PRAYER:

     Let us seek our fullest humanity.  We may be about 1/3 beast, 1/3 human and 1/3 divine, but none of the three parts is whole enough, or wise enough, to guide us.

     Let us try to become integrated in every way - all our parts, all our people, are the necessary elements of our fullest humanity, and our most complete strength.

     The excellence we seek is a fragile, beautiful thing.  We seek the ability to live our passing lives, alive with awareness and compassion, excited by the human-scale joys that come from fully participating in the passing but precious splendor of people who have come alive to the challenges of life and the joy of living them.

     As the theologian Howard Thurman has said, let us find what makes us come most fully alive, and go do it - because what the world most needs is people who have come alive.

     Amen.

    

SERMON:      Gilgamesh, the Oldest Spiritual Hero

     One of the ironies of religion is that we go to our faith traditions to seek what we feel are the most important truths - the truths we should guide our lives by - but what we mostly do is tell stories.  Those stories can structure our lives, determine how we live, what we take to be sacred.  Yet, at bottom, they’re stories.  And if we change our stories, it can change our life.  That’s what a conversion experience is about: changing your center to live out of a new story.

     In Western religion, we’re trained to explore and interpret stories from the Bible for insights into reality, ethics, etc. In Hindu countries, they don’t use the Bible, but use the many stories in their Mahabharata and Ramayana stories, and some of the philosophical writings like the Upanishads, etc.

     Like the Hindus, the ancient Greeks used lots of gods, while the Buddhists used stories without any gods at all.

     But for most of us, religion is about forming the right kind of relationship with God, much as subjects form a relationship with their master.  Not to care about God is seen as not caring about life, goodness, character or ethics - and, of course, our eternal future for most of those in Western religions.  For this God controls eternal damnation or reward, though the terms of it are made by the priests and rulers, since this God, like all gods, isn’t really part of our world except through the stories about him.

     But long before the Hebrews, long before the Greeks, over 1500 years before the Hindus, there was an earlier high civilization in Sumer, with a very different kind of story about life, the gods and immortality.

     It is the epic of Gilgamesh.  It was only unearthed and translated in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  I don’t think you can overstate just how deeply different and disturbing it is to all Western religious thought. First, it disturbed Western thinkers because it contains the ancient story of a flood, and a couple who made an ark to survive it, told centuries before the Genesis story and generally accepted as the main source of the story of Noah and his ark.

     That was in the 1870s.  But by the 1890s, some scholars were making far bolder claims.  They said this myth is not only older than the Bible, but also better than the Bible, that it was a mythology to which we could relate more naturally in our modern world.

     So this morning, I want to introduce you to this story that’s older than all of the world’s religions, older than all their gods, and explore a little of what it’s saying, and why it may well fit our modern world better.

     Ironically, even the Gilgamesh story seems to be claiming that their modern world is no longer served by the ancient world of gods and stories of immortality. Their central concern is with the reality of death, and the stories of immortality, which they finally reject as belonging to ancient times, but not their modern age. 

     Gilgamesh was a historical figure, from the dawn of our recorded human history.  He ruled about 4600 years ago in the city of Uruk in what is now southern Iraq.  He was an ancient Sumerian.  He knew he was a Sumerian, but he did not know that he was ancient.  In fact, he saw himself as very modern.  He lived about two centuries after the Sumerians had been the first to invent writing, so they rightly felt that they were far more advanced than any people who had ever lived before them. 

     In the century after his death, the historical memory of this ruler was transformed into myth.  At first, his story was recorded in a series of short poems.  1,000 years later, these stories were woven into an epic, and became known throughout the near East. 

     Thousands of fragments of this epic have been recovered, and we have about 3,000 lines of this story, which achieved its final form around 1300 BC. 

     The two main characters in the story are Gilgamesh, who is described as 2/3 divine and 1/3 human, and Enkidu, a kind of mirror image, who seems about 1/3 human and 2/3 animal.

     Enkidu was created as a kind of wild anti-hero to Gilgamesh, as his opposite.  Gilgamesh sent a woman out into the woods to tame him.  Enkidu stays with her for just a week, and is transformed into someone human and urban.  I know women who hear this and think doing that in a year, let alone a week, would be a miracle, though I don’t know too many men who think so.  Once he becomes more human, Enkidu challenges and fights with Gilgamesh, and it’s a draw: they’ve met their match, their shadow side, their complement.  They become companions, and friends.  It was through this bond with his complement that Gilgamesh first learned true friendship - and some of the modern psychological readings of that seem pretty obvious. 

     Together, they go to kill an evil monster that belongs to the gods, to prove themselves more powerful.   And they are: together, they can defeat evil. 

     The great goddess Ishtar wants Gilgamesh to marry her, and promises him love and peace - she is the goddess of love, fruitfulness and war.  But he isn’t interested, says her love leads only to war, and recounts many stories of how she has betrayed her lovers.  She is furious, and sends the bull of heaven to kill them both.  But Enkidu kills the mighty bull of heaven. 

     Here are men - or one man who has integrated his animal, human and divine natures - with no fear of the ancient supernatural powers.  In fact, they can hold their own against them, and defeat most of them.  I don’t know of another religious tradition with such a story.

     Enkidu, however, dies from wounds suffered in the fights with the supernatural monsters - at least partly as retribution demanded by the gods for their destruction of the Bull of Heaven - and Gilgamesh discovers loss, grief, and death. 

     Gilgamesh now roams the earth wondering if it’s possible to avoid death.  He finds the old Noah-type figure (Utnapishtim) who, with his wife who survived the great flood, were granted immortality. 

     Utnapishtim says he was warned by the gods of the flood, so he, his wife and artisans built and survived on the ark.  But he says this cannot happen again, and the gods’ granting of immortality was a one-time deal, long ago but not in modern times. 

     Gilgamesh still wants to gain immortality.  As he prepares to leave, the old Noah tells him of the plant growing at the bottom of the sea, called “the old one becomes a child,” and says if Gilgamesh uses it, he won’t grow old.  Gilgamesh finds the plant and is going to use it.  (This is like taking a pill to solve the problem.)  But the plant falls into the water, and a snake steals it, which is why snakes can renew their skin.  

     You might ask, “Well, what would have happened if Gilgamesh had eaten that plant?”  The answer is that then he would have to have discovered, either that the plant didn’t work or that he did something wrong, and lost his only chance at it.  Because the story, remember, was written by people who knew that we don’t have immortality, and wrote an imaginative story to say that there are irreversible reasons why we don’t and can’t. 

     So Gilgamesh knows that he can neither get the cure or the pill, and has accepted that the quest for immortality is in vain. 

