Stalin, Einstein, and My Wife

During college, I lived in Japan for a year. It was a wonderful experience. My homestay family lived in a massive apartment complex outside of Kyoto--row after row of big white towers.

A friend and I decided we would try make it to Mt Fuji over a long weekend in October. Other Westerners we knew had had luck hitchhiking around Japan, so we thought we give it a try. Never mind that Kyoto to Fuji is roughly the same distance as the Springs to Amarillo, Texas: the train was expensive, we were broke, and Japan was considered a pretty safe place to hitch.

We got a late start; it was a miserable, rainy evening. Our first ride didn't take us far, and after hours of standing by the side of the highway--cold, wet, and tired--we called it quits and bought train tickets home. A couple of hours later, exhausted and disappointed, I walked up the short flight of stairs to my family’s apartment. Thankfully the door was unlocked so I didn’t have to dig through my gear for the key. I put down my pack, took off my jacket and shoes. The apartment seemed different somehow--different art on the walls, a lot of strange jackets on the hooks by the door. The door to the dining room was closed, sounds of conversation and laughter floated out. I felt a bit hurt. I go away for a few days and they redecorate and have a party--nice. Disgruntled, I headed for my room. I slid open the door and immediately noticed that my futon was in a different place, and all my stuff was gone. By now I was more than a little upset and getting angry. I then noticed the startled, and somewhat frightened-looking, teenager sitting at a desk in the corner. I asked him who he was, where my stuff was, why he was here. He stammered something, but it didn’t matter as realization was slowly dawning. I apologized and left—quickly. I had, of course, walked into the wrong building. Everything had looked the same. The walls, the windows, the doors, all were in the same place—but the details were different and that was what mattered and what I, in my exhaustion and desire to be home, had missed.
Now I’m sure we all have stories of missing the trees for the forest. But why did I make such a silly mistake? I relied too heavily on the large structures that were the same and ignored the details that should have made it clear I was not actually home—and I want us to avoid walking into other people's theological homes and assuming they're ours.

Now, as a minister, strangers and friends routinely talk to me about religion. A friend back in Boston had made a comment that I had heard many times about how all the world's religions are at their core, the same. She asserted that the mystics say that they are. She felt that they "had to be the same." She wanted to see mystical experience as something that connects all of us, all religions, across culture and time. My response to her became this sermon.

My friend isn’t alone in her feelings about religion. We’ve all heard the metaphors: many paths up the same mountain, different waves upon a single ocean. The late Rev. Forrest Church, in his excellent intro to Unitarian-Universalism, A Chosen Faith, uses the image of various windows in a cathedral—one building, one sun, but different patterns shine through the stained glass—these varying patterns of light are the various expressions of the divine we call the world’s religions. These metaphors and analogies resonate with us. They seem intuitive and speak to our desire for unity. But metaphors are appealing specifically because they take complex ideas and transform them into homey, accessible images. The map is not, as they say, the territory. We have to ask ourselves where these metaphors come from and whether they actually reflect reality or simply our wishes—not just for unity, but for simplification of an increasingly complex world.

Let's look at mysticism for a moment as an example of how these matters aren't as simple as they seem. I'm going to borrow a former colleague's definition of Mysticism as “the experience or feeling of union or communion with some kind of ultimate reality.” But does having a basic definition, a common set of characteristics, mean all mystical experiences are the same? Remember, we don't want to get confused by the large structures and miss the details that tell us we aren't actually home.

Traditional Jewish mystical experience usually describes a journey to heaven or a vision of the divine chariot and throne. A Jewish mystic learns the various prayers and meditations that will guide him safely past the angels guarding the heavenly palaces, he prepares to see the strange beasts that pull the chariot. He does not have experiences that lead him to believe that he has no soul, has lived many lifetimes, and is essentially one with the universe. He wouldn’t think these were a weird mystical experience; he would think something had gone terribly wrong. But, Jewish mystics, as I said, don’t have those kinds of experiences. Buddhists, on the other hand, do, and would be just as distressed to have experiences involving angels, divine chariots, eternal souls, or supreme beings.
Mystical experiences tend to happen to people of deep faith and long practice. They almost always conform to cultural norms and expectations. They confirm belief systems instead of blending them. Indeed they are among the most specific of religious experiences. Hindus don't have visions of Jesus, Buddhists don't experience the trickster Coyote leading them to their totem animal.

