INVOCATION

Namaste.

When I was introduced to this greeting many years ago I was told that it meant, “I see the light in you that is also in me.”  I’ve been struck by the beauty of that concept ever since.

The normal gesture that accompanies this greeting, is to close the eyes, bow the head, and fold the hands over the heart chakra, which is the location of light, of the divine spark, of the soul, in Buddhism.

There is a long theological tradition of representing goodness with light, and so, in that sense, namaste is about seeing and acknowledging the good in others and in yourself every time you meet someone.  Because it’s almost impossible to use the greeting without thinking of it’s meaning.  It is really a mini-meditation on goodness masquerading as a greeting.

Another definition of namaste is: I recognize that within each of us is a place where Divinity dwells, and when we are in that place, we are One.  It is our hope, that in this church, through this fellowship here today, each of us will reside in that place where we recognize that we are all one…

Namaste…     Let us join together in song.

PRAYER

Let us have the insight to see:
            that there is truly an I behind this mask of flesh and blood that we wear.
            that we are luminous beings, animated by forces beyond our understanding
            that we are endowed with a will capable of mastering body and mind

And as we realize this about ourselves, let us learn to see it behind the faces of everyone we meet:
            that behind their mask of flesh and blood, is an I that is so much like our own
            that they are also luminous beings, wondrous to behold
            that they too are endowed with a will that struggles to free itself

And may these realizations help us find a way:
            to live together as brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself
            to grow together as kindred spirits on a shared quest for truth
            to decide together to make this world the utopia that it can be

SERMON: Demons of the Heart, Part 2

The sermon that I’ve come to share with you today is based heavily upon the works of three people who I consider modern-day prophets: Martin Luther King Jr., Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama, and Mohandas K. Gandhi. When we think about religion there is a tendency to focus our attention upon the great religious prophets of the distant past, prophets whose context was so radically different from our own that it seems difficult, sometimes even ludicrous, to apply their teachings to our modern lives.  So I want to focus on these modern day prophets, who applied the highest teachings to the problems and the situations that they faced right here in the modern world. Hopefully, their example will serve to remind us that the highest ideals of life are not made for pedestals but to govern the hearts and deeds of each one of us…

First I would like to share with you some passages from a Martin Luther King Jr. sermon entitled “loving your enemies”. 

“(The agape form of love is) understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them..

When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.

And this is what Jesus means… when he says, “Love your enemy.” And it’s significant that he does not say, “Like your enemy.” Like is a sentimental something, an affectionate something. There are a lot of people that I find it difficult to like. I don’t like what they do to me. I don’t like what they say about me and other people. I don’t like their attitudes. I don’t like some of the things they’re doing. I don’t like them. But Jesus says love them. And love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, “Love your enemy.” This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.

I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus’ thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil… Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love.

There’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted… For the person who hates, the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly becomes beautiful. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does.

Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them. Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.”

I’d like to translate some of this traditional Christian language into some terms and ideas that are a little more accessible to those of us who, while having a great respect for the religion of Jesus, do not subscribe to the religion about Jesus. 

First, Dr. King relies heavily upon the idea that we love our enemies because God or Jesus loves them.  At the core of these assertions, I believe, is not any sort of construct about God being a personality or a father figure or Jesus his sole manifestation in the flesh, but the more fundamental truth of human unity.  The more fundamental idea that we members of this human species are brothers and sisters, children of the same universe.  The more fundamental idea that our similarities are greater than our differences and that we ultimately struggle for the same things: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Second, I think the idea of agape needs clarification, because every time that the word love is used in this sermon, he means agape.  He’s not talking about eros, about erotic love, about the love of beauty, or about the love of attraction.  He’s also not talking about philia, about the love of companionship, the love of friendship, or the love of kinship.  He is talking about agape, about understanding, redemptive goodwill.  He is talking about having a basic feeling, a basic attitude toward all people that acknowledges their basic worth as human beings, that understands that they struggle to be good, just as we do, and that hopes, one day, that they will overcome their inner demons and come to live out the better angels of their nature, just as we have those hopes for ourselves. 

Next, I’d like to talk about the attitudes that we take when we are in opposition to others, because what we believe, what we intend in the world has a great impact on how we act, how we are perceived by others, and ultimately, in a karmic sense, on the real outcomes of our action.  When we act in opposition to another person or group of people, we have the power to choose this attitude.  We could choose to treat them as an enemy, to dehumanize them, to devalue them, to disrespect and marginalize them, then we are trying to defeat them, to destroy or maim or cripple them.  This is what Dr. King is arguing against.  On the other hand, if our opposition is accompanied by agape, then the intent, the attitude toward the opponent, does not seek defeat, it does not seek destruction, but it seeks redemption.  Within the acts of this opposition are nested opportunities for the opponent’s redemption.  Within the acts of this opposition are found indications of goodwill, of understanding, and of hope.  Underlying these acts of opposition is an obvious foundation of clear morality which calls out to the opponent as a brother or sister.  Seeking to defeat an opponent backs them into a corner, opposing them with agape leaves open a door for cooperation where we can join with them to defeat the common problem.

