Wholeness, Holiness & Happiness Sunday, September 12, 2010 Offered by Rev. Wayne Arnason West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church Rocky River, Ohio Reading "I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness " From The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama. Sermon - Part 1 Are you happy? What I mean to ask in that question is Are you happy in your life? Let me give you thirty seconds to see if that s a question you can answer. (Pause) Now I don t know what came up for you in response to that question. I know some of us in church this morning are going through some pretty tough times losses of family or friends, health scares, unemployment, or insecurity about the future. Maybe there was a quick answer that came up for you when I asked that question, and the answer was No. It was quick to come up because that s the emotional state you brought to church with you this morning, and it s where you are right now. You hope, you may even know, that unhappiness is not where you are going to be forever, but that s what s real in this moment. For other people here today, maybe the answer to that question was slow in coming because there was a lot to think about, and the thinking about it was all you could do in thirty seconds. Well, there s this going on in my family, and work is really hard right now, and I don t know how I m going to pay that bill, and the next few weeks look like they re going to be really stressful, and you re asking me if I m happy?? Beats me!! For some of you here today, however, the answer that came up was an easy Yes. Those that answer Yes quickly probably are listening to their hearts rather than thinking too much about how to answer. It s not because they have no difficulties to deal with in life that the answer comes easily, but rather because there is a foundation that their life rests upon that sustains happiness even when life is not all you hoped it might be or when you are beset by times of change and crisis. Today I want to talk about that foundation, and how you build it, and how this church can help create the building blocks of that foundation. I wanted you to hear that line from the Dalai Lama because I think it s a simple and self-evident truth about our lives: that the purpose of our lives and the motion of our lives is to seek happiness. That s hardly a new observation. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that among the self-evident inalienable rights of human beings were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. West Shore Church s mission is to help more people lead lives of meaning and purpose. Does it sound self-centered, self-absorbed, for me to suggest that one of the purposes of our living that our church helps us realize is happiness? It depends on how we understand happiness. Most of us have probably already noticed that there is no shortage of people who are trying to help us understand what happiness is and how you find it. The Dalai Lama s book, The Art of Happiness is a huge best seller and all the chain book stores have a shelf full of books, many of them very good books, about happiness and what it means and how you find it. There s probably nothing I ll have to say today that you couldn t find in a book or a tape or a
DVD somewhere. But today, you didn t stay home by yourself and pop in a DVD or open up a book about happiness that you bought in a store. Instead you decided to spend your Sunday morning in this church. Maybe you read somewhere that there was a study that said church attendance and happiness are positively related. Maybe you just knew by instinct or experience that you wanted to be in the company of a community of other people today, listening to a live person talk about Wholeness and Holiness and Happiness, with the ability to talk to other people afterwards about what he said, and the chance to be engaged in some other things around the building that might make you happy listening to music, enjoying your children or someone else s, having a good cup of coffee and a check in with friends, attending an interesting morning forum, participating in a small gesture of social justice or social service. Now, these may all be things you can connect with out there in the world during the week. It s not like people who avoid church can t find these enjoyable and meaningful activities in their lives somehow somewhere, but for whatever reason, you decided today that coming to church would be worth doing, that it might connect you meaning and with purpose in your life, that it might help you be happy. So let s talk first about Holiness and Happiness. For thousands and thousands of years, religions of different origins and traditions have been teaching that being happy in this life is not as important as making sure that you will be happy in the next one, because the next one lasts forever. Your ticket to the happiness that is possible in the next life is to live a holy life now, and a holy life involves submitting to infallible teachings about the ultimate origins and meaning and authority that guides the world. Those of you who grew up Roman Catholic will recognize this summary, but there s plenty of other religions around the world that have had pretty much the same formula, so I m not talking about any particular religion here but many. Most of them say that the next life is where happiness is to be found and where you will be rewarded for submitting to the authority of the only true teachings there are about the meaning of this life. It is hard for us to imagine today how powerful this formula for holiness has been in conditioning human lives over the centuries, and in maintaining oppressive and unjust social systems. Millions and millions of people have believed that the foundations of their lives were secure or insecure based on whether they believed they were destined for heaven or for hell. Millions of people have been held hostage to these beliefs by authorities of church and state who convinced people that they were the ones that held the keys to the kingdoms of heaven or of hell and had to be obeyed as a result. Despite all the changes in human consciousness and understanding that have happened over the past century and a half, still today, there are plenty of human beings willing to give up their lives and inflict immense death and suffering on others because they believe that happiness in this life is inconsequential compared to their imagined reward in a next one. Even though all I ve been saying here is true, and even though those who use these religious ideas as a political weapon get so much media attention and wield so much power in the political realm today because of it, I have to say that the overall direction of the human race over the past two centuries has been away from ideas like this. The Universalist Church that is one of the founding churches of our UUA was at the end of the 19 th century the fastest growing church in America and fifty years later had plateaued and started into decline? Why? Because the teaching that God was
