On the use of reason in religion: the third and last of a trilogy of sermons for High Plains

A note for All Souls folks, the beginning of the sermon is slightly different from the one I gave at All Souls on 2/5/11 but the overall message is the same.  Thanks for having me as a guest minister, it was great to be with you all.  -n

Roger, Amanda, and I took on three central tenets of High Plains Church:  The Divine is Love, Everyone Matters, and Reason is Useful in Religion.  Here is my contribution from 12/4/11.  I've included at the end the quotations Julia read before the sermon as folks asked for them.  Thanks, -n

Reason is Useful in Religion
a sermon for High Plains Church, Unitarian Universalist 12/4/11
adapted for All Souls 2/5/11
Rev. Nathan Mesnikoff ©2011

The Divine is Love, Everyone Matters, Reason is useful in religion. Three central tenets of our community and not a bad summary of Unitarian Universalist history and theology. All three, in their own way, are wonderfully subversive thoughts that fly in the face of centuries of tradition that preach a very different view. Many of us grew up in religious settings where we were taught that God's love comes with very specific demands, that some are not accorded that love due to variations in belief, practice, or lifestyle, and with the implicit message that questioning is not appropriate and reason is dangerous to faith. Many of us found our way to Unitarian Universalism because at a deep level we intuited, knew that damnation and Hell were not part of the Universe's deepest truth, as Amanda talked about: the divine is love and overcomes all. Many of us came because we discovered that which separates us is never more important than what bonds us together as human beings sharing one beautiful, fragile planet and that none of us will ever be truly free when so many are imprisoned by racism, sexism, ageism, consumerism, homophobia or simply by poverty and ignorance or Fox News. Or as Roger talked about, everyone matters. Likewise, many here and in our congregations across the country, across the world and across generations, have come to Unitarian Universalist communities because we believe that the careful use of rationality is integral -- not antithetical -- to genuine spirituality.

One thing I want to lift up is the consistency of our beliefs over centuries. I fear that we don't know our history terribly well. Those of us who make our way through the forest leading to ordination read quite a bit of Unitarian Universalist history. Ministers aside, how many here today have read a book on UU history?

So UU Thought 101. Do we believe in Original Sin? No, and let's start here as we look at the role of reason in our faith and our historical emphasis on rationality. On some level, our predecessors' rejection of original sin created a space for the role of reason in religious life. Even the noted early humanist Erasmus wrote, “Faith cures reason, which has been wounded by sin.” People believed that we just weren't clean enough to think well. Until we freed ourselves from the spectre of the depraved, enfeebled status of humanity following the fall from grace by Adam and Eve, reason could not stand on its own as a valid arbiter of theological propositions. This is still a reason some faithful people distrust science and human wisdom—we are too inferior, too weak on our own, and so we turn to the supposed Word of God rather than the Power of Humanity to explain our universe. I think this is a tremendous mistake and leaves us reliant on outdated information. Rev. Michael Dowd speaks of this when he says that relying on texts like the Bible as a source of factual knowledge is like not having updated your GPS in 200 years and still thinking that the Oregon Trail on horseback is the way to go. We need current maps to help us make the post-modern journey in a complex, multicultural, deeply polyvalent world. Or as Galileo put it, “The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heavens go."

We heard Julia read several quotations about the use of reason. There have been so many heroic figures in the on-going conversation about reason and religion. Galileo, Thomas Paine, Abigail Adams, Jefferson, Emerson. What binds them all together, theist and atheist alike, is the core belief that, however we came to possess this gift called reason, the ability to look at a proposition and determine its value to us, the ability to set aside our passions and consider facts and realities, however we have come to it, reason is a glorious faculty and one that should be celebrated not dismissed when it raises an inconvenient hand in the back of the class. Reason is not the enemy of faith. Reason is not the enemy of faith, indeed it is its salvation. For to believe anything which cannot hold up to simple reason is to live in willful ignorance. And here it is, the core of what I believe we mean when we say that “reason is useful in religion,” that we covenant with each other not to be believe specific propositions, but to be intrepid explorers of truths, especially our own. That revelation, whether from Jesus, Buddha, Darwin or Einstein, revelation is the FIRST step, not the last step. Truths presented to us by any prophet-scientist or poet-detective are handed to us for our own examination of relative benefits and defects. Someone out on the cutting edge “discovers” some new land, a fresh vista to explore. But we must make our own home in this new world. In matters of spiritual, and for that matter scientific, truth, we should avoid being armchair travelers—reading exciting accounts from the safety of our current position, but never venturing forth to see for ourselves. And, we do this too often in our tradition. Coming to church should not be your only spiritual practice. And the use of reason can be one such practice—seek out new ideas and challenges to current beliefs. Do not be satisfied with your current understanding.