So maybe mysticism isn't a good basis for comparison or unity—what about other elements of religion? Concepts of the afterlife—heaven and reincarnation are pretty different; one god, many gods, no god; individual soul, universal soul, no soul. Even conceptions of time itself can be exact opposites. Is time purely linear or does it run in cycles? What controls our lives—God, Karma, blind chance? In each case, we see over and over how specific religions are. Sure, you can say all the details are just centuries of culture and myth, but what do you actually get when you strip away all the particular, peculiar traits that makes Buddhism Buddhism and Judaism Judaism.

A lot of these points of comparison don't really work all that well if you take seriously a tradition's claims for itself. We might want to ask why we try to make all these faiths match up in the first place. Why do we seek for these commonalities? What do we think we can do once we discover them? What do we hope to get out of studying other religions?

To answer these questions we have to think about inheritance. In this case what we have inherited are Enlightenment-era attitudes toward religion. The Enlightenment saw the rapid ascension of reason over faith during the 18th century. Inspired by a growing confidence in science and human capacity, liberal thought blossomed. The philosopher Immanuel Kant summed up the spirit of the time in the short phrase, "Dare to think." The Enlightenment was a product of its historical circumstances and grew out of the many decades of political turmoil and terrible, religiously-inspired conflicts following the Protestant Reformation. Conflicts like The Thirty Years War saw almost a third of Europe’s population dead by their end—almost seven million people.

The suffering and terror of the wars of religions as well as growing religious diversity deeply influenced the Enlightenment thinkers. Many of them came to believe that traditional religions were just an inevitable source of strife and a tool of those in power to control the masses—which, I might add, is a not uncommon view among modern UU's. We are, perhaps more than any other religious tradition, children of the Enlightenment.

Philosophers of the era sought to separate "natural religion" from "revealed religion." By "natural religion" they meant something akin to what people now call "spirituality," whereas "revealed religion" had the negative connotations now summed up in "organized religion." Spirituality suggests personal belief, a lack of dogma or structure, authentic experience. Organized religion brings to mind ritual, hierarchy, dogmatic theology, priests in big stone buildings, maybe nuns with rulers for some of you. One represents all that supposedly is good, intuitive, and natural about religion; the other all the political and power issues that accumulate on top of "true" spirituality. Nowadays, you can find many folks who say they are “spiritual, but not religious.” That is a phrase and sentiment born out of the Enlightenment.

Natural religion, to them, was not only more authentic, but was also seen as reducing the potential for conflict by focusing on what they thought to be the essential elements of true religion. If this core, this essence of religion could be substituted for the divisive rigid structure of various dogmatic sects then people could live in harmony. The religion that was safe for the public sphere was that which everyone could agree upon. This sounds pretty good—leave off all the problematic, divisive, conflict-producing junk that has accumulated on top of the pure religious drive of the rational human being. Again, sounds like us.

One catch, of course, is that most of the people doing the thinking I’ve been describing were some form of Christian. With that in mind let's rethink those descriptions of "natural" religion—a focus on individual belief, dismissal of empty ritual and mediating priestly figures, use rational thought to understand true religion. Sounds a lot like the Protestantism we all know and, in some ways, all participate in. As they say, "in America, even the Jews are Protestants." (And I guess being here this morning, I’m living proof.) It's easy to come up with a core of religion, if most people in the room are more or less the same religion. Think of how easily most Protestants move between denominations—grew up Baptist, went to Methodist church in college, now Presbyterian cause the church is close. It gets harder as you go out in the wider world—and yet we tend to carry our categories with us. I'm reminded of the true story about a theologian who visits Japan. He observes an elaborate Shinto ritual and then asks the Shinto priest to explain their theology. The priest thinks for a moment and then says, “we don't have theology, we dance.” We look for the large structures that are familiar and miss the details that tell us this isn't our home. These attitudes about what constitutes “religion” may not be ours by choice, but they are deeply woven in the American culture, and perhaps are even stronger elements in the warp and woof of our UU history.

As we know many of the founders of this country were Unitarian or Deists and were deeply influenced by Enlightenment philosophy—Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, Adams: theological ancestors to us all.

You can see this Enlightenment, Deist heritage clearly in our founding document--the Declaration of Independence.
When in the Course of Human Events [human events—not god’s plan], it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them [notice the separation of the "laws of nature" and of "nature’s god"—the space between god and the natural world—not god’s laws.] , a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
Basically that says if you are going to break up with someone, you should give them a reason. The next part are some of the most beautiful and important sentences in history.

