SERMON: "Living Tradition: A Collective Inner Life"
Rev. Paul Beedle
February 11, 2007
This morning I am continuing a three-part series of sermons called “Living Tradition,” a title meant to imply the question, “how do we live our tradition?” The idea of doing a series once a year is to share with you a longer and I hope deeper theological reflection than I can achieve in a single sermon. In part one, I said that living our tradition means striving toward an embodied faith, which means that we cultivate ourselves both individually through spiritual practices, and collectively in some way, so that we come to know deeply our shared values and collective will, and live these in ways that the community beyond our walls can experience through us. Today I will talk about how we cultivate ourselves as a faith community, what I'm calling our collective inner life. I'll explore what our tradition suggests about cultivating our connections with one another. Next week I'll consider what our tradition suggests about how we live and move and work together in the world.
I think the theological question of most consequence for developing collective practices and disciplines – spiritual or otherwise – is, what is human nature? Our tradition at its American beginnings held fast to the idea articulated in the biblical book of Genesis that human beings are made in God's image. [1] That's not a statement about God, it's a statement about us. But it poses the problem that we have to know what we mean by God if we're to understand what we're saying about ourselves.
I would suggest that there's meaning in the idea that we are made in God's image that transcends the Bible and the religious traditions that use it. It even transcends the matter of whether or not you believe in God. Some of us use God-language in making meaning of our lives, because it helps. Others of us need not to use God-language in making meaning of our lives, because it gets in the way. But in order to engage one another deeply about the meaning we find and how we found it, and in order to engage our tradition, we all need to be willing to listen to God-language and try to understand what is meant by it. So let's consider this idea that our Unitarian and Universalist forebears embraced, that we are made in God's image.
This enduring idea endures because it captures or describes something real in human experience. The 19th-century Unitarian clergyman Theodore Parker said of true religion that “it is true, like the axioms of geometry, because it is true, and is to be tried by the oracle God places in the breast.” [2] In other words, truth stands on its own authority, not on that of its speaker or the language in which it is clothed, and the human heart can judge it. Let us then try it by heart. What do we know in our hearts about the image of God?
We commonly substitute the phrase “Spirit of Life” for the word “God.” The popularity and endurance of the Carolyn McDade's hymn by that name is evidence of our comfort with that substitution. Our experience shows that hymn is a prayer that most of us can join in good conscience. Our hearts accept it. So let us try the idea that we are made in God's image by making that substitution. If God is the Spirit of Life, and we understand the spirit of something to represent its essence, then we are made in the image of life's essence. I do not mean “life” as something we live but rather as a presence and force in the world – life as something we encounter, and that we are or have within us. The image of life in this sense, I would say, is our vitality.
A good photograph of a living thing captures a sense of its vitality – either you see it acting or sense impending action, or you see some sign of its inner life. I went to the Museum of Natural Science this past week, where there is an exhibit of nature photography. For me, the most arresting photographs were those that showed the vitality of the subject, whether an animal in full stride or a plant in full leaf or bloom, a close-up look into the soulful eyes of a panther, or a moment in the social life of three penguins – there was such a picture, with one male, flipper extended, confronting another with a female sheltering behind him; it might have a scene in a melodrama: “Not one step further, you bounder!”
I enjoy visiting that type of museum because it puts me in touch with the grand and enduring presence of life in the world, its endless variety of expression and form, how ancient it is and how fragile, how much beauty it embodies and produces, and with the fact that the same life that left that fossil or animates that brightly-colored frog also raises the walls of our new building and abides in you and in me. We are part of a vitality so much larger than ourselves, both in space and in time. Surely that is something we mean by speaking of “God,” and equally by speaking of the “Spirit of Life.” I would say that the divine image is our vitality, which is made present and active in the world as our will – our direction, interpretation and operation in the world – and is fueled by our courage and capability – our talents, skills, and powers.
Traditional God-language, in my view, points to this understanding of “God” as the “Spirit of Life.” Even the widespread use of the phrase “God's will” to simply mean “fate,” or else to rationalize what we can't control (which I think is a misuse of that phrase), points to our vitality and will, because it's a way of talking about capability and power: our capabilities, and powers beyond our control. I find unconvincing the quaint idea that we created gods to explain the forces of nature – that religion all goes back to apes screaming at a thunderstorm. My take is that gods are and always have been principles or constellations of principles that reflect how human beings were stoking their courage, discovering their capabilities and making sense and meaning of their lives and the world. It is a different order of thing than mere reaction to the thunder.
Gods are somehow ultimate, in the way that goals and ideals are ultimate – and transcendent in the way that goals and ideals are transcendent: striven toward but never reached, envisioned but invisible. So we have ideals like: God's love, the perfect love; God's wisdom, perfect wisdom; or God's justice, perfect justice; the God's-eye view, that is set back and sees it all, as from the balcony; and so on. The phrase “God's will” is properly of this kind: the perfect will that we wish we had, that brings our full vitality and powers and gifts to life and expression in service to life and the highest good, with love and wisdom and justice and consideration in full bloom in the world. We strive toward it but don't reach it, see it but don't see it, find its image in ourselves and try to body it forth, find it one another and try to foster and encourage and learn of it.
Understanding ourselves as being in God's image, in life's image, expressed and realized as will and power and capabilities directed toward the best love and wisdom and justice, is recognizing and naming something real, and I think universal, in human experience. One doesn't even need to believe in God in the traditional sense to sign on to this view of ourselves as made in the image of vitality. Made by what? By that great vitality described in the Museum of Natural Science, of which we are a part, by life as a presence and force in the world. We can sign on because it's real in our experience, and that's why I believe that this is and always has been the proper reference of God-language.