     Now Gilgamesh confronts reality anew.  This is his conversion experience, and it changes everything.  Here was his spiritual journey: 

1.     First, he seeks the cure for the fact that we must die - having the gods grant immortality.  But that doesn’t happen any more; the gods are useless for this.  And even Ushnapishtim, the last human to become immortal, is lonely and grieves for his lost son, so immortality can’t be the answer to human yearning anyway.

2.     Then he wants a “pill” - a magic way, not involving the gods, to become immortal, to eat of the plant called “he who is old becomes young again.”  But that also only worked once, with the snake, and isn’t available in his modern times.

3.     Finally, he understands that neither gods nor natural routes can lead us beyond the fact that we’re born, we live, and we die and become part of the world of the irretrievably dead.  Even kings die: even the rich, even the talented, even us.

4.     What, then, does the human condition offer?  What is a reality-based solution to this longing?  Many things.  Friendship, sex, relationships, families, children who survive us, the fact that we can memorialize friends, heroes, beloved people - and that we can aspire to become a memorable person.  We can achieve things that will live on in the memory of others.  We can build things.  We are part of cities and states that live on and carry our passions and memories and the tales of our deeds forward.

     When we integrate our animal, human and divine aspects, we have great power; we can even destroy evil. And that’s a good thing.  Even when gods send the evil against us, we can destroy it.  Still, we die. 

     The Gilgamesh story is saying that the gift of immortality, either from the gods or from a “pill,” belonged to the mythic past, not the reality-based present.  Whether it once happened in stories, it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t happen now; it isn’t the reality in which we live. 

     How is this good news?  Because it empowers us in the real world.  If we enter the fantasy worlds, we’re subject to those who control the stories, but who have no real information that we don’t have: just stories.

     Gods have their own rules.  We need a world with human-sized rules and dependable friendship and love, not subject to the whims of gods who wouldn’t care about us.  And we don’t need the gods - we can simply refuse to deal with them (Ishtar), or make perfunctory bribes to them (Shamash) without caring about them. 

     We can live a human-scale life.  We lose good friends, we lose those we love, but can memorialize them, tell their stories, write poems, build statues.  We can create families, cities, and seek to become a memorable person in the lives of others. 

     Like one of our own modern authors (Borges) has said, we die twice.  The first time is when our body gives out.  Then the second and final death comes when there is no one left to tell our story.  Gilgamesh accepted the first death, but said the human condition offers us chances to postpone the second death through telling our stories, writing poems, epics, memorializing those who have mattered to us, building families, cities, and participating in the joys of this fragile, transient, precious life.  The goal of human life is not absorption into the moment like other animals, and not an immortality that would breed indifference to transient things, like the gods we have sanctioned.  What is available to humans is an excellence located between the beasts and the gods, and available to neither of them.  It consists of participation in life, joy, creativity and wisdom. 

     So the gods prove to be useless, and Gilgamesh must learn to deal with life and the world the way they really are in these modern times of 4600 years ago.  This isn’t atheism, it’s growing past the time when it was useful to think in terms of gods; it’s outgrowing the gods by coming into our full humanity. 

     What, then, is the “divine” part of us?  We don’t share the gods’ immortality, or their aloofness to human pains.  Perhaps it is our imagination, our ability to gain a kind of fragile wisdom available neither to animals nor gods.  Gods don’t need wisdom, animals don’t either: they are living too much in the present to need a perspective that can reach beyond the present.  And what is wisdom?  Perhaps it’s dealing with the fact that we live, love and will die, in ways that can lead us to that lost Atlantis of the coordinated soul and a more integrated and authentic existence that magnifies our life force rather than dissipating it.  The love of gods who don’t live within our human constraints isn’t helpful, precisely because they don’t empathize with our limitations.

     What is essential about human excellence is precisely its fragility.  We who live and will die nevertheless love, make friendships, build cities, find joy, create children and invest our love and lives in them.  We can watch them grow, as we also grow through the stages of life.  Gods can’t do that.  But like the gods, our imaginations can range far beyond us: that’s the “divine” part of us.  We can create things that were not there, that are tender, beautiful, precious and passing, as we also are.  Gilgamesh chooses this fully human and participatory life over gods and immortality.

     Nearly two thousand years later, in Homer’s Odyssey Odysseus will also choose his wife Penelope over an immortal existence with the goddess Circe.    These choices of the human over the immortal are rare in world literature, and among our most courageous and hopeful stories.

     After all, as Gilgamesh might have said, he was a modern man, and nostalgia for the ancient ways no longer serves us.  It is time to grow up, time to grow beyond the gods and into our full humanity which is, in its way, even better than the gods. 

PRAYER:

     Let us be willing to listen to our hearts when we are in pain.  Not our anger, not our complaints, not our fear or the litany of life’s failings, but the still, small voices of our hearts.

     Sometimes, it is the wishes of our hearts that cause our pain, when we expect the world to grant those wishes.

     Let us not go through it alone unless we have to.  Let us find a safe place, a safe person, and ask them to listen, as we try to listen, to the cries of our hurts and of our hearts.

     Whether things around us can be changed, or we’ll have to change our demands and expectations, it often starts with the painful honesty that can say, “This is not what I expected in my life.”

     Some times the wisdom we need is just what we don’t want to hear, but what we need to hear - not from others wagging their self-righteous fingers at us, but from ourselves, in our own voice.

     Religious miracles aren’t about changing the world around us.  Those are social or political endeavors.  Religious miracles are about changing our hearts, our expectations, changing what we are willing to accept.

     They are among life’s hardest miracles, and they seldom happen alone.  When we are in pain, when we need someone just to listen, let us try to find them.

     The heart does have reasons that reason does not know.  And sometimes, if we will listen carefully, we can hear them.  Let us learn to listen.

     Amen.

TESTIMONIALS

This service about “listening to the heart” used our own Listening Ministry as an example of church members who have been through nearly six months of training as listeners, and church members who have used these services.  For this posting, I’ve removed the last names of our members, but included their comments.

Mike - A Listening Minister:

1.    What was the best thing about the listening ministry program?

One of the best things about the Listening Ministry program for me is the training. In the beginning it’s a frustrating and unnatural process, but it gets you thinking. You think about listening, which is unnatural, because most of us listen in order to respond with answers or anecdotes. As a listening minister you learn to respond with questions, to clarify, or by paraphrasing, to comprehend.  

