Visitors: Welcoming the Stranger among Us

After a prolonged absence over the summer, I attended church last week and noticed something odd. At the beginning of the service, where we usually ask visitors or people who have returned after a long absence to stand and tell us who they are, the speaker announced that we were doing something different this year. Visitors were asked to stand; they were not invited to identify themselves. A couple of people stood up and looked around. My sense was that they weren’t sure what they should do. My first reaction was: how rude! I wondered how I would feel if I were in that situation.

Today, the same thing happened in church. A few people stood up, and this time one of them spoke up, introducing himself and explaining that he was a member briefly, moved away for a short time, and has now returned.

I’m not sure what went into this decision ask our visitors to remain silent, but in my opinion, it was a not a good one one. What are we telling our visitors when we ask them to stand but not tell us who they are? Do we not care enough to ask them? Some people work up a lot of courage when they come to an unknown church for the first time, and may at least hope that they will be welcomed and that people will want to know something about them.

Ironically, later in the service, radical hospitality was mentioned. I don’t think that this is even basic hospitality. I think that we need to seriously re-consider this decision. I think we can do better.

Spirituality, Spiritual Practice, and Religion

This sermon was delivered by Dr. Alan Miller on June 14, 2009. It was preceded by The Story of Jakushin.

Most of us at one time or another have heard someone say "I'm not religious, but I am very spiritual." It may be that you have said it yourself. I of course have never said it. But then I was for many years part of a Department of Religion at a University, so I naturally have been against getting rid of the word "religion." If the issue is either spirituality or religion, then it may be that many people use the word "spirituality" as a way of protecting themselves from some perhaps obscure feelings, perhaps from some sense of guilt. Modern life after all is busy enough without the bother of religion. A more serious note was recently struck by Linda Fleming, who was the first to make use of our new Death with Dignity law, to end her own life. She is quoted as saying, "I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death." Clearly, the term spirituality can point to the most profound meaning. So I invite you to explore with me that meaning or those meanings.

The first problem that many have with the word "religion" is that it implies belief in and assent to a rather specific set of propositions or assertions; that is, a creed. How often have you had someone ask, when they heard you say you were a Unitarian Universalist, "Well, what do you people believe?" The simplest questions always seem to require the most complex answers. People who have never entered a church share this Christian cultural assumption, that religion is all about belief. I have been struggling against this cultural bias most of my adult life, because I long ago became convinced that religion is not primarily about belief. I tend to agree with Robert Solomon, a professional philosopher, who boldly asserts in his book Spirituality for the Skeptic, that "Most religious beliefs are more like club passwords or code words than propositions that can be explicated or defended." [p 13] Creeds are primarily of sociological but not of philosophical or theological significance; like a special handshake they serve to identify the in-group, and thus to separate it from everybody else.

So when spirituality is juxtaposed to religion there is more to it than matters of belief. Most often people seem to be making a distinction between certain feelings, experiences, a kind of orientation to life on the one hand, and, on the other, religion as a social institution: what is often referred to as organized religion. And organized religion, among other things, is what we are doing at this very moment. My goodness yes, we are organized: setup and takedown people scurrying here and there, snacks put out, coffee made, music chosen and practiced, sermons written, money collected, social outreach planned, children's religious education programmed, small groups scheduled, and never forget committee meetings — and lots of other things tended to. For myself, all these activities are both necessary and important; but critics of organized religion do have a point, namely, that the busyness of religion can and sometimes does obscure something more fundamental and far more precious. And spirituality is as good a name as any for that something. Indeed that something is or ought to be the essence, the driving force, the spirit, of organized religion. Ideally, if one approaches even the busyness of organized religion as a spiritual practice, spirituality and religion are not separated.

Let me be clear that by spirituality I do not mean to suggest that there is a kind of substance, called spirit, which is distinct from and stands over against matter. Nor is spirituality a code-word for "supernatural" as over against the natural. Both spirit and supernature are traditional ways of conceptualizing the spiritual; they are not the only ways of doings so, and they are not my ways. To me, everything is natural: but notice that nature can sometimes be experienced as extraordinary, special, mysterious, and awe-inspiring, as well as merely ordinary. So I want to use the term "spirituality" to mean experiential — which is I think what many people do mean by it: it is the experience, however momentary, of what theologian Paul Tillich called the "depth dimension" of human existence. Spiritual moments are those from which we derive adjectives like "sacred" and "holy." It may be seeing the glory of a sunset, or the majesty of a mountain, hearing the delightful song of a bird, giving birth to a child, or coping with the death of a loved one. It may be in hearing our joys and sorrows, in singing a particularly moving hymn, or the sublime blending of your voice with others in harmony. Characteristically, these experiences are largely unencumbered by elaborate belief systems, although they may and historically have given rise to many such systems.