I’d like to turn now to another prophet, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.  Driven from his homeland and his people during the invasion of Tibet by the Chinese, the Dalai Lama has become an international spokesperson for compassion, peace, love, and nonviolence.  Despite the tremendous oppression and violence done to the people of Tibet, the Dalai Lama has earnestly and consistently treated the members of the Chinese government with kindness and respect, while publicly condemning the actions of the government.  I would like to share with you some of his thoughts on love and enemies.

“Love is the desire to see happiness in those who have been deprived of it.  We feel compassion toward those who suffer; this is the desire to see them released from their suffering.  We habitually feel affection and love for those closest to us and for our friends, but we feel nothing for strangers and even less for those who seek to harm us.  This shows that the love for those closest to us is heavily tinged with attachment and desire and that it is partial.  Genuine love is not limited to those close to us but extends to all beings, for it is founded on the knowledge that everyone, like us, wishes to find happiness and avoid suffering.  Moreover, this extends to all people the right to find happiness and be free of pain.  As such, genuine love is impartial and includes everyone without distinction, including our enemies.

As for compassion, we must not confuse it with commiserating pity, for that is tainted with a certain scorn and gives the impression that we consider ourselves superior to those who suffer.  True compassion implies the wish to put an end to others’ suffering and a sense of responsibility for those who suffer.  This sense of responsibility means that we are committed to finding ways to comfort them in their trouble.  True love for our neighbor will be translated into courage and strength. As courage grows, fear abates; this is why kindness and brotherly love are a source of inner strength.  The more we develop love for others, the more confidence we will have in ourselves; the more courage we have, the more relaxed and serene we will be. 

The opposite of love is malice, the root of all faults.  On this basis, how can we define an enemy?  Generally, we say an enemy is someone who seeks to harm our person or those who are dear to us, or our possessions; someone, therefore, who opposes or threatens the causes of our contentment and our happiness.  When an enemy strikes against our belongings, our friends, or our loved ones, he is striking against our most likely sources of happiness.  It would be difficult, however, to affirm that our friends and possessions are the true sources of happiness, because in the end the governing factor is inner peace; it is peace of mind that makes us relaxed and happy, and we become unhappy if we lose it.”

Too often we confuse love with affection and compassion with pity.  For what is love, when we have removed all attachment, but the wish for the other’s happiness.  And what is compassion, when we have removed all traces of condescension and judgment, but the wish for the other’s healthiness.  Love and compassion in the language of the Dalai Lama are tantamount to the agape that MLK spoke of, a genuine expression of goodwill towards all, a hope for their freedom from suffering and for their experience of happiness.

The other aspect of the Dalai Lama’s thought that I think warrants emphasis, is the personal responsibility and ownership that we must take for our own happiness, our own healthiness, our own spiritual development.  Because, the key to enlightenment, to love, to compassion is not out there… it is in here.  Similarly, the stumbling blocks, the walls, the barriers to enlightenment, the true enemies, are also, in here.  And the one power that you have as an individual, the one thing in the whole universe that can never be taken from you, is the power to choose; the power to choose how you view your life, what your priorities are, what you believe in, and how you will live your life within the context that is given to you.

Finally, I would like to share with you some of the words of Mohandas K. Gandhi.  For although his prose is not as elegant nor his theology as well articulated as that of Dr. King or the Dalai Lama, Gandhi was a prophet who through his own life made the real possibilities of nonviolent action manifest.  His biography stands as a testament to the potential power of each one of us to produce change in the world by living up to the ideals that we hold highest.

“Having flung aside the sword, there is nothing except the cup of love which I can offer to those who oppose me.  It is by offering that cup that I expect to draw them close to me.  I cannot think of permanent enmity between man and man, and believing as I do in the theory of rebirth, I live in the hope that, if not in this birth, in some other birth, I shall be able to hug all humanity in friendly embrace.”

“Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself I have also erred; when I see a lustful man, I say to myself so was I once; and in this way, I feel kinship with every one in the world and feel that I cannot be happy without the humblest of us being happy.
I am too conscious of the imperfections of the species to which I belong to be irritated against any single member thereof.  My remedy is to deal with the wrong wherever I see it, not to hurt the wrong-doer, even as I would not like to be hurt for the wrongs I continually do.”