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident [self-evident—no need of a priest or a king or a revealed piece of scripture-we can see this for ourselves]. That all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights [rights not derived again from some musty tome of antiquated church canon—directly from God], that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed [again from human powers, not divine or royal]

We are a country deeply influenced by the Enlightenment. So we have this Enlightenment inheritance—a desire for explanation, a faith in human reason and the authority of individual conscience, a quest for essences or core characteristics. How do we wind up spending this inheritance?

One place is how we understand religion. We tend to follow our Enlightenment forebears in looking for an essential strand in the various religions, and our inheritance encourages us to look at individual beliefs, personal interpretation and rational philosophy and to want to discard what we see as extraneous—ritual, hierarchy, dogma. We unintentionally look for what is, more or less, Protestant in what we look at—and in the process strip away what we don't consider essential.

The Enlightenment was an amazing time in human history. Modern political theory grew out of it—concepts of human rights, democratic governments, separation of church and state. All wonderful contributions to our modern consciousness and to our liberal faith. But like all philosophies, movements, theologies, groups and individuals—there are blind spots.

We go to the Other looking to find ourselves—too often using other traditions as mirrors showing us what we want and expect to see. We tend to carry with us the general Enlightenment view that rational “men” come to similar conclusions—a possibility perhaps, if by multicultural you mean Unitarians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and maybe a few Quakers to shake things up a bit. The founders of this country, even with often brilliant foresight, could not have imagined the scope of the cultural and spiritual diversity which we face. With this diversity it becomes even more important to be aware of our own prejudices and motivations. We see more and more that there are different rationalities, different ways of being.

There are, of course, similarities and even commonalities, between religious traditions. Do religions function in similar ways in different cultures? Sure. Are there common structures in different religions? Yes. Are there family resemblances in related religions? Of course. Do religions address common human experiences? Yeah. But even given all that, the world's great religious traditions are not the same, they're not even the same internally and yet we treat them like vast monolithic structures. An American Buddhist in Boulder has very little in common with a Buddhist farmer in Sri Lanka. And if we're honest, a modern Unitarian Universalist has significant differences from the Unitarians and Universalists of the past.

I read once that human beings can be reduced to around three pounds of calcium, 27 pounds of carbon, maybe 10 gallons of water and a handful of other chemicals. All of us in this room share this basic structure. We are united by these core facts—we are, in this, the same. But knowing we have this in common, reducing us in this way doesn’t seem to move us very far-intellectually or spiritually. It doesn’t tell me how Einstein is different than Stalin is different from my wife Julia or from Tim Oliver or Diane McRae, or anyone. I don’t want to know how we are all the same. I want to know how each of you is unique. Focusing on what is similar can lead to a sort of tunnel vision. We look for what we expect to see and miss far too much.

As we spend the coming months together—exploring, learning, engaging these other religions, I hope we can be aware of the assumptions we bring. Too often we reduce other traditions to what we want from them. We treat the traditions like a Chinese menu—we take a dish from column A, another from column B, and we cobble together a meal that isn't all that nutritious though it's easy and tastes good. As Roger said last week, one of our goals is to hear stories of how other people have “seen the rabbit.” We want to try to really understand not what we can take from Buddhism, but why someone dedicates themselves to being Buddhist, or Muslim, or Wiccan, or, God forbid, Christian. If we are to be agents of understanding, we have to first understand. Knowing and embracing that our understanding will be limited, incomplete. We want to know not how they're like us, but how they are truly unique, different, even mysterious. Our aim this year to see the rabbit, and resist the temptation to make a stew of it.

At our best, Unitarian Universalism is growing into a new and unique religion. Finding our own wisdom and practices, inspired by the world's traditions and our history. On our less good days, we can sometimes have a sense that we know better than other folks, right? We see through the illusion and self-deception of orthodox religions. We know that their religions aren't “true” in some sense—we look past their superstitions to see the wisdom behind the story. We can take their rituals and practices, combine, adjust and rearrange them and make them our own. Doesn't sound very attractive? Ask yourselves hard questions this year. What is important? Is it being on the same mountain, or is it being on a path? What are we really interested in---the calcium, carbon and water—or the living breathing faith that inspires our friends and neighbors?

We shouldn't be too seduced by similarities—they're comfortable and easy, but they also tend to be weak and simple—incapable of doing the heavy lifting of actual compassion and action, of understanding and spiritual practice, of love and the challenge of relationship. Finding the similarities is easy, easy to feel comfortable with, easy to understand. But it is in genuine engagement with the Other where we learn, where we take risks, and where we demonstrate our liberal faith.