The training by itself is good enough. I’d do it again just for that. But, I joined this church for many reasons. One reason is for community, another is for personal salvation. By salvation I mean that I want to live a healthy life in the moment. For me, the two are joined. A perfect illustration of this for me started in the New UU Covenant group. Everyone in the group gave a talk that summed up their personal spiritual journey. Well, I grew up fairly un-churched. Our family suited-up for Easter or Christmas Eve services at a mild Presbyterian church. I couldn’t tell you anything about it really-other than feeling  awkward and stiff in church clothes. So, for this covenant group, I wrote about my life-the emotional ups and downs, the demons, the struggle to forgive myself and others. Before I spilled all of this out in the covenant group, I confessed that I’d written a rather long piece on my spiritual journey. The leader of  the group, Nancy G., said quite seriously something to the effect: Take as long as you need,  we’re here for you.  

We all start coming to church for one reason or the other, but I personally returned to this church for the gentle inclusiveness found in Nancy’s words and in that group’s willingness to listen to my story. This to me embodies one of the listening ministry principles. Bearing witness. Everyone needs a witness to the ups and downs in their lives. At times, friends, family, and co-workers cannot fulfill this role. Sometimes you just need a neutral person to listen respectfully with compassion to your story. You need a witness. I believe that being heard, no matter what you’re suffering, can help with the healing process.   

Dana - who used our Listening Ministry:

1.    What was the best thing about your listener or the listening ministry program?

Having someone listen without judgment or “helpful” comments. Simply allowing the words from my pain resonate in the room and echo back to my ears. This echo came back to me with acknowledgement, affirmation and confirmation of my feelings. The listening minister likewise, reiterated my feelings, and somehow my feelings were annotated and enlarged, no longer being fuzzy thoughts are hurts… But a solid that could be seen and managed.

2.    What would you tell someone who was hesitant to call for a listening minister?

That managing pain alone is a choice, but not the most effective and beneficial. Sharing pain as in sharing joy, a good meal, a good laugh, brings an expanded dimension and allows space for healing….That being heard by someone who can hear, is sensitive and supportive is the very best to bring about resolution.

3.    What surprised you most about the listening ministry?    

The ease, simplicity, of someone accommodating my time schedule, being available to me, to be with me, and support me in finding positive resolution to my issues.

Caroline - A Listening Minister

I signed up for the LM training soon after joining the church. The training required introspection, openness and sharing among other trainees. This continues throughout one’s participation in the program. Serving as a LM has helped me understand why I respond to situations as I do, what I’m feeling and why, and how to better put it into words - not a forte of mine. So I have learned both from my listenees and my fellow LM’s.  Another benefit, I have also come to know quite well a caring, open, diverse group of church members whom I care about greatly.  Six of the trainees from my group still get together on a monthly basis. I cherish these get-togethers.

     For someone who is hesitant to request a LM, I would say think of it as your time, a time when you give yourself permission to talk about what is on your mind without worrying about whether you are imposing on the listener. The old saying “get it off your chest” works: talking something through in your head is harder. Situations are clarified, emotions may not have the same grip once they are spoken.  New perspectives and insights emerge.

     The LM is a real win-win situation as far as I’m concerned. I have gained as much from my listenees and the program as they I hope have.    

Rebecca - who used our Listening Ministry:

1.    What was the best thing about your listener or the listening ministry program?

I liked that my listener had some experience with my specific issue. It made me feel like she would understand my problems from the start.

2.    What would you tell someone who was hesitant to call for a listening minister?

I found it to be very effective one on one counseling for a time that was difficult. My listener gave support that I was not able to find in friends or family.

3.    What surprised you most about the listening ministry?

How helpful it was. She just listened to me spew out all of my stuff. She never really gave advice or guidance. She just accepted me in the place I was in. It’s a world full of judgments but it’s a very powerful thing to just be accepted.

SERMON:

     When I looked for a training program for a listening ministry program after I arrived here in 2000, I chose the one we’re using for two reasons.  First, it was the hardest and demanded the most training, and I thought both our members and our volunteers deserve that kind of first-class treatment.

     And second, I liked the philosophy of this training, which saw our role not as curing, not as solving, but as listening, in the faith that the wisdom most of us need is the wisdom of our own best selves, and that can happen - sometimes almost magically - just by being able to tell our story.  Listening is work, always, and it’s hard work.  But when one person can be honest and the other can be attentive, sometimes miracles occur.

     I first saw this magic performed twenty-four years ago, and to the end of my days it will remain one of the most miraculous things I have ever witnessed. 

     I was taking a ten-week chaplaincy training program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in downtown Chicago, learning how to be a chaplain, which I finally realized meant learning how to listen.  I had signed on for the leukemia ward.  As soon as I found the ward and told them I was the new chaplain intern, three nurses jumped on me and said “Wonderful!  It’s your turn!  Go see the woman in room 19!”  I asked what this was about, and they said “We have all had all we can take of her.  It’s your turn!” 

     I went in to meet this woman, and a nurse closed the door behind me.  The patient was 29, married with two children, dying of leukemia, and furious.  I heard her whole story: very loud, punctuated with furious profanity, along with being told that the fact that I dared to be a chaplain was a cheap abomination, because in case I hadn’t heard, there was no God, there was no justice, and there was no love! 

     I have never been around anyone as deeply furious, or loud, profane and vulgar as this woman, and I had no idea how to help her.  I listened to her story.  She and her husband had had a stormy beginning to their marriage, with some painful fights and threats of divorce going both ways.  Then one day they decided to begin talking through their angers and their differences.  They worked hard at it for a year, she said.  They were vulnerable, honest, and serious.  They were willing to be heard, and willing to listen. 

     And finally, as they could hear each other’s pain and anger, they began to understand where the resentments were, how the angers had arisen and how they had each nursed them in the dark, where they gained strength until they had nearly destroyed their relationship. 

     Slowly, painfully, they found each other again, and they found the love they had lost.  They fell in love all over again, with each other, with their marriage and their new baby.  They recommitted themselves to one another for the rest of their lives, and soon their second child was on the way. 

     The past three years, she said, had been the happiest either of them had ever imagined.  They had worked for it, they had earned it, they deserved it.  There was a justice about it - this was a very important phrase for her.

     And now, she said, her voice rising again, she was going to die.  She was going to die, leaving behind the husband she loved, the two young children they both loved and had so looked forward to spending the rest of their lives raising and loving and watching grow up.

     Within seconds, the profanity and vulgarity were back, screamed almost as loud as she could scream from her desperate, hopeless pain.  I had absolutely no idea what to do.  After she finished, she told me that I was to return at the same time the next day.  I asked why.  She screamed that I would hear this story every damned day until she died, that’s why, and if I wasn’t there she would have me paged. 

