PRAYER

     If we must fail, let us fail at high endeavors.  Let us not fail to be mediocre when we could instead fail to be absolutely brilliant.   Let us not fall short of being moderately compassionate.  Let us rather fall short of being fully compassionate.

     Of all our failures in life, perhaps the saddest are those in which we failed even to try and serve the highest and noblest ideals. 

     It is a sin to fail at low aims.  Not because we failed, but because we aimed too low.

     But it is not a sin to fail at very high aims, like aiming for truth, justice, compassion and character.  Because even our failure puts us into the company of the saints, the company of those who also believe that rising to our full humanity and rising to our full divinity may be the same rising.

     Striving after low and mean ends is a boring sin, not worthy of us.  Let us have greater ambition for our failures.  Let us vow never to fail at anything that wasn’t noble and proud, never to settle for lower aspirations for ourselves, our lives, our country or our world.

     We will all fail at some things.  But let it not be a failure of vision, a failure of aspiration.  If we must fail, let us fail at high endeavors, and then let our failures bless us - for they will. 

     Amen.

SERMON

     Today’s sermon is really prepared as a companion to the program I’ll be doing here in two weeks, “Being Human Religiously,” which is a look at the soul of what the liberal style of religion - as opposed to literal religion - has been about for more than 2500 years.

     I’m also continuing to think about the idea of Spirit that I started last week with the sermon about bringing the horse in the house.  That story has now been written out for the first time, and posted on our website - along with the photograph.

     Last week the treatment was partly in fun.  There is a spirit of life that can appear without warning and break through our boundaries like all the trickster figures in all the world’s religions, opening us to some unexpected and life-giving possibilities.  And since we can find stories about it everywhere, we can call it transcendent, enduring, maybe even infinite and eternal. 

     But religion is about deciding to live in relation to that transcendental spirit.  Religion is, as one great Hindu mystic put it, “the whole soul becoming what it believes.” (Vivekananda)

     This morning, I want to think about what on earth that means, why anyone would want to do it, what we could get out of it, and how we do it.  That’s a lot of area to cover;  I have tried to cut the sermon down from its original length of nine days. 

     Many would say that being human religiously is about standing before God, and that’s one way to put it.  You could also say that Well, that would depend on what sort of a god you meant; and that’s also true.  If you think of the God of Western religions - at least the version that makes the world media most often - this could be a pretty unattractive idea - frightening, even.  That God so often seems to be about judging and punishing, even wiping out whole peoples who displease him.  And the thought of being judged by the God who created the whole universe and has these terribly high standards and this fearful punishment - it’s no wonder so many people don’t want to go to church or take religion very seriously. A lot of what passes for religion, and for God, doesn’t deserve to be taken very seriously. 

     Many people think it would make a lot more sense to reverse it and try to be religious humanly, to take religion down to a human scale, to reduce it to what we understand, even what we like. 

     And there is a lot of that going on.  God and religion are dragged down to echo and endorse what we come up with, including some of the worst of what we come up with.  Then religion is used not to expand us, but to strengthen our own biases and dangerous behaviors.  Sadly, you can see this by looking at almost every single instance where religion has become combined with the power of the state, both at home and abroad.  Again, it’s enough to turn people completely off on the whole subject of having anything at all to do with religion, and you can’t really blame them.  Think of the Muslim women in Iran who have been shot in the face by men for refusing to cover their faces with a veil.  Or what may become several states following South Dakota’s lead, criminalizing women who get abortions, while also cutting social support programs, pre-natal care, post-natal care, and health care. It’s good to be pro-life: I think it’s even a sacred command. 

     But to be pro-life means to honor and be willing to pay for all the social structures and services that are needed to support, nourish and honor human life.  These include sex education, because it is so much easier to take advantage of ignorance than of knowledge.  They include pre-natal care, post-natal care, universal health care, day care, and a host of things that are done much better in some European countries who have a much higher notion of serving human life than we do. 

     The programs are expensive, and have to be provided for all, especially for those who need them the most.  But without them, criminalizing abortion is little more than a vindictive policy that turns some of our poorest and most defenseless girls and women into just breeders.  And that isn’t pro-life.  That’s an anti-life program, wrapped in misleading religious rhetoric, and we should all be ashamed of it. 

     But in any country where the power of religion is combined with the power of the state, we see people dragging religion down to the lowest level of human greed and bigotry, rather than trying to be human at a level of high and loving ideals. 

     So let’s put it another way.  If religion is about choosing to live in a commanding kind of relationship with very high ideals, why do it?  What do we get out of it?  Isn’t it like sailors following the North Star, even though they’ll never reach it?  Why torment yourself with ideals higher than you’ll ever be able to satisfy?

     Once we ask it this way, the answer is kind of surprising.  I’m going to say some things this morning that may seem surprising, and you may want to check them out against your own life this week.  Here’s the first one.  The reason we put our lives in the service of the very highest and most demanding ideals is that it is the only way to become fully human, and we know it.  We choose this route over and over, whether we care about religion or not - I’ll convince you of this.  For example, let’s take a few secular professions.

     Lawyers, I’ve been told, are really supposed to be committed to serve three different levels of responsibilities.  First, but lowest, is the responsibility to serve their client’s wishes.  Second is the responsibility to serve the law, and the quality of law.  They shouldn’t act in ways that will weaken the rule of good laws.  And that leads to the third and highest level of allegiance, which is to the good of society.  They shouldn’t take cases that can set precedents that are likely to weaken our civil boundaries or make our world a worse place.  The popular conception of lawyers is often that they only care about doing what their client wants.  And there are some like that.  But I’ve never talked with any of those, and am not sure I’d enjoy it, though it could be interesting to challenge them on this.  However, I have found a lot of very high idealism in the lawyers I’ve known.  They believe that if they serve the highest of these ideals to the best of their ability, it is a noble profession that will make the world a better place and fulfill them both as professionals and as people.  And I think they’re right.

     Teachers also hope to serve different levels of ideals, but are the most fulfilled when they feel they have served the highest ideals.  At the lowest and perhaps least satisfying level, they teach students to pass the tests that will rank their schools.  But good teachers also have a love, a passion, for education, learning, growing, expanding their own horizons and the horizons of their students.  They love the pursuit of truth in one form or another, and give their lives to serving it, one one class at a time, one student at a time.  I’ve not met many teachers of whom this wasn’t true.  If there are teachers who don’t care about anything but getting students through the tests, I can’t imagine that teaching is a very deeply fulfilling profession for them.  At the highest level, teachers hope and believe that they can be positive influences in forming the character of their students, helping to make them better people, partners and citizens.  I’ve had teachers who absolutely did that.  So have you.  And we will never, ever forget them, will we?  So this too can be a noble and fulfilling profession, but only when it is striving to serve very high ideals.  Nobody gets much credit for just putting in time - they don’t get much fulfillment from it, either. 