No principle however, no matter how wonderful, can be safe from misuse. The use of reason is no different. We have to be careful not to elevate reason so that it becomes an end in and of itself. When we raise rationality above all else, we run the risk of reductionism. I went this way myself in graduate school and am having a very hard time stepping back from it. I was talking to a friend about this problem once and she asked me to give an example. After a moment of thought, I said the excessive use of reason, especially in matters of spirituality and art, can leave you in a situation not unlike someone who loves their dog tremendously, and decides the best way to love the dog even more is to dissect it to see if you can discover what makes the beloved animal so adorable and friendly. At the end of the process, you know more, but you may have killed what you loved and likely haven't gotten the answers you thought you were looking for. Rationality is a fantastic tool and one that should be rigorously applied to most lines of inquiry, but to seek justification for all faith positions in terms of scientific evidence is to subject spiritual beliefs to a level of scrutiny rarely, if ever, applied to other beliefs. No one asks you to justify exactly why you like Jazz over Classical or Indian over Mexican for dinner. As French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal said, “The heart has reasons that the head knows not.” And some evidence suggests that, in many things, we make a sudden, snap, intuitive judgment first about many issues and then find evidence to support our position. I think there are limits to faith—especially in the public sphere, but there should also be some modest boundaries on pure reason. It would be a poorer world if there were no room for intuition and personal experience.

And so, one thing I want to decouple from Reason is Atheism. The two are not necessarily synonymous. To make them so is to risk making the wide varieties of theistic faith a mere caricature—to believe in any god is to be a fool. There are certainly proponents of this equation, that to be truly rational, one must abandon all conceptions of a transcendental power or divinity. While I think that a strong rationality renders inedible almost any traditional conception of divinity—no old white man in the clouds, no jealous angry god micromanaging our daily lives, no pearly gates, fiery pit---rationality does not render all ideas of god defunct. I'm thinking here of theologians like the lesbian, feminist, Episcopalian Carter Heywood, who writes in her book, Saving Jesus from Those Who are Right, “I am not much of a theist,” but goes on to speak of “godding,” the finding of sacred reality in the holy relationship between two beings. She also says, and I wholly agree, “the primary aim of theology--[is to] generate the passion and the intelligence, the commitment and the vision, to help us make history in just and compassionate ways.”

Although I tend toward the agnostic, I don't have any problem with a belief in god or gods or goddesses for that matter. I don't take issue with beliefs in an afterlife or reincarnation or transmogrification of the soul onto the next vibratory level of cosmic existence. I enjoy speaking with people who believe all sorts of things that I do not. As a hospital chaplain or when I'm acting, as I am today, as a parish minister, I value the diversity of human belief. It gives me a tremendous range of metaphor and analogy to draw on in both my ministry and my life. As most of you know, I lean more toward Buddhist conceptions of reality, but happily receive communion when offered, adore Islamic poetry, and will chant with Hare Krishnas or the Benedictine Sisters I'm friends with up at Benet Hill. I am of a like mind with Thomas Jefferson when he said, “...it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” I hope to be an honest agnostic acknowledging that I can no more prove the non-existence of any particular deity than anyone can prove the existence of said being. There is no argument for or against that is truly convincing and I no more expect someone to prove the existence of their god as a predicate for respect than I demand someone prove their love for their spouse or a particular artist. I believe that human beings have an incredibly broad set of options when it comes to explaining basic reality.

All that said, I do draw a line—and I think it is one that we, as a faith community, must stand up for. I reject the use of religion as a basis for policy decisions that affect anyone who is not a willing participant in that faith. The beliefs some Christian hold about the age of the earth and the origins of life are not to be taught in schools to our children--except as cultural studies. There is no reproducible observable proof to substantiate the creation story of Genesis. And I do not accept the Bible as being any more authoritative about factual matters than other great works of literature. I adore Moby Dick and Winnie the Pooh and believe they both contain honest, valuable wisdom--but I don't think they are useful texts on either whale or bear biology. “'Pooh?' 'Yes, Piglet?' 'I've been thinking...' 'That's a very good habit to get into, Piglet.'” Any set of cultural ideas more than fifty years old needs serious review from time to time. The ethics of the Bible have some use, and their lasting influence cannot be denied, but I don't accept stoning as punishment, the moral dangers of eating shrimp or pork or the catastrophic quality of a couple of guys kissing. And I'll let you guess how many times Julia has "submitted to my authority" in the past 15 years.

