“THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM:

III. Acceptance of One Another, and Encouragement to Spiritual Growth.”[1]

INTRODUCTION: Andrei Sakharov, the great Russian nuclear physicist and political dissident during the days of Communist Russia, once asked his wife, “Do you know what I love most of all in life?” His wife, Elena Bonner said, “I have no idea.” (She confided years later in life that she expected him to say the name of some poem or sonata, or even something about her.)

            But no, this is what Sakharov said, “The thing I love most in life is radio feedback emanation.”[2] What he was referring to, as some of us might know, were the barely discernible radio waves that reach us here on Earth from outer space, and which reflect unknown cosmic processes that ended billions of years ago.

            As a past UUA president, Bill Schultz, said, in reflecting upon this statement, “What Sakharov meant, of course, was that he loved the mysteries which the Cosmos hands us, the grandeur and immensity of this thing we call Creation. And he loved the fact that we human beings can occasionally get a glimpse of those mysteries and that grandeur, even the parts whose work was done billions of years ago.”[3]

I. THAT’S A FAITH STATEMENT AS WELL.

Sakharov relished the implications of radio feedback emanation, especially when combined with Edwin Hubble’s discovery that the Universe is racing away from its center (we’re traveling away at 42,000+ miles an hour). But at the root of our questions is much the same fascination. We are addressed by the questions of existence, the Mystery of our time, and place on Planet Earth and in the Cosmos.

Where did we come from? Why must life end?

What gives life meaning?

And how should we live?

Those are questions about the mystery of it all.

It is out of response to those questions that the great and small religions of the world have arisen. Unitarian Universalists respect those poetic retellings of the origins of their faith, but we would never reduce those several faiths to facticity, namely, making their revelations rise or fall upon their ability to demonstrate their being objectively demonstrable historical facts: Moses and the Torah are living documents transmitting a time and truth that rise above historicity. Jesus and the host of stories proclaiming a virgin birth, a cosmic death, and a supernatural resurrection from the dead, are attempts to transcend the limitations of language to say Jesus was more More than anyone they had ever encountered. The story of the Buddha is an inspiring search for the truth mired in a perception that we humans were locked in to a cycle of reincarnation; the Four Noble Truths, and The eightfold path to righteous living, were a path to breaking that endless cycle. And when the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, reported upon a once-and-for-all decisive revelation from God, it brought a dynamic of self-understanding into the Middle East that transformed attitudes, practices and self-understanding.

The same is true of many other religions of the world. Unitarian Universalists respect their insights, their wisdom, their value and their worth. They truly embody much of the wisdom of the world in the answers they proclaim to the great questions of life. But what is the uniqueness which Unitarian Universalism brings to the table?

II. WHAT MAKES UUs DIFFERENT?

Some Unitarian Universalist members have strong Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Humanist or Atheist orientation. But they have also come to appreciate a characteristic that sets Unitarian Universalists apart: Like Sakharov, they love the Mystery. They love the radio wave emanations. They may even love the question more than the answer.

There’s a wonderful story about UUs' intense love of the question that is almost a part of our oral tradition:

It seems that one day those who have just died discovered themselves walking upward on a road. They come to a fork in the road with two signs: One points right and says, “Heaven.” Most people take that road. Another sign points to the left and say, “Lecture on ‘Is there a heaven?’” Most UUS choose the road pointing to the discussion of whether there is a heaven, rather than going to heaven?

Like Sakharov, they chose “radio wave emanations.”

Think of the wonder of the Cosmos, whether in its grandeur or in its minuteness…our bodies are almost a universe within. Or take a shovel of dirt and count the enormous number of living things therein. What a wonder our bodies, the dirt, the water, the trees, the plants, the birds, the butterflies, the bees, the organisms, bacteria, and viruses that inhabit and sustain us – what a wonder they are.

Then turn to the Cosmos in its grandeur and wonder at the magnitude of it as well. Yet despite all the advances that we have made and continue to make, there is still so much, much more beyond the pale of our understanding.

A U minister was once asked, “Where do UUs stand on the question of God?” He answered, “We don’t: We move.” The truth is that answers to life’s questions constantly change as life changes. That’s especially so as we face the issues surrounding the end of life.

I’ve held the hand of the dying who have not even reached middle age, and with children of only a few years. They asked, “Is there life after death? Am I going to heaven?” That’s not a time to engage in theological debate. The most comforting and honest thing I could say was, “If there is such place, if there is such an existence, I’m positive you will be a part of it.”

I’ve also gripped the hand of those advanced in years, with minds still sharp but bodies weak, who believed as I believed about many of the great questions of life. And yet, as I repeated the 23^rd Psalm or recited the Our Father, tears came down their cheeks. They felt a deep tie to the poetry of the past, and its portrayal of the Mystery of existence. And in every instance, I’ve walked away shaking my head. What a life we’ve been given! What a mystery is ours to behold!

So what does it mean to say as Unitarian Universalists say in their third principle: We Covenant to Affirm and Promote “Acceptance of One Another and Encouragement to Spiritual Growth in Our Congregations.”

III. SPIRITUAL GROWTH BEGINS WHEN:

WE NO LONGER TAKE LIFE FOR GRANTED.

At different times in our lives, we may experience some kind of wake-up call. While we may realize that much of life is determined, that we are conditioned biologically, culturally and emotionally, there is also a very small, but significant part of us that isn’t. And like the steering wheel of a car, that little bit has a lot to say about how we spend our lives and where we invest our time and energy.