“Doesn’t the New Testament say, “If your enemy strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the left”?  I have thought about it a great deal. I suspect he meant you must show courage – be willing to take a blow – several blows – to show you will not strike back – nor will you be turned aside . . . And when you do that it calls upon something in human nature – something that makes his hate for you diminish and his respect increase. I think Christ grasped that and I have seen it work.”

“Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.”

Each of these prophets, each of these men, comes from a different religious tradition.  Each of them has been tested severely by the tides of history, by the oppression of their people, by violence in their homeland, and by the constant threat of death against their own lives.  And each of them, through their own search for truth, has come up with essentially the same answer: 

Begin by looking inside, by taking responsibility for yourself, for your own feelings, your own actions.

Let go of anger and fear before they fester into hatred.

Act against injustice wherever you find it.

Tolerate other people, remember that they are just as flawed as we are.

Treat those who oppose you with the respect and human dignity with which you expect to be treated.

This is their advice, and it’s a tall order.  Some might even argue that it is naïve, that it isn’t the way the world works.  My answer is this: the philosopher applies the power of intellect to describe how the world works, the prophet applies the power of love to describe how the world could work.  That is why I call these three men prophets, and that is why I believe that their wisdom is not for pedestals but was meant to govern the hearts and deeds of each one of us…

BENEDICTION

I would like to close today with the quote from Gandhi that called me to do this sermon.  I offer it to you as a blessing and as a meditation, in hopes that it may bring you closer to God, however you define it.

“…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.”

[Sermon delivered at the First Unitartian Universalist Church of Austin on July 16, 2006 by Eric Hepburn.]

 © Eric Hepburn 2006

INTRODUCTION

Back in the days not long ago when the craze was for young born-again Christians to wear those “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelets, some Unitarian Universalist teens started wearing them, too, saying that the initials on their bracelets stood for “What would Jefferson do?” 

I submit for your consideration the idea that Jefferson himself would have hoped that response to “What would Jefferson do?” would be very nearly identical to response to “What would Jesus do?”

We Unitarian Universalists sometimes like to claim Thomas Jefferson as one of us. And, I think we can say he was a Unitarian. He was never an official member of a Unitarian church in Charlottesville, his home, because it was a very small town, and there weren’t enough people there who shared his liberal religious views to organize a church. (That sounds familiar to me…) But we do know that while he was vice-president of the United States, he attended Unitarian and Universalist church services in Philadelphia, and he called himself a Unitarian in letters he wrote to various friends, including John Adams (another of our Unitarian U.S. presidents.)

So — I proudly call Thomas Jefferson a Unitarian, too, but just as Jefferson called himself a Unitarian, he also called himself a Christian. He wrote to the famous Universalist minister, Dr. Benjamin Rush, who was also signer of the Declaration of Independence, saying: “I am a Christian, in the only sense… [Jesus] wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others….”

Thomas Jefferson wrote in an angry letter to another of his friends: “I am a real Christian.” [Some] “call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said or saw.”

I think Thomas Jefferson’s religious views might be quite consistent with those of many members of the UU Christian Fellowship, which you probably know is a modern-day organization affiliated with the UUA, the Unitarian Universalist Association.

We know that Jefferson wasn’t perfect. His inconsistencies pertaining to matters of race and, in particular the issue of slavery, have somewhat tarnished his image, of late.  Perhaps Jesus was perfect. Thomas Jefferson thought he was, that Jesus was. Unfortunately for Jefferson, the historical record and DNA evidence on him is available, and so we know he was just an imperfect human being.

But, perhaps we could all do worse than to ask ourselves — as we make our decisions at the supermarket, at the mall, at the auto dealership, in the voting booth — we could all do a lot worse than to ask ourselves “What would Jefferson do?”

SERMON

A few months ago, there was a short article in the “Religion” section of The Dallas Morning News, “one in an occasional series on the spiritual lives of historical figures”, the column said. This one was about Thomas Jefferson and specifically, the little book he complied that has come to be called The Jefferson Bible.

I was delighted to see the article because a copy of The Jefferson Bible was the first purchases I ever made from Beacon Press, the publishing house of our Unitarian Universalist Association. I’ve always liked American history, especially the early periods up through the Civil War, and I now love the fact that both the Unitarian and the Universalist streams of our modern UU faith flowed so abundantly throughout the early American landscape, helping to water the fields from which sprang the fragrant blossoms of liberty and justice.

And I happen to pretty much agree with Thomas Jefferson’s take on Jesus of Nazareth, so, of course, I’m going to like Jefferson’s Bible — and many UUs seem to like it.

