Our November/December worship theme was: Covenant
as inspired by the "Five Smooth Stones" of James Luther Adams' religious liberalism
excerpts from Covenant sermons....
from "the bumper sticker sermon"
.......You see, religions are responses…..Then they are lived out
in the world and they become paradox, and in the paradox, if we are fortunate,
and brave, we become more human. The
ancient Hebrew people lived in a certain time and place, and under a certain
system of interior and exterior domination and even humiliation. They responded. They decided that the world was not chaos.
They decided that the world was not hostile.
They decided that the world was not amoral. They decided that they could
covenant with the Elohim, the great god – make a promise to be people who had
made that decision, and in return the Elohim would love them and lead them into
liberation, over and over again – liberation from other people, liberation from
their own failings and foibles. They
would wrestle angels if they had to, they would know God, if it meant they
could live in a world where being good, and receiving good was possible.
Ancient Christianity was a response to empire. It was a response that said, we admit that we
are David against Goliath with nothing but our pocketful of 5 smooth stones, but
we will bring this empire down. They made a new covenant – they decided that
the world was loving. They would covenant with the new son of God, who knew how
to love in the face of hate, who knew how to love rather than revile, rather
than ignore, rather than judge, rather than defend, rather than flee. They would make a new covenant with this Teacher,
and he would lead them into liberation – from their own terror, and from the
terror of the Roman empire. They would die and live again if it meant that love
was possible in the world.
Eventually that ancient Hebrew tradition became Judaism. Its
covenant met the world, and it changed it, and advanced human goodness in ways
never known before. Paradoxically, the world has thrown its most amoral,
unethical, death-dealing behavior at the people of this tradition….
The ancient Christian tradition met the world with its new
covenant. It defeated empire, and then,
paradoxically, it became empire. The new covenant, as it turned out, was a
good way for Constantine to stay Emperor. Eventually Catholicism with a capital
C arose with its increasingly massive hierarchy. The church got richer and the
people poorer. Protestantism, the
protest, developed, and down came the stained glass…..but the influence of
Empire was never eradicated. The creed was set. The covenant was displaced.
Unitarian Universalism is a response to the primacy of
creed. It is a response to a corporate
bumper-sticker world. It is a religion of radical resistance, and the power of,
as MLK said, the creatively maladjusted. It is a response that makes this
covenant, a paraphrase of the words with which James Luther Adams articulated it
for us in the 1970’s: 1) humans become more human by making promises. 2) then
we break them, because we are human, and the process of being with each other
in that brokenness and remaking the covenant, over and over again is
TRANSFORMING, 3) this covenant of transformation into wholeness is both
individual as well as collective. We are not only responsible for who we
become, we are responsible for the entire character of our given society.
We decided we would let go of all the answers if it meant we
could search for the truth. We would give up all security and absolutes, if we
could believe in a world filled with hope.
from "Our Comprehensive Covenant"....
The body is a huge problem for religions. Man.
Huge. This, really, is what all
of the fuss is about, isn’t it? This is the place where religions begin to
differ. Somewhere inside of you is that pure essence of being, and it shares
the same worth of that pure essence of being that is within me, and we are
already in covenant, always. Every religion recognizes this, and we have our
ways of reminding ourselves and one another – the golden rule, Namaste, the
hongi, the first Principle…we could exist this way, you know, in that pure
energy form, pure breath, pure light….But, we don’t. We’re stuck in these great gallumping forms,
feet in the clay, head in the clouds, senses and emotions throbbing in all
different directions all at once, and most of the time lost to one another
entirely.
Covenant meets world.
So, what to do about this?
Many renounce it. Humanity has a long history of trying to redeem, and
if it cannot redeem, renounce, the body and all its evils. The female body, in particular, is a problem,
but, really, all bodies have got to go. On earth the best you can do is
regulate them – try to make them all the same. Your culture has a norm, try to
fit into it. Try to be the RIGHT size, shape, color, ethnicity, gender and of
the very correct sexual orientation, whatever that is. Don’t deviate, and we’ll
all make it through that way in one piece.
The next life will do away with all of this fuss, and we’ll be able to
see one another again. This life is a test, or it is just plain hell, depending
on your faith, and the body is part of the problem. Don’t think I’m just
speaking about the Kingdom, or Samsara, I’m talking about the religion of the
American secular consumerist dream as well.
Deny the body. Deny
the body and keep the covenant, that’s one way to go.
We go another way. We do not have the creed the kingdom or
Samsara….We have Our Whole Lives, which is comprehensive human sexuality
education for all ages. We call it OWL, though I have to admit that more than a
few 8th graders have told me it’s their own personal hell, and if we're going to be making laws it should be about outlawing it.
OWL says this: Only through the body can you keep the
covenant. Nothing about you being in a body is an accident, everything about
you being in THAT body, is on purpose. Everything about you is on purpose. You will have to be your spiritual self with
and through that bodily self. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY. We do not renounce. We
embrace. We embrace all the thoughts, feelings and behaviors around being born
into that body, being born male or female, being born both, being born neither,
needing to make our way in a new category. We embrace our desire to be
attractive to other people, to be in love, to find pleasure, to satisfy skin
hunger, to accept who we are and how we look and how we move and what we think.
