SERMON: "Living Tradition: An Embodied Faith"
Rev. Paul Beedle
January 28, 2007
Once a year I like to do a three-part series of sermons focusing on basic questions of theology. The idea is that, in a single sermon I try to focus on a theme, and while that might involve some exploration of a theological question, it doesn't usually involve talking about how theological questions hang together. In some sermons the theological part amounts to only an assertion of my belief. So I think it's a good idea regularly to share a longer theological reflection.
This series is called “living tradition,” a title meant to imply the question, “how do we live our tradition?” Not too long ago I mentioned to you that, if you notice me talking a lot about Unitarian Universalist history and tradition, if you notice me talking about shared religious practices and religious institutions, it's because that's where the passion is on my spiritual journey right now. I'm interested in the wisdom that our tradition emphasizes, and in how that wisdom translates into how we live our lives. In this series I'm going to focus on ways we live our tradition together, collectively as a congregation. That seems timely, since we are beginning a period of congregation-wide reflection and rediscovery of the values and vision that guide our shared ministries, in order to develop a new long-range plan. It also seems useful, since Unitarian Universalists in general don't often focus on our collective life of faith.
Indeed, a couple of years ago the Unitarian Universalist Association's Commission on Appraisal did a study where the main question was, “what is the center of our faith?” [1] Here's their summary of what their surveys and interviews told them: “Almost universally among UUs, personal experience is considered the most important source of religious conviction. ...We understand experience as encounter rather than perception. ... We are committed to the use of reason to interpret our experience. ... [The statement that] ` The natural world is a web of interdependent connections, of which we are inescapably a part,' is the largest piece of common ground for both ministers and laity. ... We [believe that we] deepen our wisdom in community when we share our stories and engage in dialogue across our differences. ... [We believe that h]umans are born with the potential to be good; we are committed to nurturing good through love and learning. ... We embrace a covenant in love not to `give up on anyone' – to create inclusive community ... The depth dimension of our lives (spirituality) calls us to live mindfully, seek meaning, and serve love. ... We encounter `God' in our own depths, in others, and in nature, seeking wholeness and transformation.” So there's our tradition: rational mysticism – that is, reflection on our direct experience of the mystery and wonder of life – emphasizing encounter and reason, and exploring cosmology (the interdependent web) and morality by those lights.
I worked from that “snapshot” of our faith in last year's sermon series, and I want to remind you of some of my conclusions then, because I found myself building on them as I prepared this series. Last year's series was called “Threads of Faith” – the three sermons are still on our website, tuuc.org; click on “past sermons” and then scroll down to the link for “2005-2006.” I organized that series around the widely-held view that religion is made up of three elements: the mystical, having to do with experience; the speculative, having to do with perceptions and ideas; and the traditional, having to do with the institutions and resources of the faith. Taking these in reverse order, I proposed that spiritual practices (which are conveyed by tradition) are about the question: “what to do with all this beauty?” and that belief is about the question: “what to do with all this truth?” and that spirituality (which is something we experience) is about the question: “what to do with all this good?”
I argued that spiritual practices help us claim our right and our power to name our own experience accurately, to name and interpret the events we witness for ourselves, make our own observations, to listen for the losses that cause sadness, the hurts that bring anger, the threats that inspire fear, the self-appraisals that give rise to guilt or shame, and the graces that give gladness. For this we need our full powers, our full vitality, and effective spiritual practice nurtures the will.
Next I talked about the uses of belief. Acknowledging that there are principles that continue unchanged in the light of new revelation or new truth – as we did yesterday in the Values and Visioning workshop, when we asked ourselves what things about Thoreau have remained constant through all the change we have experienced over the years – nevertheless we also acknowledge the diversity of our experience and beliefs. When we're talking about beliefs, we're not talking about truth. Individual belief is what helps a person get on purposefully with life; collective belief is about what helps a group to realize its purposes. Truth is elusive. Belief lets us get on with our lives. It can help us sometimes to understand our world, or it can help us have the courage to cope or the conviction to act. Sometimes we need the certainty of belief in the face of life's uncertainties. Sometimes we need to question. We can test the truth of our religious beliefs by the consequences of believing: spiritual or moral evidence, not scientific evidence, is what is called for.
Finally, I talked about spirituality and “what to do with all this good?” Spirituality, to my way of thinking, is about finding the still point of my beating heart, the place where I have a sense of inner peace and groundedness; and it's about listening for the still small voice, that voice of conscience or experience that lends me a sense of empowerment and confidence. I get in touch with my spirituality through both reflection and action. And I find that religion – in the sense of a tradition with resources for reflection, and in the sense of an institution with structures and support for action – helps me stay in touch with my spirituality. So it's hard for me to imagine being spiritual without being religious. And I talked about our Sunday worship services as a spiritual practice that we do together.