And this is where our stance on rationality needs to have some teeth. The private world of the believer is theirs and I will deny no one the right to their own conception of reality---as long as it doesn't hurt me, my community, or my planet. The Second Coming is not a plan for solving a global environmental crisis. “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” is not a basis for human rights. American exceptional-ism, if it exists, stems from the brilliance of the ideals we once held to, not the providence of some divinity.

And here is my problem -- my paradox. I genuinely celebrate diversity—religious no less than racial, cultural, sexual, or musical—but I kind of hear myself saying, “believe whatever you want, just don't let it influence how you vote, act, or organize your life or community.” How can someone be a dedicated Christian, believe the Bible—even if not literally, then at least seriously—and be willing to comply with my demand not to carry its tenets into the world? They can't—and it is unrealistic to think it ever was or ever could be so. I have every interest in advancing the gospel of science and the embrace of reason, but I have no interest or intention to force people to follow such a path. And so we cannot cede the public stage to those who dismiss good science or pander to willful ignorance. We must be, individually and corporately, a voice that proudly claims that reason is useful in religion. I agree with the Book of John, 8:32 “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

We represent a deeply American religion, imagined as Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and others wanted. Any idea is welcome to the stage, but it must be willing to submit to careful examination and defended not on the basis of its age, but on its merits and its ability to help humanity. The public interest must overwhelm private enthusiasms. I like the fact that no part of my mind has to be left behind in submission to any particular piece of theology. I can look closely at every part of my Unitarian Universalist faith. And if the principals are a bit bland, they are not unreasonable, unacceptable, or irrational. We can allow for private differences in belief while keeping our public sphere of common faith acceptable to all. We are the model for how interfaith dialogue can and should happen--allowing for particularity while reinforcing and celebrating commonality. What we lose in certainty and uniformity, we make up for in inquiry and courage.

The fire of reason, the energy of reflective inquiry that we Unitarian Universalists value keeps our beliefs from stagnating and becoming so inflexible or brittle that we must defend them at any cost—including sacrificing human life or dignity. We must keep these fires BLAZING—always willing to ask difficult questions of ourselves, of each other, of our community, of our government, and of our faith. When new discoveries are made in the fields of evolutionary biology, psychology, physics, and poetry we must be there, learning from those who have traveled bravely to the frontiers and brought back images of new vistas. We must fear nothing new, deciding for ourselves after careful and honest study what serves our goals of wisdom, freedom, and equality.

Minister and historian of Unitarian history Earl Morse Wilbur, who wrote what is still perhaps the definitive history of Unitarianism, proposes that what has characterized Unitarianism over the centuries has less to do with theology and more to do with a commitment to three themes: complete freedom of religious thought, tolerance of differing views and practices, and the unrestricted use of reason.

Reason used in the service of love and toward the end of justice and equality is what we strive for. We must be the first modern religious community to truly embrace change and growth. We must embrace the paradox of holding nothing and everything sacred. We must worship no idols whether they be of gold or comfortable myths. We are Unitarian Universalists, and we embrace diversity. Others have the right to have their own opinions, but they do not have the right to their own facts¹. Science and rationality have been and will continue to be the best hope for human progress and justice. Not a sterile cold inquisition, but a brave, creative inquiry into the world in here and out there. The meek may some day have the earth, but the rest of us will go to the stars. And reason, yoked together with love and justice—and then carried out into the world, will take us there.

Quotations read by Julia

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."

--Buddha

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. --Galileo

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. --Thomas Paine The Age of Reason

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since. --Abigail Adams

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. --Emerson

1Adapted from the famous quotation from Daniel Patrick Monynihan

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.

Stop the Intensity

Well, you got trouble, my friend, right here in River City. Trouble—or at least a lot of people want you to think so.

I was miserably sick with Swine Flu last month, as I lay about feeling wretched, I experimented with watching “TV” on my computer. This was a big change for me. I usually get most of my news from rather sober sources—The New York Times, The BBC, NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. I watched Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh with a horror I normally associate with particularly gory traffic accidents, and I was struck over and over by the intensity of the media. The right, out of power for the moment, seem the loudest now, but the left has its share as well. Keith Olbermann didn't always strike me as “fair and balanced.” Regardless of which side you listen to, the tone is pretty shrill and, speaking frankly, kind of scary. It doesn't take long kneeling at feet of these impoverishing prophets to be pretty sure the world is going to end sometime soon. Fear and intensity seem to be such dominant forces in our public conversation. I started wondering about what this does to us: physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

I know this stuff isn't new, this seductive shouting of fear and doom. When Thomas Jefferson ran for president a lot of people were deeply alarmed and didn't hesitate to warn us of the consequences of his election. A Connecticut paper claimed that electing Jefferson assured us a future in which “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will all be openly taught and practiced; the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed; the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.”

