over the parked cars on my street. But, I was a really big science fiction and fantasy fan,

questions, which is a natural part of being human, and asking the next question. I don’t

of being human. This is because, and this does make a difference, what most peoplewant is answers. We hate uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt. Human beings want

Frankenstein notion that there are things we simply were not meant to know, to thecensorship and burning of books, a la Fahrenheit 451, to modern debates about

Prayer

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, this morning we are here in celebration of among other things … fathers. Some of us have negative images of what fathers can be because some of us have had lousy fathers. Others see fatherhood in a positive light because their personal experiences are positive ones. In some sense many of us wish, as my wife, Viv, does that we had Atticus Finch as our father. Harper Lee’s image of fatherhood as portrayed by Gregory Peck in the Oscar winning Christmas Day 1962 release still brings pangs of envy – if only we could have been that way with our kids.          But more than simply parenting we are talking this morning about husbanding – the ability to spend or use economically, or simply the ability to live gracefully without a lot of fuss.           This world and the harbingers of news don’t want us to imagine that anything is easy. The world speaks in the language of labor. Count, if you will, how many times people tell you how hard something is going to be, or with what difficulty something may be accomplished. There’s a bit of self-fulfilling negativity there.          Think instead of the watercourse way – the fact that water effortlessly finds its own level. Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching suggests that we take the watercourse way that we flow into life, giving where giving seems appropriate and receiving when things come our way.          I’m thinking of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where Atticus Finch finds the town drunk harassing Atticus’ children who are waiting in the car. Atticus comes out of the house where he’s been visiting and simply approaches the car. The town drunk spews vitriolic profanities at Atticus, but Atticus never responds, never lashes out at the man. Atticus knows that it is his presence alone that is making the statement that needs to be made. He is his children’s father, and his economy causes the drunk to slither off away from them.          We pray for the good sense and certitude to know when we are doing what needs to be done by simply suiting up and showing up. There’s an art to life that isn’t often taught, and isn’t often recognized. Give us the insight to see those artists of life that don’t fit the mold of society, those pushed toward the periphery because they don’t match definitions of success and worldly honor.          Mostly, this morning we search for an economy of being. May we forgive ourselves when we use a hammer when a thumbtack would have done the trick. Great Spirit give us the power to know that more often than not we know, from the inside, what needs to be done, and what needs to be ignored.          Minding the breath, minding our heartbeats let us move through this life like the guests that we are, honoring the earth and all sentient beings that inhabit it.          We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything. Amen