Not that that's how everyone uses God-language, but when you look into it, I think, this is the way that various uses of God-language hang together and relate over centuries and across traditions, and some expressions in God-language are either sincere tangents from the topic of vitality and will, or else interested digressions. Sincere tangents can be about questions like “what are human capabilities?” or “what is the highest good?” An interested digression might be to talk about social or class limits to your power versus mine, in a word: politics. Reining in these tangents and digressions involves accepting the degree of our ignorance and working as best we can to recognize and realize the good that we grasp in ourselves and in the world.
Having prepared the ground this way, let me read you some of what William Ellery Channing, America's first bold champion of Unitarian theology, wrote about the idea that we are made in God's image: “I affirm, and would maintain, that true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to [God]. Its noblest influence consists in making us more and more partakers of the Divinity. For this it is to be preached. Religious instruction should aim chiefly to turn [our] aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul which constitutes it a bright image of God. ... To [one] who is growing in likeness of God, faith begins ... to change into vision. [One] carries within ... a proof of a Deity, which can only be understood by experience. [One] more than believes, [one] feels the Divine presence ... In proportion as we approach and resemble the mind of God, we are brought into harmony with the creation; for in that proportion we possess the principles from which the universe sprung; we carry within ourselves the perfections of which its beauty, magnificence, order, benevolent adaptations, and boundless purposes are the results and manifestations. ... [T]rue religion ... desires and seeks ... the perpetual unfolding and enlargement of those powers and virtues by which it is constituted [God's] glorious image. ... True religion is known by these high aspirations, hopes, and efforts. And this is the religion which most truly honors God. To honor [God] is not to tremble before ... an unapproachable sovereign, not to utter barren praise which leaves us as it found us. It is to become what we praise.” [3] I trust you can see the resemblance between Channing's God and our Spirit of Life.
So what do we do with this inheritance? How do we feel and experience our connection to one another as a connection to the Spirit of Life? I believe the answer lies in how we regard one another and in what we strive toward together. I believe the feeling and experience of the Spirit of Life as a presence and a force in the world depends upon us recognizing and acting upon the mystery that, though we feel separate, we are connected, as members of a body. [4] Maya Angelou put it this way: “...all signs tell us / It is possible and imperative that we learn / A brave and startling truth / And when we come to it... / We, this people, on this wayward, floating body / Created on this earth, of this earth, / Have the power to fashion for this earth / A climate where every man and every woman / Can live freely without sanctimonious piety / Without crippling fear / When we come to it / We must confess that we are the possible / We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world / That is when, and only when / We come to it.” [5]
And it depends upon a vision of what that looks like in our immediate everyday lives: a guiding star, a touchstone, something enduring that shows us the alignment of our small steps with the goal toward which the Spirit of Life moves. Here's how educator Paulo Freire expressed it: “I hope at least the following will endure: my trust in the people, and my faith in men and women, and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love.” [6]
So what do we do with this inheritance? How do we cultivate our connection to one another as a connection to the Spirit of Life? I believe the answer lies in actively cultivating a collective inner life: taking time and making occasions to ask and listen to each other's reflections on values and what in our behavior bears likeness to God's love and wisdom and justice and will, to put it in Channing's terms – reflecting together on what we strive to be and what might produce “a world where it would be easier to love.” Whenever we speak of values, we're talking about our collective inner life.
So how do we do that? Consultant Meg Wheatley champions a simple, old-fashioned method of discovering our collective inner life: conversation. She writes: “Because conversation is the natural way that humans think together, it is, like all life, messy. Life doesn't move in straight lines and neither does a good conversation. When a conversation begins, people always say things that don't connect. ... Everyone will speak from their unique perspective. ... If we look for superficial commonalities, we never discover the collective wisdom found only in the depths. We have to be willing to listen, curious about the diversity of experiences and ideas. We don't have to make sense of it right away. ... [I]f we suppress the messiness at the beginning, it will find us later on, and then it will be disruptive. ... Messiness has its place. We need it anytime we want better thinking or richer relationships. ... The deeper order that unifies our experience will show itself, but only if we allow chaos early on. The practice of conversation takes courage, faith, and time. ... We have to be willing to let go of our certainty and expect ourselves to be confused for a time. ... It is very difficult to give up our certainties – our positions, our beliefs, our explanations. These help define us; they lie at the heart of our personal identity. ... We don't have to let go of what we believe, but we do need to be curious about what someone else believes. ... And we have to be willing to move into the very uncomfortable place of uncertainty. We can't be creative if we refuse to be confused. ... [W]e don't have to agree with each other in order to think well together. There is no need for us to be joined at the head. We are joined by our human hearts.” [7]
I think she's right about conversation. We are tempted to believe, with all our modern communication tools, that we can connect deeply without deliberate, face-to-face time together. I believe we must resist that temptation. The Spirit of Life is found in our presence with one another. May we build conversation – shared reflection, leisurely presence – into the routine patterns of fellowship and leadership and life in our congregation. May we be joined in all that we do together by our human hearts. So may it be. Amen.
[1] Genesis 1:26
[2] “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity,” in Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism, 2nd edition (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1986); p. 133.
[3] “Likeness to God,” in The Works of William E. Channing (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1888), pp. 291-2, 296
[4] I Corinthians 12
[5] “A Brave and Startling Truth,” written for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations (online at http://www.inspirationpeak.com/poetry/bravetruth.html)
[6] from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, quoted in Margaret J. Wheatley, Turning To One Another (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publisheres, Inc., 2002), p. 9.
[7] Turning To One Another (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publisheres, Inc., 2002), pp. 32-37.