I claim that these experiences are not merely powerful, nor merely generative of feelings; they are more specific than that. We often say that they "take us out of our selves," which is the literal meaning of the word, ecstasy. I claim that these experiences are moments when we feel powerfully connected to something far greater than ourselves, something of great, perhaps of ultimate worth. Further, these are moments in which we spontaneously take up a worshipful stance toward that something. Worship, remember, means to express and affirm what is of great worth. In such moments the connection may be so powerful that the usual separation between self and other dissolves.

That to me is spirituality at its most powerful. Further, such experiences point beyond themselves: they press for expression, for action. And that is where organized religion comes in again, because it directs and focuses that expression.

Such moments of spiritual experience are at least potentially transformative: we are or can be forever changed by them. I believe that such experiences, which I have called spiritual, are moments in which the self is expanded, or, which is the same thing, connected, to something, perhaps to everything. William Houff in his book, Infinity in Your Hand, affirms that "Spiritual implies connectedness, a transcendence of the separated self. Spiritual may mean connection not only with the human community but also with the great chain of life — with what Albert Schweitzer meant when he said 'one with all life that comes within one's reach.'" [p 180] Spirituality, rather than being separate from religion, is in fact the essence of religion. The function of religion, what it ideally does, is first to enable or nurture spiritual experience, which in turn are moments of self-transformation. And second, with transformation of self, religion shapes the work of transforming the world.

So spirituality does not so much tell us what to do; rather it tells us how to do it. The most succinct and powerful way of putting this I have discovered comes from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. That text describes spirituality as the union of action (which it calls karma) and mindful awareness (which it calls yoga). Karma-yoga then means to work without desiring the fruits of work: "Let not thy motive be the fruits of action; nor let thy attachment be to inaction. Fixed in yoga... perform actions, abandoning attachment and remaining even-minded in success and failure; for serenity of mind is called yoga...." Mindful awareness means holding in mind, frequent re-minding, keeping part of the mind focused while in the midst of daily activity. It means to cultivate a self that can do that.

Religions generate and institutionalize many methods whereby self-transformation can be accomplished or at least made more probable. We are all familiar with the conversion experience, favored by evangelical Christians. (If you have ever attended a revival, you know how powerful this can be.) More broadly in the Christian tradition rituals of confession and absolution are available in the regular attendance at (usually) Sunday services. Although these are part of my own upbringing, at some point they stopped working for me. A conversion experience can indeed be life-changing, but it still requires regular reinforcement in Sunday services. If all you want is to return to a state of grace (God's forgiveness), then this is fine.

We UU's aren't given to confession much, perhaps because we don't find it effective in bringing about real self-transformation; or perhaps because it makes us uncomfortable. But we do make use of the Sunday rituals of reinforcement. Here we come together to remind ourselves of who we are and who we want to become, and especially of our connection to each other and to some greater mystery. Prayer, especially contemplative prayer, has often been seen in Western religions to be potentially transformative. Such prayer asks nothing: it is the quiet cultivation of listening. It can be undertaken in solitude or in a group, as the Quakers do, and we do in preparation for our Joys and Sorrows, or in other times of silence.

But rather than speak abstractly of spiritual practice let me tell you about a Buddhist practice that I find myself using more and more: It is a form of meditation in which certain ideas and feelings are cultivated. It is very old — at least 1700 years. It consists of 4 subjects of meditation. These four alone among all the catalogued subjects are approved for use at any time and under any circumstances. All others are supposed to be prescribed by a meditation master only for particular circumstances and are therefore "limited." The Four Unlimiteds these 4 are called, because they are always salutary. So they are "safe" for a beginner like me. Although they may be considered virtues in the sense that they can and should be incorporated into one's character, they are in fact spiritual exercises.

The Four Unlimiteds (Catvari apramanani)

1. Friendliness (Maitri)
2. Compassion (Karuna)
3. Sympathetic Joy (Mudita)
4. Equanimity (Upeksa)

Each of these should be held in mind, considered, examined and applied to those who people our world. I find that for me it works best to begin with those whom I find it easy to love — my family, my closest friends, yes my dog, and quite a few trees with whom I have a personal relationship. Then I can extend it to myself, whom I have always found it difficult to love (I distinguish here between self-absorption and self-love). Then I try to extend it to my enemies — specific people if possible, or even categories, such as the miscreants so lavishly described on the 5 o]clock news, or the misguided driver right in front of me who signals left and turns right. The overall direction though is from the one or the few to the many: I expand my purview to acquaintances, then to all humanity, and finally to all beings. What I find is that in this process my self, my ordinary ego-self, seems continually to expand until at least momentarily it contains all. Put another way, by making room for all, the self — although still present — diminishes in importance by becoming only one among many.
But let us look more closely:

1. Friendliness (kindness). Maitri
• Being open to the other
• Listening
• Caring and sharing
• The I-Thou relationship
• Forgiving oneself?
2. Compassion. Karuna. ( Can be thought of as a natural outgrowth of friendliness.)
• Acknowledging one's own suffering
• Feeling the pain and suffering of another as your own
• Willingness to help bind up wounds, seek justice
3. Sympathetic Joy. Mudita. (It is the flip side of compassion.)
• Acknowledging one's own good fortune; feeing gratitude
• Celebrating the good-fortune and accomplishments of others
• Without envy or comparisons to one's own situation
4. Equanimity. Upeksa. (this is the tough one.)
• Even-mindedness; dis-interest (not lack of interest)
• Letting anger, fear, greed, hate arise but observing them only
• Not buying into them & thus not reinforcing them
• Not owning them
• Not dwelling on them or linking them up with past events
• Not allowing them to issue in hurtful action
• Cosmo-centrism and not ego-centrism

This is hard to do. It requires that part of the self dissociate itself from the rest — at least that is how it works for me. One becomes a mere observer of the emotional or ego self. Sometimes it is spoken of as the Self observing the self. Even the good emotions, like friendliness and compassion, must be distanced here for a while I think, although their impulses to action are not abrogated.

The Mahayana Buddhist tradition presents as its ideal the bodhisattva — the fully accomplished one, the great saint. Although some today — including the Dalai Lama if I read him correctly — find this ideal impossibly high, in fact unattainable, even the extreme statement of it is instructive. The following description is from the Ratnagotravibhaga:

It is through his compassionate skill in means for others that he is tied to
the world,
And that, though he has attained the state of a saint, yet he appears to be
in the state of an ordinary person.

She has gone beyond all that is worldly, yet she has not moved out of the
world;
In the world she pursues her course for the world's weal, unstained by
worldly taints.

As a lotus flower, though it grows in water, is not polluted by the water —
So he, though born in the world, is not polluted by worldly things.

Like a fire, her mind constantly blazes up into good works for others;
At the same time she always remains merged in the calm of the highest
meditative state...

Let me leave you with this thought: it may be that all forms of spirituality require that we be of two minds: one ordinary, and one extraordinary; one that puts the ego-self at the center, and one that de-centers that self. We need to strengthen the extraordinary mind so that it can infuse the ordinary mind. Perhaps these two minds can even merge, bodhisattva-like, if only for brief moments.

The Story of Jakushin

Once long ago, in old Japan, before there were airplanes and fast trains, even before TV cartoons, there lived a Buddhist monk, named Jakushin. Now Jakushin was known far and wide for his piety. He took his religion very seriously, and tried to live his life perfectly, according to the Buddhist view that all living things have a self or soul that continues through many lives, so that a self might take on many bodies and many kinds of bodies during its career. And like the Buddha, Jakushin tried very hard to treat all animals kindly, for who knew what they had been in previous lives?

Well, one day Jakushin got a message that he should go to the palace in the capital to pay his respects to the prime minister. It was a high honor, so Jakushin lost no time in hiring a horse and a groom to take him to the palace. But there was a problem: Jakushin knew that the horse might not have been a horse in its previous life. Maybe it was his own grandfather or grandmother! How could he ride this horse? It would be so disrespectful. But as Jakushin was quite old and unable to walk very far, finally he carefully climbed on the horse's back, all the while apologizing to it. "Oh grandfather I am so sorry, but you see I am quite old and weak, and, oh I am so sorry, but oh dear oh dear."

But that was as much as he could bring himself to do. He wouldn't presume to guide the horse on the way he wanted to go. So he insisted that the groom let the horse go where it wanted. Well, you know that a horse if left to itself will find some good grass and start munching away at it. And that is what this horse did. It wandered around, with Jakushin on its back, and got no nearer to the capital at all. "Oh dear oh dear," Jakushin said, "please grandfather, would you mind taking me to the capital? It is quite important. But of course you know best, it is just that... oh dear oh dear." What else could he do?

Finally the groom, in disgust, gave the horse a whack on its rump to get it moving in the right direction, because a journey that should have taken an hour was taking all day.

Jakushin was terribly upset. "Oh, how could you? For all you know this horse might have once been your own grandfather. Or your grandmother. How can you treat it that way? They no doubt chose to be reborn as a horse out of love for you, to serve you. And you are so ungrateful and disrespectful. Oh dear oh dear."

After dark, and very late for the meeting at the palace, the groom said to himself, "Old Jakushin may know a lot about grandfathers, but he knows nothing about horses! Maybe the horse was his grandfather in another life. But now, he is still a horse."