love and that there was no literal hell was no longer cutting edge, but mainstream. If you are a Methodist or a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian or a Congregationalist today you might not make these claims as boldly or loudly as a Unitarian Universalist, but you sure aren t telling grieving families at Aunt Minnie s funeral that she will be burning in a literal hell forever because she hadn t been coming to church. Even those mainstream faiths that still teach hell do so in a much more sophisticated way for those who have ears to hear. And those who attend those churches or temples or mosques in this country hear the teachings in their heads but also look at the people they live near and work with day to day and have a hard time believing in their hearts that their God would actually condemn most of world s people who don t believe exactly as they do to burning in hell forever as punishment. But what about those evangelical mega churches, you might ask, those big box churches that suck in so many of the people who go to church every Sunday. Aren t they preaching a fundamentalist message that includes the old idea that God s plan includes a heaven for those who believe the correct way and a hell for those don t?? Well, yes, many of them are, but I ve got to say when I look at web sites and videos and other promotional materials that those churches put out and they interview their members about why they are at that church and what it means in their lives, this is what I hear: There is a God who loves me and has a purpose for my life. I am finding that purpose through community and service in this congregation. That s what I hear most of the people saying who are finding happiness in evangelical churches. I m sure if you ask them they will tell you that they are confident that they are going to heaven and sorry other people aren t, but they are not being attracted to those churches by fear and anxiety. They are being drawn in by a need to find meaning and purpose and the meaning and purpose they find is the same message that Universalists have been preaching for two hundred years. God is love. God loves you. You can lead a happy life of meaning and purpose and this community can help. Both progressive and conservative religious traditions have actually been moving away from identifying Happiness in life with sanctimonious Holiness. Instead, churches of all kinds are finding ways within their own doctrinal frameworks to preach a message of Wholeness. Wholeness is a good word to describe the foundation of happiness in life, and in the second part of the sermon today, we will be talking about the building blocks that can create a foundation of wholeness and the probability of happiness. Reading from an Islamic folk tale Oh, great sage, Nasrudin, said the eager student, I must ask you a very important question, the answer to which we all seek: What is the secret to attaining happiness? Nasrudin thought for a time, then responded. The secret of happiness is good judgment. Ah, said the student. But how do we attain good judgment? From experience, answered Nasrudin. Yes, said the student. But how do we attain experience? Bad judgment. Sermon - Part 2
I would probably have an easier time today preaching you a sermon about how NOT to be happy, and you would probably have an easier time understanding it too because we all have racked up a pretty good list of life experiences and attitudes that have made us miserable. Let s see =Where should I begin? In my life, I ve made myself unhappy because I wanted to in a different body, because I ve longed to have a partner, because I ve longed to have a different partner, because I couldn t buy something I ve wanted, because I bought something I wanted and it didn t make me happy. I ve been miserable when I felt imprisoned by parenting and miserable when my kids left home. I ve felt bad about how stingy I am with my time and money, and I ve felt badly about how much of both I give away. When bad judgment leads us down a path that ends up making us unhappy, we may learn about something NOT to do, but we don t necessarily learn that doing the opposite will automatically make us happy. That s because happiness is never a result of just one life circumstance being exactly you want. It s a result of something that is underneath all circumstances, a foundation of wholeness that sustains happiness, that our lives can rest upon and not be shaken even in the face of the most difficult losses or challenges. I believe we feel whole, we feel balanced, we feel happy about the life we are living when we have these four things as part of our foundation of wholeness: 1) when we are confident in our own worth and dignity as human beings 2) when we feel we are enough and that we have enough and that we can be generous with who we are and what we have 3) when we feel loved in primary relationships and in a community 4) when we feel needed, and that our life makes a difference. Let me say a word about each of these four building blocks for a foundation of wholeness in life that sustains happiness. In this church we teach that the first building block is confidence in your own worth and dignity as a human being. That s the key phrase in the first principle of Unitarian Universalism that our congregations affirm: that each individual has worth and dignity. This is also our worship theme for this month of September. We start with that because no human being feels whole when their worth and dignity is ignored, dismissed or denied. In modern educational theory this wisdom has been embraced in the movement to include attention to self-esteem in the education of a child. There are many of us in this room who have spent a lifetime coming to terms with a personal identity or status that the majority culture has denied or disrespected. To feel like a whole person and to find personal happiness you must be confident of your own worth and dignity, no matter what your family or your society or the world around you says. In this church we want to help you do that. In this church we teach that you are enough, and that you have enough to be generous with who you are and what you have. There s a part of this building block to wholeness and happiness that quite frankly has to do with money. There s a study somebody did that discovered richer people are more likely to be happier than poorer people. Duh? Can t argue with that. People need incomes that can sustain a safe home, and enough nourishment to sustain a safe and healthy body. The unhappiest people are those with poor health and daily lives plagued by tensions around physical safety. That s why peace, freedom, and justice are critical teachings and goals of our religion. That s why in his ground breaking writings on human self-actualization the psychologist Abraham Maslow insisted that we must first insure that our physical needs and our security needs are fulfilled before we can