     Doctors have the same kind of ideals that drew them to give their lives to medicine.  Not pushing pills, but serving health, being part of a profession that cares for the quality of the lives of their patients, one patient at a time. 

     We could go down the list with more, but the most important things in life - things like justice, truth, health and character - must always be served by holding ourselves responsible to these terribly high ideals.  The higher the ideals we serve, the more gratifying we can find the act of serving them.  See if this isn’t true in your own life.

     And all this is true on a more personal level, too, in our personal lives rather than our jobs.  All weddings, oaths of office, all professional and personal standards we make a big thing of or dress up to do, are always committing us to serve only the very highest ideals.  If they weren’t, it would feel tacky, and we wouldn’t be interested.

     I’ve never officiated at a wedding where the couple swore to more or less like one another for awhile till they got bored, then to split.  There was a hit song in the 70s that sold millions of records, where the lyrics said “We’ll sing in the sunshine, we’ll laugh every day; we’ll sing in the sunshine, then I’ll be on my way.”  I never heard it sung at a wedding. 

     At a wedding, couples make bold and daring promises, amazing promises.  These two people who really don’t know anywhere near as much about each other as they think, stand in front of all their best friends and families and all that is holy to them.  They stand there and promise to love, honor and cherish, keeping themselves faithful to the other for as long as they both shall live.  Without aspiring to a commitment of that quality, it wouldn’t even be worth attending a wedding.  If all they aspire to is to sing in the sunshine then be on their way, most of their friends and family would suggest they just get on their way.  But nobody does that.

     Without the transcendent promises that call us to become more, the whole idea of a wedding loses its magnificence of spirit, its nobility of human aspiration, its magic and its blessing. 

     Still, why do we do it?  These aren’t even religious examples I’ve been using, but any time we do something that feels deeply important to us, we seek out the highest ideals we can find, and swear to put ourselves at their service.  If that isn’t a religious commitment, I don’t know what is.  But why?  What do we get out of it?  Why bother?

     This isn’t just a rhetorical question; there’s an answer to it.  Here’s the reason for being human religiously.  It’s because - and see if this doesn’t ring true for you - the highest satisfaction and deepest comfort in life come from being committed to the highest and most compassionate ideals, because it is the act of commitment that transforms and blesses us.  This is expressed in so many ways in different religions.

     It is seeing ourselves as being beloved of God, knowing Jesus loves us, feeling engulfed in the compassion of Allah, the Buddha or Kuan Yin.  Just trying to serve these things blesses us, even if we don’t do it perfectly.  Because perfect ideals, and perfect gods, have forgiven us in advance for being merely human, as long as we’re trying to be the best kind of humans.  This sounds all poetic and foofy, but it is absolutely true.  Compassion, acceptance and forgiveness are key attributes of every god worthy of the name.

     You may know Christians, as I do, for whom one of the most profoundly loving facts in their lives is the fact that they can say “Christ has accepted me just as I am.”  If they hadn’t felt that, they would probably have just kept looking.  It’s ironic.  We can fail at trying to serve high ideals and still feel blessed by our aspirations.  But if we just try to get by, get away with what we can, drag religion down to our lowest expectations so it will be easy to meet them, then when we look back on it there is no blessing for us at all. 

     When a Buddhist tries to see all others through the eyes of the Buddha’s or Kuan Yin’s boundless compassion, it rubs off.  They also come to see themselves through the eyes of that boundless compassion; it rubs off.  They have become what they tried to serve, and it transformed their lives.  A Jew, Christian or Muslim who tries to serve the God of Love in honest and earnest ways, lives a far more loving and beloved life than they might otherwise.  As the Hindu mystic Vivekananda put it, “Religion is … the whole soul becoming what it believes.”  Not what it achieves, what it believes.  We become what we most truly believe.  If you believe the search for truth trumps lesser concerns, you become a person with more truth about you.  The magic of serving high ideals - truth, justice, health, compassion and the rest - is that in part we become what we serve, even when we fail to serve it perfectly. 

     We say this to ourselves in so many ways.  “At least I tried; it was worth trying; Well, I did my best….”  Think about this.  There is some deep magic here, in the fact that just choosing to serve high ideals is transformative.  We’ll never do it perfectly.  I suspect no marriage has ever quite lived up to the poetic vows of the wedding day, and no professional ever really finished a whole career without being able to remember several times, maybe a bunch of times, that they failed, even failed pretty miserably, to live up to what mattered so much to them.  But in the long run - and hopefully even in the shorter runs - we don’t condemn ourselves for the inevitable failures that come with being human.  We are blessed by the ideals to which we give our lives, the compassion to which we give our hearts, the gods in whose service we enlist our souls.  Think about it this week, and see if it isn’t true for you too.

     It is one of the greatest miracles in life, really. 

     It is kind of like that picture of sailors steering their courses by following the North Star.  No sailor will ever reach the North Star.  It isn’t possible.  But just following it changes their course completely.  And when we align our hearts with the promise to love till death do us part, it changes our course as far as you can get from just wanting to sing in the sunshine then be on your way. 

     And it doesn’t take great wisdom; we don’t have to be saints, or like Mother Theresa or Gandhi - almost nobody can do that!  We just have to try to be human in the best way we know how, try to follow that path, like steering on the North Star.  Just that is transformative.  And that is one of the greatest miracles in life.

     I’ll tell you about a young couple I met during my first years in the ministry.  They weren’t members of the church, didn’t have a church, but asked if I would marry them.  They were both eighteen years old.  I asked them to write their wedding vows, as I ask all couples.  We don’t have to use those vows - many couples prefer more traditional vows, and sometimes what they are promising each other is really too personal to share in a public ceremony.  But I want them to know what their vows are, what their promises are.

     All couples find this is harder than they thought, but this young couple found it to be nearly impossible.  One or the other of them phoned at least three times, asking more questions.  Finally, they asked to come back in and talk about it.  They were completely frustrated!  “We can’t do this!” he said, and she agreed. “We don’t know enough to write anything good enough for a wedding.”  In fact, they agreed, they hardly knew anything.  “Well,” I said, “this does sounds serious.  But you must know something.  Tell me, what do you know about yourselves and what you’re bringing to this marriage?” 

     Between them, it started tumbling out.  “We don’t know anything about the future.  We don’t know what we’ll be doing for work even in two years, let alone in forty.  We don’t know yet if we’ll have children, or even if we want children.  We don’t know where we’ll live.  We just know we love each other like the other half of our own souls, that we’ll be together for the rest of our lives, that together we can figure out anything we need to, and by God, that has to be enough!” 