Hermits or Husbands

Reading: (From Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper) He came out on a high bald knoll that looked over the valley and he stopped here and studied it as a man might cresting a hill and seeing a strange landscape for the first time. Pines and cedars in a swatch of dark green piled down the mountain to the left and ceased again where the road cut through. Beyond that a field and a log hogpen, the shakes spilling down the broken roof, looking like some diminutive settler’s cabin in ruins. Through the leaves of the hardwoods he could see the zinc-colored roof of the church faintly coruscant and a patch of boarded siding weathered the paper-gray of a waspnest. And far in the distance the long purple welts of the Great Smokies. If I was a younger man, he told himself, I would move to them mountains. I would find me a clearwater branch and build me a log house with a fireplace. And my bees would make black mountain honey. And I wouldn’t care for no man.          He started down the steep incline … Then I wouldn’t be unneighborly neither, he added. Introduction: We heard from Monty Newton our Worship Associate. You may be asking yourself, “What does a seemingly misanthropic old black man have to do with Father’s Day?” Good question. By the end of this sermon that question should be laid to rest.          Something I’ve noticed through the years. Men tend to isolate. You ever notice that? Yes, it’s true, men do have friends, but how many men do you know who have kept in touch with those friends throughout the years? And even if they have what do men have friends for? Do men call each other and complain about their kids?  Do men commiserate when they aren’t getting along with their wives? What exactly is the role of friends when it comes to men? I’m not pretending to know the answers to these and other questions about men. After all, I’m a man, and it goes without saying, almost, that I’m writing this sermon in order to learn something about myself and other men.           Recently, I got a questionnaire from a parishioner of this church and the questions concerned my role as a father. The questions were good, but to tell the truth all I could write back to this parishioner was that I felt that I had been a failure as a father. When my son was three years old I left he and his mother, and when the papers came for my son to be adopted by another man, I went down to the lawyer’s office and I signed the papers without thinking twice. When my daughter was ten years old I left her and her mother, my second wife. True, a few years later I had my daughter for a couple of summers, but when the third summer rolled around, my daughter chose a new set of tires for her car rather than coming out to Dallas and spending time with me, and my third wife.How did I feel about that? First, I thought it was a choice that my daughter shouldn’t have had to make. It was my summer and whether my daughter needed tires on her car or not, she owed me that summer, right? In the end I did nothing more than complain. Viv and I didn’t see Isabelle that summer, and in a way, it was a relief. The first summer Isabelle had come to visit us; I’d spent half the summer running between Viv and Isabelle asking them if everything was all right. Finally, Viv and Isabelle came to me one day and told me to stop trying to fix something that wasn’t broken. Who knew? Certainly not me.          I’m sixty years old and to me women might as well be a different species. Yes, I get along with my wife, my sister and her friends, the female parishioners in this church, but the concerns of women are not the concerns of men. Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars as the book title reads. I haven’t read the book, but the title seems perfectly clear to me.           Lawrence Durrell, the British Novelist and Poet, once said concerning the Mona Lisa that “She has the look of a woman who has just dined off her husband.” Even when reading that quote I’m not sure, “Could that be a good thing?”          Eric Berne the Psychiatrist is reported to have said, “No husband is a hero to his wife’s psychiatrist.”          Since husbands are more often times than not, men, perhaps it would behoove us to take a look at some famous quotes about men.          Mark Twain wrote, “The noblest work of God? Man. Who found this out? Man.”          Twain again, “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”          And finally, Twain during his Letters From the Earth phase, “Man is a museum of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes today and is gone tomorrow, he begins as dirt and departs as stench.”          Perhaps you think the last a bit too harsh, that perhaps Mark Twain’s closeness to the subject has made it impossible to be objective, after all, familiarity does breed contempt. But Twain added to that old adage; “Familiarity breeds contempt – and children!”          But it’s another definition of husband that I would like us to look at today. We’ve been dealing with the meaning of husband as in a woman’s spouse, the man to whom a woman is married.          But there’s also the transitive verb, to husband.  The meaning of that verb is to be thrifty with something: to use something economically and sensibly.          What would it mean in the wedding ceremony if when I pronounced a couple husband and wife, it was this definition of husband that was being thought through? What would marriages be if the job of one of the two partners was the job of making sure that what was used by the couple was used in an economic, sensible and thrifty manner?          And it is these ideas of thrift, sensibility and economy that lead quite easily into our discussion of the hermit.          When we become overwhelmed by the world and our lives seem to be nothing more than one continuous activity, it might just be that it’s time for a retreat. Sometimes these retreats are religious or spiritual in nature.           Gautama Buddha abandoned his family and went on a spiritual quest. His wife didn’t send the county sheriff after him for non- payment of child support. The nature of this quest was the discovery that outside the walls of Buddha’s father’s castle the rest of the world was lost in suffering. In truth, the very foundation of Buddhism is the fact that suffering is universal and that if human kind is to persevere in this life then they must deal with suffering.           Suffering is unavoidable and to live this life one must not ignore it, push it out of consciousness, nor pretend that it is not the ultimate fate of all who live.           