As I said in my Offertory words, Jefferson was raised an Anglican, but as a student at William and Mary College, he was introduced to philosophy and church history, and was influenced by the English deists who put forth the notion of a Creator God who set the world in motion, and then stepped back, to interfere no more in its workings. But Jefferson did not remain a deist throughout his life.

During his tenure as John Adams’ vice-president, (1797-1801) he became quite friendly with Dr. Benjamin Rush, a medical doctor and out-spoken Universalist. He and Jefferson had what Jefferson described as many “delightful conversations”, about the Christian religion.

Around this same time, (1796) Joseph Priestly, the English clergyman and scientist who you may remember as having discovered oxygen, came to Philadelphia and established the first church in America to be founded as a Unitarian church from its beginning.

Priestly had been a Unitarian clergyman back in England, and when his home and laboratory were burned to the ground, at least partly because of his unorthodox religious views, Priestly was invited by Benjamin Franklin to come find safe haven in the United States, in Philadelphia, and he did.

Thomas Jefferson visited Joseph Priestley’s Unitarian church and heard him preach. It’s possible that Jefferson may have had a similar reaction to what I’ve heard described many times by many of us when we talk about our first visit to a UU church. That he couldn’t quite believe someone was actually up in a pulpit preaching the unconventional notions, considered blasphemous by most, that he had come to believe on his own! Jefferson developed quite a friendship with Joseph Priestly, and their conversations and correspondence solidified Jefferson’s Unitarian views, and in fact, caused him to re-examine the value of Christianity, from which he had by then become alienated and removed.

Always a free-thinker and one who came to his conclusions based on evidence and the careful reasoning of his own mind, under the influence of Priestly and Rush, the Unitarian and the Universalist, Jefferson turned his attentions again to the New Testament Gospels he had, of course, studied as a youth. “To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; (Jefferson wrote to Rush), but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.”

Jefferson had come to believe that Jesus exhibited (quote)  “the most benevolent, and the most eloquent and sublime character that has ever been exhibited to man” whose “system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has ever been taught”, (unquote) but Jefferson rejected as contrary to evidence and reason, and to the very intentions of Jesus himself, any belief in Jesus’ divinity.

Like Priestly and other Unitarians before him, Jefferson thought that the Gospel texts had been corrupted in transmission, both naturally by time and human error and intentionally by those in the early Christian church who had sought to increase their power and status by making the new religion more popular to non-Jewish converts by grafting onto it elements of Greek sophistry and Roman mysticism. Jefferson proposed to purify the Gospels of Jesus by ridding them of those things he saw as corruptions, although he did not actually complete this task until well into his life in the year 1820, at the age of 77, some 6 years before his death.

And, how did he finally do that? There is a Garrison Keillor joke you may have heard about the notice posted for am adult r.e. class in a Unitarian Church that said, “Bible Study Begins Next Week. Bring your Bibles — and your scissors.”  Well, that’s literally what Thomas Jefferson did!

Using two copies each of Greek, Latin, French and English translations of the four Gospels, Jefferson took a razor and physically cut from the pages any references to supernatural occurrences - no virgin birth, no angels in the sky, at the beginning. No walking on water or feeding the multitudes in the middle. And, certainly most disturbing of all for orthodox Christians, no resurrection at the end. 

And then, Jefferson pasted into a blank book those parts of the story he thought could be true. He left in what seemed to him to be the plausible facts about Jesus’ life. He also combined the 4 narratives into a single chronological story. He, of course, left in all the sayings and moral teachings he believed Jesus had said.  Jefferson described this work (and these are his words, not mine)  as separating “diamonds from the dunghill”.

And what did Jefferson leave himself and us with after all his snipping and pasting? I return to the Dallas Morning News article I mentioned at the beginning which quotes Catholic author and historian Garry Wills (with whom I frequently agree) as saying that although Jefferson’s Gospel tells the tale of “a good man, a very good man, perhaps the best of good men,” this Jesus is “boring, utterly without mystery’, “shorn of his paradoxes and left with platitudes.”

I beg to differ with Garry Wills and to agree with Thomas Jefferson. If, in his religious searching, Gary Wills has come to believe in Jesus the Christ, born of the virgin Mary, risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, neither Jefferson nor I would try to change his mind — or yours, should those be your beliefs. Jefferson said, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

I believe that this pulpit is different from others in that my job up here is not to try to convince you of anything. You are the authority when it comes to your own religious beliefs. Religion is different from science in that we cannot know, we will not know, in this life at least, what is “true” and what is not. “For now we see through a glass darkly”.

So I am here only to share with you my perspective, and you may use it to inform your own, in some way, if you wish, so, this is what I think: I do not find Jefferson’s human Jesus “boring, without mystery’, “shorn of his paradoxes and left with platitudes.”