     Yes, that’s what they decided to use for their wedding vows, and I suspect nobody who was there will ever forget it.  I don’t know what happened to that young couple.  He had just enlisted in the armed forces, and they were leaving in a week for some military post.  But I hope they’re still together, and still know those wonderfully profound lessons they had already learned as 18-year-olds in love.  High ideals bless and transform us, even if we serve them haltingly. 

     But when we reverse it, and drag religion down to the level of our most undeveloped parts or our greed, bigotry or the rest of it, then we’re not serving anything big enough to cherish us, or cradle us, or forgive us our sins, since we’ve not tried to forgive the sins of others, or serve them.  That’s when God becomes a fearful and capriciously vicious judge and punisher.  Because it isn’t God at all, but only our own smallest untutored biases, writ large.  As contradictory as it sounds, we rise or shrink to the size of the ideals we serve.  Just serving high ideals is transformative. 

     It’s all about living more wisely and well here and now, not elsewhere and later.  As you’ll learn when you come to the program at the end of the month, almost all of the best religious thinkers from all religious traditions for the past 2500 years and more have tried to help us become human religiously, by orienting our lives to ideals as high, as luminous, and as beyond our reach as the North Star.  When religion is taken seriously, as I think all the best styles of liberal religion have done, it is never about pie in the sky.  It’s about pie here.  And love here.  And justice, compassion, truth and salvation by character here.  It’s what Jesus meant when he said that the kingdom of heaven isn’t coming, isn’t in the future, but is within and among us.  It’s here, or it’s nowhere.  The magic, the miracle and the transformation are also here, or nowhere.  There’s really quite a lot at stake for us. 

     The attraction of becoming human religiously is simple, and I think it’s powerful.  Understood correctly, it is saying, “Here’s the deal.  If you will believe in very high ideals, the kind that make high demands on you, and if you use your life to try and serve them, you will be blessed, accepted, and forgiven for your failings.  You don’t have to earn salvation.  You just have to enlist in the service of the highest ideals of truth, justice, love, health and character, and let them direct you.  Even when you fail, you will be blessed for trying, and you will feel it.

     The power of faith, and living that faith, can transform you, and your whole soul may become what you believe.  And that may be the greatest miracle of all, now or later, here or anywhere.

     I can’t guarantee to persuade you.  I can only testify, which is what I’m really doing here.  The rest can only happen inside of you, as you turn these things over in your heart and mind.  If it happens, you might experience it as a kind of miracle.  And those kinds of miracles, luckily, do happen: every day.

STORY: The Horse in the House

          It happened in the summer of 1955, and was both logical and necessary.  We lived in Colfax, Iowa, a town of about 1800, twenty miles east of Des Moines.  Formerly located on Highway 6, the Interstate bypassed it when it went in in the early 1960s, kind of leaving it where it was.

          But where it was - at least in 1955 - was a wonderful place, at least for a 13-year-old boy with a horse.  My younger brother also had a horse, named Spooky.  Spooky was white, and hot-tempered, at least to me, though my brother seemed to get along with him.

          My horse was brown, with a big white line running up the back of his left hind leg, around his rump and back down his right leg.  He was laid-back and cool, and his name was Louie. 

          The horses were our freedom.  We could come home from school, throw a saddle on, and just ride, ride, anywhere.  A couple times on weekends, we left on horseback to make camp for the weekend.  I had a Marlin lever-action .22 caliber rifle and a saddle holster, just like I knew all real cowboys had, and would hunt big game for our vittles.  OK, squirrels.  Whatever.  We’d make camp, cut down some saplings, or cut branches, make a corral that straddled the small creek, so the horses wouldn’t wander off.  Then I’d shoot a squirrel or two, which we’d cook on a stick over an open fire, then retire to sleep using our saddles as pillows, just like in the movies.  I don’t think cowboys really used saddles as pillows.  It’s very uncomfortable.

          When my brother Peter and I were 13 and 10, our horses were sometimes our best friends.  We fed them, cleaned their stable in the barn, and rode them around the fenced pasture next to the house almost every day.  I had a paper route that went from downtown straight out Main Street about two miles out past our house.  Every day, summer and winter, I’d get to our house, saddle up Louie, and we’d finish the route together.  We were close.

          My brother Peter and I used to like to give the horses sugar cubes, which they gobbled out of our hands almost too eagerly.  That was until the vet said the sugar cubes would rot their teeth and we shouldn’t do it any more.  Bummer.  They liked carrots and apples fine, but they also had a sweet tooth.  We understood.

          We were looking for a loophole in the “no sugar cubes” deal.  I think we found it by chance one morning, when my brother didn’t want to finish his grape juice because it was too sweet.  The words hit like a revelation straight from the gods - or at least the god Poseidon, who was also fond of horses. 

          After our mother left for the day, we poured some grape juice in the dog bowls on the rickety back porch.  The horses loved it!  But there was an unexpected bonus that made it all even better.  The grape juice made their noses and tongues purple.  Now that was cool!  Horses with purple tongues and, in Spooky’s case, a purple nose! 

          The occasion giving rise to the center of this story came on one of those days when both horses were up on the back porch, drinking grape juice out of the dog bowls.  When Pete took Spooky back down, he broke the wooden steps - really, it’s amazing that both horses didn’t fall straight through the porch.

          Well, now Louie was stuck up there on the back porch.  He wouldn’t jump down, there wasn’t any other way off the porch, and our mother would be coming home in an hour or two.  This called for quick thinking, which kids mostly know they’re pretty good at.  We had two friends over, who would help with the horses in return for getting to ride them.  I shared my plan.  Joey could take Louie’s halter, I’d go ahead to clear away the furniture, and we would lead the horse through the house and out the front door, over the new porch with its sturdy cement step.  Oh yes, and Jimmy would walk behind Louie, carrying a metal bucket, just in case.  Jimmy protested, but he was the littlest, so it was only fitting.

          No sooner had I announced this grand and eminently logical plan than my brother jumped on Spooky and rode away as fast and as far as he could.

          The plan worked beautifully.  I cleared the furniture out of the way, Louie was very well-behaved, and Jimmy whined all the way through the kitchen and dining room about the sorry hand that Life had dealt him.

          When we got into the living room, the television was on, and Louie stopped.  His ears shot forward, his eyes got big, and I could feel him thinking “Hey - we haven’t got this out in the barn!  The Big House is a whole other thing!”  I saw the family camera sitting on a hall table - a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye with flash bulb attachment - and quickly took a picture of this scene. 

          But I wasn’t as quick as Jimmy.  When he saw me going for the camera, he walked up by the horse’s shoulders, and set the bucket down. 