We embrace the vulnerability that comes with intimacy – that to be known for
who we are is a risk, that to care for others, to share with them, to really
like the people you spend time with and want to be liked in return is a risk.
We embrace that risk. We embrace the
reality of all the rules and roles around gender identity and sexual
orientation – we know we are told who to be, who to love, and how. We embrace
challenging those messages, we embrace breaking out of those rules and roles.
We embrace the rainbow spectrum of bodies, genders, sexuality, desire, and
family systems. We embrace the frailty of our bodies, we are responsible for
our own physical health. We are responsible for the physical health of others,
especially those we engage in intimacy with, and our own children, and our
family members. We embrace the difference between pleasure and power, between
attraction and coercion. We are responsible for the behavior of our bodies, at
all times, in all situations, and we do not exploit the bodies of others, and
yes, there’s that one aspect of being human where some bodies can make babies
with other bodies, and that should be done with reverence and with love and
with consciousness and as a decision that two grown people make together.
You want to know why our youth groups hold together the way
they do? OWL. Try talking about this stuff with a group of 12 other people
every year, year in and year out, and see if you don’t stick with them for the
rest of your life.
Because, our brains are hardwired to think about each other
all of the time. Stew did his super
sleuthing, and we found out from social scientist Matthew Lieberman that
thinking about our relationships with other people is our brain’s favorite
activity, and, actually, our default mode. It’s not that we’re interested in
other people, and their attraction to us, and so we think about them. It’s that
we are, all human beings, hardwired to think about other people’s thoughts,
feelings and goals as our baseline of existence on the planet. In other words,
the second you are not thinking about the task at hand you are back to thinking
about other people and your connection to them. This is true in infancy,
becomes almost unbearable in the teenage years, especially if adults think they
can get in the way of it, and continues after the brain and body have reached
full maturity until the day we die. And
I’m thinking, maybe this is why, in the very center of every religion, there’s
this shining little promise about being really and truly good to yourself and
to other people, all of the time. Do bodies get in the way of that? Maybe they
are the very best vehicle for returning to covenant over and over and over
again.
Maybe if each of us can learn to accept how perfect our
imperfect bodies are, how good our imperfect lives are, that yes, through the
wonder and maze of senses, emotions, conflicting desires, heartlongings and
terrifying truths about who we are and what we look like and what we long for
and who we love, we can learn to accept how perfect other imperfect people are,
too. The other way looks good sometimes – know what the pretty little norm is
and stick to it – but it’s dangerous. Everything interesting about everyone
just goes underground. Sometimes it rises again and flowers, but sometimes it rots,
and you cannot keep covenant from such a broken place – not in an individual
relationship, not in the relationship of a nation to its people, or one nation
to another. You can’t ask people to lie about who they are and what they feel
and what they want, and then ask them to keep promises with YOU…No, we need the
authenticity that embracing our bodies and our bodily differences allows. The
world is yearning for this authenticity – for our perfectly imperfect selves.
Covenant is embodied in a faith that is free. My promise to
you is to you on your worst day – with a head cold and a broken heart and no
sleep feeling that everything that is unacceptable about you is hanging out for
the world to see. That’s when we’ll be closest to the truth, that’s when we’ll
know if the hope we are offering the world is worth anything, when we need it
for ourselves. I will practice these
moments of vulnerability with you......
One of the many great sources for these two months of worship services is and has been Victoria Safford. Her book is out of print, but you can get the Kindle version on Amazon!
For many of the services we were making reference to our UUA Action Issue for 2012-2016: Reproductive Justice. I encourage you to read up on this important piece of our faith. I've also referenced Our Whole Lives comprehensive sexuality education, which you can learn more about on the UUA website. We offer OWL here at First U for teens and pre-teens each year.
For more on human beings being "hardwired" for connection, check out the research -much of which is going highly mainstream these days!
Go to www.delanceyplace.com and search "delanceyplace.com 11/12/13 - our brain's favorite activity " for more from Matthew Lieberman
Finally, here are a couple of the poems that we read for our Song of Songs Sunday. Many thanks to everyone who offered up their favorite love poem for inspiration and enjoyment.
'This much I do Remember' by Billy Collins
It was after dinner.
You were talking to me across the table
about something or other,
a greyhound you had seen that day
or a song you liked,
and I was looking past you
over your bare shoulder
at the three oranges lying
on the kitchen counter
next to the small electric bean grinder,
which was also orange,
and the orange and white cruets for vinegar and oil.
Alll of which converged
into a random still life,
so fastened together by the hasp of color,
and so fixed behind the animated
foreground of your
talking and smiling,
gesturing and pouring wine,
and the camber of you shoulders
that I could feel it being painted within me,
brushed on the wall of my skull,
while the tone of your voice
lifted and fell in its flight,
and the three oranges
remained fixed on the counter
the way that stars are said
to be fixed in the universe.
Then all of the moments of the past
began to line up behind that moment
and all of the moments to come
assembled in front of it in a long row,
giving me reason to believe
that this was a moment I had rescued
from millions that rush out of sight
into a darkness behind the eyes.
Even after I have forgotten what year it is,
my middle name,
and the meaning of money,
I will still carry in my pocket
the small coin of that moment,
minted in the kingdom
that we pace through every day.
- Billy Collins
With That Moon Language
Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, What every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
-Hafiz
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