I personally have no need of supernatural beings when miracles are all around me. To me, nothing could be more miraculous than the natural world. No revelation from God could be more astonishing than the reasonable and demonstrative fact that an ordinary human mind, or minds, somehow devised the radical and elegant prescriptions for living that have been passed down to us as the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Seek always justice. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. The truly valuable things in life are not material things. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Treat the least among you as if he or she were the messiah. Look around you, for the Kingdom of God is at hand if only you have eyes to see it.    Platitudes? No, I don’t think so.

Thomas Jefferson also knew how much easier it is to espouse a religion about Jesus than it is to live out the religion of Jesus. And the miracle, my friends, what I see as the miracle, anyway, is the religion of Jesus. A description of a way of living that puts others ahead of self, peacemaking ahead of violence, compassion and forgiveness ahead of self-righteousness and revenge.

Now, I don’t always live my life that way. Neither did Thomas Jefferson. But, I find that by looking at Jesus as Thomas Jefferson did in his Bible, as a human being, but an extraordinary human being with a visionary message delivered with powerful eloquence, I, just like Jefferson before me, can now reclaim a part of my religious past — no longer to be throwing out a beautiful baby with the implausible bathwater I still can’t swallow — to mix a metaphor or two.

And, just like Jefferson, late in my life, I am coming to appreciate anew those figurative diamonds he literally cut and pasted into this little document to serve as a description of the beautiful way of living in harmony with all of creation that Jesus spoke about.

And, so this morning I am moved to say: Thank you, Jesus! And thank you, Thomas Jefferson. And Benjamin Rush and Joseph Priestly and all the rest of you brave and noble and reasonable Unitarians and Universalists down through the centuries. Your clear and compassionate thinking is the miracle. You are the miracles. We are all the miracles.  Amen.

© Scottie McIntyre Johnson 2006

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, today we meet very close to this nation’s birthday, the day in which this country declared itself independent of the British Empire. We would hope that, that independence has done more than simply cut us off from the rest of the world. We would pray that in our good fortune and experience of the democratic process that we would not forget that those things we fled from in the old world, may, in fact, come back to haunt us. As a republic we need to remember that although our sovereign power resides in those whom we elect, those so elected need to be responsible ultimately to we, the people. In these trying times when it seems that our nation is making more enemies than friends, in these times when elected representation ignores the best interests of those who elected them, give us the patience to withstand the affront and the willingness to get back the power that exists in the people themselves. Democracy is a prime example of relationship in action. Let us never forget that how we treat one another in this country is as equally important as how our country treats other countries. Fairness and peace are things that we must practice in our grass roots relationships. If peace is to be practiced in and by this country it must first be practiced here in and by this covenant community. If love, empathy and compassion are to be taught by freedom loving people, then that love, empathy and compassion must be a part of the cloth that makes up this covenanting community. May we recognize the fact that the entire world is an interdependent whole.  Help us, Great Spirit, to humbly remember our births, to graciously remember that we all shall die, and to treat our mother, the earth, as the living being she is.

We ask this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely everything.

Amen.

SERMON:     Interdependence DayIntroduction: The sun is a nuclear engine. It started up a long, long time ago - 4.5 billion years ago to be exact - and it has been revving up its engine ever since. Scientists estimate that in 500 million years from now - that’s in a half a billion years our Sun - we call it ours you know - our sense of property has no bounds - our Sun will heat up to the point that the surface of OUR beloved planet Earth will be about the same temperature as Venus - around 750 degrees Fahrenheit with a variance of ten degrees all over the planet. In other words there won’t be a planet Earth, as we know it. There is speculation that the future of the human race - Homo sapiens - rests on the technology that can take us to Mars - the next planet that will be ready for life as we know it.

          There have been a lot of science fiction movies made where Earth is threatened from forces outside our galaxy. It looks like we’ve been looking too far away, it seems something closer to home will eventually be our undoing.

          Speaking of galaxies, do you remember the little ditty, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord he is rolling down the alley in a blue and yellow Ford?” My guess is - it was a Ford Galaxy.

          George Bernard Shaw once said that the English and the Americans were two great peoples separated by a common language. It is my contention today that the Republican and Democratic Parties are two great parties separated by a common misunderstanding. The nature of that misunderstanding is cosmic in scope and proportion.

          It turns out that life on this planet is like a bad “B” movie where the main character turns to the other characters and says, “Nobody is going to get out of this alive.” And although the actor well enough known to be a lead in a “B” science fiction movie may have been referring to their reputations and resumes as actors, as well as their pretend life in that movie, it turns out that prophesies sometimes come from the weirdest places.

