EXPECTATIONS OF THE HUMAN COMMUNITY: To Befriend or Not to Befriend? Rev. Jack Donovan 10/01/17 Unitarian Universalist Church - St Petersburg, Florida

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1 EXPECTATIONS OF THE HUMAN COMMUNITY: To Befriend or Not to Befriend? Rev. Jack Donovan 10/01/17 Unitarian Universalist Church - St Petersburg, Florida READINGS (printed after sermon) Invocation from Meditation XVII by John Donne (1624) Meditation from Intimations of Immortality by Wm Wordsworth Reading#1 from The Meaning of Human Existence by E.O. Wilson and 12 Essential Scientific Concepts by Indre Viskontas Reading #2 from Book of Genesis 3-4 and Gospel of Luke 10 Benediction At Times Our Own Light Goes Out, by Albert Schweitzer SERMON How many here know the role of a lectionary in a Jewish or Christian religious year? Well, a lectionary is a prescribed set of scripture readings for each day of the year. The Christian lectionary has four short readings per day a text from the Torah about Jewish history and law, a text from the Hebrew prophets or wisdom literature about celebration and guidance, a text from one of the gospels about the life and teachings of Jesus, and a text from the writings of the apostles about the life and teachings of Jesus immediate followers. Read the lectionary selections for three years and you ll read the whole of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The flow through the seasons of the church year tells a grand story running from the creation of existence, to the creation of earthkind and humankind, to the creative lives of Jesus forebears, to Jesus creative life and work, and finally to Jesus influence on the creative lives and work of those who followed him. At some point, it occurred to me that the lectionary is about human creativity and growth, and that the outline of that creative story is the same as for every living creature s story, even plants: an origin or creation story, a heritage story, a birth and growth story, an accomplishments-andfulfillment story, and an influence-on-others-beyond-one s-death story. So, I thought, why not a Unitarian Universalist lectionary a set of texts from many biographies and autobiographies about the stages and challenges and fulfillments of life that all types of human beings go through. 1

2 Early Unitarians in Renaissance and Reformation Europe and in colonial and revolutionary America used the stories of Torah and Gospel as life guides, not for salvation in heaven, but for fulfillment on earth. Since then, we have added the scriptures, histories, and stories of every race, gender, and class to our storehouse of teaching stories about living a fulfilling life. This is an aid in the search for understanding and fulfillment. The autobiographies I started with this summer were by Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Al Franken from Saturday Night Live - plus and a book on the natural history of The Tree. Life in a nutshell. Our church covenant groups are probably going to be exploring these questions through the year, of what we are and what influences us in what we become as we develop through the stages of life. And so, last Sunday, under the starting theme of Getting Ready to Be Human, we began with the beginning of life questions Where did we come from and What are we or, What do we think we are, and, Is it important what we think we are? Put one way, the answer boiled down to, We are living beings evolved from countless ancestors with potentials for surviving and thriving in the many conditions that have influenced earthkind for millions of years and with vulnerabilities to conditions and creatures that can quickly lead to our demise. For survival, that s important to know. And though many of our forebears have assigned responsibility for their surviving and thriving to divine agency, the evidence of science and philosophy says our safety and happiness depend on nature and our individual and societal responses to the conditions of nature. That s important to know. Evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson emphasizes our inherited potentials for social interaction as characterizing us as human. The potentials he lists include capacities to communicate, recognize, evaluate, bond, cooperate, compete, and from all these feeling the deep warm pleasure of belonging to our own special groups. He adds on the downside that these characteristic potentials, developed as they must be within a group or tribe or community, make it hard to care about other people beyond our own tribe or country, or past one or two generations or species. He notes that this worked okay for paleolithic peoples, but is not working so well in our globally urban and technoscientific society. What other evolved potentials for surviving and thriving might we list? Biologists like Ursula Goodenough and neuroscientist Indre Viskontas note our potential to walk upright, make tools, use speech, create stories, 2