Humans have always used fear to define good and evil, insider from outsider, saved from damned. It seems to me though that the yellow journalism, mudslinging, and schadenfreude of yesteryear was maybe the equivalent of beer and whiskey, while the current crop is far closer to crack and crystal meth. I think instinct, added to the incredibly pervasive and calculated nature of modern media, has created a far more fraught environment.

What we're struggling with here is our own animal nature. Not some deep bestial aggressiveness and certainly not some sense of Original Sin calling us defiled for the mythical action of some long ago fig-leafed couple, but just simple, adaptive biology—in a word, evolution. Our species has grown and changed and adapted over a vast reach of time.

We evolved in a state of privation, never having enough. Our bodies, like those of other animals, often went through periods where food was scarce. When nourishment was available, you gorged yourself because it wasn't clear when the next opportunity would come. We may have culturally and materially developed to the point where that kind of deprivation is only the province of the truly poor, but our bodies don't know the difference. Our brains reward us for eating certain types of food because biologically speaking they ensure survival—primarily fat and sugar. And, have no doubt, the massive corporations who design our food know exactly the mix that is most likely to result in that nice flood of dopamine and endorphins. Actions that are conducive to survival produce this wash of chemicals that we perceive as pleasurable—and so we want to do it again and again. Food and sex are among the strongest of these reactions—both very pleasurable, both completely central to the survival of our DNA, and both exploited every single moment of every single day.
But those aren't the only two signals important for survival or easy to exploit—fear is profoundly important as well. Imagine a creature that paid little attention to the sensation of fear—they hear the growl of the predator, pause for a moment, but then go back to feeding peacefully. There is a scientific name for this kind of creature—lunch.

Our nervous systems naturally key in on unique or intense environmental cues—they might indicate a threat. So the media, food and advertising industries have to constantly look for what is new, startling, shocking if they are to capture our attention. There is a ratcheting-up process that leads us from horror movies starring Bela Lugosi to the the Friday the 13th movies to the latest crop of what are known as torture porn movies which push boundaries ever further. We go from a quarter pounder with cheese being indulgent to the latest Carl Jr's inventions with a pound of meat, bacon, cheese, and guacamole with enough calories to meet the needs of the average Ethiopian family for a week. Everything has to be bigger, louder, sharper.

High intensity stimulates our brains. When Glen Beck openly weeps on camera, when Keith Olberman raises his deep, resonant voice to sternly and aggressively correct the Republican leadership--we are stirred. Strong emotion elicits strong reactions in us. To our brains, we are still tribal creatures—dependent on social signals for our place in the group and for our survival. If someone in the tribe was deeply upset we needed to respond—they were likely upset by something that was a threat to us. We didn't have time to determine if the threat was real—we had to react. Doubt any of this, go to a horror movie, see if you get worked up even though you know that every moment of it is absolutely fake. Our primal brain doesn't take account of special effects—there are just effects.

There is an old adage about dysfunctional and addictive relationships—intensity is not intimacy. Many of us confuse the two. The internet and television with their 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet of noise, body parts, violence, hatred, and pain feeds us plenty of intensity. Remember the old news saying, “if it bleeds, it leads.”

And the screaming heads on radio and television invite us to the worst interpretation of those we disagree with—and I can think of few things more harmful to the long-term health of our democracy or our individual souls than the routine demonization of those who think differently. We wind up with an almost Newtonian response—the more fear I feel the more likely I am to move further away from the center. Moderates become un-electable and so we push our national discussion from conversation to chaos—locked in a perpetual war of polar opposites led by idealogues.
Numerous books and studies have pointed out the increasing isolation so many of us feel. Isolation and loneliness we live with despite being connected every hour of the day by satellite TV, cellphones, and wireless internet. I think we, as a culture, are living out this addictions theory axiom—we have plenty of intensity and increasingly little intimacy.

When we are encouraged to feel afraid—afraid of our government, afraid of other countries, afraid of those who look, love, believe, think differently then we push ourselves into a constant feeling of danger, a perpetual fight or flight state which leaves us compromised intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Instead of ready and engaged, informed and hopeful, we find ourselves panting on the floor, door barred, wide-eyed and ready to repel the next assault. This is no way to live.

Where do we go to find silence and solace, rationality and reprieve, perhaps even recovery from the crystal meth-level high of irresistible media and unstoppable corporations? Well, right here, of course. We are the antidote to fear, this is the place to recalibrate your senses and your soul.

I don't think UU congregations always get why we come together on Sundays. We don't as Unitarian Universalists take the concept of sabbath seriously enough. If you cannot find a couple of hours each week where you will not answer your phone, will not check the latest headlines or stock prices, will simply let a little time pass in worship than we, actually you, have a problem. Be here, breathe, settle into a quiet sense of worship.

