SERMON for January 13, 2019

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1 SERMON for January 13, 2019 INFLUENCES ON THE WILD THINGS OF OUR YOUNG SOULS For Better or Worse Rev. Jack Donovan Unitarian Universalist Church - St. Petersburg, Florida READINGS (printed below, after the sermon) Gathering from Trappist monk Thomas Merton and cellular biologist Ursula Goodenough Invocation From Generation to Generation, by Antoine de St. Exupery (Hymnal Reading #649) Meditation Holy Spirit, by Hildegard of Bingen Reading Nurture is Manifested from Ursula Goodenough s The Sacred Depths of Nature SERMON When will you make your First Communion? All our Catholic neighbors asked me that when I was five and six years old, speaking as if it were a matter of life or death. According to the Catholic life cycle, I was approaching the age of capacity and responsibility to choose right over wrong, goodness over sin. This was a potential that had to be fulfilled you see that? because it was in fact a matter of eternal life or death for them. My parents were much more relaxed about this yes, it had meaning and we would value it and do it right but we need not be anxious like the holy but rather uptight rather harsh nuns. My Unitarian friends across the fields on either side seemed more to have play circles than communions and their parents certainly always included me. I wonder if that was proselytizing to them? Hmmh. The next sacrament in the Catholic cycle of life potentials is Confirmation essentially a coming-of-age ceremony as one enters all of puberty s changes of body and mind. By this time you ve supposedly committed to memory and to spirit all the church doctrine in the Catechism and are prepared to represent it in the world. Baptism purified you for entry into the world of God, as I had memorized it. Now Confirmation, as a second baptism by the spirit, enrolled you in God s purification of the world, again as a matter of eternal life or death. I remember my Confirmation classmate Muffy McKenna asking in her knowing, chilling, parochial school girl s way, Have you received your vocation yet? Translated from Catholic into English, she was asking, Has the holy spirit told you what you are to be in the world and what you are to do in life? The stakes were high again, a heaven or hell matter. The influence as to who one strove to be and become was intense. And again my parents expected my preparations to be dutiful and serious but they showed no sign of fear or disapproval. In fact, they were perhaps a little lax as to the emotional intensity required not neglectful, but perhaps permissive. Perhaps they assessed that I already had enough emotional intensity. I 1

2 think that Confirmation time was when the Unitarian kids were having sex education, about which my church and family said nothing and about which the Unitarian kids only smiled. As I recall, nobody actually talked practically about how to find my vocation for the kingdom of God. Yes, they directed us to memorize the catechism, love God (however that is done), pray a lot for the descent of the holy spirit upon us, and hope a lot that it wasn t actually a deceptive demonic spirit. But that was all. Of course, their hesitancy may have been due to my resistance one s own character can invite or repel advice, counsel, and education. Students do each present a different teaching/learning context to the teacher. Those who would influence or be influenced are influenced by that. This past Sunday - Epiphany Sunday 58 Greek Orthodox teenage boys in Tarpon Springs dove into the bayou to fetch a cross tossed in by the archbishop to symbolize the baptism of Jesus. Thousands were there to witness. The young man who retrieved the cross was rapturous, saying, It s a huge blessing. Everything is love. And last year s winner added, When I touched the cross in the water, I had an out of body experience. It slowed me down, changed the way I look at life. We are all in a brotherhood now. I m glad for their joy in adventure. But my recovering-catholic heart went out to them all. Toward what goals are their passionate energy-packed potentials for all that really matters being directed - for understanding life and caring for it? And my heart went out to the girls, too, for not being allowed (the news article noted) to participate in the dive for the cross, as they might have wished. What would psychologist Mary Pipher s Ophelia say about that? Social research has established pretty well established that positive encouragement, of clear engaging expectations, and good social resources have perhaps the greatest influence on the fulfillment of potential. There s lots of research verification these days. I was particularly captivated by the research on the inordinately superior achievement among Chinese of those born in the Year of the Dragon compared to those born under other signs. And also the research on the inordinately superior athletic achievement of those born early in their sport s annual cycle simply because, at age six or seven or eight when it all begins, the strength and coordination advantage of being six month months older has brought much greater investment by coaches in a child s training and opportunities. It may be as simple as the story of a young girl who was trying to learn to skip rope. Her parents looked on encouragingly and gave tips and clapped appreciatively at any success. Finally she had a spurt of really getting it and her parents clapped exuberantly. Then off she went into the neighborhood. A little while later she came back looking very dejected. I can skip rope, she said. But I need a lot of clapping. Potentials that are invested in are the most fulfilled. I think we can we expect it to be so also for our spiritual potentials for understanding life, and caring for it, and communing with it. So, how well are we doing? Described psychologically, how well do we nurture our potentials for trust-building, self-control, free will, initiative, purposefulness, competence, confidence, 2

