Godly, Godless, and Good?

Transcription

1 Godly, Godless, and Good? Sunday, January 10, 2016 Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister The Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist Readings (1) Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Senior Minister ( ), The Community Church of New York: "When I say 'God' it is poetry and not theology everything the poets have written about flowers and birds and skies and seas and saviors of the race, and God - whoever He may be - has at one time or another reached my soul!... the poets are stained with my fingers and blotted by my tears." (2) Theologian Henry Nelson Wieman: If my home is in creativity itself [or Life, or God, or Beauty], If my home is in creativity itself, I can undergo great changes without despair. (3) My late colleague, Rev. Dr. Duncan Littlefair, who served the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, once asked and answered a helpful question: He asks, OK, where do you find spirit? Okay, where do you find it? You find it right here. Anywhere. Where you work. Where you play. Where you rest. Anywhere. You find it in you and you and you and even you. Who me? Yes, you -- eating, drinking, defecating, fornicating, ugly, selfish, sensual, dominating, driving, controlling, frightened, anxious, worried, insecure, unsure, bewildered you. Yes, you. Because you see, you are the child of God. You re beautiful. Let me talk to you, and you talk to me, and we ll find the spirit in each other. You know why? Because we need to. 1

2 And Jesus said that if you need to, you can. If you want to, you will. If you seek for it, you will find it. And so we re going to find because we need it. And you paint for me, and I ll sing for you; and we ll dance together, and we ll write. I ll write to you and you write to me. We'll talk about these things, these whispers, these calls, these gentle revelations; and we ll teach them to our children so they ll know there s something more than survival, something more than gross animal being. No matter how much they may tend to get swallowed up in the awful cauldron of the mess of it, they will know there s something more, something transfiguring and transforming. So we ll walk together, you and I. We ll plant flowers on the way. We care. We care for the trees and for the streams, and for the lakes and the rivers. And we care for the grass and for the air. We care for fire. We care for the sun. And we will share with each other. And we ll hold hands some day and look out into that vast, immense universe and thank God. Thank whatever Gods there may be for the gift of the spirit. Where in the world is the spirit? [Where do we meet God?] It s wherever anyone sees and hears and feels and cares. Godly, Godless, and Good? Rev. Bruce Southworth Where, how, do we meet God? Why would we want to? I heard an anthropologist and cognitive psychologist last month, Scott Atran, speaking about ISIS fighters, and their total commitment to an apocalyptic religious vision, a distorted version of Islam. The self-identities of ISIS fighters are consumed by their communal commitment with no personal identity left over. The same fanaticism may happen in any faith tradition; it is not unique or necessary to Islam, which has many good things integral to it. But, all that is another topic, another day. What sparks my mentioning Scott Atran was a side comment he made about religions and God. He rejects usual supernatural concepts of God as unintelligible, with the irrational embrace of strange ideas. He is part of the wave of atheists speaking out these days. Atran is an esteemed international scholar with academic positions in Paris, at Oxford, at John Jay College, and at the University of Michigan. He offers a version of 2

3 the rationalist, modernist atheist point of view. Atran affirms, religious beliefs, in being absurd (whether or not they are recognized as such), cannot even be processed as comprehensible because their semantic content is contradictory (for example, a bodiless but physically powerful and sentient being, a deity that is one in three, etc.). He caught my attention, and I need to delve into his writings. I am particularly curious to see if he has anything to say about process and empirical theologies, which make comprehensible claims about creative process, emergence of consciousness and compassion, and religious symbols. All that is part of our tradition, which certainly includes humanists and other atheists in good measure, as well as theists, mystics, skeptics, and so many more. Here, in a place such as this, being Godly, or Godless, is just fine and a wonderful mix. And doing what is good and right and honorable always beckons to us. With the loose guidance of my readings, this morning I turn to poets, theologians, and everyday experiences, as witnesses to faith that is not absurd belief and faith that are sustaining, healing, and affirming in a wounded and wondrous world. In thinking about atheism again because of that speaker, I am reminded of a conversation with a friend from way back, a friend without a religious institutional connection. I recall a time when he asked what I was speaking about one upcoming Sunday. I gave him the title, An Invitation to God. He smiled; he liked it. I mentioned to him that there had been an article in the Sunday Times Magazine a couple of months earlier by a science writer who was reflecting upon being an atheist. She wrote about her own comfort with the label, and yet being in the minority. My friend answered, Why would someone be an atheist? Haven t they had any experiences? He seemed genuinely puzzled. He added, I m glad I ve had experiences. Then after a pause he began to tell me about one of his. My friend is profoundly deaf and has been his whole life. He recalled as a child being in a playground and saying to God that for just one minute he wanted to have normal hearing, just for one minute. Then, he realized that he could hear really, truly hear he could hear a basketball being dribbled behind him. Across the road, he could hear other children laughing. He said he knows what he can hear with his hearing aids, and this was entirely different. It lasted, he said, for precisely one minute. Exactly. Did he imagine this? he asked. He didn t think so. It was real. It was his experience. We didn t have time, then, for me to hear about his other experiences. 3