          This was not good timing.  It was not good timing because when the flash bulb popped, it startled Louie.  And Louie pooped on the rug. 

          I yelled at Jimmy - his duties had been made very clear.  But he snapped back - petulantly, I thought - “I am not going down in history holding a bucket behind a horse’s butt!”  It was a good point, well taken.

          Still, there was the poop.

          We took Louie out the front, got him back into the barn, and both Joey and Jimmy disappeared as quickly as my brother had a few minutes earlier. 

          I scooped the poop, but it wasn’t going to be that simple.  There was a stain.  Not dramatic, but noticeable.  I went into the kitchen and looked under the sink, where wondrous and mysterious Chemicals are kept.  And there was a big bottle of Glamorene Rug Cleaner.  It was, I’m quite sure, the only time in my life I ever saw or used that product, but its name was stamped in my mind forevermore. 

          Luckily, I had a bucket.  Of course, if it had been used in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to use it in the second place.  I filled the bucket with water, dumped in a lot of Glamorene, got a brush, and scrubbed. 

          Glamorene Rug Cleaner was truly miraculous! Unfortunately, there was now a large wet spot, a couple feet across, which was even more noticeable than the original stain.  My mother had never been accused of being a good housekeeper, though this was the first time I saw that as a good thing.  I took a throw rug from the other side of the room and covered the wet spot. 

          She never noticed.  Neither did my father.  And Peter knew better than to say one single word.  During the day, I’d take the rug off, covering it again before my mother came home.  In two or three days, the rug was dry, and looked like its scruffy old self again.  When I moved the rug back where it belonged, both parents suddenly noticed it had been moved, though I assured them it had always mostly been there.

          In short, I pulled off the caper of the century. I got away with bringing Louie through the house, even though he had had that little accident in the living room.  In the days to come, both my brother and I would laugh about it while we were out riding.  Certain kinds of kids live for moments like that.
          It was - I don’t know, maybe two or three weeks later: a long time later.  I came home from some serious playing, and no sooner had the screen door shut than I heard this Mother Voice shouting “Howie! Come in here!”  Every kid knows that voice, and knows what it means.

          I stood a little paralyzed there by the front door, wondering - not what I’d done, but what anyone could possibly have told her about.  Nothing.  There was nothing.  I’d either been quite good, or left no evidence.  I was sure of it.  I went into the kitchen, and every kid knows just what comes next.  With my most innocent look, I said “Yes, Mother?”

          She was not a happy woman.  “What do you mean, bringing that horse in the house?”

          This took really quick thinking.  Could she possibly know about that?  It didn’t seem likely.  Pete wouldn’t dare tell.  And Jimmy and Joey knew if they blabbed, they’d lose their ticket for free horse rides.  And Louie didn’t talk.  That’s it.  She couldn’t know. 

          So again with the innocent kid look, I said “What horse?”

          The next line was the Voice of Damnation and Doom: “I just got the pictures back from Walgreen’s!”

          Poop.  That horse.  Louie, the cool, laid-back horse.  Ah, yes.

          The next moments were a bit awkward.  Denial seemed out of the question.  But explaining the logic of it - and especially how responsibly we brought the horse into the house, with moving the furniture and Jimmy and the bucket and all - that was a little trickier.  And then there was the matter of the poop.  I couldn’t really leave that out.  And the Glamorene, and the wet spot - which finally cleared up the mystery of the moving throw rug.  It was actually quite a complex story.  And telling it did sound a bit odd, even though it was all quite logical from beginning to end. 

          As I stumbled through the story, I suddenly saw a gift from the gods, a shot of pure Grace: the corner of her mouth twitched.  She was on the verge of laughing!  Oh, Hallelujah! 

          Again, every kid would know what move to make next.  “What’s the matter, Mom?  Are you going to laugh?  It’s really pretty funny, isn’t it?  Huh?” 

          Her expression was one of those that should have been filmed.  She needed to be serious - it was still Serious Parent time - but she could barely keep it in.  Finally, she blurted “I have no idea what to say to you.  I would feel ridiculous saying ‘Don’t bring that horse in the house again’!” I look back on that as about the most ideal way a parent could handle this situation - not that more than like one in a billion parents will ever have to face this situation.  As for the back steps; they were rebuilt, but I don’t remember anything about it.  Maybe Pete and I had our allowances docked to help pay the carpenter, but I don’t think so.  I think the family absorbed Louie’s Big Day as one of those Memories we’re always trying to make - or perhaps as the sad sign of a child too far gone to save.

          And that’s the story of how the horse was brought into the house, way back in the summer of 1955 when both I and my world were a lot younger and simpler. 

          But as logical as it is, I have learned through the years how filled with Basic Disbelief many people are.  Like you.  You don’t quite believe it - at least not all of it - do you? 

          Oh, come on.  This is better than most history.  Even if you don’t believe it, can’t you pretend to?

          But no.  No.  And so, for those too cynical to accept the simple truth of a childhood memory from a half-century ago, a gift for you too.  I carried that photo in my billfold for over twenty years.  Louie was with me through the Army, in Germany, even through the Vietnam War.  Then sometime in the mid-70s, while I was spending a weekend with my brother’s family, he picked my pocket as I slept, stole the picture, and sent it off to have it copied.  At Christmas, he gave me a 16×20 print of that old photo, complete with its fading and scratches, which I then had mounted and framed.  It still hangs on my office wall today. (See image below)

PRAYER

     There are little sparks of life around that we often miss: a special person, a twinkle in the eye of someone who just seems to very real to us.

     Little lights are scattered here and there in our lives: people, places, even things that can awaken our own spirit in ways large and small, but in ways we wish for.

     So often when life seems dull or we seem to be in a rut, we’ve lost sight of those sparks, or lost touch with them.  Spontaneous things, unplanned fun, or contact with those people who have such a young spirit, no matter how old they are.

     There is an old mystical story that says all these sparks are parts of God, and that our task is to find them, draw them to our lives, and use them to transform ourselves and our world back into an image of God.

     Drawing the world back into an image of God sounds like a task far beyond anything we can do.  But we do recognize those moments, people and places that make us feel more alive, that seem to make life offer more options, that open us up.

     Let us start there, attending to the sources of inspiration that make us feel more alive, more thankful, more joyful.  Let us claim those sources and the little sparks of life they offer, even if they offer them only to us. 

     The task of reconstituting the world is too big to imagine.  Let us bring it down to a level we can see and feel: reconstituting one spirit at a time, one life at a time, one relationship at a time, to make them show forth more light, love, and joy. 

     It’s a start.  A good start.

     Amen

SERMON:     Oh, Go ahead: Bring the Horse in the House!