The solution to this problem is in the very nature of how the Buddha saw the self. If it is true that we all suffer, then who is it that is suffering? Buddha discovered that there is no permanent self, and this discovery led him inexorably to the conclusion that even though suffering happens, it is made worse when this suffering happens to somebody. If, in fact, the lights are on, but nobody’s home, then suffering is still present, but the self that keeps score, the self that knows it’s being wronged, the self that holds grudges, the self that wants revenge this self is an illusion.  Suffering is just what is – take note of it and move on. This taking note and moving on is called enlightenment. If there is no self, then scores aren’t kept, wrongs don’t need to be righted, grudges become mote and revenge becomes the boomerang that won’t come back.           The Chinese Book of Changes, the I-Ching, counsels us thusly; The wise person rises above the inferior man. The wise person is like the sky above the mountain. No matter how high the mountain is, it can never touch the sky. The wise person keeps their distance because the mountain can never reach them, neither in a psychological nor physical sense. The wise person’s retreat is not motivated by hatred or anger but by dignity.          The image of the lake is often used in Asian philosophy. Everything is reflected in the lake, but nothing is held there. The moon in the lake is perfectly reflected, but to jump into the lake in order to get to the moon would gain us nothing but a bath. The forest fire is reflected in the lake, but the water is not burning.           Now we seem to be returning to Monty Newton’s story of Roosevelt the man with a mirror for a front door. Those who live in Abilene might think that it’s quaint for Roosevelt to have a mirror for a front door, and perhaps even Roosevelt thinks nothing more than it’s convenient. But on a deeper philosophical level the person who approaches Roosevelt’s house will see themselves reflected in the entrance to that house.          In much the same way Roosevelt himself is nothing more than a calm lake, a clean mirror. If you approach him with fear and trembling, then it is fear and trembling that you will see reflected there. If, like Monty, you approach him as a man among men, and talk to him like you would anybody else, then miraculously, he responds in kind. Imagine that?          Perhaps then it isn’t a question of either being a husband or a hermit? Perhaps the real deal is in being a husband in the sense of someone who is cautious and economical in their dealings with the world, then it follows quite naturally that drawing back, retreating, abandoning the fight when, and if, it’s really nothing more than a fight between entities that don’t exist, then perhaps the paradox between either being a husband or a hermit is resolved, or held in a state of suspended animation?          The Tarot deck has as one of its Major Arcana the card known as The Hermit. The manner in which this card is displayed in the Waite-Rider deck is much like the manner in which saints are portrayed. He is wearing a monk’s robe. He carries with him a staff and a lantern. He is not a beggar, nor one who seeks only isolation. His long white beard, staff and lantern suggest that he is out and about in the world, not lost in idleness, nor seeking only isolation. The lantern is the light of the world shed precisely for the enlightenment of others. This hermit is a sage, not simply searching for truth and justice but bringing truth and justice to the people. He’s like The Fool in the Major Arcana, he will go to all lengths, walk to the edge, but unlike the Fool he knows his boundaries, will not step over the precipice, is not on an adventure, but rather walking about the world in hope of spreading light to those who need it.           The hermit is an unsettling image for us in Western society. This hermit is outside the context of daily living – he’s not worried about the kids and their soccer game – and he is not subordinated to the authority of the age. He is, in fact, modeling for the rest of the world, and this modeling can lead to his being ostracized and scapegoated by the culture within which he lives, but quite amicably refuses to take part in.           Hence the image of Roosevelt, the black man who lives off the fat of the land, the man who shows the rest of Abilene that the rules and constrictors of the society in which they live may not be as solid as they would like to believe.           On some level we all wish to be comforted by the societal rules by which we play, but the truth is, these rules are arbitrary and potentially meaningless. We are reminded of that when there lives one among us who ignores the rules but not only gets by, but in a deeper sense flourishes.          The morality of the wandering hermit tells us that what is right and what is wrong knows no place and time.           We wish there were answers to life’s big questions. Are men hermits or husbands? What is the truth of our being?           The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote “Try to love the questions themselves … Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing, live your way into the answers.”          And yet we should not expect the world to always understand what we are up to. Even with the best of intentions we who would be husbands – persons who would use judicially those things with which we are entrusted – we husbands must not expect the world or those in it to realize what we may be up to, or accept what we think we have to offer.          I will close with a story that illustrates this perfectly.          There was once a farmer – a man who husbanded the land – who kept his fields completely to himself. His crops were his main interest and he prided himself in keeping the birds and animals away. He built fences around about, and didn’t even like the idea that when he harvested he might be leaving even the least little bit in the fields for the mice or other scavengers. Then, one day he got sick and almost died. When he recovered he was changed. He realized now that he was lonely. He’d been so successful in his efforts to keep those at bay – that he wanted at bay – that although he was a rich man, his riches did not fill the space in the middle of his chest. In a flash he realized he needed other beings. Immediately he when out and took down the fences that surrounded his fields. He walked into the fields and stood there with his arms outstretched to receive in loving kindness all who would now visit him. He stood there night and day his arms opened in love. Much to his surprise no animals came to eat his crops, no birds landed to enjoy his grains. The truth was they were all terrified of the farmer’s new scarecrow.                                          