4 My critical, rationalist tendencies make me averse to theologies that still portray God in some anthropomorphic, human image; old Graybeard in the sky, with ancient dualisms of supernatural realms; and personal images of a God who responds to specific petitions of prayer. Even though that imagery doesn t make sense to me, I keep finding that I need to be accepting of what works for others (as long as it doesn t harm others). I leave this friend s experience as a mystery. So, we vary here God-talk and no God-talk how we/you speak about all this. o For some, God is present with every heartbeat and breath. o For others, mystery, without words or God-talk, is sufficient for your awe and reverence. o For some, God-talk has done so much damage that you may cringe at its invocation. o For still others, the stories and teachings of the Buddha, or of Jesus, or of Mohammad, or Moses, or Socrates are what are primary... essential parts of your path, with or without God-talk. We each choose the sacred stories, theologies, philosophies, and conclusions that speak to us heart and soul. Sometimes, I turn to poets, for example, a colleague J. David Scheyer, who writes: if there is a god i think he must be shaped something like a mountain and something like a tree and something like an ocean... i rather imagine [God] looks something like a black man and something like a white man and something like a yellow man and something like a woman, too... i think [God] sees the universe through the eyes of a big, brown bear and through the eyes of a dove and through the eyes of a gentle, medium-size whale... A Roman Catholic Priest, John Bannister Tabb ( ), in 1893 wrote a poem titled Evolution. Out of the dusk a shadow, Then, a spark; Out of the cloud a silence, Then, a lark; Out of the heart a rapture, Then, a pain; 4

5 Out of the dead, cold ashes, Life again. Other lines, from a favorite poem from Shelley: "Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere, Destroyer and preserver... " so akin to Hindu images of Shiva and Vishnu. I turn to my colleague Kate Braestrup, a chaplain for the Maine Wildlife Service. She is a keen and spirited spiritual writer, who spoke here a few years ago. She does not focus much on God language and substitutes Love. She describes once when being asked to offer a prayer that she began the 23 rd Psalm (as she had adapted it), Love is my shepherd; I shall not want. Love makes me lie down in green pastures; loves leads me beside still waters Love restores my soul Amen. Amen. My earliest inquiry about God, as best as I can recall, came when I was about five years old. For some reason, I had to ask my mother who, or what, or where God is. And being the wise soul that she was, a former Methodist, with a perfect attendance pin from her childhood Sunday school, moving to a young adulthood with no church connection, then to being a forty-something mother of two who had become a Unitarian in the Bible Belt, she answered me. We were in the basement. Next to the washing machine. She did not equivocate. She did not interrogate: What do you think? Why do you want to know? She did not dismiss: Not now, I m busy. Or say, When you re older. Or Let s go ask a minister. She did not hesitate. She said, God is love. For me, it was a perfect and powerful and appropriate answer. I really have no idea what I was asking at the time. Did I want a definition of a word that I had heard outside the home from other children? Or did I want to know if there is something trustworthy in life, in the world, in the universe? I don t know what I needed or wanted, but it worked. And that definition, God is love. still works for me when simple is the imperative. When older, during college, in the midst of the ancient forests of the Smoky Mountains, I experienced the thin slice of silence translated traditionally as a still small voice. So, I find myself embracing experiences of Nature, Evolution, Creativity, and Love which do not necessitate God-talk, yet affirm fundamentals about what sustains and comforts me and others like many of you. 5

6 There are also theologians that have nurtured my faith and thoughts about this matter of Godliness or Godlessness, and I am deeply sympathetic with the conclusion of the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. He argued that despite the abuse of the word God, which is admittedly so tarnished and so easily abused, we may still want to, as he says, "point indirectly to certain scarcely describable events in human life where spirit was encountered." to "point indirectly to certain scarcely describable events in human life where spirit was encountered." Those moments for me include the interpersonal, and again I commend to you Alice Walker s novel The Color Purple, to me one of the great theological volumes of the 20th century. Shug at one point puts it this way: tell the truth, have you ever found God in Church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for (God) to show. Any God I ever felt in Church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They came to church to share God, not find God. Summoned into a pilgrimage, we find stunning companions in our shared, curious, caring journey a good way to live and bless the world. Celie in The Color Purple also describes a moment when Shug reported she felt at-one with a tree, with all creation, and was running outdoors in a kind of mystic ecstasy. There is also a colleague and theologian/preacher, now retired in Arizona, Ray Manker who embraces the ambiguity, the paradox this way, and I return to his words with pleasure for his provocation. He wrote: The word "God" and all the various descriptions of God developed through the ages are but human gropings for an attempt to understand the deep spiritual experiences of life.... I am intoxicated by all these varied experiences of God: o watching a thunder and sand-storm roll across the desert in summer; o experiencing the majesty of a sunset or a sunrise; o welcoming a friend in the hospital as we explore the meaning of that friend's death, and knowing that I am experiencing my own death too; o helping young people sift through their values and their beliefs, their hopes and their fears, as they decide whether or not to be conscientious objectors; o deciding to be arrested in protest of our government's orders to kill and be killed in Honduras, EI Salvador, Grenada, Panama, or in the Middle East Gulf war; 6