Behind each of those answers to the questions, “what to do with all this beauty?”, “what to do with all this truth?”, and “what to do with all this good?” – behind my perspectives on the mystical, the speculative, and the traditional elements of religion – lurks the starting place of my theology. Every theology has a starting place. It's composed not only of a cornerstone of truth or belief upon which one builds, but also of one's choice of “the fundamental question to ask.” I call myself a UU Mystic because I believe that a living tradition and a helpful theology both flow from the experiential element of religion. Theology is the speculative element of religion. It's about the search for truth and meaning. So my choice of the fundamental question to ask is, “what do we know from experience?” Whatever we talk about in theology has to refer to real experiences that people have – maybe it's an experience that somebody else has, not necessarily mine or yours, but nevertheless something real in human experience. Of course, there are all kinds of considerations and questions to ask about how we verify something as real, or whether we just believe that it's real and that's good enough to be getting on with, and at the end of the day what do we mean by “real.” I assume that we can work through all that, and I think there is a common ground of reality in human experience that we can talk about.
Having chosen “what do we know from experience?” as my fundamental question, the cornerstone on which I build is that the most basic thing we know from experience is our will. And by that I don't simply mean “what we want.” I mean our will as what we are: all the qualities of vitality and awareness, attention and intention that we have, we experience fundamentally as will. The philosopher Henri Bergson talked about living beings as centers of transformation: foci of redirected force, centers of action and creative evolution. We are not billiard balls. We are not simply knocked about by the world. We take in and store and mold and transform what the world hands us into decisions and action, into interpretive ideas and meanings. That's the sort of thing I mean when I speak of will as what we are. Jacob Needleman says something similar, that: “We are born for meaning ... And we are born for ... the struggle with ourselves and our illusions. ... We are searchers ... And ... we have the possibility and the need to help each other search.” [2]
With appropriate attention, awareness and intention, it is managable for us to know ourselves individually as wills, as centers of transformation. It is more challenging to know another, and yet more challenging to know the will of a group, especially when the group is large. That's why we're going about this long-range planning process so thoroughly. Yesterday's workshop was a process of telling stories, lots of listening, private reflection and shared reflection. In the coming weeks there will be focus groups to continue that process, and there is also a blog where anyone can comment on postings about our ongoing conversations about our future. Both the goals for our future and the leaders of this process of developing them will emerge as we go along. We'll follow the energy and trust the process. And gradually we hope we'll come to know the will of the congregation. And I hope you can see that we're not just doing organizational work through this process. We're doing theology. We're attempting to live our tradition, which tells us that we need not think alike to love alike, and that if we agree in love no other disagreement can do us any injury. The current jargon for this is appreciative inquiry – focus on listening and understanding and appreciating others' stories and views. But at root it's aiming to live as love demands, to be faithful to what connects us and what is best in us and those higher things toward which we strive.
Above all, living our tradition means striving toward an embodied faith. That means that how we live reflects what we believe and the values we cherish. It means that we cultivate ourselves individually through spiritual practices, and it means that we cultivate ourselves somehow collectively, so that the will of the group that we discover can be brought to life and be lived in the world. It means that we know our collective will deeply, and that the community beyond our walls can see our values and faith as a lived reality and living presence in its midst.
In closing, I want to share a meditation practice with you. Take your dominant hand – your right if you're right-handed, your left if you're left-handed – and hold it gently in your non-dominant hand. Just rest them on your lap. Early in my service as interim associate minister at Neighborhood Church in Pasadena CA, I was leaving my upstairs office – I was the last one in the building – and I turned my ankle on the stairs and fell. I had to use a cane to walk for a couple of weeks after that, and it gave me occasion to reflect on my strength and what I took for granted. That year my colleague the Rev. David Keyes was serving as interim senior minister, and we led worship together every Sunday, dividing up parts of the service between us. David almost always did the prayer – when we planned worship together, I'd offer to, but he's always say, “no, I'll do the prayer.” Finally I asked him, “why do you always want to do the prayer?” and he answered, “Because you don't pray, Paul.” Which was true: I'd do a meditation of some kind, but not any traditional form of prayer. So I had the benefit of receiving the prayer all that year. And after my tumble on the stairs, I took to holding my dominant hand in my non-dominant hand – holding my strength – during the prayer. Once a week holding it, warming it, cradling it, letting it rest. It's become what I do with my hands during a prayer – it's become a habit, and a reminder to care for my strength, and a reminder that I can care for my strength using what I regard as not my strength or even my weakness. And that I can ask for help. What kinds of habits can we build to remind us of what we strive toward and how best to strive?
Week after next I will continue this series, considering the question of a collective inner life: what does our tradition suggest about cultivating our connections with one another? The third part of the series will ask, what does our tradition suggest about how we live and move and work together in the world?
Meanwhile, let us share our stories and listen well and reflect deeply in the coming weeks on the future of our congregation. What is our collective will? Toward what do we strive? How will we cultivate our faith community? And how will we embody Unitarian Universalism in the world?
The answers will emerge. So may it be. Amen.
[1] Engaging Our Theological Diversity (Boston: UUA, 2006)
[2] Needleman, p. 5.