3 decipher intentions, resist danger, grow food, analyze experience, imagine futures, plan goals, solve problems, cooperate with one another, care for one another, and experience bliss in so many ways including eating, sex, beauty, learning, problem-solving, creativity, seeing children play and grow. These are potentials of every human being on earth if they have not been impaired somehow. Let me return to the concept of the soul for a moment, because the term can be useful and I think it s good to have a naturalist definition of religious terms. The definition I like is that the soul is the seed of the self, created by the union of egg and sperm, evolved all the way from the singular creative source. This seed encapsulates all the potentials by which we can survive and thrive. From these potentials grow the characteristics that come to be our selves in whatever fulfilled forms we can accomplish and these fulfilled forms are appropriately called our spirits. Think of a spirit as a spire or sprout that springs from the seed of a soul. The spirit s growth from the potentials in the seed brings us to fruition, to fulfillment. The spirit, then, is the developed soul. So we are not talking about something different from what many of the world s religions have focused on. We are just talking about it differently. Humankind s hope and challenge is this, I think: At birth, everybody starts with a great soul; but in life not everybody grows into a great spirit. It is the job of the community to help its members grow a great spirit. It is the job of the great spirits to help grow a greater community. What are the potentials in you that can be used to build community. We have made some lists. Science is now also telling us our potentials importantly include the mirror neurons and other intricacies of our brain that allow recognition of our connection to others. They include our abilities when touched by fear or need, to not just react, but, when appropriate, to pause, to remember things past, to learn from them, then to imagine possible future scenarios, then to connect those possible scenarios with the neurons of compassion and judgment and feel our way to the best outcome. Humans can survive by passion and reaction for a while. But we don t thrive until we can pause and go along the neural pathways of compassion and reflection. If people s scenario-imagining capacity has developed to include many forms of life in their circles of concern, what they choose to do most likely will be very good for life. That is one way we can influence the wellbeing of our communities for the good. 3

4 At the same time that we influence our community s well-being, our community can influence our well-being. Perhaps the most pressing question of our time is, Is there enough love to go around? Right now it seems the people believe there is not. But science tells us that our potential is vast as an ocean. So I would say that perhaps the most important things a community can contribute to its people is a social infrastructure that includes channels for the streams of love for desire, for friendship, and for the greatest of these, caring kindness. What neurological channels do we have so far for love? Tribalism is one, but its limits are abrupt and often violent. Altruism is one, but its limits are most often kinship bound. Likeness-recognition is one, but its tolerance runs far short of modern need. I have seen a culture or two that had channels for love worked out pretty well. But they were ancient and their delicacy made them vulnerable, and they are disappearing. Love is not so easy. Isn t that a main point of the story between Adam and Eve and Yehoveh? Or between Cain and Abel - cowboys and farmers? Or between Yehoveh and the people of Babel or of the United Nations? Always the divided masses always fear and conflict weighed against attraction and compassion. No wonder the ancients pictured the human mind divided by angels at one ear and devils at the other. How can we best benefit from the potentials of human community? Passivity is debilitating. It seems we must be actively be a neighbor to the stranger. We must include. We must help others survive. There are many people for whom we can stop and be a neighbor, helping even strangers and making the community ever stronger. Yes, insanity and substance abuse may be beyond our momentary help as untrained individuals and neglected institutions. But given American wealth and science, there really seems no reason we cannot build institutions that exorcise demons and give us strength. And if that is what individuals can do for community, what can community do to help our human potentials come to fulfillment? Remember Hamlet? In his bewildered, betrayed, lonely, and powerless misery, he thought the question was to be or not to be. But that doesn t seem to be life s great question. If it ever was, was it not answered in the affirmative 15 billion years ago with a bang? And Life s great answer does not seem to find the biblical good neighbor to be sufficient. Good neighbors help you survive. But the goal of life is to thrive to be safe and happy, to quote Thomas Jefferso. 4

