During my first year of seminary in Chicago, I took a class in Liberal Theology. We studied all the classic western philosophers and theologians paying particular attention to their theories of morality. We wanted to know how people come to know what was good or bad. Are we born with an innate sense of right and wrong, we wanted to know, or is it imparted solely by our families and our culture? These were the primary questions we wrestled with - doing our best to understand the outdated language and the challenging assumptions - and coming, at the end of the semester - to a time and a place when we would have to face the music and answer all of these questions for ourselves in our final term paper.
The assignment was simple but not easy - describe your theology of morality, the professor required. Explain in detail how people come to know what is right and what is wrong and whether or not, in your opinion, there are any absolute moral laws. And this is exactly the place where I got stuck. I understood the philosophers and the theologians - and I longed to believe them, but as we studied and as I wrestled with these questions myself - I found that I couldn't quite buy their sure answers. I like the poet, simply could not "rest with the safe and armored folk, congenitally blessed with opinions stout as oak, assured that every question one single answer hath."
I, too, could often see the other side, could feel my beliefs stretching like plastic as I considered multiple opinions - and I feared falling into the sometimes abyss of moral relativism, of finding myself cold and shivering in the draft of the open mind - sliding into one of the downfalls of liberalism - the belief that anything goes - that nothing is sure enough to stand upon.
I admired so much the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Ghandi and Susan B. Anthony - and I knew that if I, too, wanted to make a difference in the world, that I was going to have to find the unwavering principles upon which I could stand. But as I faced that term paper, filled with divergent opinions - I feared that I, like our poet, would be left shivering there in the draft of the open mind, immobilized by the multitude of opinions, unable to take a stand or make a difference in this world.
What I did not know yet, was that right there, right there in that place where I stood, I already had everything I needed to assert an opinion, to put forward a conviction, to place myself squarely in the field of debate. And even more so, I had everything I needed to build a faith that I could rely on, even in the darkest and most confusing of times. I had, after all, my own experiences to draw on, my own mind, and my own conscience - and as I made my way through seminary and through life, I came to know that these were the only three tools I would need as I outlined my own set of beliefs and came to rest in my own sure faith - my own experiences, my own mind, and my own conscience - these were the three sure and steady tools I would need.
But I get ahead of myself here - in order to find my faith - in order to welcome the seeming chaos of the open mind and trust that I would be ok no matter what was happening around me - I first had to get lost for quite some time, and I still do get lost some times, there in the messy middle.
Almost a year ago now, I had the privilege of sitting with a dedicated group of folks from this congregation as we began a 10 month pilot program for Unitarian Universalist spiritual deepening. We started our time together with a retreat, and over the course of that opening day each person told the story of their spiritual lives - stories of where and who they had come from and how their beliefs had been formed and transformed over the course of their lives. As I sat back and listened to everyone's stories unfold, several themes emerged - but one stuck out with remarkable clarity. When folks were younger, they said, no matter what religion or lack of religion they were brought up in - they were taught that if you behaved in a certain way, if you believed in certain things, then certain things would happen. If you did as you were told, then your life would be clean and neat and good and everything would work out ok.
This set of beliefs worked well for awhile for most folks, but then, as life has a way of doing, a storm rose up right in the middle of those neat and clean lives. For some folks it was the loss of a child or a relationship, for others it was an eye opening experience or a new piece of knowledge, but for each person, at some point, the unpredictability of life drifted in and the if then faith that had worked for so long suddenly fell apart and these good people found themselves lost, seemingly without a spiritual anchor in the midst of rough seas.
Lost at sea without an anchor - shivering in the draft of an open mind - our first poet from this morning surely found herself there, in the messy middle, too. With past beliefs and surety smashed on the shoreline - with reality looming large all around us, there we sit, longing for opinions stout as oak, for armor and safety, for floors of sturdy lumber and windows weatherproof.
But shedding this initial surety - these beliefs that have been passed down to us like gods that tell us that if we just believe this one thing, if we just behave in this one certain way, then we will be safe, then we will be secure, then we will be right - for many of us, shedding this if then faith has been the starting point for the work of our spiritual lives.
For a true spiritual warrior, the Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron tells us, "accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not-knowing is part of the adventure. It's also what makes us afraid."[1]
If we accept that we can never know what will come next - if we accept that not-knowing as a part of our lives - then the if then faith of the past suddenly loses its value. For even while we may attempt to structure our days and nights in a predictable pattern - even while we may attempt to create a routine for ourselves that makes sense to us and attempts to ensure a certain amount of security - when we take a good clear look at our life experiences and when we are honest with ourselves - we have to admit that we never can know just who will be around the next corner or just what particular experience or piece of knowledge or insight will come our way.
This not-knowing, this uncertainty about the future - can be a difficult thing to swallow though - and even though it is part of the adventure, it is also what makes us afraid. When the veil of illusion is pulled away - the veil of surety and of absolutes - the veil of an if then faith for some of us - when this veil is pulled away we find ourselves dealing face to face with reality, and smack dab in the messy middle of life.