     I had failed miserably with the very first patient to whom I’d been assigned.  I felt awful, and I was in that room at that time for five full days, feeling worse for her and worse for myself every day.

     I was depressed all that weekend, and partly because I knew Monday was coming and I’d have to go back into that room again.  So Monday morning, in the group when the ten chaplain students met with our supervisor, I confessed.  I told the story, said I had completely failed at this, and didn’t know what to do.

     Our supervisor was a Lutheran minister named John Serkland - good people deserve to have their names told with their stories.  John listened to my miserable story, and said “Do you want me to save you?”  I said “Do you honestly think you can?”  He said Yes, he thought he probably could.  I couldn’t believe it.  I didn’t even know what that could mean.  I said “John, this woman is going to die, she’s furious and I don’t blame her.  What on earth can you possibly do?”  He said that tomorrow he would go with me to visit her.

     So that day, Monday, I spent another painful and miserable fifteen minutes in her room, hearing the same story, with more volume, more profanity, more vulgarity, more hopeless fury, and that night I didn’t sleep well.

     The next day, John wore his chaplain costume, with the Lutheran backward collar.  I thought, Man, she’s going to throw the bedstand at you in that costume!  That afternoon, we walked into her room.  She took one quick look at us, and sized the situation up immediately.  “Oh I see,” she yelled, “the little moron is stumped, so he brings the big fat moron!”  Her actual words were far more colorful,

     John sat down in the chair by the head of her bed.  He said, “My name is John.  May I hear your story?”  That’s all he said for the next ten minutes.  She laid into him.  She called him names, told him what an abomination his costume was, then told him her story, the story I had already heard six times.  It seemed even more angry, more desperate, more hopeless.  When she finished, John said just three words.  He looked at her and simply said, “You expected more.”

     She was prepared to throw whatever he said right back in his face, and she formed her mouth for a response, but nothing came out.  She mustered more energy, more anger, and again tried to say something, but again nothing came out.  Then tears ran down both her cheeks; she looked at John and simply said, “Yes.”

     “Yes,” he repeated.  She reached her hand out, and he clasped it for a few seconds, then said “I would like to come back tomorrow.”  She nodded.  We left. 

     The next day, we returned, and the spell had been broken.  She apologized for her behavior, her anger, her language, and John said she had nothing to apologize for.  “I expected more,” she said, “I expected more than this.  But there isn’t more.  There’s just this.  Just 29 years.  Just this.  I was just so angry!  I didn’t know what to do.  It didn’t seem right.  There was no justice in it.  I wanted more.  But there isn’t more.  There is just this.”  She thanked John, then said “You don’t have to come back.”  She nodded toward me and said, “He’ll do.”  We laughed, and left.

     John and I went to the hospital cafeteria for some coffee and conversation.  I said “How did you know what to do?”  He said, “I have a confession to make.  About ten years ago, I was assigned to a patient much like her, in the same condition, and she was also furious.  Each day she would scream at me, call me names, tell me chaplains were a disgrace, and the rest of it.  I had no idea what to do.  I kept wanting to help her, to solve her problem, and I couldn’t solve her problem because she was right: she was dying, and it wasn’t fair.  She died, angry to the end, and I knew I had failed her.  I thought about it for years.  A couple years ago, after I’d had a lot more experience, I finally realized that I hadn’t needed to fix her, I’d just needed to hear her.  I wondered if I would ever get another chance to do it right.  This time, it was your turn.  And because you failed as I once had, I got the chance to say those three words I wish I had said ten years ago.”

     All John did was listen to her heart.  It was all she needed.  Most of the time, it’s all any of us need.  It’s our own wisdom that we need, but we can’t hear it because our fear, our desperation and our fury keep us from hearing ourselves.  Sometimes, it just takes someone else.  Not someone to fix us, not someone to give us wise answers like dishing out pills.  Not someone to listen to our symptoms and diagnose a medication.  Just someone to listen to our heart.  Just that.

     And what a gift it is.  That young woman died a few weeks later.  During those weeks, she spent every minute she could loving her husband, her children, expressing her appreciation for all that others had been able to do.  She had found a peace I didn’t think possible.  It was certainly a peace I couldn’t have led her to.  But she didn’t need to be led; she just needed to be heard - and to listen to herself. 

     Of all the thoughts I’ve had about that experience, two stand out.

     The first was realizing that virtually all of our frustrations, angers and disappointments in life result from the fact that we expected more.  Our friendships or relationships aren’t as satisfying as we want: we expected more.  Our parents, our families, frustrate us with their scripts, their expectations, their badgering.  We expected more from our family.  Our job drives us nuts: we expected more from that!  We’re not attractive enough, not successful enough, not happy enough: we expected more. 

     Sometimes, of course, there can be more.  Every social action, every political action effort in history has been the demand that our society be more.  The American colonists expected more representation for their taxes, demanded it, fought for it, and got it.  A century ago, women expected more of a voice in elections.  They fought for it, and got it.  The civil rights movement, the Vietnam era anti-war movement, the movement to remove President Nixon from office, and hundreds of other movements came precisely from the fact that we expected more, worked for more, and got more.  So this isn’t about urging a spineless passivity.  Some things can be changed.

     But not everything can be changed.  Some things must finally be accepted.  Then it’s time to look for spiritual miracles.  Those miracles don’t change the world around us; they change the world within us.  That’s what religious miracles are about: not walking on water, but learning to walk on the earth for as long as we’ve been given: awake, aware, and grateful.

     The second lesson I learned is that it usually won’t happen unless we can listen and hear.  Not only chaplains, ministers and listening ministers need to listen and hear, but those telling their stories need to listen and hear, too.  I don’t know how many times that woman shouted her story, but she never heard what her heart was saying, and she put others off so much that they didn’t even want to listen.  If both she and John had not been willing to listen to her heart, I think she would have died in that same painful fury. 

     When we can get our hearts and our heads together and listen, sometimes miracles happen.  They really happen every day, all around us, in quiet conversations and quiet reflections going on everywhere.  Life can have profound disappointments, but it also has its miracles.  Indeed, miracles abound.  Sometimes all we have to do is listen. 

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:     Eric Hepburn, Worship Associate

     The year is 1948, India has just won independence from the British Empire on the strength of a massive campaign of non-violent civil resistance. However, in the wake of this victory comes the separation of India and Pakistan along religious lines.  Hindus and Muslims violently clash as the harsh realities of separating a people set in.

     Amidst this chaos, Mohandas K. Gandhi, plans a peace mission to Pakistan to plead for the reunification of India.  In an interview with Margaret Bourke White he says of his planned journey, “I am simply going to prove, to Hindus here and Muslims there, that the only devils in the world are those running ‘round in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles ought to be fought”

     Miss White asks, “So what kind of warrior have you been, in that warfare?”