Whenever I use the word worship I can feel a little shudder go through a number of congregants—worship, such a word to be afraid of. Worship—as if we came together to engage in anything like what most other churches do. When we speak of worship, when we worship together, we are tapping into the word's deepest roots. We bring together “worth”—that which we find valuable—with the suffix “-ship” meaning to shape or create. We all come together to engage in a profound act of creation—we, together, minister and layperson, women and men, rich and poor, republican and democrat, gay and straight, theist and atheist—we come together to shape, to create and share what is of worth to us. Nothing less brings us together every weekend—nothing less should. I want, today, for all of us to let go of our nervousness about calling what we do worship. And yes, I am certainly using the word differently than most Baptists, Methodists, or Evangelicals would—but we can take their sense of it back as well. We do worship—we worship what is Holy and Divine like they do, but we locate it differently. We find God in the free mind and soul, we find it in the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and the dreams of Dr. King. We find it in small acts of personal courage and grand gestures toward justice. We find it in our history of tolerance and rationality in the face of superstition and fossilized tradition. We find it in the open hand and the open heart. We find it in every spiritual path an honest, loving person ever walked. We find it in the words of Jesus and Buddha, the music of Bach and the Beatles.

We Unitarian Universalists are different from those faith traditions that lace their message of love with fear and offer salvation with one hand while holding a stick in the other. Brave men and women over centuries have purged our tradition of fear and superstition. And, to be frank, it is surely one of the main reasons our religion has such low growth and loses so many of our youth. You will never hear in a church like ours—believe as we do or you are damned for eternity. You will never hear, love who we say is acceptable or you will be punished with a horrible disease. You will never hear, everyone who is not Unitarian Universalist is wrong and influenced by the devil. Coming to our church is like going to a Nascar race and never, ever seeing a crash. In fact going to a race and not only not seeing a crash, but being asked genuinely to hope one never happens anywhere.

This is not just modern UU, this is us going back. Does anyone know who John Murray is? He preached his first Universalist sermon in the states in 1770. He famously said, “You may possess only a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. Give them not Hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.”
A deep, pervasive, bitter fear is not part of our history and has no place in our future. We offer hope and community. And we steadfastly refuse any claims to truth that hold distrust, fear, prejudice, or discrimination at their core.

This afternoon you will ordain me. You should not do this just because I'm a good guy or because I can preach, but because you recognize in me a life's calling as a minister of the Unitarian Universalist tradition. And I am that, I stand here at this pulpit with 500 years of our history at my back, holding me up, informing and teaching me, leading and inspiring me. I am a Unitarian—I believe that this holy, sacred, intoxicating, frustrating, comedic divine reality is ultimately non-dualistic, One with a capital “O” and that is what, if anything, I call God. I am a Universalist, I believe that salvation—a profoundly deep health and healing is available to all who seek it, not just those who hold to one set of beliefs, but all those that seek the truth in love shall find it and that truth creates freedom. I've heard dozens of UU ministers preach—here and New Jersey and San Francisco and Boston and Maine and Seattle and other places—Buddhists and Pagans, Christians and agnostics, Humanists and Jews. We use different language, different images but we speak with a surprisingly steady unified voice. We call you to freedom, peace, justice, balance, self-awareness and love---in short we try to call you to what is best in the human spirit, what is truly sacred in religion. You call us and then we call you.

Fear is easy; our way is hard. Fear removes the ability to think and traps us in a state of raw instinct, closes our eyes and hearts, and seduces us with false promises of safety and crystal clear identity. Overcoming this addiction will be, as with most addictions, very hard—made even harder because there's a peddler of fear and intensity on every street corner and the seductive call echoes from every radio, television, rooftop and, unfortunately, too many pulpits.

But that is, I think, increasingly the purpose of this free religion of ours, to be a strong gentle counterpoint to the rest of it all. I challenge you, today and in the days to come, to practice rejecting fear. Hear excess in the media and laugh softly to yourself. Read alarm in the paper, smile, and put the paper down. Consciously remember this community when you need to be re-grounded in what is of value. This is your genuine heritage; Unitarian Universalists have been doing this for 500 years. If your spiritual identity is primarily that of what you left behind, what you don't want, you are cheating yourself and this tradition. Reject intensity, refute fear, welcome intimacy, and practice--as John Murray advised—uncovering your light, give yourself and those around you hope and courage, not hell. Live our values, speak our gospel of justice, love, and unity in diversity. It is the task of this generation of Unitarian Universalists to reclaim the spirituality of our faith—steadfastly holding to the motive force of humanism, the methodical fearlessness of science, while not being afraid of the profound mystery of life. We have chosen a path that allows us tremendous freedom but requires of us a deep, steady strength. Ours is a path that has for many generations rejected the seductions of fear, let us strive to be worthy.