[Tale adapted from the Konjaku monogatari shuu, compiled about 1,200 AD]

Elevator Speeches

For years, I’ve been told I need an Elevator Speech, something I could say about what I believe as a Unitarian Universalist in the time it took for a short ride in an elevator. This has been one of Bill Sinkford’s themes at GAs I have attended. I’ve also hear it from a number of local ministers. Yet I still don’t have one. Perhaps it’s the contrarian in me. I slip into the tendencies that I think many UUs have: I can tell you what I don’t believe more easily than I can tell you what I believe. I can expound a bit on some of the principles, though I certainly don’t have them memorized. I even generally agree with them; at least I don’t oppose any of them. I’ve always found that little red fold-out card “What do Unitarian Universalists believe?” (it’s been around for years) that is handed out at our Welcome Table to visitors on Sunday morning to be somewhat of a curiosity. I first encountered it in 1980 at the first Unitarian church that I joined (it really was just “Unitarian”). At the time, I thought that it should be blank on the inside, perhaps with lines so the owner could fill in what worked for him/her. I’ve since become a bit more serious about UUism.

So how does one relate one’s belief about a “complex” religion in a media culture that looks for a two-word sound bite? “Unitarian Universalism” is two words, but not all that snappy. Maybe we should change our name. Many UUs don’t subscribe to, or even know, the original tenets of Unitarianism or Universalism. But I am at a loss to come up with a name that relates the beliefs of such a diverse group of people, especially one that fits into a neat sound bite.

How do I, as an atheist, explain to anyone why I would even attend a church? I was originally drawn to the intellectual emphasis in the sermons I heard. There was a rationality there that appealed to me. I liked the fact that we had no problems changing the words to the hymns or to the anthems that the choir sang. I discovered that I was there for the community, and not all that much for the spirituality. I notice that there has been much more emphasis on spirituality lately, and I’m not sure that I’m all that pleased with the trend. I miss some of the intellectuality of the sermons.

I suppose I can always fall back on my pat answer when asked what I believe: I believe that I’ll have another cookie. But that seems a little flippant now. The fact remains that I still don’t have a good Elevator Speech. I don’t expect I’ll have an answer any time soon.

Southern (Hemisphere) Enlightenment

I ran across this ad for an Argentinean bank on the blog ministrare, the blog of Rev Sean Parker Dennison, minister of the South Valley UU Society in Salt Lake City, UT. It is an ad featuring a positive view of a transgendered woman which has a lot to teach us about tolerance and forgiveness. I found it quite inspiring, and posted it on my blog, All Carrot, No Stick, and Facebook as well. My hope is that this gets wide distribution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEaGbTr8B2o

From your (Cedars) Prez - query for you

I'm wondering how many Cedars' Members are on Facebook and whether it would be worth creating a Facebook group for Cedars.  It could be yet another way to use the latest technology to expand communications.  I'm interested in what you all think and what ideas you might have for how we could use the group.  Of course, there will be redundancies with what we already have - in print and on the website including the blog.  But everyone responds differently and is excited by different things.  Perhaps if enough people are on Facebook, it might be an easy way for them to stay abreast of what's going on.

Please - tell me what do you think?

From your (Cedars) Prez - about AGM

Last weekend in Salem, OR was my 2nd experience at the Pacific NW District (of the UUA) Annual General Meeting. And again, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and learned from it. In my former professional life, I attended so many conferences, most of which were of limited value or interest. But these UUA/PNWD conferences are different.

For one thing, it is amazing how exhilarating it is to be around SO MANY UUs!  So many people who ardently believe as I do, in values that I so deeply believe would make this world a hugely better place. I've even started to feel that UUs need to do an intervention in the halls of Congress and the Senate to teach these folks about our 7 principles. Getting them all to start each session and each day with our affirmation would be such a big help, don't you think?  (Maybe we could start with our own COBI government!)

Secondly, I always learn useful and interesting information about how we UUs can make a difference in the world; and I learn useful information about how to make Cedars a better place for all of us.

The most interesting workshop I attended was on blogging - how blogs in congregations can enhance communication, engagement in the congregation's activities, and even excitement in what's going on. This workshop was co-led by the minister at the UU church on Whidbey Island who maintains a blog (Ms. Kitty's Saloon and Road Show) that has become very popular even beyond her congregation. (Perhaps our ministers could be persuaded to have a blog?) What I am particularly hopeful of is that Cedars' blog could become an active, vital place to exchange ideas and be an avenue of open communication between the Board of Trustees and Cedars' members.  The Board wants and needs to hear from Members so that it makes policies that are appropriately responsive to Members' needs and wishes. I will try out for the rest of this church year (end of June), writing a "From the Board" post after each Board meeting to let anyone who's interested know about some of the ideas that surfaced, and about any interesting discussions that could benefit from Members' input. With some publicity, I am hoping that more Members will come to the blog and let us know what they think.