     Gandhi replies, “Not a very good one. That is why I have so much tolerance for the other scoundrels of the world.”

     Shortly thereafter, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist during a prayer meeting in his own garden.

     The only devils in the world are those running ‘round in our own hearts.  And that is where all of our battles ought to be fought

     I believe that this is profoundly true.  It is for me, an article of faith and a cornerstone of compassion.  We, all of us, all the brothers and sisters of humanity, share the same devils, and for each of us they reside in the same place.  In here (gesture to heart). 

     I struggle against these devils, against greed, and against hate, and against delusion.  I struggle against them the same as you do, the same as everybody else does.

     And when one of my brothers or one of my sisters succumbs to one of these devils, I am filled with sadness.  When one of my brothers raises a hand in violence, I am filled with grief.  When one of my sisters takes more than her share, I am filled with disappointment.  When I act on the behest of any one of these devils, any one that is not among the better angels of our nature, then I am filled with remorse.

     And the devils know, they know when we are grieving, when we are remorseful, when we are feeling bad about ourselves and our brothers and sisters.  It is then, that they come again.  Spurring us to feel hate against our brother who suffers already from his violence, spurring us to feel greed towards the possession of our sister who already suffers from her attachment, spurring us to delude ourselves that our actions were not the result of low motives.

     So this is my article of faith, to have compassion for myself, to have compassion for my brothers and sisters, by believing that these devils are not US, that they are not inevitable, that they are not part of the world outside, but part of the world inside of each of us.

PRAYER

     Let us help one another in facing the demons of our hearts.  Those dark feelings, the selfish impulses that tell us we can take what we want and treat those who get in our way merely as obstacles rather than as our brothers and sisters.  These are the demons of our hearts, and they are hard to face alone.

     We are all guilty. We have all done things to others we should not have done.  We have all refrained from doing things for others that we should have done.  We were listening to the wrong voices.  We didn’t hear the voices of understanding and compassion because we were too full of what we wanted.

     And so we have committed sins of commission and sins of omission, and have not been our best selves, either alone or as a nation.

     For on a national level, we also need help in facing the demons of our hearts.  There too, we have plundered others, as though their only purpose was to provide us with cheap oil, cheap labor, even cheap thrills of torture and humiliation, at Abu Graib and other hell-holes.

     Both angels and demons reside in us as possibilities, but we must choose wisely, or the wrong choices may be made for us by others.  It takes courage to choose wisely.  It also takes vision.

     Let us strive for the vision to see who we are as individuals and as a society, and the courage to change into who we would be more proud to become.  Demons, like evil, love the dark.  Let us shed light on our demons, that we may begin to expel them.  It is a brave prayer, and we offer it with both trepidation and resolve.  Amen.

SERMON:   Demons of the Heart

     I believe in demons.  I believe in good spirits, too, but also demons:  selfish spirits, dynamics that are destructive to others, even to life.

     If “angels” are messengers from our better nature, demons are their shadow side: the messengers from those selfish parts that have always been with us as well, hiding right there in our hearts. 

     This morning, I want to talk about some of these demons.  I want to talk about the scripts, the demons, directing and defining who we are and what forces seem to be loose among us and growing in strength, at least abroad. 

     A year ago, I read a new book about these demons.  The author is confessing his role as one of those who served the greedy interests.  The book is called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins.  I’m surprised that it’s been a year since I read the book, because I remember thinking that I needed to preach on this immediately.  Perhaps I didn’t want to acknowledge some of these things either. 

     The book is a confession.  For over ten years, Perkins was an economic hit man, and he describes the plan in great and disturbing detail - and even hints at bigger and more current places in our own country where these demons have operated. 

     To cut to the chase, an economic hit man is an economist employed through a consulting firm paid by major corporations, but working hand in hand with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. government, to reshape the economic profile of the world in ways that benefit us at the expense of everyone else.  It is an attempt to dominate the world, one economy at a time. 

     When a country has oil, cheap labor or strategic location we want, some of these economists do a study to prove to the leaders of the target country that they are on the verge of a huge bonanza from oil or exports, that could make an unbelievable amount of money - figures they often used were a 15% return on investment for the next 25 years.  It’s the chance of a lifetime. 

     Normally, they said we wouldn’t much care what happened to your little country.  But with that kind of money to be made, a lot of people would be willing to invest in it.  And the World Bank and International Monetary Fund might well even be willing to provide loans.

     The loans are necessary, very big loans.  Because before this country can take advantage of the bonanza that awaits them, they must develop infrastructure: roads, electricity, water facilities and so on.  That’s expensive, and not the sort of work they’re able to do.  However, there are corporations in the US that can and will do all the work to give them their needed infrastructure, and it can all be paid for with the loans from the World Bank.  The corporations include Bechtel, Haliburton, and other big ones you may have heard of.  So most of the money never leaves the U.S.

     If the economic hit men are persuasive enough, the country takes the loans.  Yet without exception, the bonanza never turns out to have been there after all, and the country always defaults on the loans.  That’s not a failure; it’s how the plan is supposed to work.

     An Economic Hit Man’s (EHM) job is “to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests.  In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty.  We can draw on them whenever we desire - to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs.  In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people.  The owners of U.S. engineering/construction companies become fabulously wealthy.” (xi)  And the foreign leaders also become wealthy by selling out everyone else in their country.  In fact, this whole scheme depends on finding a few leaders who are willing to get very rich by selling out everyone else.  History seems to show an unending supply of such people, in all countries.

     While hit men worked in many countries, Ecuador provides a typical and revealing case of what happens.

     Because of the work of John Perkins and other Economic Hit Men, he says, “Ecuador is in far worse shape today than she was before we introduced her to the miracles of modern economics, banking, and engineering.  Since 1970, during this period known euphemistically as the Oil Boom, the official poverty level grew from 50 to 70 percent, under- or unemployment increased from 15 to 70 percent, and public debt increased from $240 million to $16 billion.  Meanwhile, the share of national resources allocated to the poorest segments of the population declined from 20 to 6 percent. (xviii)

     “Nearly every country brought under the global empire’s umbrella has suffered a similar fate.  Third world debt has grown to more than $2.5 trillion, and the cost of servicing it - over $375 billion per year as of 2004 - is more than all third world spending on health and education, and twenty times what developing countries receive annually in foreign aid.  Over half the people in the world survive on less than two dollars per day, which is roughly the same amount they received in the early 1970s.  Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of third world households account for 70 to 90 percent of all private financial wealth and real estate ownership in their country. (xix) - much as they are beginning to do in the U.S.