Amen, blessed be, namaste.

Cake or Death: Laughter and Spirituality

Cake or Death.

How many people have heard of Eddie Izzard? I'm a pretty big fan of the British stand-up comic and actor. I want to play a brief bit of one of his skits. (click here for a youtube clip that isn't identical to the one in church, but has the main point.)

Cake or Death. It seems a pretty easy choice.

I must admit I've felt a bit daunted by my topic this morning. Y'know, it seemed like great idea at the time—offer a sermon for the auction. I like preaching, you all seem to like listening—a match made in heaven, a veritable piece of cake. Ahhh, sweet naiveté of youth—or at least middle age. The auction bit went well—folks bid on the sermon, and Sheila won. I felt good, I was able to contribute to the church by doing something I already enjoy.

But then, people started coming up to me. Not before, when I could have changed my mind or placed some limits, not before did they come to me, but after, then they started.

"Y'know, one year, someone handed Matthew an 873 page book, written in Swedish mind you, on the ontological implications of interfaith epistemology in instances of sacred sexuality in persons of Buddhist inclination—and it was the best sermon ever given in the state of Colorado. Seven people in the congregation actually reached Nirvana by the end, seven. Two more the next day once they really digested it all"

The full extent of my plight kept being expanded for me. I kept smiling as best I could, but I'm sure my eyes started getting wider. I didn't have time to being reading long books, let alone ones written in Northern European languages. I mean, Norwegian I could handle, maybe Finnish, but Swedish, never. I don't even like Ikea much.

Then Sheila sent me the email with her chosen topic—and I breathed deeply.
Sheila asked me to preach on light in the midst of the dark, to preach about the role of laughter and joy in religion and spirituality. What a wonderful topic Sheila, thank you for creating this opportunity and for your generous support of this community.

And what a perfect time for the topic. Am I the only one who feels a need to take another look at the Book of Revelation? The economy , health care, global warming—and now pandemic. Swine Flu, are you kidding me? Who the hell is kissing the pigs? Swine Flu...Yes, Rabbi, yes...I know, I know, I should have kept kosher.

Of course, all of these catastrophes are starting to take on a new meaning for me as I rapidly approach fatherhood. Most every day, some helpful person reminds me how overwhelming parenting can be. To which I want to say, thank you. Thank you very much. I had already been worried, now I can really settle into some prime, irrational anxiety. Thanks.

It is in these moments, that I need to do three things. First, remember to breathe—greatest advice I've ever received or given—just breathe. Second, remember that I am blessed with community—not just this one, but others as well. We are only truly human and grounded in community. As most of you know I am a hospital chaplain and the one thing I see over and over again---the grease that eases life's sticky passages is connection—the more you have consciously sought connection, the easier life will generally be even in the face of tragedy. Third, I need to remember the healing power, the profound sacredness, of laughter.

For this morning let us think together on three elements of holy laughter—choice, community, and consciousness. All three are profoundly spiritual and important in our identity as Unitarian Universalists. And I do feel a need to connect this with spirituality and Unitarian Universalism. Making folks laugh is a noble enough goal, but I'm not sure its enough for worship. These sacred hours we spend together, when we share together our wisdom, our faith, our fears and our love. For them to mean something we have to, more often than not, touch on that which is beyond the mundane, to make a conscious choice to aim toward the sacred.

But we can still, indeed must still, laugh as we do this. Losing our ability to laugh at ourselves, is the first step toward forgetting that all religions are merely windows through which the light of the Divine pours through. Too much seriousness is like an accumulating layer of dirt on these windows—before you know it, the light gets blocked and you spend your days trying to decipher mystic patterns and perceive apocalyptic visions in the patterns in the grime. Laughter cleanses our eyes, our souls, our faith---laughter, it turns out, does windows.

I didn't write all my own material this morning—I've tried to draw from several traditions. I'll share with you traditional wisdom stories from Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism---as well as a smattering of UU jokes that have been around the proverbial block a time or two. Regardless of the source, I've tried to tie everything together to offer some ideas about why a sense of humor is a critical part of spirituality.