          When I was married to my second wife we were separated for a while. I moved into my mother’s summerhouse in Key Largo, Florida. I was having a good time fishing for rainbow sea trout in Florida Bay - as the western side of the waters along the Keys are known. I was also doing my damnedest to play out the role of the Hemingway-like character who drank too much, caroused with strange women, and wrote brilliant prose. Well, at least I was being successful at the drinking part.

          One night in the Keys, I dreamed I gave my five-year old daughter, Isabelle, a piggyback ride on my shoulders. When I awoke I could still feel her little legs on my shoulders.

          I got up, poured out the booze, threw the live shrimp into the bay - I was fishing from a rowboat and in the early afternoons when the sun was headed toward the Gulf, I’d get a strike on nearly every cast - anyway, I freed the live shrimp, counted my money and called a cab.

          When I got to the Greyhound Bus Station it turned out that I only had enough money to get to Orlando, in central Florida, which if you know Florida at all, is not walking distance to the Capital, Tallahassee, in the panhandle.

          On the bus ride from Key Largo to Miami I had to do some fast thinking. Where could I get an extra $40 to push my bus ticket all the way to Tallahassee?

          Bus stations are always in dubious parts of cities, and Miami is no exception. I could see the Cuban pawn and jewelry shops lined up and down one street as we made our way toward the station. That’s where I’d get the extra $40.

          The only thing I had of value that would be of interest to either of those shops was a little bit of gold. The first few jewelry shops told me the same thing. It was a poor grade of gold and too little to even think about getting $40. Then, I happened upon a jewelry store with a manager who was a beautiful Cuban woman.

          I had something else that was nearly always saleable - a modicum of charm.  I turned the volume on that charm up to ten and entered the shop. She wasn’t interested. That’s when I told her why I wanted to sell my wedding ring. I had to get back to Tallahassee to reunite with my beloved wife and child. I think I was on the verge of tears. I may even have told her about the dream with my daughter Isabelle. I can’t remember. The next step was to get down on my knees. The gold wedding ring went to the beautiful Cuban woman, but the forty bucks wasn’t for the gold in the ring. It was in exchange for a story of romance gone awry.

          I rolled into Tallahassee around 4:30 AM. The bus station is about two miles from Lake Ella Drive where my wife, Debra, and daughter, Isabelle, were staying with her parents, Lino and Teresa Hernandez.

          I got to the lake when there was just beginning to show a sliver of light in the east. I walked around the lake and waited for the sun to come up.

          As I was standing there with the lake between me and the rising Sun, all of a sudden I knew - no, no, I felt that the Sun was stationary and that it was our mother, the Earth, that was moving beneath my feet. My problems on this spinning orb were laughable compared to the enormity of space, and the light that was streaming at me from the Sun - its mean distance from the earth defined as one astronomical unit - boy, you can say that again!  I understood finally that the burdens I carried were fictitious and I could, if I chose, discard them. At that moment I walked to the house and rang the doorbell. My father-in-law, Lino, came to the door all bleary-eyed and half asleep, and I asked him, “Can Debra and Isabelle come out and play?” 

          Some one once asked Buckminster Fuller if he could imagine what it must feel like to be an astronaut. He laughed and said, “We’re all astronauts - we are all riding our mother, spaceship Earth.” There is a sense in which this earth is our spaceship. We have a controlled atmosphere, food supplies, and amusements on board.

          The leaders of this world, and certainly the leaders of this country have decided to ignore the fact that we’re all on the same spaceship - the same vehicle!

          Why would anyone tease onboard a closed atmospheric vehicle with others onboard that same vehicle that they might use nuclear weapons in order to get their way?  Think about it. It would be like riding in a car with someone and when they decide not to stop at the I-35 Czech Stop Bakery and Shell station you announce that if they don’t stop you’ll pull the pin on a concussion grenade that you happen to have in your pocket. There’s a disconnect somewhere in that kind of thinking.

          Is anybody paying attention to the fact that the billions that were spending and making on this war could have fed the entire planet a few times over?

          There have been a lot of science fiction movies made where Earth is threatened from forces outside our galaxy. It looks like we’ve been looking too far away, it seems something closer to home will eventually be our undoing.

          So how can we diffuse this bomb of a world? Can we diffuse it? Is it hopeless? Are we doomed? Will nobody and nothing get out of this alive? Will we destroy our world?