There in the messy middle of life - as we search for guideposts and trail markers, most of us find ourselves feeling pretty darn uncomfortable at first. Frightened, anxious, looking desperately for someway out, someway back to those sturdy floors and weatherproof windows of conviction - From this place of discomfort we tend to move with fear - pushing and rushing and striving and feeling inadequate. For many of us, when we are struggling with the messy middle - it is as if we are caught in a net or a spider web, and the more we struggle, the more tangled up we get. It is only when we relax and stop struggling, only as we come to accept this not-knowing - this reality of unpredictability over and over again - it is only then that we see the situation with new eyes, it is only then that we find ourselves living with a bit more flexibility, living with a slightly looser grip on the wheel - feeling just a bit more open to the possibility of whatever new thing might come our way.
The key I've found when struggling there in the messy middle is to relax, to give up the search for clear answers - to settle in and loosen up so that I might hear that trustworthy internal voice that can guide us toward our own reliable and abiding truth.
That trustworthy inner voice - that voice that can guide us to our own reliable and abiding truth. It is our voice. So often we search all around us for an answer - looking for a teacher - for a straight faith that can be our guide - we look everywhere for an answer big enough not to be insulting - but looking everywhere and anywhere outside of ourselves is not the work of a spiritual life. The work of a spiritual life, I believe, begins when we take a good look at ourselves and the world as they are - when we settle in to ourselves to find that which we can place our trust in.
Throughout the ages, our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors have preached this message loud and clear. One of our Unitarian prophets, Ralph Waldo Emerson, tells us over and over again that no religion is worthy of our time or attention if it does not encourage us on our own spiritual quest. "There is a time in every man's education," he writes, "when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.... Trust thyself,"[2] he tells us. Though we are surrounded by prophets and sages and charlatans alike, he reminds us, we must develop our own faith. We must take up our own life, each of us a newborn bard of the holy spirit, tilling our own plot of ground, our own life and experiences - for there and only there will be our answers.
So, given all of this information, how do we then, exactly, find our footing there in the messy middle? The first step, I believe, like in so many things, is acceptance. The second step comes as we loosen our grip and relax, and the third step, I believe, is to take up the advice of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and to look to the experiences we surely have had that tap into our deepest sense of reality as we till the soil of our own lives.
Our own deepest experiences - these are our guides. The experiences of being cared for when we least expected it - the experiences of interconnectedness - of clarity when a difficult task lay in front of us to be completed -the experience of listening and of being heard - of trusting and being trusted by another person. These deepest experiences will be different for each one of us - but for each of us, it is these very experiences that can form the basis of a faith that can hold us and direct us back to our principles and our values over and over again, regardless of the unpredictable situations that come our way.
This kind of faith is what the Buddhist scholar, Sharon Salzberg, refers to as an abiding faith. "Abiding faith,"she writes, "does not depend on borrowed concepts. Rather it is the magnetic force of a bone-deep, lived understanding, one that draws us to realize our ideals, walk our talk, and act in accord with what we know to be true."[3]
It is a faith that calls us to align our actions with our deepest values. The theologian, Paul Tillich, uses the term, ultimate concern when he talks about faith and I too find this to be a guiding phrase. When we know what is of ultimate concern for us, and when we align our lives with that ultimate concern - it is then that we have discovered the kind of faith I was searching for there in my first year of seminary - the kind of faith that allows you to stand up and stand out to make a difference in the world even when your views are unpopular, even when the world around you feels at times both hopeless and frightening. This kind of faith is an unshakable faith - an abiding faith - rooted in that which is of ultimate concern to each of us.
"Our ultimate concern," Sharon Salzberg writes, "is the touchstone we turn to over and over again, the thread that we reach for to convey a sense of meaning in our lives. It is the glue that connects the disparate pieces, the frame that gives shape to the picture of our experiences."[4] I turn to my ultimate concern, to my deepest experiences, when I find myself smack dab in the messy middle of life - struggling with ambiguity or confusion - longing for order and for clarity.
For many people, Salzberg goes on to write, "a principle such as justice serves as an ultimate concern. Bernice Johnson Reagan, a singer with Sweet Honey in the Rock, was a dedicated civil rights activist in the early sixties. Recalling the danger she and her friends faced in challenging segregation in Georgia, she says, 'Now I sit back and look at some of the things we did, and I say, 'What in the world came over us?' But death had nothing to do with what we were doing. If somebody shot us, we would be dead. And when people died, we cried and we went to funerals. And we went and did the next thing the next day, because it was really beyond life and death. It was really like sometimes you know what you're supposed to be doing. And when you know what you're supposed to be doing, it's somebody else's job to kill you."[5] (Faith, 154-5)
When you know what you're supposed to be doing, it's somebody else's job to kill you. There in the messy middle of desegregation, there in the midst of violence and loss and fear - there Bernice aligned herself with something larger than life and death - the principle of justice. There she found that which was of ultimate concern and she allowed this principle to guide her - there in difficult times, then when nothing but clarity was called for.
So perhaps an if then faith is not so bad after all - as long as the if is the discovery of our own true voice, as long as the if - is the if of making a study of our own lives and finding there that which is of ultimate concern, as long as the then is putting that which is of ultimate concern into action
May we, too, be brave enough to make a study of our lives. Tilling this plot of ground which is our own experience that we might discover that which is of ultimate concern, that we, too, might find there an abiding faith that can hold and strengthen us no matter what comes our way - that we, too, might align our lives with our deepest values - that then, we might find the courage to stand up and to stand out as we strive to build the beloved community here on earth.
May it be so, and Amen.
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