7 o to watch children at play in their happy dance of life and know that thousands of those same children live on the edge of starvation here in the United States as we spend untold billions on yet more instruments of death and destruction. [He continues:] The experiences of God are not all satisfying or beautiful; some are disturbing and haunting. God speaks in many voices, sometimes challenging, sometimes comforting, sometimes disturbing, sometimes filling us with awe. I open myself to all these experiences and am intoxicated by them. But it is the primary experiences which intoxicate me, not the word "God" or any of the hundreds of definitions and descriptions. God, for me, is not something I can believe in. Theology and dogma get in the way. I am satisfied to be just a God-intoxicated atheist. How goes it with you with or without God? I also see something trustworthy, mysterious, and powerful in other scarcely describable events, such as one offered by feminist, eco-activist Starhawk. I think of an incident that she describes in her book Truth or Dare. She reports that after one civil disobedience action, she and a dozen or so other women had been arrested and were being detained in a large holding area. Guards appeared in pursuit of another woman, and then the group began to chant in unified power, thereby protecting the one being pursued. The chanting resounded off the walls, and Starhawk describes, And so, after a moment (and in some dismay), (confronted by the women s collective voice) the guards withdrew. The chant dies away. It is over. For a moment, mystery has bested authority. The moment passes. We take a deep breath, return to our arguments and irritation. The encounter does not transform us into saints, or even make us all get along much better. The implications of the incident are too much for us to take in fully: we wall it off, returning to our usual games and strategies. Yet what has taken place is an act that could teach us something deep about power. In that moment in the jail, the power of domination and control met something outside its comprehension, a power rooted in another source. To know that power, to create the situations that bring it forth, is magic. And I would say such power is sacred. Spirit, Life, connection present in that transforming moment that we can help bring into being. Where spirit is present. 7

8 Spirit of Life, also, is a synonym for sacred Creativity in and around us this extraordinary thing that we are the universe coming to Consciousness. We are starstuff called to be co-creators to ally ourselves with one another, with creation, with justice and love and beauty and mindfulness and humility and boldness and the health and strength deep within us. Cosmic Naturalism does not deny the struggles and pain that may come our way will come our way yet affirms the radiance of the human spirit and the Spirit of Life, and the radiance of our lives. To speak of God is to speak metaphorically - to speak symbolically about something trustworthy, something to which your heart and soul can, not only cling, but also embrace completely. I prefer for myself to speak more often about this Creativity as the Source of Life and Love, or the Source of Beauty and Justice, the Spirit of Life. And if the mention of God as metaphor, symbol, befuddles you, or annoys you, I understand. Yet, the invitation to wonder, to reverence, to thanksgiving, and to new Life remains whether with Godly or Godless reference, whichever. A final matter, about witnessing to Life, to the sacred, to trustworthy eruptions of Life, encounters with Spirit Spirit, to our partnership with Creativity, with God if you like: an image comes from Mark Twain and his book Huckleberry Finn. There is a scene in which Huck has decided that he must betray the whereabouts of his friend, Jim, a runaway slave. If he does not tell Miss Watson where Jim is, Huck is convinced that he shall go to hell, such is the plain hand of Providence. It was his duty to do so. Having written the letter to Miss Watson, Huck feels all washed clean of sin. For the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and [he says] I knowed I could pray now. He reflects upon his new state of being, and says, how it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell for keeping Jim s hiding place a secret. But then Huck began to think about Jim and the rush of the river and the talking and the singing, the laughing, the friendship. Then I happened to look around and see that paper [that treacherous letter] I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling because I d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath and then says to myself: All right, then, I ll go to hell and tore it up. Conscience confronting betrayal. Whatever God-talk or absence of God language, whatever theological vision persuades you out of your own experiences and reflection, our mission is to be grateful for this gift of Life and lively awareness, of Consciousness and moral Conscience, of persistent Consciousness as the universe in flower. 8

9 That is sometimes hard, but yielding to bitterness kills the spirit. To give thanks, to witness to divinity around us and within us, always trying to do the right thing. Indeed In deeds. ****** Where in the world is the spirit? (Where might we find God and Life at our best?) It is wherever anyone sees and hears and feels and cares (and loves). Meditation May love and strength be in our hands May love and courage be in our hearts May love and wisdom be in our minds May love be with us and work through us Today and in all our days. Amen Adapted from K. Braestrup 9