INDIVIDUAL WORTH AND DIGNITY: HOW IN THE WORLD? Unitarian Universalist Church of St Petersburg September 27, 2015 Rev. Jack Donovan SCRIPTURES Spirit of Life based on the 23 rd Psalm The Pasture by Robert Frost Will There Be Roses? From The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett SERMON When I was about 35 years old, I was dwelling in California, trying, unsuccessfully, to write a novel about life in the paradise of the South Pacific Islands where I had been a Peace Corps Volunteer. I had been trying out different churches to find one suited to my lead character, an anthropologist. I d had no success finding a reasonable church. But I got drawn one after-noon to a public lecture on religious value systems by a Stanford professor of comparative religion. She was close to the end of her talk when she said, You know, our western religious traditions advocate that we love our neighbors as ourselves. But you know what? They don t teach us how to love ourselves. Epiphany! On two earlier Sundays this month we asked, What is individual human worth and why bother to try to sense and develop it? But now comes the hardest question: How are we to come to value ourselves? How does one develop a sense of one s inherent worth. How does one develop that worth, the potential that is within you from birth. That is the first challenge or task of spiritual being and well-being, and it is the first affirmation in the covenant of UUA congregations. How does one realize one s worth so as to cultivate the blossoms and blessings of life like tranquility, love, helpfulness, joy, like bliss running over to bless others in the rosebed of being. With all the stress and distress and distractions of life, how in the world does one come to understand and fulfill one s worth? 1
Of course, first, something has to click. We have to wake up to the fact of our potential. Once you know it s there, you can start to grow and use it. There are many wake up calls and signs. The greatest 19 th Century American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said, follow the call of your soul and then the soul within your soul. But what if you aren t listening? Follow your bliss, said scholar of comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell. By bliss Campbell was probably referring to the greatest of the characteristics that Hinduism sees in the nature of God. Bliss. Us, follow that? How in this world? Something has to click, like someone saying, Our Western religions don t teach us how to love ourselves. Perhaps someone saying, Namaste will hook us with its profundity: The divine in me honors the divine in you. If one took that seriously, one could start to know the voice within of which Emerson spoke. Our Western traditions don t teach us how to love ourselves. I remember an evening in the island village where I lived in the Peace Corps. People were gathered, as usual. A little boy or girl had done something upsetting. I don t remember what. It may have been the evening a child tipped over the communal dinner bowl so he could watch the great pile of live silvery minnows doused in soy sauce and lime juice go swimming across the dirt floor. Or it may have been the time the four year old girl swung a machete to chop open a coconut and the machete ricochetted and nicked the scalp of a nearby dog. Or maybe it was just another of those times when a little one accidently bumped another little one off the sea wall into the mud of the mangrove swamp. I expected there to be upset and rebuke. But instead the culprit, looking on in shock himself or herself, received a hug and a pat, along with the words, He (or she) doesn t understand yet and everyone nodded Of course and went on with things. And that was always the response to the children s upsetting behavior. He doesn t understand yet. Isn t that a great mantra for a civilization and culture as complex as ours? She doesn t understand yet. The full and 2
valid expectation in the islands, where the people seemed universally content with the 2000 year old customary way of living in the blessings of paradise, was that you can understand and you want to and you will. Watch, children of all ages and stages. Pay attention and we ll all be fine. A community is necessary that nurtures us with love and guidance as an on-going familiar supportive and caring group. You can never understand very much or grow very much all by yourself. You will have little sense of your worth, much less the worth of others, without supportive and caring companions. One thing common to all religions and arts and sciences they want their beneficiaries to be blest and to flourish. The 23 rd Psalm speaks of the realization that the spirit of life yields abundant providence, even at fearful times. Life is on our side, ever empowering us to make it through surround-ing enemies, through the valley of the shadow of death. Blessings runneth over and where they are used for blessing others, goodness and kindness flow wherever you go and you dwell in communities of peace forever. In his poem The Pasture, Robert Frost modernizes the 23 rd Psalm a bit. Clear the pasture spring whose waters enliven the green pasture. Wait a while to watch the purity and beauty and renewal. This is the practice of meditation coming to clarity in one s consciousness, coming to purity in one s life energy, coming to awareness of the inherent worth of your vast potential. Then you go out into the pasture to help life as it stands tottering by the Mother Creator. And always, you invite others to come, too or to come to. This turns work into worship. We cannot have the bliss of growth in spirit, we cannot expand the circles of caring relationship, without a community to help us and receive our help back as our potentials are fulfilled. The Secret Garden gives the same guidance to young people that everything in Earth s garden is wick, full of energy and life and creativity and 3
knowing (for the Old English word wic is the root also of wit and wisdom). And even when seemingly dead from neglect, the garden will yet flourish with proper tending and tenderness, and become a fountain of blossoms and blessings. Even babies with their inherent worth and their birthright of mother s love, still must tend to their own worth. And they do, with wails and tears and innocence and vulnerability and with the wonderful mystery of their potential for being. And in time other tools of affirming worth emerge recognition, smiles, coos, progress! Glory be, what they didn t understand yesterday, they do today! And now they re lifting up and rolling over and crawling forth, and, O My God, they can reach the electric outlet brilliant children! Soon they can tell your family s stories and then the world s and you have taught them. And comes a consciousness and a conscience, and a valuing of life and investment of themselves in life. Day after day this is how the children can grow more understanding, more thanking, more caring. And so it is for all of us. All along the way there are gifts, resources, blessing, accumulated by our predecessors, that we and the children can call on. Here are three checklists for how to grow worth and sense of worth: First, there are lots of tried and true ancient formulas for peace and prosperity that give an accounting of humankind s covenant with life -- like those of the Buddhist or Jewish scriptures: - Center rightly, fully love the Source and seed of your soul. - Worship rightly, don t idolize work or gain, - Appreciate rightly, don t be ungrateful, - Relate rightly, don t take life or exploit or adulterate, - Speak rightly, don t bear false witness. - Take rightly, don t steal, - Prosper rightly, don t envy or hoard, 4