In December, our choir was invited to sing in a showcase of choral groups at a large Catholic Church in north Austin. The church was brimming with holiday decorations and a packed sanctuary of well over a thousand dressed in colorful Christmas regalia. In attendance were 15 church choirs, each presenting two holiday songs. The choirs sang traditional and non-traditional Christmas carols, mostly in English, accompanied by piano or organ. Being our different selves, assembled under the leadership of our creative and talented Director of Music, we chose to sing an a cappella chorale in German from a JS Bach cantata with a segue into a Nigerian folk song accompanied by djembe drum and rattles. On the way back to our seats after our performance, I heard several people in the audience remarking about our unique pieces. By the way, they WERE beautiful!After the concert, a choir member from one of the Episcopal churches struck up a conversation, saying: “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve never really understood just what it is that Unitarian Universalists believe. Since you are part of this Christmas event, are you Christians?” I replied: “Not exactly. We were… and some still are, yet most of us are not.” He replied: “How does that work? Do you believe in Jesus or not?” I said: “Not in an orthodox way. Many of us value his teachings, but few, if any, believe in the orthodox view that he is the only begotten Son of God and of the resurrection on the third day.” He asked: “Well, if you don’t believe in the resurrection, what about your own immortality.” I replied: “You’d have to say we’re pretty diverse on that one, too.” Finally, he said: “Y’all believe in God, right?” Again I replied, “Not exactly. Many of us do, each in his or her way. Others of us don’t find the concept of God a useful one.”This kind of conversation stirs up in me curiosity about what UUs present to the world. And not only WHAT, but HOW we present it to the world. Along the lines of the WHAT, let’s look briefly at Unitarian Universalism: It’s a fact that we do not believe that any religious precept or doctrine must be accepted as true simply because some religious organization, tradition or authority says it is. Neither do we believe that all UUs should have identical beliefs.The fact is UUs have different beliefs. Since individual freedom of belief is one of our basic principles, it follows that there will be differing beliefs among us. Found in today’s churches are humanism, agnosticism, atheism, theism, liberal Christianity, neo-paganism and earth spiritualism, to name a few. Interestingly, these beliefs are not mutually exclusive. It’s possible to hold more than one. While we are bound by a set of common principles, we leave it to the individual to decide what particular beliefs lead to these principles.There’s a perception among many, that Unitarian Universalism has no beliefs, especially none in a God. It is much more accurate to say that we do not have a single, defined concept of God in which all UUs are expected to believe. Each member is free to explore and develop an understanding of God that is meaningful to him or her. They’re also free to reject the term or concept altogether.Diversity in a system is a sign of life. Rich eco-systems, for example, are not monocultures. The multiplicity of expressions found in UUs is a healthy sign. Unlike diversity, divisiveness is a real issue that separates many religious adherents, like the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam. There’s divisiveness among Jewish and Christian sects as well. This issue may be fueled by beliefs, especially those reduced and codified into creeds. The way most people state “I believe in…” creates a position that must be defended or expanded at the expense of others. Creedal religions suggest that humankind’s spiritual and religious growth have reached a conclusion. Creeds, rather than encouraging more searching and curiosity, can tend to freeze and halt one’s pilgrimage of faith. Creedal religions forego much of the process and the celebration of new insights, which have been referred to theologically as “continuous revelation”. Creedal worship, as many of us have experienced, is akin to saying: here’s the answer, let’s affirm it in unison.Unitarian Universalists find comfort in a creedless religion. Although many question that UUs have no center, and without a significant unifying element, some are concerned that we, too, will simply become more fragmented and individualized like our society. To those who are anxious about too much diversity, I say, relax, no one needs to ask whether the forest of many trees has a center. It’s a zone of life to be entered. Just be here, breathe and pay attention. Center or no center, I propose that