3 belonging, self-appreciation, compassion, reverence? Or the same developmental sequence described sacramentally: how well do we nurture the grace of our potentials for belonging, including, understanding, committing, caring, contributing, fulfilling? Or the same sequence framed in the Unitarian Universalist covenant: how well do we nurture the human potentials for worth and dignity; acceptance and encouragement; justice, equity and compassion; free and responsible searching for truth and meaning; rights of conscience and democratic process; world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; and finally evolving to respect, and even reverence, for the web of all existence. No fulfillment is guaranteed for any soul. But perhaps fulfillment is possible for all souls. Anne Frank, writing as death came closer, told us last Sunday that she still believed that people are good at heart. Ursula Goodenough, standing probably near collapse under the convergence of terror and joy, holding onto her nearly lost child, reminds us that we have a response to love that lets us give our all. The actions of the mother of Max the Wild Thing illustrates an ideal of the Expectant and Responsive Parent - that there are boundaries and consequences to potential gone wild, but that there is always loving nurturance to help develop these wonderful wild potentials into life-promoting strengths. The story of the little girl learning to jump rope likewise, I think, testifies to the value of encouragement for developing the potentials that give our lives fullness. A society s rules can repress and destroy heroic and saintly potentials. A woman tells a story of her first day as a little girl going to kindergarten. As she got settled into her seat, she saw a little boy sobbing at his desk. She immediately went over and hugged and held him and he started to ease up. But the teacher made the girl return to her seat. The boy s crying gradually returned to sobbing, and the girl went over and hugged and held him again, only to be told by the teacher, Go back to your desk, young lady he just needs to cry it out. and amazingly, the contentiousness went on all morning. When the girl went home, her teacher sent along a note describing her as repeatedly disobedient and disrespectful. This is not that unusual in our society, is it? Sometimes it seems rules of individual responsibility get applied where rules of community responsibility are obliged. But in this case, the little girl and her mother had a relationship of trust. The girl explained to her mother what had happened, and the next day her mother went to the teacher. You should know, the mother said, in our home we emphasize a compassionate response when someone is suffering. Our family is not going to change, so you can expect my daughter to keep doing it. I hope you ll adjust to that. The girl, telling the story decades later as a grown-up, added, It s been 72 years since that day and I ve had the joy of hugging people ever since. Besides genome and environment (including the hugely influential political-economic power structure), the main thing I see influencing the fulfillment of children s potential is the behavior of people and institutions (again, including the political-economic system). The influencers gradually grow in number and distance from home - from parents and immediate caregivers to 3

4 close kin, playmates and friends, then neighbors, teachers, peers, corporations, and governments, then personal foes and competitors, then finally strangers. For a lengthy period of time, parents remain the best positioned to provide encouragement and support for developing the fullness of hope, initiative, learning, industriousness, and sense of self. Then with time, teachers and peers grow in influence and the world s circles in general. It is not a matter of difference in personal potential that explains over 15 million American children in extreme poverty (defined as less than $2/day/family member) nor, I think, should it be a matter of indifference. Social research has shown clearly that America s vaunted class mobility is a myth. Yet we know, it is not outside the human purview to enormously, positively influence children s growth in understanding, caring, belonging and general well-being through very modest investments, especially given the returns. The famous mystic monastic Hildegard of Bingen and famous mystic monastic Thomas Merton, 1000 years apart, remind us that the divine light the holy spirit the substance of the cosmos composes us and is our power for ourselves and the world. They implore us to find ways to use it well for all and what more than for the potentials of the children? For who knows who promotes the greater growth in the other the parent or the child? Antoine de Saint Exupery urges us to make our homes heritages of the ceremonies, the sacramental rituals, of our passages that our children (as well as ourselves) may have the keys and find the treasures of meaning in life. It is enlightened parents especially but also enlightened peers and teachers who can educate and encourage us over each threshold of the stages of life. As Rumi sings, to be a caravan, not of despair, but of renewing hope, we must find trustworthy companionship and routes to trustworthy fulfillment, and pass the secrets on. Ursula Goodenough wrote, All of us see in children the hope and promise of what we humans can become. As the forbears of our children, we are called to transmit to them a joyous and sustainable vision of their future meaning that we are each called to develop such a vision. One wonders what truths we can learn and what ways we could develop to transcend the limits somehow imposed on our childhood potentials and how we could pass these ways on to generations of life. This week we might continue pondering the influences on our childhood potentials and our influences on the potentials of childhood. Then in a couple of Sundays, we could consider the future. 4

5 READINGS Gathering from Trappist monk Thomas Merton and cellular biologist Ursula Goodenough And I saw it - the divine and radiant point of light at the center of every person, everywhere. Everyone, everything, is filled with sacred light. -Thomas Merton, Trappist monk Although parents each contribute half of their genetic endowment to a child, they basically end up with a stranger. -Ursula Goodenough, cellular biologist Invocation From Generation to Generation, by Antoine de St. Exupery (Hymnal Reading #649) Meditation Holy Spirit, by Hildegard of Bingen Holy spirit, giving life to all life, moving all creatures, root of all things, washing them clean, wiping away their mistakes, healing their wounds, you are my true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening my heart from ancient sleep. holy spirit. Reading Nurture is Manifested from Ursula Goodenough s The Sacred Depths of Nature The nurture of offspring is fully as important as surviving long enough to produce them. Nurture is manifested in countless ways. My own experience with this imperative came when, alone on a beach with my youngest son, I saw him being dragged out to sea. I jumped in, fully clothed, and as I swam out I realized that I was taking in huge amounts of water as I navigated the strongly turbulent surf. My brain displayed the headline: This Is How People Drown in Rip Tides. I looked ahead at James s terrified face bobbing above the waves, and the next realization came to me not as a headline but as an understanding: Either both of us survive or both of us drown. I reached him and pulled him to shore with a calm conviction that was somehow outside myself, and as we stood together on the empty beach, I absorbed my new self-knowledge: I am endowed with an inherent maternal altruism, unrehearsed, that is poised to flood my being whenever my children are in danger. There is no way to describe the joy that attends this kind of knowledge. Benediction May you stay always filled with the gracious power of life to empower all your wonderful potentials and then, like children, play it forward. 5

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UTILITARIAN UNIVERSALISM A Sermon on the One True Church

UTILITARIAN UNIVERSALISM A Sermon on the One True Church Sermon by Rev. Jack Donovan, February 19, 2017 Unitarian Universalist Church of St Petersburg READINGS Gathering Deut 15, Luke 12, Preamble US Constitution,