Relative Freedom

So about a week ago, I had the great pleasure of being at Red Rocks amphitheater with Kyle Heimer.  Kyle has an extra ticket for the rock band Rush--a longtime favorite of mine.  The band has been around for 42 years now--a year longer than I have.  I think part of their longevity is their flexibility—they keep growing and changing over time, and, to me, their longevity is also about the quality of the lyrics.
The drummer, Neil Peart, their primary lyricist, is clearly a bright fellow--interested in politics, religion, and literature---his songs reflect an intellectual curiosity and a libertarian humanist sensibility.
One of my favorite songs by the band is titled Freewill.  Now I'm not claiming this is deep philosophy, but as many of you know, I've done my time immersed in baroque philosophy--complex, esoteric, and mostly at a ridiculously far remove from anything resembling real life.  As I've said in the past, I no longer have much interest in grand philosophical systems that don't speak to how I live my life day to day. Besides, I think most of us draw tremendous comfort and meaning from the soundtracks of our lives.  Music is where I and many others turn for comfort, energy, and connection.
Anyway, back to Rush and that much-loved song of mine.  The final stanza and chorus are:

"Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete.
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet.

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill."

I love the clarity of the song--philosophy lessons that last five minutes twenty-four seconds are about what I have patience for these days.
    So there we are, my sermon on fate, destiny, freewill, and freedom done in less than the length of a pop song.  I believe we are free to make choices, to choose our lives.  Thanks for coming, be good, see you next time.
    Well, maybe it's not that simple. I have to admit that the more I researched the subject, the more I pondered, the more daunted I became. Fate, destiny, is a complex hard topic—I initially, foolishly, thought it would be pretty simple. I don't believe in an external controlling intelligence and so fate goes poof---if there's no grand designer, there's no grand design. And yet the more I thought about what fate and freedom actually means, the more I realized the complexity involved. If I were a parish minister rather than a chaplain, this is a sort of topic I would engage as a series rather than a one off.
First, I think I need to define what I'm talking about here. What I am addressing here is capital F Fate or capital D Destiny—a preordained, predetermined path or outcome for one's life. A belief that someone or something has created an order that pushes or pulls one toward a particular end. Here's where I begin to get tripped up. This seems a slam-dunk as I don't believe in this kind of external intelligence, and yet I do believe that we are all embedded in webs of connection we can barely understand. Do these webs constitute enough of an independent intelligence to influence our lives? I think they do, but there are no simple answers here. I also think we need to expand our definition of fate and destiny, perhaps with a small f and d, and so reshape our concepts of influence and connection. I do not believe that the God of the Bible has determined the course of my life, but I do believe that a million little notes, some heard, some beyond my perception create the soundtrack of my life—some days Rush and Jethro Tull, some days John Denver and Sheryl Crow, sometimes Vivaldi or Mozart, and sometimes it's just elevator music.
I do believe we are free, but every decision, every relationship, every action, every philosophical/theological stance, every motion and moment happens in a context.  We do not live our lives in a vacuum. We are free, but it is a relative freedom.  And by relative freedom I don't mean the fact that my mother is 1500 miles away—although, trust me, with my family that is a sort of freedom.  Rather I mean that I am relatively free given the psycho-social dysfunctional family psychopathology I have acquired, the physical and disease process damage this body has sustained in 41 years, the cultural biases I have—both as a middle-class liberal east-coast born American white male and as an Ashkenazi Jew, the educational and career-based opportunities and limitations that I have---in short, all the chosen and imposed, conscious and unconscious restrictions in and around my life have an impact on both my sense of freedom and the reality of that freedom.
Now having just admitted my impatience with complicated philosophy, that little litany of disclaimers I just offered sounds a lot like complicated philosophy.  Oh well, you can take the boy out of the philosophy department.
Let me try and simplify what I mean.  I am free because I perceive myself making choices, and yet, at the same time, I am not free because my choices are subject to so many influences that are very real. I can, and sometimes try to, deny these elements in my life, very real elements that shape my destiny as surely as any god.
How can I consider myself truly free with so many forces pushing on my decisions? Do these forces not constitute some kind of fate or destiny.? You might call this negative-destiny—not in the sense that it is necessarily bad, but rather that many of the conscious and unconscious restrictions on my decisions have a fairly strong limiting effect on what I do. I have commitments to my family--Julia, Benjamin; to my employer, Memorial; this congregation and the UUA; friends; and so on---to meet those commitments I do not just take off for Nepal on a whim nor do I behave in ways that are strongly inconsistent with those commitments. Just a small example, a friend recently ended his employment at Memorial. Some friends threw him a party to which I was invited—at Hooter's. It may seem a silly thing, but I really thought about whether I should go. I don't particularly approve of their business model—it feels exploitative. I try to be aware that my role as a minister and a chaplain means that I represent something to a number of people. I've heard other ministers say the same thing. Although I have much less theological baggage to deal with due to the nature of our tradition, ministers are invested with certain expectations by their religious communities. And this too, is perhaps, a form of fate. And this is a form of fate, and a loss of freedom, that everyone deals with in different ways. The prejudice our congregations sometimes hold against those who are conservative in their politics or those who serve in the military is also a sort of predestination that we carry out and make people more or less comfortable in our churches. A person who walks in here wearing a cross and a military uniform is, you could say, destined, to get a different welcome than the person who walks in wearing tie-die and Birkenstocks. Perhaps not a strongly different welcome, especially at this church, and it is not a very substantial form of destiny, but you get the point. Everything we bring to an encounter, visually and symbolically and historically contributes to determining outcome. It's a form of mini-destiny.
I'm not going to speak this morning about Augustinian or Calvinistic conceptions of Predestination except to say that I don't believe them in the slightest. I spent time reaquainting myself with those concepts and they still make head and heart hurt. I don't believe that many Unitarian Universalists are interested in a God who has already, more or less randomly, chosen who will go to heaven and who will go to hell regardless of any behavior or choice. Grace is, those folks claim, purely a gift from God that humans in their post fall-from-Eden state of depravity neither merit nor can earn being incapable of good. Some of our ancestors, like Michael Servetus, died denying such capricious and demoralizing theologies, and I don't think many of us have much more stomach for such ideas. Also, freewill is either true or it isn't. If some god has already determined the exact shape of my life then I don't really have freewill. Variations on the theme—God doesn't choose, but is aware of all possible choices and knows which one I will choose, or God knows the final outcomes but not the small details still turn people into puppets. I readily grant that freedom and freewill are complex ideas, but I have always and will continue to resist any theology or philosophy that denies the basic integrity, worth, and inherent potential nobility and beauty of the individual human being.

What piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
I am not completely free, no one but a psychopath on a desert island is or could be, but I am blessed to live in a time and culture that accords me about as much potential freedom as any human being has ever enjoyed in the history of civilization. I will not throw away the benefits of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the American Revolution to a theology that demeans my basic humanity. I will, on the other hand, try to preach one that enshrines humanity's best efforts to shed the shackles of tyranny, dogma, and ignorance. Let me stop this portion here. I don't want this to be a barnburner sermon, but this is something I feel passionate about and proud of our heritage.
But whatever fate may be embedded in my genes and imposed by environment or personal history is still not the "foretold in the stars" destiny most people mean by the word.  Here's where things get hard for me.  I am not particularly fatalistic.  I don't believe in some foreordained destiny--at least I don't think I do.  My problem here is that I cannot deny the presence of what feel like moments that seem beyond random, beyond pure chance, moments that are, indeed, significant and do seem to reflect some kind of path or pattern to my life. Various people have noted these sorts of events. Mythologist Joseph Campbell said that when we follow our bliss, "a thousand unseen helping hands" aid us in our journey. He's not alone in feeling that way, WH Murray, a Scottish mountaineer, beautifully wrote:
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
And I have experienced Providence, these unseen hands. Moments of change in which opportunity seems to arise to be placed like a gift of tremendous value in hands.
 Maybe I just need to return to my Buddhist roots. The concept of karma makes sense to me in a sort of Newtonian physics way. My present and future are partially determined by my past in that I make choices, which lead to other choices, and so on—perhaps even across lives. I'd like to believe that the universe recycles. Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn, speaks of Interbeing, his name for the older, quite complex doctrine of Pratitya Samutpadha—web of interconnection. Of course, we don't need to go much further than our own principles which also point to the interdependent web of life and although we tend to understand that as physical ecology, I believe it also applies to metaphysical ecology. We are connected.
At least a few words need to be said about the darker side of fate, karma, destiny.  Throughout history, various regimes have used such metaphysics to justify social order and control.  Throughout history we have used various conceptions of fate to offer cover for our darker intentions. We have used biblical “evidence” to define Africans as the "children of Ham" and so subject to slavery, we have justified a repressive caste system in India under the guise of Karma, and leveled charges of blood libel against Jews for murdering Christ and thus given sanction to persecution and murder. The list goes on for ways we have claimed fate as authority for injustice.
But do we say we don't believe in corporate fate, that a whole group can be held responsible for the actions of another generation?  And yet how do we acknowledge the role of past foreign policy plays in creating the conditions for our current challenges---or do we simply continue to place all the blame on the Other? Do we ignore the complexities of Colonialism when we throw up our hands and wonder why the Middle-East is rife with discord or Africa is filled with corruption? Do we deny our complicity in some of the world's most intractable problems and then feign ignorance when these tragedies begin to wash up upon our shores?
A sense of Fate or Destiny has tremendous potential to shape our understanding of events both personal and global.  None of us get to make choices that are completely free and with no relationship to past, present, or future. And this brings me back to that Rush song, Freewill, and a new insight for me into the very lyrics I quoted earlier. “Each of us, a cell of awareness, imperfect and imcomplete.” I have no idea what Neil Peart meant by those words, but as someone who writes and preaches on a regular basis, I've come to understand that what I write and say sometimes has strikingly little to do with what my audience reads or hears. And so, whatever Neil meant, I now see connectivity in the midst of his ode to freedom. “Each of us a cell of awareness” perhaps recognizes the organic nature of our bonds to each other—cells within a larger organism—moving towards perfection and completion only to the extent that we recognize our role in the larger body. I will never deny both the reality and necessity of freewill, but I increasingly have a appreciation of how much I am both director and player in this bizarre performance that is life. To quote Shakespeare once again:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts
We have fates and destinies, but they are created by us through organic complex connections that are given divinity and holiness through the relationships we build, the choices we make, and the wisdom we earn.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernst Henley
written 1875 from his hospital bed