Let's begin with a story from the Islamic tradition.
One day the news went out that Mullah Nasrudin, the great Islamic Sufi mystic, had suffered a significant loss. His one and only, much loved donkey had gone missing What a loss, how terrible everyone said. When his neighbours heard the news they felt so bad for him they decided to go to Nasrudin's house and help him to find his donkey. So they came to the wise man's home and found him smiling and praising God in gratitude They couldn't understand it and asked the Mullah: " Mullah aren't you sad about loss of your donkey?" The Mullah laughed and said, "I am happy because God has been so good to me.” His friends were still confused. Nasrudin shook his head and smiled, “Don’t you get it? If I had been riding that donkey, I'd be lost right now too!”

For me the first message of sacred laughter is that of choice. We don't have a choice about much that happens to us. Life unfolds as it will, but we always have a choice about how we respond. Within the Buddhist tradition they sum this idea up by saying that “pain is mandatory, suffering is optional.” “Pain is mandatory, suffering is optional.” I see this over and over again, in the midst of tragedy so intense it sometimes literally takes my breath away. With precious few exceptions, events come to us all that cause pain, events that shatter our hopes, events that we wouldn't wish on anyone. These things simply happen, indeed it is one of the great tasks of religion to answer the question---why do bad things happen to good people? For the most part, the Unitarian Universalist answer is—I don't know. We don't spend much time trying to tease out the cause, we mostly focus on response. God's plan, karma, fate, or simple random chance—we don't, as a community share a single answer, nor does our history offer a clear systematic theology of evil. What we have now, and what is completely consistent with centuries of Unitarian and Universalist faith is that regardless of why it happened, we can use our freedom, innate wisdom, and goodness, and our community to get through.

Choice is not just individual though, it belongs to us as a community and as part of our spiritual inheritance. Because our religious forebears lived and died for tolerance and the use of reason in religion and the right of the individual to follow their own innate wisdom—because of these precious beliefs we are for the most part freed from the idolatries of the mind and spirit that afflict so many other faiths. We don't suppress questions, indeed we encourage them.

Not long ago, Julia and I were at Betty Davis' home for a Stewardship dinner. Conversation eventually turned to a Academy Cadet who happened to visit on a morning I was preaching. After the service he was, apparently, rather upset with some of the heresies I proclaimed. I can easily imagine an exchange he might have had with one of our members, the young man sputtering “I couldn't believe the sermon this morning, I didn't agree with practically anything that was said.” To which any of our members might have happily replied, “Oh well then you'll fit right in.” We all know the joke about a busload of UU's who die in a crash. They find themselves at a fork in a road with a sign saying “Heaven to the left” “Discussion about heaven to the right” and the whole troupe, of course, heads right.

When you join this community, when you begin to identify yourselves as Unitarian Universalist, you affirm more than perhaps anything else the value of freedom. You leave behind what seems to be the increasingly narrow dogmatism of many faiths. There are tremendous rewards for this choice but also a cost. The cost, as many of us have found and occasionally lament is the sense of surety and security that comes from letting clerics and texts dictate your reality in this world and the one to come. The reward, the reward is a sense of humor. Laughter only comes out of freedom for to laugh is to see difference, to recognize contradictions and paradoxes, to be aware of irony. To see the profound gap between what we hope for and what is reality is to be aware of the tension inherent in existence—and in that space between what we dearly hoped for and what we feared might happen, in that space we have a choice of how we respond. I see this in my work as a chaplain and in my own life. Do we choose cake or do we choose “death”?

Now, obviously I’m not suggesting anyone should laugh when given a diagnosis of Leukemia or smile when someone you love dies. Nor should we laugh off every insult and injury. We have to cry sometimes, to struggle sometimes, to scream and rage against reality sometimes—else how do we know when life is sweet? I doubt there’s a person in this room who has not at some time enjoyed an unexpected reprieve—the truck just misses hitting you, the diagnosis is benign, the lost child found playing at a friend’s house, the slide on the ice that comes to a gentle stop. Sometimes the laughter bursts forth at these times in sheer giddiness as the tension leaves so suddenly it does feel like a weight lifted from our shoulders.

The fact is religion is often absurd. For a long time I expressed that sentiment out of a highly critical analysis of religion in general. Church father Tertulian famously once said, "I believe because it is absurd." That kind of attitude drove me nuts, still does a lot of the time, but more and more I feel that the absurdity of religion is only exceeded by the absurdity of real life. Cake or Death, laugh or die—the choice is ours.

Humor and laughter are not just individual responses, but are an integral part of what binds us together as humans—they are part of what creates community. To laugh together is to create bonds and community is the second aspect of laughter I want to talk about.