          Jayan Nayar, a lecturer in the School of Law, at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom has this to say; “It is often that we think that to change the world it is necessary to change the way power is exercised in the world; so we go about the business of exposing and denouncing the many power configurations that dominate.” Yet, “To say the word power is to describe relationship; to acknowledge power is to acknowledge our subservience to that relationship. There can exist no power if the subservient relationship is refused - then power can only achieve its ambitions through its naked form, violence.” Mr. Nayar continues; “Changing the world therefore is a misnomer for in truth it is relationships that are to be changed. And the only relationships we can change for us are our own. And the constant in all our relationships is ourselves - the ‘I’ of all of us. And so, to change our relationships, we must change the ‘I’ that is each of us. Transformations of ‘structures’ will soon follow. This is, perhaps, the beginning of emancipations. This is, perhaps, the essential message of all the Mahatmas,”

          So … what do we need to change in order to change the world? Is it even possible to talk like this? Is there one thing that if we did away with it, then everyone would be changed?

          My problems on this spinning orb were laughable compared to the enormity of space, and the light that was streaming at me from the Sun - its mean distance from the earth defined as one astronomical unit - boy, you can say that again!  I understood finally that the burdens I carried were fictitious and I could, if I chose, discard them.

          Rachel Naomi Remen tells the story of a woman who was a cancer survivor. She lived in San Rafael. Helene was a truly gorgeous woman who took hours on her appearance. She told Dr. Remen that she was living with a man that was perfect with one exception - he lacked passion. He asked her permission every time he kissed her. She wasn’t sure this is what she wanted in a man.

          “All this changed on October the 17^th, 1989 at 5:04PM. On that afternoon, Helene was in one of downtown San Francisco’s finest department stores seeking the perfect outfit for a business dinner honoring her fiancé. In the company of a personal shopper, she was in a dressing room wearing a fuchsia silk dress that she had decided was just right. Both women were admiring the dress, when the shopper suggested she wear it up to the seventh floor and match it to a pair of shoes. Leaving all her belongings in the locked dressing room, she went to the shoe department. She had just put on a pair of heels in the perfect shade when the earthquake struck.

          All the lights went out. The building shook violently and she was thrown to the floor. In the darkness she could hear things falling all around her. When the shaking stopped, she, a few saleswomen, and several other customers somehow made their way down the stairs in the dark to the front door. There was broken glass everywhere.

          Helene found herself standing in the street in a very expensive dress and perfectly matching four-inch heels. Frightened and dazed people rushed by her. All of her own clothes and her purse were somewhere in the dark chaos of a building which quite possibly was no longer safe to reenter. Her money was in her purse. So were her car keys. Walking to the corner, she picked up a public phone. It was dead.

          Helene was a person who had never been able to ask for help, and she couldn’t ask for help now. She turned north and started walking toward her home, many miles away in San Rafael.

          It took her almost eight hours to reach there. After a short time her feet began to hurt, so she took off the heels and threw them away. As she walked on, her nylons tore and her feet began to bleed. She passed buildings that had collapsed, stumbled over rubble, waded through streets filled with filthy water from the fire-fighting efforts. Dirty, sweaty, and disheveled, she walked down the Marina to the Golden Gate Bridge and crossed into the next county. She reached home sometime after midnight and knocked on her own front door. It was opened by her fiancé, who had never before seen her with her hair uncombed. Without a word he took her into his arms, kicked the door closed, covered her dirty, tear-stained face with kisses, and made love to her right there on the floor.

          Helene is a very intelligent person but she could not understand why she had never met this ardent lover before. When she asked him, he said simply, “I was always afraid of smearing your lipstick.”

          She tells me that now when she begins to relapse into her former perfectionism, she remembers the look of love in her fiancé’s eyes when he opened the door. She had been looked at by men all of her life but she had never seen that expression in a man’s eyes before.”

          In our efforts to remain aloof and perfect, in our desires to appear in control and in the know, perhaps we have given those around us, those that we are supposedly involved with in relationships the wrong message.

          There have been a lot of science fiction movies made where Earth is threatened from forces outside our galaxy. It looks like we’ve been looking too far away, it seems something closer to home will eventually be our undoing.

          So this is what it boils down to - we can’t change things by complaining about them. Power structures are based on relationship and the only way those in power stay in power is for us to maintain a subservient relationship to their power structure. If we decide to build grass roots relationships closer to our homes and churches and ignore the call of big government we can go so far as to refuse to pay taxes to support an unjust and profit driven war. However if we refuse this subservient relationship, we run the risk of being the object of ambitious power through its naked form - that is - through violence.

          And yet, we must envision a new story for our species. We can no longer be satisfied with their country versus our country, nor especially, my country, right or wrong. These attitudes are juvenile and lead from all out competition to war-like stances and war-like actions now participated in by our government.

          We cannot rely on the fact that we are the only superpower to get us through. Can’t anyone remember what happens to the bully when all the kids on the block get tired of getting beat-up?