     There is a wonderful story from medieval Jewish mysticism about how in the beginning, God existed just as undifferentiated infinite light.  But God wanted to behold himself, and so he created the world; the world is the image of God.  Then God withdrew, and the world was no longer the image of God, but a fractured, separated place.  But spread throughout this world, there are billions and billions of sparks from that divine light that can connect us with all that is sacred. 

     Our task in life is to cherish those sparks that it is our good fortune to encounter in life, and to raise and spiritualize them, so we can reconstitute the world as an image of God.  Each of us, they say, encounters those persons, events and things that contain sparks that we are uniquely suited to redeem.

     And our sacred task in life is to find those sparks we are lucky enough to come across, to cherish and embody them, to lift them up and spiritualize them, and by doing this to reconstitute the world so that it can once more take on the image of a God of love, justice, happiness and peace. 

     There are a lot of ways to describe those sparks, but when you’re around one you usually notice it. 

     Mostly, we seem to notice those sparks when they’re gone.

     I think of the final lines from a poem written 150 years ago by Thomas Hood, called “I Remember, I Remember.”  It’s looking back to a childhood when the world seemed to be whole and sacred, but looking from a present where it isn’t.  The final lines of the poem say,

I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.

     He’s talking about heaven as though it were above the sky.  But the real “heaven” he’s talking about was that state of spirit in which we were close enough to the soul of life nearly to touch it.

     And when we miss that - well, missing it has produced a lot of great tragedy and poetry, including some poignant funny poems.  One of my favorite of those is a great favorite of women, at least women who think that one day they might become old.  You’ve probably all heard it.  It was written in 1961 by an English woman named Jenny Joseph, and her original title for it was simply “Warning”:

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
and pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

     Sometimes, it seems that we lose the ability to see and save these sparks just by growing up.  Thomas Hood’s poem longs for his first childhood; Jenny Joseph’s poem seems to be looking forward to her second childhood.  That’s a big part of why it’s so much fun seeing the children come up for their story each Sunday: they bring that sense of wonder with them.  They seem to do so easily what we grownups sometimes have trouble doing at all.

     During my first year in the ministry, in 1986, I witnessed such a scene: one I’ll never forget.

     It was after the third sermon I had preached there.  I had written a series of children’s stories for those three weeks.  They were like a serial, and were a simple story, if not a great one.  It was a story about a bush that became unhappy just being a bush because all those darned birds kept taking it for granted and it didn’t have a starring role like the big trees did.  The more unhappy it got, and the angrier it got at having to be a bush, the more its roots withdrew from the soil, until at last they pulled out, the wind blew, and it became a tumbleweed.  Now it roamed everywhere, but never had a home, and began feeling lonely.  When the wind stopped for awhile, it found itself resting not far from a lovely little river, in a beautiful meadow.  It was grateful for the rest, and to be in such a beautiful place.  And soon, it put down roots and again became a bush.  Now when birds came to sit in its branches, it was thankful for the company.  It came to love the place, and all the other creatures in its world.  And as that happened, it grew and grew, and finally became a very, very big tree.  The End.

     I wasn’t prepared for what happened after the service.  In the foyer, a church member who was a physics professor came up to me, raging mad.  He was actually red in the face, as he accused me of having done a ridiculous and shameful thing.  My crime was that I had told the children a story that could not be scientifically true. 

     I could hardly believe it!  It was ridiculous, he yelled, to say that a tumbleweed could again put down roots and become a bush.  Though he didn’t know the scientific names of the plants involved, he was quite sure it couldn’t happen.  And then, as though that weren’t bad enough, I had gone to absolutely stupid extremes by then telling the children that the bush could become a tree! 

     “It’s ridiculous!” he said, getting pretty worked up.  Then he shook his finger at me and said “Do you actually believe that a bush can become a tree?” 

     I said Yes.  Now he turned nearly purple.  He was almost shouting, as he said “Well, I would like to know how in hell a bush can become a tree!”

     That’s when the six-year-old boy who had been standing behind me waiting for his turn finally had all he could take.  He stepped forward, looked up at the physicist, and said “It’s easy, Mister.  It just has to learn how to love!”

     You hear something like this, and it can be easy to feel like Peter Pan, like you never want to grow up if it means losing the ability to understand even the simplest of stories.  The little boy had been waiting to tell me how much he had liked the three stories, and that he would never forget them.  The man was in his fifties, with a Ph.D. in physics, yet actually seemed to think the story had been about a bush!  If we must lose the ability to see even the simplest magic when we grow up,

     But of course we do grow up.  We have to grow up.  Eventually, our parents want us to move out and get a job.  And to do that - well, we have to grow up.  You know, it’s one thing to have your kid bring a horse in the house once.  But if every role of film you got developed had a picture of your child with another large heavy animal standing in your living room, you’d be looking for a good therapist.

     There’s a famous passage from the Christian scriptures, written by St. Paul, where he says, “When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.” (I Cor. 13: 11).  When you think about it, it’s an odd thing to say, after Jesus had said that you can’t hope to enter the kingdom of heaven unless you’re like a child!  Maybe Paul didn’t get it. 

     I don’t know quite what happens to us when we grow up, but something does seem to change - that change that Peter Pan was so afraid of.  I remember stories on the old hippies of the 60s and 70s who had tuned in, turned on and dropped out, then growing into investment bankers and organization men and women, becoming the new incarnation of the very Establishment they had earlier hated, as they raised their own children and suffered through their teen-aged rebellions, wondering why they didn’t grow up.

     Sometimes, it seems that part of growing up is losing touch with that spark, the almost magical and transformative insights of even the simplest fairy tales and stories - about a beauty that remains asleep until wakened by a loving kiss, about frogs turning into princes the same way, or tumbleweeds turning into bushes and then trees, just because they’ve learned how to love.

     But without seeing the sparks within these stories, and being open to them, we really are farther off from heaven than when we were young.  And the “heaven” in this story isn’t a place, you know, but that kind of life where it feels the sacred dimensions, the sparks, are right there near us, close enough to touch. That’s what we seem to lose. 

     Of course, growing up doesn’t have to mean just growing old, and we all know some people with both plenty of years and plenty of sparks.  In fact, they are probably some of our very favorite people in the whole world.  They’re some of the vessels carrying those sparks for us to find, and claim, and embody, in our own sacred task of trying to reconstitute the world so it can once again be the image of God, of all that is holy and life-giving.

     When I was a graduate student, in a very arid, intellectual and sometimes impersonal graduate school, there were a few of these living sparks around, and they were absolutely magical for me.