there IS something that binds us together. As I visit many UU congregations, I have discovered that what keeps participants interested, curious and coming to church is the community, fellowship, each other. That’s a description of our covenant, the commitments and promises that we voluntarily make to each other. For UUs, it’s our covenantal relationship, not creeds, that binds us together.Being a covenantal faith also has to do with the primacy of freedom, especially a free mind and the freedom of religious belief. For centuries, freethinking religious liberals have been persecuted, ostracized and put in harm’s way because they wouldn’t relinquish their free mind to the prevailing view. So, to protect, celebrate, support and nurture the free mind and the freedom of religious belief, our faith remains a covenantal and creedless religion.Without professing a creed, it IS more challenging to express who we are and how we interact. Perhaps that’s part of a public relations and marketing issue UUs face.Today I am drawing attention to something that UUs share, something unique in the vast play of religious expression on our planet, in our quest for an effective faith here and now, and that is our covenantal relationship. In the study of theology, much is made of the covenant between God and humankind. The way UUs covenant makes us unique. Sure it may involve an active relationship to Divine Mystery, and again, it may not. It is, however, a promise we make with each other. Covenant is the commitment that empowers our mission and vision, and it fuels an extraordinary bond, a solidarity, which makes our experiences Unitarian Universalist, expressing itself in creative Sunday worship, religious education, the annual pledge drive, mindfulness meditation, social action, earth-centered ritual, landscaping or building maintenance, volunteering on the board or singing in the choir. Everything we do is grounded in covenant. We are a covenantal faith.What does this mean? It means that our individualized searches for a theological center need to be understood as a search for the solidarity and mutuality that can carry us through an increasingly individualized lifestyle, energizing our devoted action as a smaller committed community on behalf of the larger global community. How can we mature in our individualized and collective search to new levels of effective faith? How about by re-imagining the way we speak of religious individualism and dissent. We are right to extol the lone, courageous voice that holds out against the follies of groupthink. We celebrate the dissenter who begs to differ when the crowd is gung ho for a course of action that will cause untold harm to life. Behind the lone prophet who speaks up, there is a group – WE celebrate the lone prophet because there is a WE here – there is a whole movement of us who hold to values that are fragile, dissident, and life-giving.Theologians suggest that it is always a mistake to imagine that lone prophets are really alone. Take Martin Luther King, Jr., for example. He galvanized a movement – yes – but his power did not come from the singularity of his vision, or a mere exercise of individual conscience. He voiced the conscience of a whole body of people, a community that shared the experience of racism and had a long legacy of resistance and hope. He wasn’t singing solo. He was singing from the midst of the choir.It might be helpful to think of Jesus this way, as well. It is a mistake to see him as an isolated, heroic individual. It is more accurate to see him as the crest of a wave, the sparkling foam breaking brightly from the force of a whole ocean moving and swelling up from underneath. I sense among Unitarian Universalists these days a deep desire to affirm the ocean, and our covenantal community, that is welling up within the voices of individual conscience that we celebrate.As meaningful as our mission, principles and purposes are, these are only as good as our covenant to embody them. They’ll only be seen and make an impact as we gather together in “covenant to affirm and promote them”. We also make another commitment (and I quote again) “We enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.” Our community is grounded in covenant. We rise and fall together. One deeply radical implication of this is that it is impossible to be a Unitarian Universalist alone. In the Men’s work I’ve been doing for many years, we have a saying: “You have to do your work, but you can’t do it alone.” This holds true for UUs, too. We must do our work in relationship with other Unitarian Universalists! The only way to be a UU is to be part of a UU congregation and to make and receive promises and commitments to our collective vision, mission, principles, purposes and, yes, most importantly, to