THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
LET'S HAVE SOME SLACK IN SACRED SPACE
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu
December 10, 2000Galileo and Copernicus were wrong. If you had tried to launch a space craft by the theories of Galileo and Copernicus, that space craft would have gotten thoroughly lost. On the other hand, if you had used Ptolemy's numbers, the space craft would go exactly where it was supposed to go. Ptolemy was right. Copernicus and Galileo were wrong.
Ptolemy was right because his numbers were all based on observation. They had simply looked and written down what they'd seen. Now, unfortunately, the conceptual model about what was going on out there was all pretty goofy. But the numbers were right. Galileo and Copernicus were right about how things were going out there but they still figured that orbits were supposed to be nice and perfectly circular. They weren't and aren't.
One of the things that happened to me in theological school was a drug experiment that went on at Harvard. Twenty of us were in the experiment. Ten only got placebos. Ten of us got psillicybin and had a really interesting afternoon's experience. Afterwards we both dictated into a tape recorder and wrote down longhand what our experience had been. People specially trained to recognize the classical signs of mystical experience concluded that nine of us had, indeed, had what, by those criteria, were mystical experiences. One of us said that he didn't have such an experience. The evaluators said, "Yes, he did." I was that one. And a year later I had agreed with them.
Now, what's interesting about the ten people who had the experience with the drug is that all ten of their descriptions used differing vocabularies to talk about their experience. They experienced the same meditation service going on upstairs piped down to us, and yet experienced those words in different images and imagery. They experienced them in very differing theological contexts. We had ten quite different experiences out of the same sensory and biochemical input.
In the middle of the last century, Universalists were sending out missionaries right along with the rest of standard-brand Christians in this country. The Universalist missionaries kept coming back from places like Japan and India and Arabia and Africa, and they would come back saying, "You know, the religions in those countries have some interesting ideas. We could actually learn from them! Why, when you read the dhamapada it sounds for all the world like an extension of the Sermon on the Mount. Why, those Hindus clearly understand that their stories are myths and it doesn't seem to bother them at all! And, you know, Islam has an even more thoroughgoing monotheism than Christians ever thought of having. Even some of those religions in Africa have some incredible insights about how the human species is wired and what religious experience can do for the richness of human life!"
Out of that experience came a recognition within Universalism that in back of, underneath -- use whatever spatial metaphor seems to work -- but behind the differing images and languages and stories and visions lie the same human experiences. Behind the differing vocabulary of those ten theological students lay the same human experiences.
And yet, we behave as if the religions of the human species were competing truth claims, one of which is true and all others are false. Ours, of course, happens to be true. And yet, the one theme that 61-1/2 years have taught me about my religious convictions is that I'm pretty absolutely certain that I'm wrong. Judging by the number of times I have changed my mind, sometimes been forced to change my mind by my own experience or by data laid in my lap that I could not ignore. I must conclude that I still have some more to experience before I get to absolute certainty -- if there is any such animal out there.
Out here in our larger community, I deal with clergy and lay folk of a wonderfully rich diversity of religious traditions. One of the things these insights lead me to do is to listen a whole lot louder back of the language that we're in the habit of using. To listen not for the allegations as to the ontological structures of the universe. My suspicion is that none of us have the foggiest notion what those ultimately are. Listening rather for what the meanings, and commitments especially, are.
Over and over again throughout my life, working in social justice and interfaith contexts, I have found that two deeply committed religious folk, with very different theological certainties still find that their mutual commitments are held in common. On that level, we rarely significantly disagree. Oh, there are some areas where we are, indeed, led into deeply conflicting disagreements. But the amount of overlap is so large as to be significantly humbling. It is especially so for those of us who insist that ours is the correct way and if everybody else would just get it straight they would clearly and certainly agree with us.
One of my responses to the interesting exercise that went on in the recenent Presidential election is that it is time for us to call for a lowering of the volume on the rhetoric. The nation really is split down the middle. Even if they count all the votes, and try really hard to count every possible vote, and accurately guess what the intention is of every intended voter, not just in Florida but I suspect across the country; then what we will end up with is the discovery that this vote was closer than the margin of error. That's the reality. The winer will end up dealing with a Senate that is exactly 50-50, apparently, and with a House of Representatives that is so close to 50-50 as to make little difference. We are going to be either in a situation where we have the opportunity to transcend our habitual style of politics or we'll stay deadlocked. And there are those who consider that the federal government not being able to get anything done for the next four years probably won't be a tragedy.
It seems to me, it is time for us to call a halt to the rather extreme rhetoric; to turn down the volume. It is time for all of the various parties to politics in our country, and to the deep values divide that runs right down the middle of our culture, to take a pause. Now, I can't get them to do it. I have no access there. But maybe if we can begin to quiet it they won't shout so loudly.