fully enjoy all the happiness that human beings are capable of. There is something, however, that I can argue with when it comes to the happiness associated with feeling you are enough because of your economic well-being. Feeling that you are enough should not depend on whatever you think it would mean to have enough money. A lot of our economic well-being is more about the anxiety around money than about how much money you have. We find happy people in every society and in every social class in that country. So I m not going to tell you that having enough money to feel safe and comfortable isn t important to your happiness, but I am going to say that the picture we have in our heads of how much money we need to have to obtain the things we think we need to be happy makes a big difference in how happy we will feel. Unlike prosperity gospel churches or the author of popular book The Secret, we aren t going to tell you that your social or economic status is something you have created by positive thinking or self-defeating thinking. Our religion looks critically at our place as individuals and as a church community in our society s class structure and as participants in the power dynamic that creates racism and oppression. We know that oppressive structures and policies keep people in their places in the economic hierarchy. So if we truly believe in the individual worth and dignity of each person, we must use what privilege and power we have to connect our self-interest and happiness to the happiness of others. When we feel we are enough, we find happiness in being generous with who we are and what we have. Another study about happiness found that happiness and generosity are connected. Happy people are more generous, and generosity creates more happy people, both the givers and the receivers. In our church we want to help you appreciate that you are enough, and that being able to be a generous person is not limited by what you have, but increased by who you are. In this church we also teach that you are lovable and loving, and that your relationships with others in partnerships, friendships, and in community is critical to your happiness. Yet more studies about happiness may tell you that the odds are against single people being happy people when compared with people who have partners, but at the same time we know that partnership is no automatic ticket to happiness. If we re talking about wholeness in our living we have to recognize that our happiness can t be built on just one magic relationship. All loving relationships end in loss, but such losses do not end the love in our lives. Wholeness in living means that we are connecting in friendships and in communities drawing upon the same loving feelings that we commit to a life partner. Both single people and people in partnerships face this same challenge in seeking relationships in community. The disease that runs rampant in our western cultures as we grow in wealth but decline in community is loneliness. In a world where the word community is used early and often, we are here in this church trying to build a face to face community where friendship is nurtured, where people are included no matter what their partnership status maybe, and where all loving relationships are recognized. The last building block in a life of wholeness that can sustain happiness is knowing that you make a difference and that you are needed. In this church, we try to help build this into our lives. Some of us are doing that through our jobs or through a volunteer role. Parenting is a way that many of us have looked for wholeness by being needed and by being loved by our children. Parenting is a profound way of service through bringing one more redeemer
to the world. But we re not all parents and in the course of a lifespan both careers and parenting have their times of intense and times of diminishing commitment. Meaningful work that meets a human need is available all the time, no matter where we are in our lives. Having a commitment to service in some form in your daily life from week to week and month to month is part of the wholeness that creates happiness. In our interdependent world our self interest and our happiness is inextricably tied to everyone else s. So the service that we can perform, the needs that we can meet, can be as simple as changing our own habits in a way that serves others we will never meet. The Carbon Footprint Pledge that I introduced to you last Sunday and that continues to be available today out in the lobby is one concrete example of something you can do to realize in routine life that your happiness is part of the world s wholeness. Pick one up today and we ll see what you did with it in future services later in the year. Our church teaches this spiritual perspective on what a commitment to service in your life can mean, a recognition that we find wholeness and happiness in our lives by knowing that even in small ways our lives do make a difference, not just to those immediately around us that we know and love, but to the planet as a whole. In the poem with which we opened this service, the poet said that life is the only way to seek the least of all possible mistakes. Being happy is never a result of making no mistakes. Rather it is a result of learning from all your mistakes that you are a whole person nevertheless, a person whose life is important and needed because of the ways you can give and serve, a person who loves and takes care of others and is grateful for the love and care you receive in return, a person who has infinite worth and dignity because you know your life belongs not just to you, but to everyone who has gone before, and that lives today and will follow us tomorrow, all of us a part of this one amazing human life we all share. Amen.