each other.About the HOW that Unitarian Universalism shows up in the world …it is an issue of intent. How does the congregation intend to grow and respond to the of influx new members? What are the agreements and boundaries? What are the action steps? How do we do this as UUs? Unitarian Universalists do have a very contemporary and timely message, yet how safe do we feel in our own container of mutual trust and support to step up and shine our lights from the hilltop?We must integrate our diversity as a covenant people, addressing our deepest concerns in an atmosphere of acceptance, love and commitment. Then getting the word out will happen naturally. We must mature to a deep, real and believable level of community that naturally overflows into and communicates with the vast ocean of life.Cultural trends indicate suspicion of religious communities. So most people opt for the admission of being spiritual rather than religious, because of the implied institutional aspects of religions. Many people today in Austin choose to follow their own unique and individualistic path instead of a community one. Many of these people might find a supportive community among us.Individually, we, as UUs, are each finding our own way. Yet this message is designed to call our attention to the little wonders created for us to find together as a covenant community – as diversity in unity. Are we undervaluing or dismissing the opportunities provided in the corporate and collective contexts, like our church, as a shared experience of curiosity, grace and presence? For me, and maybe this is why I do what I do, I have experienced my most empowering and grace-filled moments as an individual in community, in congregational worship, in sharing as a covenant group, on weekend retreats or week-long social action projects, where we are gifted with the opportunity to work side-by-side, to cooperate, to collaborate, to bond. Our covenant community is bound by common principles and promises that empower us to share lives together in the promise of mutual trust and support. How are you participating? What talents and concerns do you bring to our table? How are you serving and being served?We can be devoted to a specific religious practice—Christian prayer, Buddhist meditation, or pagan ritual (to name a few)—but as UUs we do not hold the view that there is one religion that encompasses the exclusive, final truth for all times and places, not even Unitarian Universalism. UU-ism is confident that revelation is a continuous process and is not sealed for all time. The sacred impulse towards justice, compassion and equity moves in us, like an ocean, in many times and places, in myriad ways that call to us and teach us. We can see this world as tragically flawed, wondrously gifted, or both of the above, but we cannot hold the view that salvation is to be found solely beyond this world – in some life after death or a world other than this world. While remaining open to mysteries that may be revealed beyond the grave or in realms beyond what we know at present, Unitarian Universalism is clear that the Ultimate is present here and now, and can be experienced, even if only partially, within the frame of our mortal existence. This means we do not hold to a hope that is only attained in the sweet by and by. We hold that this world, this life, these bodies are the dwelling place of the Sacred. This is the essence of our covenantal bond. Now is the time. Here is the place for our action, for our interaction.Here’s a vision for us, an image of expanding the continual growing process of our covenant, the continuous revelation of our calling as divine-humans. We might describe our current level of maturation as a congregation as a pool of water. As we continue to affirm our trusting and supporting covenant among ourselves, and we endeavor to reach out to others and connect with all beings, welcoming them into our hearts and lives, we expand the boundaries of our pool so that it becomes a lake. As we choose to honor life, especially as it is most challengingly revealed in all our familiar circumstances, and to live fully with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength … as we do everything in our power to assure that our covenant embraces life and matures in practice and depth, our lake begins to flow like a river. And as we together seek our life of curious faith, we will find naturally that the flow of our river reaches the magnificence of a grand collective of all beings as great as an ocean, diverse, expansive and vast in its influence for good, for ourselves, for all, for Life.  Amen.Acknowledgments to Heretics’ Faith by Frederic John Muir, The Unitarians and the Universalists by David Robinson, and One Hundred Questions by Steve Edington.