     My teacher was one of them.  He was a man in his 60s who wore beads, had an earring, wore jeans, sometimes sandals, and open collars that somehow survived from the hippie movement, and shoulder-length hair, except on the top where he didn’t have much hair at all. 

     He looked like a walking refutation of grown-up seriousness.  We became close, I had many dinners with his family, and still remember the feeling that one of the greatest living theologians was also an over-sized elf.

     I had another professor who was much more sober and quiet, very grown-up.  During the week, if he wasn’t teaching an advanced seminar or discussing the footnotes of footnotes, you would find John in the library, meticulously digging up even more footnotes.

     Ah, but on Sunday night, after the sun went down, some of the students would gather in the lounge for an evening of playing Dungeons and Dragons.  And there was John, playing the Dungeonmaster, dressed in a wonderful brownish medieval robe with hood and rope belt that his wife had made for him, his eyes twinkling like a six-year-old boy, and more excitedly alive than I ever saw him at any other time. On Sunday nights, he was just full of sparks.

     And I suspect that if someone were to have asked John whether he actually believed in that ridiculous Dungeons and Dragons stuff, he might have said he actually believed that letting ourselves expand in imaginary escapades we’ll never be able to encounter in grown-up life can open up whole new and wonderful avenues for our souls to take flight. 

     In religious studies, you often call figures like this Trickster figures.  Those are the figures that don’t follow grown-up rules, that bring spontaneity into life whether you want it or not.

     Even the more official and restrained parts of the University sometimes welcomed in these Trickster figures, and there would be a quiet explosion of sparks that could just take your breath away.

     The most memorable came one Christmas Eve, in the big formal service in Rockefeller Chapel.  Built with the money of John D. Rockefeller, this huge stone building was over a hundred feet high inside, seated two thousand people, and seemed modeled on the magnificent cathedrals of medieval Europe.  The Sunday services were so dismal it seldom drew more than fifty.

     But on Christmas Eve, it was packed.  Organ, huge choir, medium-sized orchestra, priests in formal robes, everybody being very sober and pious.

     Then, into the middle of this great pomp, they staged a re-enactment of the old Bible story of Joseph and Mary looking for a place to stay.  And slowly, from the end of the long stone aisle all the way to the front, came this year’s Joseph, and Mary - and real live donkey!  A donkey!  The little donkey didn’t know the story, didn’t care for the music or the costumes or much else besides the carrots Joseph would try to slip him unnoticed. 

     The donkey had no costume, no pretense at all, couldn’t have cared less about Christmas, and completely stole the show!  Finally, when the donkey entered, there was something that was simply real.  I don’t remember much else from the program that night, but the donkey, at least, was sacred, and everybody there with eyes to see could see it.  There was one of those magnificent sparks, clip-clopping down the aisle: just clip-clopping and looking around.

     Bringing the donkey into the temple revealed the temple in the donkey.  And if even a little donkey could contain a temple, then surely we could, too.  And just knowing that helps to accomplish the sacred task of reconstituting the world. 

     Sometimes just telling these stories is like bringing a donkey into the temple.  That’s the role that stories, fairy tales, movies and some imaginative fantasy games can play for us, and it’s a role we need, if we’re going to find any of those sparks at all.

     I don’t know if Mardi Gras or Burning Man or the others offer more escape than transformation.  But anywhere that spirit is present, it can offer transformation, because it shows that power of life, that power that represents life unchained, that most powerful force anywhere.

     How many of you have thought some version of “When I’m older and no longer afraid of what people might think, I’ll wear purple.  I’ll do the harmless but outrageous things I don’t dare do now”?

     What would those things be, that would let your soul take flight?  Do you think perhaps it might be wise to practice them a little now, so that when you get older and have the nerve to do outrageous things that let your soul soar, people won’t be so surprised? 

     In the beginning, God, the divine and magical dimension of the universe, existed just as infinite light.  But God wanted to behold himself, and so he created the world; the world is the image of God.  Then God withdrew, and the world was no longer the image of God, but a fractured, separated place.  But spread throughout this world, there are billions and billions of sparks from that divine light that can connect us with all that is sacred.  And our sacred task in life is to find those sparks we are lucky enough to come across, to cherish and embody them, to lift them up and spiritualize them, and by doing this to reconstitute the world so that it can once more take on the image of a God of love, justice, joy, and peace. 

     My story about bringing the horse in the house may not be about much more than dealing with a problem you will never, ever have: what to do with a horse that’s stuck on your back porch before your mother comes home.  That’s not a spiritual quest at all.  Yet there’s something in it that still has some magic about it, a spark to it, even fifty years later, isn’t there? 

     Let’s not grow up without bringing with us that child’s ability to feel pure joy, to expect magic everywhere, and to find it.  These sparks can come through so many different doors.  They can arrive like a little donkey.  They can be like a spark, or a lightning flash.  Sometimes they come announced by that “still, small voice” that prophets have written about.  And sometimes - you can trust me on this one - they even whinny.

Virtually the whole story is captured in this photo.  At the far right, you can see the edge of the console-style television set.  Louie’s alert eyes and ears speak for themselves.  That’s Joey on the sofa, and Jimmy, derelict from duty, peeping over the horse’s shoulders.  On the floor, you can still see the top of the metal bucket - which, like Jimmy, is about four feet from where it should have been.

Rev. Davidson Loehr is a liberal minister in Austin, TX, and author of the book America, Fascism & God: Sermons from a Heretical Preacher (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2005).  He can be reached at dloehr@austin.rr.com

PRAYER:      Davidson Loehr

     Let us not hide our lights under a basket.  We meet in this room with the sculpture of a flame in the wall, with a small burning light in our chalice, and with 150 more little personal lights sitting over in the window, waiting to be lit by members and visitors.  We’re surrounded by symbols that say what we’re about here is finding and sharing a certain kind of light.  So let’s not hide it under a basket.

     All religions say they offer a light unto the world.  But nobody cares what goes on inside those churches, or what the people in the little buildings think.  The rest of the world wonders if we will have some light to share with those outside of our little building.

     We have so many kinds of light - even more than those 150 little lights in the window can signify.  And the world needs light of many kinds in many dark areas.  Who will take light to the world if we don’t?

     And so this symbol of light that surrounds and cradles us.  Let us take some with us when we leave.  Let us not hide our lights under a basket.  Light deserves more, and the world needs more.  Let this be a place where we learn to light our own lights, then take them out of here to offer to our larger world, each in our own way. 

     Just that could change the world.  Just that.

     Amen.