I’m aware that many of us have had those wake-up calls in our lives. We once lived as though life would endure forever, so eat, drink and be merry. Then something happened to tell us, that much of life is what we make of it. Much of life depends upon the decisions we make about our time, our relationships, our money.

In fact, we are perhaps the only species that has the capacity to reflect upon the way we have lived our lives in the past, and then determine to change the way we are living in the present and future. So the first indication of spiritual growth in an individual and congregation is when we as individuals and as congregations determine to take responsibility for how we live our lives.

I’ve had those wake-up moments myself. Several years ago in another city, I looked out the second-story window of the town-house I was renting. The view below was of a Dempsey Dumpster. That giant garbage can symbolized exactly how I felt. The only thing that might have been closer to my feelings was an outdoor toilet.

As I stood there, I remembered a youthful goal of how much net worth I wanted to have by the time I was 40, and how close I had come. Now all my assets were gone.

I once had a great position near the top with a tremendous company doing wonderful work all over the globe. That too was gone.

The previous Christmas Eve, my family and I were driving to the kids’ grandparents. I felt so proud of them. We stopped at a restaurant on the way for breakfast. As we were leaving, a gentleman eating alone noted how beautiful they all looked – my former Miss America wife, my Choctaw Indian daughter, my other daughter, son and step son. He said to me, “You have a beautiful family.” Then he added as if prescient, “Be sure you don’t lose it.” But I had done just that. Now as I looked out the window, those kinds of events washed over me. So much that I had worked for and dreamed of: All gone!

As darkness settled in, I sat down at my Radio Shack Model 4 computer. In the process of writing, I had a life-changing insight: Though I had many friends and loved ones, the future was up to me. I could not take life for granted.

So I began to list the things that were important to me, and what I would do about them in the coming week. One was to go into therapy to combat the poor pitiful me party I couldn’t quit holding; another was to run four miles a day to enable my body to help; another was to return to graduate school and get a doctorate; others concerned daily interactions with my kids, and my aged parents. And out of that list eventually came a decision to return to parish ministry.

There were other commitments, equally important. And despite my starting over, these past almost 25 years have been among the richest of my life; 20 of them have been in parish ministry as a Unitarian Universalist minister, ten of which have been at All Faiths, which we will celebrate this next February 2011 on Founders Day. And the central lesson I learned was that “Spiritual growth can begin when we no longer take life for granted.”

IV. The key to acceptance of one another is the ability

to put ourselves in the place of others.

In pre-civil war days, Unitarian minister, the Rev. Theodore Parker, was being violently attacked for his insistence that people of all races could attend the Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. It precipitated bitter threats and controversy. It reached a fever pitch when some members threatened to physically remove any African-Americans who tried to attend their services.

            The next Sunday, the church filled up, and as there had been before, it included Blacks and Whites. There was an undertone of anger, and a potential riot in the making – in church.

            Dr. Parker came in from a side door and walked up to the pulpit. He reached in to his belt and pulled out a loaded pistol. The undercurrent stopped. He then said, “I will shoot anyone who tries to remove the Negroes from this service.” No one did.

            The thrust of all the great religions in the world is built upon the capacity of people who not only have become aware of the difference they can make in the world, but who also feel the pain of others, who have the capacity to realize what it must be like to be different than the minority, and not to be like everybody else.

            So where does hate come from? Here’s an awesome answer.

CONCLUSION

In the 1948 Broadway musical, "South Pacific," the drama revolves around Nellie, a plucky young woman from Little Rock, Ark., who during World War II longs to see distant places and meet different kinds of people. As a Navy nurse, Nellie gets her wish when she ships out to the South Pacific. There on one of the islands, she falls in love with an elegant Frenchman, Emile. But later, when she discovers he has two mixed-race island children—their dead mother was an island native—she breaks off the relationship. "I can't help it," Nellie cries. "This is something that is born in me." But her friend Marine Lt. Joe Cable insists that racism is learned:

"You've got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made

And people whose skin is a different shade

You've got to be carefully taught."

In the out-of-town tryouts before taking the production to Broadway, there was pressure on Rogers and Hammerstein, to change the words or else cut the song, but lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II refused. He took issue with the notion that human beings are born bigoted. We have to be taught to hate as children, the song says; it doesn't come naturally.

James Michener, who wrote Tales of the South Pacific, on which the musical was based, recalled, "The authors said this number represented why they had wanted to do the play, and that even if it meant the failure of the production, it was going to stay in." Michener wrote in The World Is My Home that an agitated man accosted him at New Haven’s Union Station and warned: “Your play will fail if you leave that song in about racial prejudice. It’s ugly, it’s untimely and it’s not what patrons want to hear when they go to a musical.” He was wrong: It ran for years, and won every award possible, as did the many starring actors and actresses. But at the time, it was a pure act of courage in its birthing.

For example, when South Pacific was performed in Atlanta in the early 1950s, it was denounced on the floor of the Georgia Legislature, and labeled “propaganda inspired by Moscow." One legislator said, "Intermarriage produces half-breeds, and half-breeds are not conducive to the higher type of society…a song justifying interracial marriage was a threat to the American way of life.”

            Thanks to a host of brave civil rights figures, today the issues have changed significantly. But we still have arenas in which our voice needs to be heard. We have the opportunity in 2010 to speak out for the acceptance of others, whether it’s race, undocumented workers, former felons, or persons of same-sex orientation. Remember: “You have to be taught to hate…You have to be carefully taught.”

Shalom. Salaam Aleikum. Amen. And Blessed Be.