An audio version of this sermon can be downloaded at http://media.libsyn.com/media/austinuu/05_A_liberal_Reclarification_of_Natural_Law.mp3

Invocation

I’d like to open this morning with a passage from the Martin Luther King Jr. sermon Rediscovering Lost Values:

“…the first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. I’m not so sure we all believe that. We never doubt that there are physical laws of the universe that we must obey. We never doubt that. And so we just don’t jump out of airplanes or jump off of high buildings for the fun of it—we don’t do that. Because we unconsciously know that there is a final law of gravitation, and if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences—we know that. Even if we don’t know it in its Newtonian formulation, we know it intuitively, and so we just don’t jump off the highest building in (Austin) for the fun of it—we don’t do that. Because we know that there is a law of gravitation which is final in the universe. If we disobey it we’ll suffer the consequences.

But I’m not so sure if we know that there are moral laws just as abiding as the physical law. I’m not so sure about that. I’m not so sure if we really believe that there is a law of love in this universe, and that if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences.”

Prayer:

Please join me in an attitude of prayer, as we share this reading from Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
            so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
            we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
            our presence automatically liberates others.

Sermon : a liberal reclamation of natural law

When Dr. King argued in our opening reading that there are moral laws that are just as abiding as the physical laws, what laws is he referring to? In order to be clear in our consideration of an answer to this question, we must start by being clear about the nature of morality. Morality is the distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil. So, what Dr. King is arguing is that just as there is a law of gravity that describes the inevitable relationship of attraction between two masses, there are laws of morality that describe the inevitable relationships between right and wrong, between good and evil.

Classical natural law was the first systematic attempt to explore these relationships. It was based on the idea that there is a human nature and a human essence which defines how human beings must live in order to have a good life. Aristotle’s formulation of the first principle of natural law was that one should do good and avoid evil. However, if we survey the history of natural law, we can’t help but notice some of the dogmatic and inhumane positions that have been taken in its name. We can look back to Aristotle and read of natural law used in defense of slavery. We can survey contemporary natural law thinkers and read of opposition to abortion, opposition to gay rights, and support for economic disparity. When we view this checkered history, we might reasonably assume that the idea of natural law is simply one more archaic holdover from a bygone past when humankind had little understanding of the world and relied on inflexible and absolutist proscriptions to govern social life. We might reject the very idea of natural law and embrace the relativistic ethics of postmodern academia. But I suggest to you, that tossing out the idea of natural law along with its substantial historical baggage is a case of tossing out the baby with the bathwater, because, perhaps more than ever, a reclaimed version of natural law could provide the very anchor that liberalism seems to be so badly in need of.

So, let’s start with a fresh look at the core concepts of natural law in light of our current religious and scientific knowledge. The basis for our revised concept of natural law is simply the idea that there are rules or laws which govern the operation of the universe. This proposition is generally accepted when we are dealing with the analytical categories of the hard sciences; with laws of gravity, laws of inertia, laws of ecology, laws of genetics, or laws of biology. But when we attempt to formulate what natural laws govern humanity, this is when things have tended to become more controversial. If there is natural law that applies to all living things or natural law that applies specifically to humanity, perhaps these constitute moral law as Dr. King spoke about. The question is: how can we discern these laws? It is true that we are not exempt from the laws of gravity, or inertia, or relativity, which effect all matter in our universe. It is also true that we are not exempt from the laws of ecology or genetics which govern all forms of life as we know it. But human natural law, moral law which applies exclusively to our species, must itself be rooted in those aspects that are uniquely yet universally human.

Aristotle’s analysis identified reason as the key human virtue that distinguishes us from other animals. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and the other major figures in natural law thinking have all followed suit. So, if it is reason, if it is our advanced capacity for logical and speculative thought, that differentiates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, then it is here that we will find the core of a human natural law.

Our contemporary understanding of human biology and cognitive science, as well as the contextual issues of biological and social evolution, provide us with important insights that were unavailable to the classical thinkers. For instance, it is quite clear to us now that the human ability to reason does not develop much beyond the level of our primate cousins without the acquisition of human language and symbol systems. Language is the cognitive toolkit required for human level reasoning and we are not born with it, we must acquire it through learning. What makes us human is that we learn, and what and how we learn determines our humanity. The evolution of human knowledge and culture has become much more critical to our survival than our biological evolution.

Research in developmental psychology indicates that our worldview and moral development proceed in relatively linear stages, for example from pre-conventional, to conventional, to post-conventional. In addition, there is strong evidence that the average mode of moral development of a population is strongly associated with the types of social structures, institutions, and cultures that the population will have. Along these related arcs of individual development over a lifetime and social evolution over recorded human history, we find opportunities for a new take on natural law and a new story arc for humanity.

Just as most classical natural law has been rooted in the Christian theology of the Fall, in the presumption that humanity is imperfect and flawed, in the assumption that we are incapable of overcoming the taint of original sin without divine intervention; so our reclaimed natural law must be rooted in the ideology that humanity has awakened to an amazing capacity to learn, to understand, to act, and to create. We are here to learn about our universe and about ourselves, and as we learn, as we understand, as we act, and as we create, we are perfected. The ancient Hebrew understanding of the word perfect was not a state, it was not a condition, it was a process. It is this dynamic process of continually learning, understanding, acting, and creating that I believe is the fundamental human natural law.