The Ben I’ll Never Be

[please note that sermons are primarily spoken works rather than written ones--what preaches well may not be read well. Forgive any grammatical or spelling errors--life is rather busy these days.]

You're either a poet
Or you're a lover
Or you're the famous
Benjamin Stone.
You take one road,
You try one door,
There isn't time for any more.
One's life consists of either/or.

So goes the opening stanza of “The Road You Didn’t Take” from the Sondheim musical, “Follies.” I’ve never seen it performed, had never even heard of it until a cover version jumped out at me from a Mandy Patinkin album. And I mean jumped out. The song spoke to something I had been struggling with.

I’m at an age, I guess middle-age, where I’m gradually watching the rapidly flowing hopes and intentions of the first half of my life slowly solidifying into firmer, clearer, less malleable patterns. I say this with a little sadness, but not much. I am lucky enough to be aware, most of the time, that whatever I've lost, the broad potential of who I might have been, has been replaced by a fullness of actual existence that is certainly not perfect, but satisfying.

And yet, I can’t help but feel some sense of loss as my life takes a more settled form. Although being a hospital chaplain rapidly destroys any sense of complacency about life's predictability, still, I have been experiencing an awareness of how some doors, once walked through, can't be opened again and the place you find yourself in on the other side becomes your whole world, never really having seen the one-way sign. Put more simply, roughly halfway through life’s journey, I’m increasingly aware of how my choices have shaped my life far more than any external force. Those choices have created the man I am: strengths, talents, failings and foibles. Whatever nature may have given me, I have nurtured through choice and habit into the shape I see in the mirror. 2300 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle himself observed “we are what we repeatedly do; excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” Our life is defined not only by the major turning points but also, perhaps even more so, by the tiny, gentle, near infinite swipes of daily action that over time wear away the indeterminate forms of childhood into the more fixed images of maturity.

This was one of the paradoxes of life that the Buddha pointed out 25 centuries ago. I am both the same person I was when I was 5, 15, 25, and 40 and yet completely different than I was at those ages. My mind is different, my body different. Tremendous changes and yet I am me. The Buddha used this little thought experiment to illustrate how little coherence the idea of a permanent self possessed. For me it just emphasizes the role of choice. One Nathan might have gone to medical school as he had intended when he was 19. A very different Nathan might have never spent a year in Japan, might have finished a PhD, might have married Trisha, Leslie, Leea, Cindi, or Jordana. Might not have married, might have joined the FBI, might have moved to Pittsburgh instead of Colorado Springs, might have said no to being a parent, might have said yes to the job offer he got from Penrose two days before Memorial made an offer, might have, might have, might have. Every no is a yes to some other life and vice verse of course. Every yes is a no to another potential path.