Ah, some will say, but then they will win or think they have. Perhaps. And there are significant issues on which we probably cannot find common ground. On these, we aren't likely to relent and we aren't likely to prevail. The most that can be done for the time being is keep as little damage happening as possible.
We do share many commitments in common. Some are more obvious. Some are more hidden, concealed behind conflicts in our language that we seem resistant to attempt to transcend, but they are there.
I've had conversations on a couple of occasions with my brother, Dan. My brother Dan is a fundamentalist, right-wing Christian and yet he is an eminently sane individual. Dan and I enjoy arguing and conversing. When we are together, both my wife and his have a tendency to attempt to keep us off those topics. But one of the things that comes across to me loud and clear from my brother Dan is his deep concern that it is almost impossible in this culture today to raise your children with your values. This is true whether you happen to be a Unitarian Universalist liberal or Two Seed in the Spirit Evangelical and Reformed Expiationist Conservative. This is true for all of us. We cannot compete with the volume at which the culture out there yells at our children. It's siren song uses every tool of the media and every subtle piece of psychological insight to tell them how the world is and ought to be and how they ought to behave in it. It is an area that we certainly share concern and a commitment to find ways to make that happen somehow differently. That's one of the obvious ones. There are many more of them hovering beneath the surface.
One of the tragedies is that many of us rarely have an opportunity, with the rhetoric turned down, to actually converse with somebody who appears to differ with us dramatically on our social values. I remember my wife, years ago, after a certain election in 1968, saying she couldn't understand how it was possible for that person to win because everybody she knew was going to vote for the other guy. And what the comment amply demonstrated was the circles in which we moved. We didn't move in the circles that talked about the values represented by that "other guy."
With FACE and a similar organization that I worked with in Florida called HOPE, social action organizations that are truly interfaith, the rhetoric is turned down because we are working on some shared commitment. What happens is the discovery that the same fears and anxieties are at the heart of both of our response to what is happening out there in the larger culture. I might verbalize them differently, describe them differently, I might even ascribe causes and possible solutions differently. Still, the kinds of things that call forth their righteous indignation and concern, calls forthmine as well.
It is time that we acknowledge that "their" fears are real. It is very rare for me to come across a conservative that I even have the smallest suspicion has some other hidden agenda. They are not seeking to take away my freedom and my power. Their responses are to things that are threatening to their vision of what our life together ought to be about. Even those fears that you and I may be confident are groundless are yet truly frightening to them. We liberals tend to escalate the rhetoric right along with the one on the other side until our rhetoric has convinced both of us that we are enemies. In fact we may, on calmer comparison, find we're quite worried about the same things, and at a loss to find answers to those concerns. What I know for sure is that it does not do any good to yell across the chasm that "you shouldn't feel that way."
Some of our fears are real, too. And some of them are equally groundless.
I think is important here, particularly for religious liberals, to recognize that a religious vocabulary that turns an awful lot of us off may be a necessary tool in the dialogue for talking about what feels threatening and about what we might do about it. Whether you like it or I like it or not, that is our common vocabulary. We have inherited it from 400 and some years of post-Reformation Western religious and political experience. It is our common language for talking about social issues, for talking about how we handle the political process, for how we talk about the things that deeply concern human beings and the very fabric of the family we share together. That language is deeply imbued with the vocabulary of traditional Christianity, and if we are unwilling to use that language in conversations with those with whom we share this community, we shall be crippled in being able to seriously dialogue with them. It is not the case that we have to say that those things are the ultimate truth in order to carry on the dialogue. We need only the willingness to hear the common commitments and concerns back of that language. We need the willingness to hear and to acknowledge that the commitments and concerns are not just a bunch of stupid superstition, even though you may be sure that their theology is.
Here in Hawaii, Buddhist groups are slowly beginning to be willing to participate in that larger interfaith context. We are gropingly beginning to find a vocabulary that transcends both of our religious vocabularies. Somehow, it is okay for Christian pastors and clergy to modify their language for the benefit of being inclusive with Buddhists when it was not okay for them to modify it to be inclusive with Jews and Unitarians and the faithless. It's a fascinating phenomenon.
I saw it happen two years ago at a FACE activity. One of our local Catholic priests had been invited to do the opening reflection with which FACE activities routinely start. It had been well established already that, no matter who was invited to do the reflection, we were not to use the religious vocabulary of prayer out of our respective traditions. The Catholic priest had forgotten that he was supposed to do it, and so he simply got up and did what he usually did to open a meeting. He did a very nice Jesus prayer. And he had hell to pay for it! He got chewed up one side and down the other. By whom? His own Catholic parishioners. I had not seen that happen before. I left that meeting with the biggest smile on my face and a good deal of empathy for the poor priest.
