man, brought in new light and led him to eventually talk about his fear. "I'm so scared to stop and take a look," he said. "Truth is, I'm living a life of such little consequence and it frightens me more than I can say. My life feels so thin."
A quote by Mother Theresa is relevant here. On a visit to the United States not long before her death, she said,"America has a worse poverty than India. Yours is a spiritual poverty, a loneliness and emptiness that comes from devoting your life to yourselves."
There's a lot Mother Theresa said and believed with which I disagree, but not this. She's dead on. The defining struggle of our day is not so much an oppressive anti-individualism but a suffocating shallowness. We're not so much a culture of people aching to be free, but a people who long to be more. You've heard it before we have more money, more advantages, more conveniences and more options than any culture this planet has ever seen. And yet, when surveyed, we reveal ourselves to be the most unsatisfied and most depressed culture ever. Having achieved an unprecedented amount of personal freedom, we find ourselves surprised at how empty we feel. We are shocked at how much freedom by itself feels like being alone.
I say this, not to push us into depression on such a beautiful spring day, but to highlight that there is a great need out there, an invitation, waiting for and wanting us to respond. The question is: Is this what we want to do?
And actually, we're all in luck. Our first chance to tackle that question occurs this afternoon at what may seem like the least spiritual of all gatherings in this church, but which might in fact turn out to be the most spiritual: our congregational meeting to approve the budget.
The other night I sat through the third three-hour Board meeting in two weeks, all three devoted to developing the budget that will be presented to you this afternoon. As odd as it may sound, that meeting felt holy. It's only over the past few days that I have been able to identify why. You'll see a bold budget this afternoon, one that takes risks and asks the congregation to be willing to do a number of things differently than we have before. But the sacred weightiness of the other evening wasn't in that boldness. It is also a responsible budget, the product of hard work and tough decisions. But again, the sacred wasn't in the responsible leadership either, as important and powerful as that was. No, for me--and I've got to believe for many of the others at the meeting as well--the holiness of the other night resided in the fact that all of the new initiatives, difficult choices, additional staffing and programs-every single one of them--were done for the sake of others who are not among us yet.
I can't honestly tell you when or how the shift occurred. All I know is that it did. In different ways, I heard the board asking not "What do we want most?" but "What do others need most?" How can we make room for and integrate newcomers who walk through our door? What will it take to make a visible difference in the lives of Rochester's less fortunate? How can we be of greater service to the children and families of School 22? How do we finance and support not only our ministers taking leadership positions in our community, but our laity as well?
I know this doesn't sound spiritual. It's no match for tales about spending a summer with monks in Nepal or stories about an exotic meditative experience that allowed you to feel "one with all that is." But it was a moment that made me at least feel larger. It felt real, important and of great consequence. Again, it felt Holy--holy because it was this amazing moment of being other-centered in the midst of a culture saturated and suffocated by me-ism. It made me feel the way I'd like to feel more often. It made me feel the way I suspect all of us would like to feel more often.
And so, this morning I end by asking you, where is this happening in your life and how can the church help?
Where are you being invited to give and connect your life with something larger than your own needs? Where is "religion" trying to break into your living and loving?
And I am not being rhetorical here. This is a serious question and I-along with Kaaren, the ministry team and the church leadership-- really want to hear your answers. We want to know.
Is it happening in your curiosity about tutoring at School 22, serving meals down at St. Joe's House of Hospitality, or working with the Green Sanctuary team? And if so, how can the church make it easier for you to get involved?
Is it in the responsibility of having suddenly to sacrifice your own needs and plans to care for your ailing parents? And if so, how can the church keep you supported and emotionally fed enough so you are able to be present to the privilege of this experience, not just to its exhaustion?
Is it in your passion to nurture your child's spiritual life? And if so, how can the church support you, provide resources and work with you in this sacred task?
Is it in your desire to start singing again and offer beauty to others for the first time in 20 years?
Is it in your urge to be more vocal about the reasons you are a vegetarian?
Or is it in the calling to use your gifts to teach a class or lead a small group?
Where is it happening for you?
Jesus gets the most credit for this idea, but every spiritual master expressed it in one form or another: It is by giving ourselves away that we find ourselves.
William Slone Coffin, one of the most prophetic and influential ministers of the 20th century, said it this way: "Love measures our stature: the more we love and offer ourselves to others, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of one all wrapped up in themselves."
And so I ask again, where are you being called to grow bigger? What is the something larger than yourself that is calling to you, inviting you to let it in? And how can this church--this community committed to religion as well as individualism--how can it help?
Lot's of questions. Lots to talk about. Let us begin....
Amen.
May 15, 2005