     “For every $100 of crude oil taken out of the Ecuadorian rain forests, the oil companies receive $75.  Of the remaining $25, three-quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt.  Most of the remainder covers military and other government expenses - which leaves about $2.50 for health, education, and programs aimed at helping the poor.  Thus, out of every $100 worth of oil torn from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the people who need the money most, those whose lives have been so adversely impacted by the dams, the drilling, and the pipelines, and who are dying from lack of edible food and potable water. (xx)  And yet, among the options facing the targeted countries, the Economic Hit Men are the kindest.

     When they fail, an even more sinister breed steps in, known as the jackals.  “The jackals are always there, lurking in the shadows.  When they emerge, heads of state are overthrown or die in violent “accidents.”  And if by chance the jackals fail, as they failed in Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq, then the old models resurface.  When the jackals fail, young American soldiers are sent in to kill and to die.” (xxi)

     So first, the false economists are sent in to trick the country’s leaders.  If they fail, the jackals, the older-style hit men, are sent in to kill the leader, as we did with Allende in Chili, Roldos in Ecuador, Torrijos in Panama and others.  And if the hit men fail, our military forces invade the country, as we invaded Panama to kidnap its leader, and as we invaded Iraq, twice. 

     Some of the major corporations that pull the strings to make this scheme work include United Fruit Co. (owned by George HW Bush), Bechtel and Halliburton. (73) When Perkins worked this scheme, Bechtel’s president was George Shultz, Nixon’s Secretary of Labor.  And Bechtel was loaded with Nixon, Ford, and Bush cronies. (74)  Today, we know that Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton before becoming Vice President.

     Religion is involved in these demonic activities, as well.  And Perkins talks about how a front organization called the Summer Institute of Linguistics, an evangelical missionary group from the US, was in collusion with the oil companies.  The organization had entered Ecuador, as it had so many other countries, under the pretext of studying, recording, and translating indigenous languages.

     But whenever seismologists reported to corporate headquarters that a certain region had characteristics indicating a high probability of oil beneath the surface, SIL went in and encouraged the indigenous people to move from that land, onto missionary reservations; there they would receive free food, shelter, clothes, medical treatment, and missionary-style education.  The condition was that they had to deed their lands to the oil companies. (142)

     While the sophistication of the economic hit men was new, nothing else about the scheme was, for we have used hit men and soldiers to serve the bidding of large corporations for a century or more.

     Seventy-five years ago, General Smedley Butler gave a speech about this to the American Legion convention in Connecticut - later included in his book War is a Racket.  The speech was given on August 21, 1931, when he said:

          “I spent 33 years … being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism….

          “I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street….

          “In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested…. I had … a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions…. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents.” (from Joel Bakan’s The Corporation, p. 93)

An EHM Failure in Iraq

     Perkins wrote his book because after our illegal invasion of Iraq, he again saw Bechtel and Halliburton getting unbid contracts, and realized this was simply part three - the military invasion - of the same scheme he had served for a decade.

     We wanted Iraq for many reasons.  It is important because of oil, because it controls the most important sources of water in the Middle East, and because of its strategic location.  It borders Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey, and has a coastline on the Persian Gulf.  It is within easy missile-striking distance of both Israel and the former Soviet Union.  Today, it is common knowledge that whoever controls Iraq holds the key to controlling the Middle East. (184)

     By the late 1980s, it was apparent that Saddam was not buying into the EHM scenario.  This was a major frustration and a great embarrassment to the first Bush administration.  Like Panama, Iraq contributed to George HW Bush’s wimp image. As Bush searched for a way out, Saddam played into his hands.  In August 1990, he invaded the oil-rich sheikhdom of Kuwait.  Bush responded with a denunciation of Saddam for violating international law, even though it had been less than a year since Bush himself had staged the illegal and unilateral invasion of Panama.  (184) 

     Bill Clinton continued pressuring Saddam into following US interests, by placing the sanctions on Iraq that prevented them from getting the chemicals needed to make their drinking water safe.  As a direct result, over a million Iraqis died during the 90s, including over half a million children.

     When Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright was asked about the deaths of those half million children near the end of Clinton’s presidency, she told the press “We think it’s worth it.”   In fact, while the two Bushes invaded Iraq, Clinton’s sanctions caused far more deaths than those from both Gulf Wars combined.

     Perkins’ revelations are disturbing - as is the fact that he played along for a decade, and benefited financially for years afterwards.  The philosophy he’s describing is a brutal one, in which the profits of a few are felt to justify any and all means necessary to get and protect them, including deceit, assassinations, piracy, murder and mass murder.  Perhaps we can say, “Well, at least this isn’t our government doing this, just some greedy people.”

     But can we really say this?  Can you?  I don’t think I can.  I don’t think that kind of a philosophy can be stopped outside our borders.  I think it must continue within our borders, as well. 

     When I originally delivered this sermon on 12 February 2006, I had added a section on 9-11, expressing my belief that agencies of our own government had orchestrated the attacks of 9-11.  But that suggestion was and is so shocking, so repulsive, that it would take a very convincing exposition to make it at all persuasive, and I didn’t do that.  It was a sloppy and slapdash addition that I shouldn’t have tacked on - as several members of my church were quick to point out.  During the next two weeks, I removed that section and rewrote it, pretty much from scratch, creating a stand-alone essay.  That essay, however, is not a sermon, not about religion, and I’m not comfortable having it on our church’s website.  It is a passion from other areas of my life, where I am simply operating as an American citizen, concerned with what has happened to our country.   If interested, you can find that long (11,600 word) essay, titled “The New World Order Story,” online at www.propeace.net and other sites. 

     I do apologize that this isn’t a proper sermon, and lacks a hopeful ending.  But when I delivered this sermon I didn’t see a clear path ahead.  Now three weeks later, as I edit it for posting on our church website, I still don’t.  It will come, as it always has - but not yet.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, here we are again sitting in the house that speaks of mystery, but does not define it. May we be glad to be a part of a tradition that allows us to think for ourselves, may we remember that it is the rich tradition of these churches, both Unitarian and Universalist, that came together that each would be stronger and each would survive.

And when we remember let us remember that Christianity was a big part of the Universalist movement. That the universalism spoken about in its name was a universalism of grace – a rebellion against the Calvinistic notion that there were only a select few who would be saved and a statement that grace was for everyone in all places, in all times. And these precursors of our tradition go all the way back to the middle ages when there was a hue and cry for the Holy scriptures to be translated into the vernacular. Yet, those who so protested and changed things did not do so to dissipate faith, but rather to deepen it.