We have the opportunity, maybe, to make some headway with some of the issues that have split the culture down the middle. We fought for a long time about welfare reform. While it seems clear that welfare reform in some places needs major revision, we simply can not go back to what we were doing before. Across the divide, on both conservative and liberal sides, is a recognition that "Welfare to Work" that actually works stands a reasonably good chance of making some exciting things happen.
I got called recently by another one of the gay rights groups in town. We will be seeing some demonstrations, rallies and some work with the legislature pushing again for same-sex unions. One of the things that seemed clear to me out of the 1998 vote was that the population of this state was not comfortable with writing off gay couples completely, but they were clearly not comfortable with calling it "marriage." Again and again, as I spoke at various places around the community during that election, people consistently said to me afterwards, "But if they just wouldn't call it 'marriage' I could vote for it." The actual support for stable gay and lesbian relationships was rather strong, strong enough, possibly, to prevail.
The immorality of homosexuality in the eyes of religious conservatives will not go away. But what disturbs a lot of the folk who are less conservative than that is the perceived approval of and recruitment to promiscuity. As they see committed gay and lesbian couples seeking the legal and institutional prvisions to takes responsibility for their lives, perhaps the animus will soften. Maybe one day, when we judge relationships it will be by the quality of the love, not the body parts with which they do it.
Abortion. Only time will tell what difference RU-486, the so-called abortion pill, will make in this issue. Same for the more recent recommendation from the AMA that the morning after pill be made an over-the-counter drug. But let me tell you a story about abortion.
On the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, 1993, I stood before the TV cameras at a rally in Tampa, Florida. I suggested that it was time for those who were opposed to abortion and those who were pro-choice to commence talking and working together to do whatever it takes to see to it that fewer and fewer women are ever faced with having to make that decision. My telephone rang off the hook for two weeks. Who called ? They were rabid anti-abortion people who consistently said, "Why the dickens hasn't somebody been saying this before?" That was eight years ago. Maybe it's finally time that it can begin to be said. For the opposition to good sex education is dramatically less than the opposition to abortion, the opposition to true contraception even less so.
One of the issues that has been a mark of the split down the middle of the culture has been the notion of school prayer and the separation of church and state. As a major actor in that one over the years I have to make a confession to you. We have engaged in real overkill. Oh, yes, the opposition has engaged in just as much "awfulizing" as we have engaged in overkill. When I lived in Tampa, the committee that I chaired on the board of the ACLU there was to deal with school and religion conflicts issues. I regularly had to go to high school principals and sometimes to members of the Board of Education and explain that "they couldn't do that." It was contrary to the First Amendment of the Constitution. Were they trying to have school prayer? No! They were trying to keep individual kids from exercising their religious freedom. We had scared them so badly with the notion of separation of church and state that they were scared to death if they let anybody anywhere near the school campus say anything that even sounded quasi-religious that they were going to get sued. That image has settled in to the point where you regularly see it even in cartoons in the Sunday funny papers. There was one Rose Is Rose cartoon where the little boy's guardian angel couldn't go to school with him.
The very same First Amendment that we have vociferously and effectively defended protects the right of every kid and every citizen, within the limits of not interfering with other people, to express and carry out their religious convictions. And it is as often on that side that the culture out there errs as it is on the side of trying to get you to be religious, whether you want to or not. It's time we turned down the volume of the rhetoric.
Finally, the one that has me most excited is the possibility indicated in the recent election that the American people are finally ready to back off from to back off from the idiocy that we call the "war on drugs."
Several measures passed in the election. In all of them, the people are saying putting people in jail for drug use is stupid. They need drug treatment. And taking away people's property without due process of law and handing it over to law enforcement does not encourage law enforcement to do a better job. They want due process, and they want the zero tolerance money--from property taken and sold that belonged to people who used it in drug dealing--to go for drug treatment.
Even the one measure in Massachusetts that went down to a narrow defeat, lost because there were too many parts to it. Overkill again.
Slowly, we might begin to turn toward sanity. This split down the middle of the culture may begin the possibility of our listening louder across that divide. Yes, there are major issues on which we will continue to be divided. There are neighbors, there are other religious groups in town, that we won't be able to talk calmly with. But the vast majority of our neighbors--Christian, Buddhist, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Islamic and non-religious alike--share the same concerns we have, are worried and anxious about the deep issues facing our culture. We can learn to listen across that divide. This election tells us loud and clear that the only way resolution is going to come to many of those issues is if we, indeed, begin learning how to listen louder.