Sermon

Last week, I shared with you the truth that "I don’t know how to do this." I don’t quite know how to preach to those of you sprawled out in beach chairs or to those climbing trees. I don’t quite know how to preach through this PA system which is so good I can be heard almost as well and as intimately as an air raid siren. At a deeper level, I said that I don’t know how to do this whole church thing – teasing meaning out of life’s mysteries, seeking, learning, healing life’s wounds, speaking out for justice and all the rest – BUT I also said that I am convinced that somehow together we – you and I – when we come together as a congregation, we tap into powerful resources and we DO know how to do this whole church thing – we know even more than we think we know, and that’s a lot.

In a way, though, I’m continuing these musings today, trying to get clear in my own mind why we bother with all this on Sunday mornings. I need to be reminded and my guess is that you do too.

Over the summer I read an essay by another Unitarian Universalist minister – Rolfe Gerhardt – that helped me. He suggested that there are two—in some ways competing—paradigms for Unitarian Universalists: the paradigm of spiritual adventure and the paradigm of spiritual healing.

Now, it’s always a bit suspect when people divide the world up into two sorts of anything. You’ve heard me say before that I agree with that Robert Benchley that "there are two kinds of people: those who think there are two kinds of people and those who do not." Unitarian Universalism, in general, does not divide the world into twos: the saved and the damned, gay/straight, black/white, male/female, Republican/Democrat, etc., etc.

In general, we say, our commonalities as human beings are more significant than our differences. That, by the way, is but one reason that I take pride in First Parish’s place on this, the Town Common: this is supposed to be public space, Bedford’s own People’s Park…and this is also why I’m hopeful that we can learn to refer to our new Fellowship Hall—when it’s finished—not as our new Fellowship Hall, not as our Great Room, not as our Pretty Good Room, but rather as our Common Room. First Parish is a place where all people may come together—believers, unbelievers, contrarians, people who can and cannot be pinned down by any label—this is a place we share in common and where we celebrate our common life.

This disclaimer aside—and we may come back to it—I nonetheless know what Rolfe Gerhardt is talking about when he says that some people come to our churches seeking spiritual adventure and others come seeking spiritual healing. Interestingly, the spiritual adventurers tend to be the older generation—though of course there are plenty of exceptions—while it is the younger generation that tends to seek spiritual healing. It is not unrelated that the older generation of ministers tends to be male while the younger generation of ministers is now more than 50% female. Adventure is a stereotypical masculine activity, while healing is often seen as feminine. And, of course, there are younger female adventurers just as there are older male healers…but still the generalization that some people come here seeking adventure while others come here seeking healing has, I think, much truth to it.

Let me enlarge these distinctions. The adventurers—the searchers—are those who came into this religion because it is a searching, adventuresome, risk-taking, world-changing, human-growth-potential-oriented religion. You know who these people are! These are the ones to whom Walt Whitman’s words resonate: "Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road…Forward! after the Great Companions! And to belong to them!" People inspired by Emerson preaching "Self-reliance" and "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist…nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." Our 19^th century forbear William Ellery Channing’s words inspired these adventurers: "This house…is reared for the progress of truth," Channing exhorted, "reared in the faith that the church is destined to new light and new purity, reared in the anticipation of a happier, holier age… Sleep over your business, if you will, but not over your religion." With roots as deep as all our history, Unitarian Universalism has always been a religion to wake you up, to stir and disturb you – and probably to stir and disturb your sleepy complacent neighbors, too. This is also the older generation of First Parishioners, don’t you know? The ones who reveled in Sunday morning services—lay and ministerial—that might shock, astound, dazzle, delight and offend. The ones who caroused at the Friday night potlucks till 2am. The ones here at First Parish who field-tested our first sexuality curriculum, used it as a model for sex education at Bedford High School. The ones who riled the neighbors by defending youth who hung out on this Common. The ones who thumbed their noses at the United States government by harboring draft resisters during the Vietnam War.

These are not yahoos! They are adventurers deeply and faithfully rooted in our religious heritage: They are like Thoreau who urged marching to a different drummer; they absorbed Robert Frost’s counsel to take "The Road Not Taken." They are ones who saw that the rightful role of a human being is not to grovel in prostrate worship of some vengeful God but to affirm the dignity that is rightful and proper to human beings. UU minister Ken Patton sang new humanist words to the tune of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God: "We are the earth upright and proud; in us the earth is knowing…We dedicate our minds and hearts, to order, beauty bringing. Our labor is our strength; our love will win at length; our minds will find the ways to live in peace and praise. Our day is just beginning." Alfred Cole, another adventuresome minister, said, "Touch not my lips with the white fire from the glowing altar of some peaceful shrine." Helen Keller is a heroine to these searchers: "Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing." Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King’s mentor at BU, challenged, "Look well to the growing edge!" These are not yahoos; nay, they are many of our heroes and many of us!

Indeed, it was this energy – this walk on the wild side daring – that first captured my attention in a Unitarian church, took my breath away, took me out of my comfort zone and time and again took me to the edge of myself. The Unitarian Church in Chicago where I grew up cracked open my world and I’ve been a little cracked ever since; it opened me to experiences and people that I would never have otherwise had or known. This is air raid siren religion; a religion of warning and challenge and in-your-face questioning: What do you stand for? What will you put up with? Who are you (who am I) anyway? Why must our world be the way it is?