The first corollary to this law is humility. Humility is the recognition that there is no end to this process of learning, no end to this process of perfection. Our perception of our place within this process may be accurate or it may be wishful thinking. We must be assertive about acting on our beliefs, but open about the ultimate rightness of those beliefs. Like good scientists we must remember that our understandings are only theories and that they may need editing or be disproved as we continue to learn and as our understanding grows. Developmental stagnation often occurs when we forget humility, when we cherish our current theories more than we cherish learning, when we believe we have already learned something, or don’t need to learn any more. These failures of humility happen when we forget that it is our essence to keep learning, when we forget that what we already know is just tentative, just a bridge to the next realization.

The second corollary to the fundamental human law is compassion. If humility is the recognition that we never stop learning, compassion is the recognition that the same is true for our brothers and sisters. Compassion, in this context, is remembering that it is more important to be peaceful than to be right. A focus on being right produces an emphasis on the other person being wrong, it short-circuits the possibility of constructive dialogue, where people can share their understandings and potentially reconcile their disagreements. It is failures of compassion that produce most developmental stagnation at the social scale. When groups and individuals in society become convinced that they are right, that others are wrong, that they have learned all there is, or all that they need to know, then they stop producing open and honest dialogue with one another. While this critique applies to much of the religious right in this country, it also applies to the dogmatic left. Dogmatism is, by definition, both a failure in humility and a failure in compassion.

As we engage successfully in this process of perfection, of learning and acting, then we progress toward enlightenment. These elements of learning, understanding, acting, and creating make up an iterative process of human engagement. In order to work effectively we must learn through observation, understand through abstraction, and apply what we have learned through action, thereby creating our best version of reality. Our moral development stagnates when this process becomes broken, when we fail to learn, when we fail to understand what we have learned, when we fail to act on our understandings, when we have these failures, we fail to create the best world of which we are capable. Because we are not powerless, our greatest fear has come true, we are powerful beyond measure.

Those who have realized their power, who have let their light shine out to the world, they are the prophets in our human story. They are the beacons of moral development who blaze ahead into uncharted territories, showing us the way. They taught us myths when we knew only of the hunt and the cave. They taught us to love all our human brothers and sisters when we knew only of the love of kinship or the love of the tribe. They taught us science when we had turned our myths into facts. They taught us compassion when our hearts were filled with greed. They taught us humility when we knew that we were right. Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed… Martin Luther King Jr., Tenzin Gyatso the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Mohandas K. Gandhi… and how many others whose names are lost in the past, and how many more who will bless us in the future? They are out there among us as we speak, waiting to teach us the next lessons. They are the outliers on the bell-curve of moral development, those who have managed to evolve further than their peers, the bodhisattvas of humanity, hoping for the chance to lend us a helping hand as we labor to live up to our status as the radiant children of god.

If we reject the story of the Fall and its implication of our inherent imperfection, if we embrace the idea of awakening, if we embrace the idea of our perfectibility, then we must embrace the open ended nature of our own story. Once again we have the benefit of knowledge and insights of which the classical thinkers were unaware, we know, even though it is very difficult to understand, that our universe is old beyond imagining, that it is vast beyond our comprehension, that countless species of life have come into being and passed into extinction on this very planet we call home, that the timescales of our human civilizations are but blinks of the eye in the history of life on this planet. We have learned these things together, we struggle to understand them, and one day we must act on this understanding to continue the creation of our story. Right now our story is but a tiny chapter in the tale of this universe. How large a part we will ultimately play is up to us, for we are powerful beyond measure.

We learn, we apply what we learn to our universe, to our societies, and to ourselves, we recreate the universe as we go. This is the nature of our gift, the nature of our humanity. When we apply this gift to the betterment of ourselves, to the betterment of our brothers and sisters, to the betterment of our environments and ecologies, to the betterment of our governments and institutions, then we do good. We promote the fullest version of humanity that is possible in that moment. Then, we are powerful beyond measure. Then, we are the radiant children of god.