Laughter, scientists and sociologists tell us, predates speech by tens of thousands of years, maybe even millions of years. Infants laugh way before they talk. Those born blind and deaf laugh. The ability and instinct to laugh is not learned, it is part of what it means to be human at the deepest level. We are wired for laughter. Groups laugh far more than individuals. Laughter is profoundly social—and that perhaps is the key. Laughter reminds us that we are social beings, that we are connected. When we laugh together, I feel happy, I feel love. Nothing else feels that way. I think of some of the most exciting things I've ever done. Racing against a thunderstorm while climbing a mountain in the Cascades. Driving a motorcycle at 130 mph. That's all adrenaline. That all makes me aware that I am alive. But to be surrounded by my community sharing laughter tells me why it's good to be alive. For inspiration, Sheila sent me several quotations. One was G.K. Chesterton, the English journalist who said, “It is the test of a good religion if you can joke about it.” We are bound together as a community not because of shared dogma, but because of shared ideals. Of course, sometimes it's hard to know just what those ideals are—a trait we make fun of ourselves about:

“How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change a light bulb?” “We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that a light bulb works for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship to your light bulb and present it next month at our annual light bulb Sunday service. We will explore a number of light bulb traditions including incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long-life and tinted; all of which are equally valid paths to spiritual luminescence.”

The third aspect of laughter I want to speak about this morning is consciousness. Now the truth is that what I'm actually talking about here is awareness of ego as a component of spirituality, but I was trying to find something that worked with choice and community and consciousness has more alliterative value than ego. There are two modes of awareness or consciousness that are important here. First is how a sense of humor is a natural outgrowth of spiritual development. May I be saved from those who are excessively earnest—I don't trust people who are too sober. I like people who can laugh at themselves, their beliefs, and me for that matter. I'd rather hang out with Trickster Coyote from the Native American tradition than with Yahweh any day. Yahweh seems entirely too serious to me. There are some signs of he has a sense of humor—the giraffe, the platypus, my baldness--but overall a pretty sober fellow.

I've had the pleasure of meeting a number of people I'd consider holy or advanced souls or on their way to enlightenment. I've also met a number of people who thought they were in this category. Perhaps the most significant difference is how easily the truly wise laugh—at themselves, at their foibles and failings and even at their faith.

A story from the Jewish tradition: One day a rabbi is overwhelmed with the spiritual realization of how small he is in the grand scheme. He falls to his knees in the synagogue and shouts out over and over again, “I am nothing, I am nothing.” The president of the congregation sees this act of piety and falls to his knees, beating his chest, also exclaiming, “I am nothing, I am nothing.” The janitor for the shul sees the two men and rushes to their side, “ I am nothing, I am nothing.” The second man nudges the first and says, “Heh, look who thinks he's nothing.”

The second aspect of consciousness is how it can be happily derailed by humor. Humor can often lance through the tangles of intellectualism to show us wisdom that isn't linear and remind us of truths that aren't logical.

Mara, sort of the Buddhist equivalent of Satan--though not as pervasively evil, more of a tempter figure, is walking the earth one day with one of his demons. The demon observes a man stopping suddenly to pick up a shining item. The demon looks to Mara and says, “Did you see that? That human just found a piece of the Truth.” Mara nods and walks on. The demon sputters and exclaims, “Aren't you worried that he discovered a Truth?” Mara smiles and says, “Don't worry, he'll just make a belief out of it.”

Cake or death. It seems like such an easy choice. What are you going to choose today, tomorrow, and the day after? And yet, how often do we choose “or death”? How often do we avoid the risks inherent in genuine community for the safety of solitude, the safety of the expected. Perhaps the most basic platitude about life is that each of us ends in death. We all go there eventually---but we don't have to go there in tiny increments every day. If we are wise enough to bring holy laughter instead of mundane practicality or fateful resignation, if we bring a sacred smile or subversive giggle to more of our situations, we can develop the skill of choosing “cake.” Laughter is often our response to the unexpected. It can be so hard to look for the “cake” choice in the midst of the difficulty, but there almost always is one—people with cancer can laugh, those locked in concentration camps found things to smile about, indeed I'm sure they have to---for the alternative to “cake” is “death.” We find ways to cope, adapt, and eventually laugh or we most assuredly perish. We can learn, as a spiritual practice, to be aware of the choices in front of us and to consciously reach out for the laughter, for the healing it brings, for the community it builds, and for the awareness we all come here to find.

I want to close with one more story from the Islamic tradition starring the wise fool Mullah Nasrudin who, in this final tableau, is sitting with some friends drinking coffee:

They are discussing death, "When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning, what would you like to hear them say about you?"
The first man says, "I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor of my time, and a great family man."
The second says, " I would like to hear that I was a wonderful school teacher who made a huge difference in our children of tomorrow."
Nasrudin says, " I would like to hear them say... LOOK!! HE'S MOVING!!!"

Cake or death. Blessed be, amen, and namaste.