          Now we would remember all those who have come here today in search of answers, in search of questions, in search of comfort. Let their very presence in this assembly be the balm they need, let the communal energy of this sanctuary bask them in love, understanding and companionship.

          Let us now remember that there is a world much larger than this community. A world so torn by strife, war, famine and disease that it hardly seems fair for us to be in despair over anything.  Yet the human spirit is one that continually strives for better and more. May we, this morning, consider our blessings, consider our wealth – monetary, spiritual and emotional – and let us find the space to rejoice. Rejoice that we have enough, rejoice that enough is enough and finally rejoice for the sheer sake of rejoicing. We pray all this in the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything. Amen.

SERMON

     The Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, David Mamet, says, (quote)  “Only two legitimate national holidays remain. By ‘legitimate’ holidays, I mean this: holidays with a specific, naturally evolved meaning, the celebration of which we find refreshing and correct, and in the celebration of which we, as a people, are united. Those holidays are the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl.”

     Our Middle English word, sacred, comes from the Old French, sacer, which means; dedicated, holy, sacred – set apart … pertaining to religious rites or practices … devoted to a single use.”

     Dr. Loehr got an email from a colleague shortly before the Rose Bowl. The colleague wrote, “Now let me get this straight, you’re going to show a football game on the large screen at your church?” Dr. Loehr wrote back, “What is it about the sacred that you don’t understand?

     I’m seeing similarities between church and football. The mega churches have noticed this already – why do you think that Fellowhip.com in Dallas is built like a stadium and has a large screen that projects the pastor’s face in 30 foot close-ups? What church will never duplicate is the originality and complexity of how football passes the plate. Heck, I’ve watched Super Bowls just to see the commercials. And halfway through the service we have our centering ceremony, but at a Super Bowl game we are likely to see a portion of the anatomy of a vestal virgin, or what passes as one. Perhaps if the stadium churches get big enough they’ll bring back the lions. That was a big hit at the Roman Coliseum.

     But I’ll give the evangelicals their due they do play by the rulebook, that is, the game of religion, the game of church that they are playing has rules. If you’re saved, you win. If you’re not saved – you lose. And it’s not just any old game. Here is probably the only place the evangelicals outdo the NFL. The evangelicals are playing the game of eternity. The saying, “It’s only a game!” hardly applies here. You lose this game, …  the game of salvation … you lose forever. The logic of the eternity game turns ordinary folks into people who want to save your soul now that they found peace with Jesus. They become bean counters for Christ. When you say you’re saved, when you say you’ve found Jesus, their score increases. And the rules of the game have been written down in a book, the author of whom just happens to be The Lord God Almighty!

     Believe me, they know how the game is played and they know who wins and who loses.

     But today we, all of us the evangelicals and liberal religious folks alike, get to practice our religious freedom in this country when we gather around our television sets, put out the sacramental chips and salsa, pop open that beer, near-beer, soda or pop the cork on that fine wine. Yes, we celebrate this naturally evolved meaningful game with bread and wine.

     And the church … what does the church have to offer? I am cognizant of the fact that number one: you know what cognizant means and number two: I know that I am addressing the refugees of all the world’s great religions, refugees from all of what the great religious traditions have had to offer are gathered right here in this sanctuary.

     So … let’s not kid ourselves – I hate to mix my football and baseball analogies, but hey – the churches struck out hundreds of years ago, but they refuse to leave the plate. Bat in hand the church waits for someone … anyone to play her churchy games.

     Football is American. I mean by that, that we in the USA know exactly what we mean when we say American. Americans made this sport. From the Knute to the Gipper to the Super athletes of today, we have molded this sport, we have injected this sport to make it bigger, we have dreamed this sport into being. In a world that seems to fight us at every play we needed a concrete model … a game … in which we could choose clearly delineated sides, and then participate either directly, or by watching the two clearly delineated sides fight for the control over and general misuse of a strangely shaped cylindrical ball filled with air and covered originally by the skin of a pig. This sport was definitely not designed by Jews.

     And by picking sides, dressing up and showing up we participate in an all out hour battle for control of this pig’s skin!

     If your team brings home the bacon more times than theirs … yours wins. Life is good. But if your team loses … it’s the end of the world, as you know it.

     David Mamet again, “The Super Bowl, it seems to me, is a celebration of our national love of invidious comparison.” “Invidious comparison” Are you still with me, Unitarian Universalists?

     Invidious – tending to cause ill will or animosity; offensive, yes, yes, the Super Bowl is doubly invidious … it is offensive as well as defensive.

     When and if you watch the game this evening you will be participating in a celebration of union – yes, union over diversity, but still union – you will be setting aside, making sacred – you will be practicing religion because you will be answering, or trying to answer the two big religious questions; Who am I? And what am I doing here?

     I am a Dallas Cowboy’s fan and what I’m doing here is celebrating the quite human and obvious world-weary fact that the more powerful dominate and that sometimes, but only sometimes, wily, sly and creative can substitute for strength … I will celebrate the clear cut delineations of a game and I will see life, mine and yours, reflected there.

     And as I look into the game and see our lives mirrored there what do I see? I see conflict, fear, rage, tumult, but also I see strength, fearlessness, hope, camaraderie, the end of fighting, peace, stillness, brother and sisterhood and finally the exaltation of the most high.

     Yet … there is more to this game than meets the eye. This game is classic in a purer sense.

     Aristotle supposedly wrote two books on drama. The first is the book of Poetics. It is a study of tragedy. The second book dealt with comedy, and it has been subsequently lost.

     No wonder it was lost Aristotle himself says of comedy … and I quote … “Its early stages passed unnoticed, because it was not as yet taken up in a serious manner.” Comedy wasn’t taken seriously; I hate that when that happens.

     Aristotle turns around and says this about tragedy and he might as well have been talking about football.

     “Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear.” Listen the next time a good hit is laid upon a player – the crowd expels air involuntarily (make the sound). It isn’t something they rehearse like a cheer, its visceral … it’s a gut reaction (make the sound again). Aristotle continues, “Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly.” A punt returned 80 yards for a touchdown … a tipped pass bobbled and then pull in by our side … Vince Young glibly side stepping his way into the end zone winning the Rose Bowl with 18 seconds left … hook ‘em horns! Again, Aristotle, “Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another.” First down followed by second down followed by third down followed by touchdown.