HOMILY: SANCTUARY - A Safe Place For You, By You & Of You,
Jack R. Harris-Bonham, Ministerial Intern

I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3 NIV)

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or, lo there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within (among) you. (Luke 17:20b-21 KJV))

Introduction: Kids - and I’m speaking to all the kids here not just the ones who are from the 1^st to 6^th grades. There’s a whole lot more kids here than that. In the reading from the Bible that I just read Jesus says that unless you change and become like a child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  So where is this kingdom of heaven? The answer to that question is in the second reading … “for behold, the kingdom of heaven is within, or among you.” Throughout history human kind has tried to represent the kingdom of heaven through the building of sanctuaries like this one. Why do you suppose there are windows way up high here in the front of our sanctuary?  It’s pretty simple really. Down through the ages we humans have been a lot more literal than we have to be. We tend to take things exactly as they are said. When we hear the words, “kingdom of heaven,” we tend to look towards the heavens - the sky. So a whole lot of cathedrals and churches tend to have light pouring in from above - from the sky. When you enter a room you eyes tend to follow the light and so when a church, or sanctuary like this one is entered our eyes, our heads and our thoughts tend to go toward the heavens - the sky. So architects and builders of churches have given us a literal interpretation of the kingdom of heaven here on earth. They build sanctuaries that take our thoughts out of this world into the next world - the so-called kingdom of heaven.

     But that’s not what Jesus meant when he talked about the kingdom of heaven. He was talking about a place that’s right here on earth - a place that’s easier to get to, if we have the mind and heart of a child.

     The Zen Master, Shunryu Suzuki, once said, “In the experts mind there are few possibilities, but in beginner’s mind there are many possibilities.”  When Suzuki-Roshi said “beginner’s mind” he was, in fact, talking about the mind and heart of a child.

     What is it about the mind and heart of a child that helps us enter the kingdom of heaven? I mean here we are in a representation of the kingdom of God right here on this earth. We are in a sanctuary and this sanctuary is designed so that we can realize the kingdom. But the part that’s missing in most adults, the part that can help us realize the kingdom here on this earth is the imagination and wonder of a child.

     In the child dedication ceremony that we do here at First Church, we say at one point in that ceremony, “Nothing is strange to the children for whom everything is new.  Children do not yet know what belongs and what does not; therefore for them all things belong.  Their ears are open to all music.  Their eyes are open to all arts.  Their minds open to all languages.  Their being open to all manners.  In the child’s country there are no foreigners.”

     This gets at the heart of what it means to be in a sanctuary. For truly all things are holy and wonderful. It is in that spirit that we gather here in this sacred space. We gather to recognize each other as part of ourselves. We gather to have the imagination of a child’s heart and mind to see past our differences into the heart of the matter, which is that we all - each and every one of us - belong to one another.

     There was a man once who wanted to learn to meditate.  Meditation is like praying, but there are no words. Meditation is sitting quietly and doing nothing.

     But the man didn’t know how - he didn’t know how to just sit and be quiet. Maybe you can understand this? Sometimes it’s hard to sit and be quiet. So a friend suggested that the man go to a place in his mind, in his thinking, a place where he would feel safe - a safe place.

     But everywhere he thought of - the golf course, his job, his car, his home - none of these places felt safe to him, then, he remembered the way he felt in his mother’s arms. When he was a little boy and he got scared, he’d run to his mother and do this! (Hold arms up to be held.)  She would take him into her arms and she would hold him tight and talk sweet to him. It didn’t matter much what his mother said, what really matter was the way she smelled - like perfume and cookies - and the way he was able to totally relax in her arms. 

     It’s that feeling of being safe and protected that best explains sanctuary. To be lovingly embraced by the warmth of a room full of friends.

     And now I want each of you kids out there to open the special packages that were handed to you when you entered the embrace of this sanctuary. Inside you’ll find color crayons and a piece of paper. There’s going to be a number on one side of this paper. I want to invite you now to begin coloring on the side of the paper without the number - we need to be able to see that number.

     Color your hearts out! Make those pieces of paper bright, bold and beautiful and hold on to them because those pieces of paper will be magically transformed at the end of the service.

HOMILY:   What are we Doing Here?            Davidson Loehr

     In most ways, asking what kind of religion we’re doing in this or any other liberal, non-creedal church isn’t a tricky question at all.  We’re doing about the same thing that all religions try to do: help ourselves find better paths through life, and the courage to take them.  And like all religions, we remind ourselves of this mission through the use of symbols and metaphors.

     I think of this place in mixed metaphors.  The symbol of light is our most powerful and persistent symbol, but I also think of this as a “garden of light,” where light seeds can be planted and grow, then we can take them out of here and bring our own kind of inspiration, our own kind of light, to the larger world around us.

     In some ways, all of this is contained in that large symbol of the chalice with the flame in it, that Jack will be telling you more about in a few minutes.  There really isn’t anything Unitarian in that symbol.  It points back to a Roman Catholic priest of six hundred years ago who thought the spirit, the power of religion, symbolized by the Communion chalice, should be offered to all, not just to those approved by his church.  There’s the spirit of liberal religion in one symbol: a chalice offering communion, a communion of light, to all the world, not stopping at the walls of a church or at the walls of a nation or at the walls of belief. 

     And that flame, that light, is what we like to think we have to offer: more light, a different and better way of seeing things, even if it is often highly unorthodox.  That too is in the style of that old priest whose life and death we celebrate every time we look at the symbol of the flaming chalice.  The flame has a much darker meaning, too, but I’ll let Jack tell you that.

     But it’s all about sharing what we have with others outside these walls.  Because until it’s been shared with others, there’s no communion.  Nobody cares what Unitarians think.  Nobody cares what Presbyterians busy themselves with inside their walls.  The world only cares whether our religion has filled us up enough so that there is some overflow that might share light and sustenance with those outside our little walls.  That’s the “communion” the world needs from those who style ourselves “religious.”  So the big light sculpted into the wall is to remind us of that high and hard calling.  And the single flame that we light in our small chalice up on the stage is that same symbol, brought to life, to light.

     But we also have 150 personal lights over there in the window, for you to light.  And that’s like sharing the big communion cup with you, then letting you make it your own, in whatever form you give it.

     Where do you take your light?  Into your lives, into your families, into your jobs, into your thoughts and dreams, to let it shine there.  But you know you have to take it out of this room before it can do any real work. 

     For many of you, the larger world you most want to share light with is your children, and they are probably the most important larger world we have.  The children are the future of our families, our faith, and our world.  That’s why so much of what we try to do here is meant to be of help to parents and children.

     Not all of us here have children, so we try to share our light in different ways, usually through work or friendships.  Artists try to bring more beauty; lawyers and lawmakers try to bring more justice; mechanics and engineers try to bring more creative efficiency; teachers and preachers try to bring more understanding, more light, more compassion.  We all try to bring more of some kind of light into the parts of the larger world for which we have passion.