And this is true for every one of us here today. A billion small decisions, leading to a million slightly bigger ones, leading to a 100,000 more significant ones, leading to the hundreds of fairly important choices leading to a few dozen truly epic ones---all of which reinforcing the one decision we make each and every moment of every day—to be alive—and to be alive is to make choices.
And this is why my words this morning are hopefully more than just a peek into a fellow congregant’s midlife crisis. I wouldn’t preach about this if I didn’t feel that this was a shared experience. We may have diversity in age, belief, work background, family structure, place of origin, and so on, but regardless of any way we might distinguish ourselves from one another, I think relatively early on we start to get the sense that there is not a reset button for life. The inevitability of choice touches us all. A choice made today leads me on to another choice which leads to another choice and so on. Each particular tree of life that our decisions shape has a unique structure and is only one of thousands if not millions that we might have watered, fed, and pruned over the course of a lifetime. You might feel you’ve wandered off-course, made bad choices, and hopefully, ultimately, found your way back to the intended but no matter then final outcome or destination, the path you took is unique.

You may well still feel off-course, adrift in a sea of confusion. To some extent, many if not most people do. But the story only comes to an end when we come to an end, and no one gets to skip ahead to read the final chapter of their life. For better or worse, we never know what the next hour, day, or year hold. And yet you still have decisions to make. Even in the face of those events that are not choices—random accidents of fate or biology—as long as you have capacity for decision-making, you must make decisions. Whether that choice is to crawl into a closet or take on the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” the question is not ultimately, with all respect to Mr. Shakespeare, “to be or not to be” but rather what choices do you make here and now, how you choose to be in the face of “The heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” as Prince Hamlet observes.

This is the Hindu and Buddhist doctrine of Karma. Like so many other religious ideas, karma gets oversimplified, turning into some cosmic tit for tat—I step on an ant so I get crushed by a falling piano as if life and the universe were only slightly more subtle than a roadrunner cartoon. Karma,at its most basic, tries to remind us that we are ultimately responsible for our own lives. Not that we are in control, for control is a profound illusion. No, not control but responsible, we are the ones who are able to respond to the circumstances in front of us, and the way we respond today creates the choices we face tomorrow and so forward through this lifetime. Few things are truly in our control, but how we choose to respond is. It may seem something of a paradox. I am not in control of my life, and yet I am responsible for it. I believe that single sentence represents an important spiritual truth. To be responsible but not in control points to the fine balance between clutching at circumstances too possessively and being a mere passenger on your life’s journey.

There are, of course, events and conditions that no one consciously chooses. Though this depends on how far you are willing to take the concept of karma and reincarnation. Some would argue that even those circumstances that seem outside of one’s control—being born into profound poverty or illness are choices that some part of you made in a former lifetime. Not punishment, but setting your soul up for a classroom you know you need even as you forget signing up for the course. I don’t know if I believe that. I’m not so sure my childhood friend Doug somehow chose to be hit by a drunk driver or my uncle Jerry chose to contract a deadly lymphoma cancer. To be honest, I’m not sure it matters. Whether this life is set up by a previous one or not, regardless of the profound unfairness or tragedy that you find in front of you, you still make choices about how you will respond. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and founder of the Logotherapy school of psychology, taught this. One may well not be in control of one’s circumstances, but one is in control of how one reacts to them and ultimately what meaning you then draw from that experience.

But life’s journey, no matter how long, comes to an end—at least in this form. Last week Roger spoke to us about German minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer. American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was an influence on the Bonhoeffer. Let’s take a moment and join together in a responsive reading based on Niebuhr.

"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."

“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, therefore, we are saved by hope.” Our choices create ripples that potentially far beyond the boundaries of our own lives. Few of us will lead lives that ensure our memory in history books, but the challenge of time has always meant investing our offspring with the hopeful mandate to carry some part of ourselves into the future with them.

For better or worse, some part of me sees in my Benjamin an hourglass counting down my own days. Nothing in my life to this point has caused me to throw myself so forcefully into the future as the birth of my child. When he is 10, I’ll be 50, when he is graduating from college, I’ll be around 60. If he waits as long as we did to have children, I’ll be 80 before I see a grandchild. Will I make it to all those events? Will I be in good health? Who will I be then? Will Julia be with me? Will Ben? Surely I will not be who I am now, but not someone else either. And so even as I see in Benjamin a reflection of my own mortality, I also see the future as naturally belonging to him in a very real sense. The last line of the song I mentioned before is “the Ben I’ll never be, who remembers him.” For me that echoes both the slow solidification of my life—all the Nathan’s I’ll never be—as well as the beauty and challenge of the unknown future that my child will see, and a powerful reminder of the separateness of his life from mine. He has his own choices to make. I don’t get to live his life.