     The Super Bowl is not only theatrically tragic … it is great theatrical tragedy. Some would like to say that football is comedic since it is, in fact, a celebration of the winners. But this is not the Greek definition of tragedy and certainly not Aristotle’s.  In the Poetics Aristotle says “comedy aims at representing men as worse than in real life, and tragedy better than in actual life.” It doesn’t matter that we celebrate the winner, what matters is that these men are bigger, faster, stronger, meaner and more talented than men in actual life. Do yourself a favor the next time you see a football player in person – collegiate or professional – go and stand beside them. Your spouse, those standing around and yourself will automatically make the necessary invidious comparisons.

     In some ways it can be said that football surpasses the actual theatre. In a play there is usually only one protagonist.

     In a football game we have each team playing the protagonist and the antagonist simultaneously. In a play such as King Lear who ever roots for Goneril or Regan, the gold digging daughters of King Lear? Compared to football the theatre is two-dimensional.

     Aristotle again; “the story … must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole.”

     In football each action has a direct and irrevocable reaction. Cause is followed neatly by effect and each effect engenders a new cause and subsequent effect – provided there is no indisputable video evidence. Each game is perfect unto itself and taking any play from the game would be tantamount to Emperor Franz Joseph’s suggestion to Mozart that the opera was fine, but there were simply too many notes.

     No part of the game is irrelevant which is a perfect segue to the church.

     The evangelicals – even with their “game of eternity” cannot out spectacle the tragic theatre of the NFL. But where do we stand in all this invidious comparison? Where are we UU’s?

     The evangelicals have a saying, “I need a witness!” Are we their witnesses? Is our part of the religious game nothing more than skeptical, talking mirrors? Are all our put downs both explicit and implicit, all our education and degrees but spiteful pedigrees for the judgment game at hand? Is our game of religion just a game of the superiority of intellect? Are we doing something besides looking at the world of evangelical religion and finding it wanting, not satisfactory for our high intellectual, sarcastic and totally invidious tastes?  And I realize all my earlier quips concerning the evangelicals fit into this category.

     So … the question boils down to this: Does the Unitarian Universalist Association have a game plan?  Does the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin do we have game plan? And if we do have game – what are the rules? How do we win? What would constitute losing this game?

     In the Wizard of Oz we were warned, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

     As Unitarian Universalists we have paid a great deal of attention to the man behind the screen and some of us have gone behind the curtain into the holy of holies.      And what have we found besides our insatiable desire to know?

     Dr. Loehr this past Senior Luncheon decried the UUA’s lack of center, their lack of anything that smacks of a truly religious center. As Dr. Loehr is fond of saying, “There is no there, there.” In other words the UUA has no game.

     Paradoxically, in the UUA’s efforts to be hip, left of center and politically correct, paradoxically and ironically those who wished to save us by introducing us to ourselves, via the seven principles and a leftist political agenda, ironically and ultimately we have been left in the position of having to define ourselves – who are we? What are we doing here? These are the two great religious questions.

     What is holy is the process of life itself.  And the process cannot be made into a game because it has no beginning and no perceptible end. Any interruption in the process … any freezing of a stage of the process … any product from the process is itself not holy. One cannot be said to win a process … one can only be two things to the process. We can resist and suffer or we can accept and suffer. Suffering is our lot, but acceptance is like manna from heaven. Acceptance of the ontological process exudes a sacramental value often described as grace. But the question remains how would one, could one, pay homage to a process, celebrate a mystery, participate in the ultimate?

     The cathedral is gone and ex cathedra we are free to see all of life as sacred. The task before us is impossible … the tools we have are at best primitive, our swords keep outnumbering our pruning hooks, yet it is we, us – all of us – who are called upon to play the game, to expect grace/manna, to expect nothing else and that gladly, remembering, as Aristotle states in t he Poetics, character may determine the quality of our life but only our actions can prove whether that life is finally happy or wretched.

     On my walks with my dogs I often find beautiful shells of varied colors and some with stripes. They were the home of something once … a snail … a slug … life … but that life is no longer occupying that edifice and I can’t help but think of the great cathedrals, temples, synagogues and mosques of the world. The Spirit, the one called Holy, lived there once, or perhaps it was only a magnificent home built to entice the god’s inside?

     My father, Jack Sr., felt uncomfortable with the idea of God inside a building … any building.

     My father found God in a stubbled field on a crisp November morning with a Browning Over and Under resting easily on his shoulder. No, God didn’t have the Browning that was my dad. There was more grace in Dad’s easy swing to aim and shoot than I’ve ever seen in any preacher. My dad would have liked the cowboy’s prayer.

Lord, I’ve never lived where churches grow,
I love Creation better as it stood
That day You finished it so long ago
And looked upon Your work, and called it good.
I know that others find You in the light
That’s sifted down through tinted window panes,
And yet I seem to feel You near tonight
In this dim, quiet starlight on the plains.

     In the dim, quiet starlight of the hill country we at FUUCA, we refugees from the world’s major religions, are asked to celebrate something that has no perceptible beginning and no perceptible end – we are asked to celebrate the process of life itself – life as something sacred, holy and most high.

     We love games, the theatre, movies and novels because limits are set, structure us present and we can hold the magnitude of life in our hand, our head and our hearts.

     And yet even refugees must make a camp at the border. And this camp we have chosen to call camp UUA. In order not to be lost in the magnitude we have carved out our corner and declared it a safe zone.

     Within this safe zone we are free to believe or not to believe, free to suspend judgment, free to honor life, free to care for those on the margins of society, free to agree to disagree.

     Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838 said, “Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give bread of life.”

     So … if you’ve been wondering amidst the football analogies and the laying of Aristotle over the game where the bread of life comes in, or what the good news is, then I will go beyond inductive reasoning, beyond inference and simply tell you.

     The game played well within UU campuses like this one is a game of teamwork. The first definition of team is still the harnessing of draft animals to do work. Yes, we can agree to disagree and laugh about it, but at the same time as teammates we must agree to be harnessed to what we see to be the truth. And this truth is not heaven sent. It is rather a truth wrought from life. And this truth that we together as team members, harnessed to one another in a common effort, this truth is nothing more or less than our lives passed through the fires of thought.

     We live this game of UUism by never forgetting that what is best gives us to ourselves. The sublime is excited by the great stoical doctrine, know thyself and obey thyself. That, which shows God in us, fortifies us. That, which shows God out of us, makes of us merely receivers of the divine instead of its very source.

     Yes, we have game … we are the gamest … we are ready and willing … resolute and brave. We are all children of chance. What we believe may be unexpected, random and unpredictable, but we must never forget that our hearts and minds are open, open to the revelations of life, open to opportunity, open to change, open to life, itself.

     There’s only one-way to know process … realize your part in it – that’s what covenant is about … that’s what union is about … that’s what love is about and hopefully, that’s what we at the  First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin are all about.