          A new story has to be written. Chief Seattle spoke these words long ago and they still ring true today;

          “I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be made more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. This we know; the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family.”

          I’m sure that most of you have heard these words before, but who among you knows the secret behind these words?

(Pick up the handheld mike and go into the congregation.)

          No, this isn’t a rhetorical question. I’m really asking, Who among you knows the secret behind these beautiful words?

(Either you get an answer or you don’t.)

          Truth is these words were not written nor spoken by Chief Seattle. They were instead written by a screenwriter, Ted Perry, for a late 1970’s movie entitled, “Home,” which was produced in the United States by - are you ready? - the Southern Baptist Convention.

          Is this an outrage? I think not. Do you remember in my story about getting back to Tallahassee from Key Largo these words?

          The gold wedding ring went to the beautiful Cuban woman, but the forty bucks wasn’t for the gold ring it was in exchange for my story of romance gone awry.

          The truth is Chief Seattle did make a speech; it simply wasn’t as good as the one rewritten by the screenwriter. The gold - the truth - in my wedding band wasn’t worth forty bucks, but the sad story of romance gone awry - now, there was a universal truth that any woman could identify with.

          Jerry Mander in his book, In Absence of the Sacred, says this about the works of Carlos Castaneda; “He led millions through experiences designed to reveal unknown dimensions of our nature. And he did all this by imitating Native American storytelling style. Like the stories, myths and histories Castaneda emulated, it scarcely mattered to what extent the characters were real or not. They were teaching systems.”

          Our old stories of manifest destiny and dominion over this earth granted us by a single God in charge of everything, those stories were teaching systems too. They taught us that we lived in a mechanistic world, and that cultures that believed that the earth was a mother, and the sky a father, those cultures were less advanced than ours. We practiced what is nominally called Cultural Darwinism and in the process we murdered millions of indigents, raped the land, made and broke treaties - those treaties were teaching systems, too - they taught the Native Americans that in the end the white man could not be trusted.

Conclusion:

          So … the stories we hold onto, that we are better, that they are less developed, that we will win because we have the technology, all these stories are no more or less true than say … the narrative of Jesus the Christ. We have suffered long enough from the stories that teach us not to respect the earth, the sky, and the beasts of the field. We must rewrite our cultural narratives, we must. Yes, it seems that everyone is onboard with this technological BS, and how can the most powerful nation in the world be wrong, but this is probably the same thoughts that go lightly through the minds of lemmings as they follow the running procession off the cliffs and into the sea.

          There have been a lot of science fiction movies made where Earth is threatened from forces outside our galaxy. It looks like we’ve been looking too far away, it seems something closer to home will eventually be our undoing.

          I’m declaring today, the 2 day of July 2006, Interdependence Day. And you’re in just the right spot to celebrate. Today we celebrate that we have found a place where we can gather as a free community. We have found friends with whom we can share our hopes, our lives, and our dreams. We have covenanted with others to be there for one another, to love as unconditionally as we possibly can, to listen to one another, to grow in the fact that we can all believe whatever it is that we believe, simply because we believe it. No one here has been asked to leave their brain, their heart or their social conscience at the door. We gather here as human beings possessed not only of the powers of ratiocination, but the willingness to imagine that there are other ways in which the world can be seen. We gather here for no other reason than to bask in the warmth of friendship, the beauty of fellowship, and the light of open-mindedness.

          The secret to the mundane drama of life is to hold your position while allowing others to hold theirs.

          The hope of the planet is in covenant communities like us. Our duty is to keep relationship alive at the grass roots level. If peace is to be practiced it will be practiced here first. We teach love, grace, empathy, compassion, willingness to fail, the ability to be playful. We are free men, women and children who have agreed - we shall be as one from time to time. We shall recognize our interdependence, we shall humbly remember our births, we shall give credit where credit is due, and live as lightly on the land as possible.

          I repeat we are the hope of humankind.

          Changing the world therefore is a misnomer, for, in truth, it is relationships that are to be changed.

          So don’t tell me you don’t know about changing the story, rewriting the plot - I don’t believe that. There is hardly a one of you sitting here that was handed this particular covenant. Many UU’s are here - not by default - no! We are here because we didn’t like the stories we were born with. We weren’t going to live our lives in guilt. We refused to accept the notion that a God would condemn some to hell and elect others to heaven. We weren’t satisfied with the scripts that we had been given. So what did we do? We rewrote the scenario to fit what we felt matched both our hearts and our minds.

          Our problems on this spinning orb are laughable compared to the enormity of space, and the light that is streaming at us from the Sun - its mean distance from the earth defined as one astronomical unit - boy, you can say that again!  We must understand finally that the burdens we carry are fictitious and we could, if we chose, discard them.