5 My claim would be that thriving comes not from neighbors, but from friends. Nothing keeps the light of life shining like friendship. Friendship between person and person, friendship between parent and child, friendship between spouse and spouse, friendship between lover and lover, and now, we ask, friendship between stranger and stranger. What quality of relationship brings deep warm pleasure, as E.O. Wilson put it, more than friendship? Friends trust. Friends care. Friends do not stop with ensuring your survival. Friends strive to help you thrive and sustain the joy of growing and fulfilling all your potentials. Let me close practically, by noting that friendship is the idea behind Covenant Groups. It is why such groups have become so important to so many church communities. I think they would be called Friendship Groups if the phrase wasn t a bit intimidating. It s my sense that, in a covenant of friendship, when you have your true people and can speak your true heart to them, you and community grow and you are on your way to becoming a great spirit, and so is your community, able to flow with love wherever it is needed. That is why I think To be or not to be is not the question. To befriend or not to befriend that is the question. And if you choose to befriend, all your days become high holy days. May you choose wisely. 5

6 READINGS Invocation adapted from Meditation XVII by John Donne (1624) No one is an island, entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of mine own or of mine friend's were. Each person s death diminishes me, for I am involved in humankind. Therefore, I send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for me. Meditation from Intimations of Immortality by Wm Wordsworth There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore; Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From the One, who is our home: Yet Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: 6

7 Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet; Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. Readings from The Meaning of Human Existence by E.O. Wilson The origin of the human condition is best explained by the natural selection for social interaction the inherited propensities to communicate, recognize, evaluate, bond, cooperate, compete, and from all these the deep warm pleasure of belonging to your own special group. The problem holding everything up thus far is that Homo sapiens is hampered by genetic adaptations that worked very well for millions of years of hunter-gatherer existence, but are increasingly a hindrance in a globally urban and technoscientific society. People find it hard to care about other people beyond their own tribe or country, and even then past one or two generations. It is harder still to be concerned about (other) animal species. It is a biological trait necessary for survival of the species. from 12 Essential Scientific Concepts by Indre Viskontas How might consciousness have emerged from our tangled mass of stupid cells? Some neurons (that is, brain cells) are specifically involved in helping you understand the intentions and beliefs of people and animals around you. Some brain cells that fire when engaged in a specific task also fire when watching someone else perform that task. They are called mirror neurons because they seem to be mirroring what they see. They seem to play a role in how we understand the intentions of others and how we develop a theory of mind that is, the idea that other people have thoughts, desires, and goals, just like we do. If we learn that others have a mind, can we not turn those same cells inward and observe our own minds? (Research also indicates that) most of us have a social circle that caps out at about 150 people with whom we can maintain stable relationships. 7

8 But as a civilization, we ve managed to overcome this limitation of our brains by linking up brains into larger networks. We started living in neighborhoods, and then our colony size exploded. No matter where you live, your neighborhood, your town, your city has a personality. Traits that separate it from other places to live have emerged as distinct. from The Book of Genesis 3-4 Then Yehoveh God said, See, the humans have become like us, knowing good and evil; and next they might reach out and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. Therefore, Yehoveh God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken. Then Adam and Eve knew one another, and she conceived and bore Cain and Abel. Abel became a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. And Yehoveh had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering not so much. So Cain was very angry, and Yehoveh said, Why are you angry? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, waywardness is lurking at your door, and you must master it. But Cain said to Abel, Let us go out to the field. And when they were in the field, Cain killed his brother. Then Yehoveh said to Cain, Where is your brother? and Cain said, I do not know; am I my brother s keeper? from The Gospel of Luke 10 Jesus and his followers were on their way to Jerusalem and a lawyer asked Jesus, Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus asked him, What is written in the law? The lawyer said, To love Yehoveh with all your heart and soul and strength and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, Do this and you will live. And the lawyer asked, But who is my neighbor? Jesus said, Listen. A man coming down on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was beaten by robbers and left for dead. In time, both a priest and a temple official passed by and avoided the beaten man. But a Samaritan stopped and nursed him and paid an innkeeper to care for him until the Samaritan could return. Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the robbed and beaten man? Benediction At Times Our Own Light Goes Out, by Albert Schweitzer At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. 8