But now let’s take a look at the other side of it: the healers. A response to the need for healing has been present in other churches since time immemorial but less emphasized in our own; until sometime around the early 1970’s, when another voice began to be heard in Unitarian Universalism. It was a quieter voice, maybe even a rainstick voice; a voice most probably female; a voice that spoke from the heart as well as the head; that with Holly Near sang "we are a gentle angry people;" a voice of determination that affirmed power-with not power-over; a voice that with Meg Christian sang, "let us be like drops of water, and the rock will wear away." It was a voice that found comfort in the earth, in native voices like Chief Noah who (unlike Ken Patton) said, "This we know. The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth." Or the words of the poet Nancy Wood who said, "My help is in the mountain/Where I take myself to heal/The earthly wounds/That people give to me." It was an honest voice that acknowledged in first-person singular terms, "I am sometimes lonely, hurt, afraid, confused, angry, and in need of healing." It was about this time that women came into our ministry in greater numbers, that candles of joy and concern came to be lighted, and that words which many had discarded – like prayer, and God, and ritual, and faith – came back, however occasionally and tentatively to our lips. And instead of so much talk about testosterone-fueled self-reliance and Robert Frost’s road-not-taken poem about men who refuse to stop for directions and instead get hopelessly lost, we began to hear more and more about the need for connection and mutuality and win-win and inclusiveness and community. Unitarian Universalist churches used to wax poetic about our gathering "to fearlessly search for truth." Searching is fine, but once in a while it might be nice to find some truth – and I think that more and more we have begun to celebrate not just the search but the discovery of truths, and values, and principles and purposes. There used to be foolish jokes about Unitarian Universalists who burned question marks on peoples’ lawns or who, unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses, knocked on doors but had nothing to say. Beginning a generation or so ago, these UU stereotypes began to feel not just foolish, but embarrassing, and indeed – as we came to more and more talk about our beliefs and not just our disbeliefs – these jokes became unfunny because they became untrue.

And so these people who come to our church seeking healing are neither yahoos nor mushy touchy-feely spirituality saps, nor happy-talking healers…they are truly many of us. And, like adventurers, healers too may actually be found throughout our religious history – particularly on the Universalist side of our tradition and that history is today being rediscovered and appreciated anew. And it is this challenge to listen as much as to speak, to be real as well as to be bold, to acknowledge my own need and dependence and incompleteness…this healing aspect of our coming together is one that speaks to the issue of my life too.

There’s a therapist and native American storyteller named Terry Tafoya who has described two different archetypes in our culture, ones he calls The Orphan and the Seeker. "The Orphan is energized by feelings of pain, disillusionment, loss of faith, abandonment, failure of hopes and dreams, and powerlessness – common feelings in our impersonal world. The Orphan copes with these feelings by acknowledging them and then seeking to be rescued. The Orphan seeks out persons, groups, and structures that will help the Orphan feel safe again…The group and its sense of community become salvation for the Orphan."

The Seeker, on the other hand, "feels less pain than alienation, dissatisfaction and emptiness." And very differently from the Orphan, the Seeker uses feelings of uneasiness as motivation to explore and wander, to take risks and search out the new. The Seeker is always reaching for something better."

So what happens when the Orphan and the Seeker come to First Parish? "The Orphan needs to focus on the pain and needs nurturing and rituals to cope with it. The Orphan will give up individuality to achieve a supportive sense of community." Again, very differently, when the Seeker comes to First Parish, he or she "needs to focus on possibilities and explanation and needs challenges to stimulate and open. The Seeker needs freedom and shies away from commitment."

In Rolfe Gerhardt’s essay, he says that while we are all to some extent both Orphans and Seekers, and our churches must minister to both, he contends that Orphans and Seekers are ultimately incompatible: Seekers’ lust for the new seems scattered and flaky to Orphans, while Orphans seem conservative and inhibiting to the Seekers. Seekers like air raid sirens (once in a while), while Orphans never tire of rainsticks.

Gerhardt thinks that, eventually, we need to make a choice and forthrightly he says that it is his personal opinion that Unitarian Universalists are naturally and historically most suited to attract and minister to Seekers, that other religions are more oriented to meet the needs of Orphans." Whatever new paradigms emerge, he says, he hopes that "we will continue to be there for the Seekers, be there as ministers of the religion of adventure."

I have no interest in excluding anyone, or dividing the Seekers from the Orphans, the sheep from the goats, the saved from the damned, or any of that. I do think it worth carefully noting, however, that the Seekers sometimes see themselves as the minority, the fading older generation, the lost tribe of true Unitarians.

I too want First Parish to remain a welcoming place for those who seek – perhaps not air raid sirens – but religious adventure. I also want this to be a community that – amidst this world of hurt, and loneliness, and sadness and alienation – nurtures, sustains, and helps to heal the hurts.

Let us meditate and pray: God of many names, Spirit of Life: As both orphans and seekers, people in need of healing and people looking for new adventure, may we alike affirm the wisdom of the old poem:

He drew a circle that shut me out – Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win – We drew a circle that took him in. Amen.