- Care rightly, don t close your heart, Second, all along the way there are the community s customary offerings of sacramental covenant that sign a willingness to invest in expanding relationships of care: - the baptismal rituals of caring communities at a birth, - then the communion rituals of worshipping communities at the awakening to relationship, - then the reconciliation rituals of forgiving community at the dawning of conscience, - then the partner rituals of esteeming communities at the acceptance of responsibility, - then the celebratory rituals of hopeful communities at the choosing of vocation, - then the prayerful rituals of interdependent communities at the bonding in marriage, - and at last the reverential rituals of grateful communities at the completion of the spiritual life. And third, all along the way there are practices for training in advancement of worth and dignity, advancement of the human spirit: - Exercise of mind and body for fitness and endurance into wisdom, - Meditation to clear the mind and heart and spirit, - Contemplation to gain insight and hope, - Journaling to nurture memory and conscience, - Dreamwork to raise unconscious influences to consciousness and usefulness, - Studying the world to better learn its secret gifts and ways, 5
- Deep friendship for guidance and deep listening for appreciating, - Apprenticeship for competence. - Prayer for gratitude and commitment, - Service for experience and fulfillment. Each of these may serve to enhance worth and sense of worth at any age and stage. And always there are the seemingly innocuous spiritual wake-up questions: Where do I dwell and what do I need and the same questions to you. And always we have the awakened spirit s answers: I don t fully understand yet; and, I m not yet fully complete. Discovering the potential for your best and most valued self, and freeing that potential from constraints and constrictions, is how to promote worth and dignity. Something has to click and wake us to our still untapped wonder-filled potentials. And when we are on that way of bliss, then we are ready for the bliss beyond ourselves in relationships with others that will honor and enhance their worth and dignity, too. We ll start to talk about this next relational stage in the journey of fulfillment next Sunday and then through October. But for now, I hope you will join in gathering here 15 minutes after the service to add your thoughts together on how we might best promote the inherent worth and sense of worth within ourselves. Spirit of Life based on the 23 rd Psalm READINGS All: Women: Men: All: Spirit of life, you are our shepherd; we shall not want. You bring us to eat in green pastures; you lead us to drink from quiet waters; you restore our souls; you lead us on paths of righteousness for goodness sake. Yea, though we walk in the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for you are with us; your hand and your staff, they comfort us. 6
Women: Men: All: You spread a table for us even amidst our troubles; you bless us with life till our cups runneth over, so goodness and kindness may flow from us all the days of our lives and we may dwell in your house of peace forever. The Pasture by Robert Frost I m going out to clean the pasture spring, I ll only stop to rake the leaves away, And wait to watch the water clear, I may. I shan t be gone long, -- you come, too. I m going out to fetch the little calf That s standing by the mother it s so young It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I shan t be gone long, -- you come, too. Will There Be Roses? from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (from chapter 11, when the local farm boy Dickon comes at his sister Martha s request to help the orphaned Mary learn to tend the secret garden on her uncle s great but neglected estate.) For two or three minutes Dickon stood looking round him, while Mary watched him, and then he began to walk about softly, even more lightly than Mary had walked the first time she had found herself inside the four walls. His eyes seemed to be taking in everything the gray trees with the gray creepers climbing over them and hanging from their branches, the tangle on the walls and among the grass, the evergreen alcoves with the stone seats and all flower urns standing in them. I never thought I d see this place, he said at last, in a whisper. He stopped and looked round at the lovely gray tangle about him, and his round eyes looked queerly happy. Eh! the nests as ll be here come springtime, he said. It d be th safest nestin place in England. No one never comin near an tangles o trees an roses to build in. I wonder all th birds on th moor don t build here. Will there be roses? Mary whispered. Can you tell? I thought perhaps they were all dead. Eh! No! Not them not all of em! he answered. Look here! He stepped over to the nearest tree an old, old one with gray lichen all over its bark, but upholding a curtain of tangled sprays and branches. There s lots o dead wood as ought to be cut out, he said but it made some new last year. This here s a new bit, and he touched a shoot which looked brownish green instead of hard, dry gray. 7
Mary touched it herself in an eager, reverent way. That one? she said. Is that one quite alive quite? Dickon curved his wide smiling mouth. It s as wick as you or me, he said; and Mary remembered that Martha had told her that wick meant alive or lively. I m glad it s wick! she cried out in her whisper. I want them all to be wick. They ve run wild, said Dickon, but the strongest ones has fair thrived on it. See here! He knelt and with his knife cut a lifeless looking branch through, not far about the earth. There! he said exultantly. I told thee so. There s green in that wood yet. Look at it. Mary was down on her knees before he spoke, gazing with all her might. When it looks a bit greenish an juicy like that, it s wick, he explained. And if the old wood s cut off an it s dug round, an took care of there ll be he stopped and lifted his face to look up at the climbing and hanging sprays above him there ll be a fountain o roses here this summer. 8