     For me, it’s largely about finding patterns to things that make them more understandable, more useful.  I love stories, and look for the plots that hold actions together.  For almost all the sermons I do here, I’m looking for patterns that you can use within your lives, like the wonderful old story of Gilgamesh last week.

     But I also have some passion for the world around me, because I think being an aware and responsible citizen is a civic duty that has almost sacred status.  And as a veteran of the Vietnam War, I have a lot of passion for the subject of war, and a deep disgust at seeing the lives of soldiers wasted through illegal and dishonest wars.  I have some interest in all sorts of things that define the larger world around us, and these too find their way into my sermons, as you know. 

     Three weeks ago, I preached a sermon trying to assert some patterns in that larger world outside our walls, and it was a good example of how this business of “light” works in this very bright and animated church. 

     As you know if you were here, it was a pretty contentious sermon, because I said during it that I thought our government was responsible for the awful attacks of 9-11.  Well, it’s hard to touch such a powerful and important subject without having done some good homework, and without figuring out just how to frame it, and for what audience.  And I must say none of that was done well.

     But the uproar that ensued was all part of the process of offering our light out, then listening to critiques from people who don’t like that light, or don’t think it illuminates.  It didn’t take long to realize that I had done it poorly and needed to do a lot more work before offering it out beyond these walls, and I did a lot of work during the past two weeks.

     But this past Friday, that work had grown into a brand new essay, and a long one, about four sermon lengths, that I offered out to the Internet, and which is now posted on the first of what I suspect will be many web sites around the world, to see if it can stimulate further discussion of some of the important issues raised there (www.propeace.net).

     Some of you liked the version of three weeks ago, some hated it, but it turned out to be just a “light seed” that got cut back, then grew into a very different kind of light.  I’m happy with the new piece, though it has very little to do with the sermon of three weeks ago, and am happy to see it out where it will draw more comments and certainly more criticisms from that larger world beyond these walls.  I am trying to articulate the “frame” story that I believe is the plot that helps explain not only 9-11 but also our imperialism, our rapacious economy, our growing indifference to the poor, two rigged elections and much more.  I think I’ve done it, so it is time to offer it out, to see what comments and critiques it will draw, and whether it can spark a good and ongoing discussion.  It is bound to draw some angry criticism, no matter how many concurring sentiments it gathers, because that’s the price of sending offerings out into the larger world.  But I think informed and passionate attacks are exciting and positive, because I see that Spirit operating, and trust the process that can sort the grain from the chaff.  The new title of the piece is “The New World Order Story,” and it will be posted on enough websites that I won’t post it on the church website because it isn’t a sermon, isn’t about religion, and is now really intended for an audience I might describe just as “citizens” or “Americans,” rather than just us.  Like about five or six other sermons I’ve done in my six hears here, it wound up being intended for a larger audience, the one outside these walls. 

     But it grew here.  It grew in this atmosphere where we come to seek more light - and yes, to criticize the quality of light that is sometimes offered.  But this was the light garden where it grew, just as it’s the light garden where so many of your own lights grow, and are taken into so many other directions. 

     The faith of this liberal style of religion isn’t about all believing the same thing.  That’s for religions of creeds and orthodoxies, religions that exalt a position.  Liberal religion doesn’t exalt a position, but a process.  It is about trusting the light, trusting people, and trusting the act of open communion.  We believe that it is our job to share the light we think we have found with others outside the walls here, to make a positive difference in the world around us so that we might all find better paths through life, and the courage to take them.  And we trust that people will use that light as they need to, as they see most fit, and that even if they use it in ways we wouldn’t have, I think there is a trust that it’s still a good thing to have more light in the world. 

     When we do it right, the light in that chalice really can symbolize light, enlightenment, illumination, and the spirit of life.  When we do it wrong, that chalice light can revert to its original meaning, which Jack will tell you about shortly.

     Now watching these light seeds grow can be kind of exciting, in a frustrating way, even when it’s done very awkwardly.  It’s more fun when there aren’t so many birth pangs.  But it is a sacred mission, this business of giving birth to more light, and taking it into the many corners of our many worlds, to try and make a positive difference, and to illuminate better paths.  And that’s a good thing.

HOMILY, PART TWO:      Sanctuary, by Jack R. Harris-Bonham

     Now, if the ushers will collect the beautifully colored pieces of paper. Kids just pass them down to the end of the aisle and the ushers will bring them up here.

     Now, while that’s going on I want to show you something - it’s a sort of word puzzle. The older kids have an advantage here, but that’s okay - that’s how we learn by watching older kids give answers - answers that maybe we’d thought of, too, but were too scared to speak up and give.

     (Hold up the sign with this on it:  CH_ _ CH.) What’s missing in this word? (Wait for answers - hopefully some kid will have the right answer - if not - wing it!)

     That’s right! What’s missing in “church” - U R! You see it’s like a joke, a pun, a play on words. What’s missing, what church is, wouldn’t be church, unless you are there!

     I remember this hand game that I was taught when I was a kid. (Do the hand game about church.)

     “Here is the church, here is the steeple. Open the doors and there are the people.”  You see, without the people - there is no church. (Say while closing your hands) And it is the church, which lovingly embraces the people. 

     Back in the 15^th Century there was a priest Jan Hus. He had a church in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Part of their church service was a meal - they shared bread and wine together. But back then the priests were supposed to speak in a foreign language, Latin, and only the priests were supposed to drink from the cup or chalice. But Jan Hus spoke the church service not in Latin, but in his native tongue, Czech and he passed the cup around and let everyone in the church drink from it. He was punished for doing that - in fact - he was burned at the stake.

     In 1939 the Unitarian Service Committee that was helping people escape Nazi Germany had an artist named Hans Deutsch design them a symbol that would represent how Unitarians felt about the world. Hans Deutsch designed a chalice - like the one that Jan Hus passed to all the people, and in the middle of the chalice he put a flame - and the flame was Jan Hus as he was being burned alive at the stake. The message is clear. We Unitarians believe that the cup of knowledge, faith and love is intended for all people, and to back this statement up we put someone who died for that belief as a part of the chalice.

     Now, I notice that some of you have been watching what’s happening over here. We’ve put together a giant puzzle from all the pieces that you colored and what have we made? Who can tell me?

     (Wait for answers - or give clues)

     That’s right! It’s the chalice. Chalice is just a fancy word for cup. The chalice or cup is a symbol for Unitarian Universalist because when we come here we are nourished, feed from a single cup or source.

     So what you’ve made here today with your individual efforts is a coloring of the cup that nourishes - the symbol of our faith. Each of you work independently, but by putting together your efforts you made something larger and greater than any one of us - and that’s as good a definition of church as you’ll probably ever get.