Later today it will be my honor to participate in installing the Reverend Roger Butts as the minister of this church. I don't want to force a connection from this sermon to the celebration this afternoon, but I do see a natural correspondence between the two. Because, here, in this church, in this faith, we make choices. We are not at the whim of supernatural forces, corrupt by some long ago sin, unable to act on our own. Ours is an empowering faith that believes we can act in our own lives and in the world. Indeed, the current issue of UU World magazine asks us if can make choices to be more inclusive.

And we must make choices, Unitarian Universalism is far too this-worldly to be able to afford adherents who are passive observers. I want echo Rev. Roger’s sermon from last week when I say that our faith must be an active one. In the Internet age, many, if not most of us, are inconsequentially immortal, being consigned to the archives of google and facebook forever. Let that not be your only legacy to the world. Here your decisions matter. Just like individuals, congregations make choices. Who will we be collectively? Will we choose to meet our growth and decide to welcome it even as it calls us to even greater changes. Can we bid good-bye to the churches we might have been and embrace the one we are now and might become? What will our impact be in the lives gathered here? What will our choices mean for the Colorado Springs community? How will we teach our children? For this is the role of RE, to pass on our spiritual genetic material, knowing and accepting the inevitable changes, but hoping to see our reflection looking back at us. I, as do many Unitarian Universalist ministers, believe our religious education programs must not only educate broadly about other traditions and life skills, but increasingly teach children why they should choose to be life-long Unitarian Universalists. We don’t have to be too shy about believing our tradition is right and noble and good. If you thought that someplace else was better, why wouldn’t you be there. I believe this is the best place, best tradition for my family and me. And while I accept his freedom of choice, I want my son to be a Unitarian Universalist. Some choices are better than others. He will hopefully learn to choose good foods and a healthy, sustainable lifestyle over eating and producing primarily garbage; and he will hopefully learn that it is better to be open-minded, tolerant, and engaged—and part of a long tradition of women and men who have lived and died for those ideals.

Because ultimately, we need to be living for something beyond the material, choosing something bigger, broader. For me this is the point of transcendental spirituality. Not to point us to a heavenly realm beyond this one, not to suffuse this plane of existence with invisible angels and demons, but to call us to an existence that transcends the physical by redirecting us to a deeper relationship with ourselves and others—and choices we make.

And that is what I forget when I get caught up in seeing only the end points marked by Ben's rapid growth. I see myself at 60 when he is 20, but what I forget to see is me at his college graduation, I see myself at 80, but I forget to see being at his wedding to some strong, bright woman or man—I forget all the joys and difficulties we will hopefully live through together. The relationship that I will nurture with intention and love over those years. Perhaps this is part of what Niebuhr means, “Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope.”

To cast myself too far into the future is to leapfrog the life lived between here and there. And many of us do that to ourselves constantly. I can't wait for next weekend, I can't wait for summer, I can't wait for school to end or start, I can't wait, I can't wait. And we sometimes forget that looking forward can sometimes turn into a looking past this moment, these choices. Worrying about the Nathan or Ben I'll never be, the doors that have closed, the roads not taken, can shut my eyes and stop my ears and close my heart to the Nathan or Kelly, or Joe, or Roger, or Diane we are right now.

It doesn't matter what occasions the crisis—teen-age, middle-age, old-age. The cause is far less important than the spiritual reality that we increase our pain and difficulty when we remove ourselves from ourselves through regret, desire, hate or any emotion based in emotional and spiritual dislocation. If I only had done this...if I only had that, if he, she, it, they would only go away, change, or die. Regret turns us to the doors that are closed, the decisions over and done with and robs us of the true power we have, to choose how we meet our circumstance here and now.

In recent years, I've become increasingly impatient with abstract theologies and philosophies. Which, if you've known me long enough, is an astounding change. Ten years ago I was at Boston University working on a doctorate in Philosophy of Religion. All I wanted to study was abstracts, I had even written a master's thesis on philosophy of mysticism that was incomprehensible enough to be considered pretty good. But I think my preference then for abstracts primarily served to insulate me from realities and choices that were harder to deal with. Now I want all spirituality to accord with the old African proverb, “when you pray, move your feet.” Your life, your faith, your church, your city and country are made up of actual choices. I don't care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin—doing the jitterbug or dancing cheek to cheek notwithstanding—all I want to know is how they chose to dance.

I hope this day and all your days to come you make healthy, compassionate, and brave choices for your church and your world, for those you love and who will have their own futures, and most of all, I hope you make bright and beautiful choices for yourself.