“To Whom or What  Are We As UUs Responsible?”[1]

INTRODUCTION: During the 19^th Century, over the 75 year span of what was called the “Orphan Train Movement,” it’s estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 "abandoned" children in New York City were relocated to new homes via the Orphan Trains. At the start of the 20^th century, the last stop of one such train was Ft. Worth, Texas. Those left-over, abandoned children, who had made the train trip from New York City, but had not been chosen at any stop, were placed in what later would became a home for unwed mothers, and is known today as the Edna Gladney Center for Adoption. In the early 1980s, while living in Ft. Worth, Texas, I knew a family who had three children, all of whom were adopted through Edna Gladney.

        One of the procedures then, when they placed a second child with an adoptive family, was to have the first child bring out her or his new sister or brother and present the new sibling to the new parents.

        My friends explained that their first adopted child, Ronnie, had proudly followed this ritual and with a nurse’s help had brought out his new sister and given her to his parents. And the same procedure, only with two siblings, was followed for their third child as well.

        It so happened, however, as the years passed that the second child exhibited all the traits of what we sometimes call the “middle child syndrome.” In short, she could be a real pill.

        One night at the dinner table, she was especially acting out, when her older brother Ronnie suddenly lay his head down on the table and began to cry. In surprise, his father leaned over both to console and to find out what was wrong. Finally, Ronnie lifted up his head and pointed at his sister and said, “Oh, Daddy! I got the wrong one.”

        Now I imagine that there are some of you here this morning who understand that feeling. Maybe it’s not having chosen the wrong sibling, but of having made significant wrong decisions or taken wrong turns in life. At some time or place in life, you feel like you too made the wrong choice. You got the wrong one – the wrong spouse or partner, the wrong occupation or profession, bought the wrong house, chosen the wrong city, the wrong college, the wrong major, etc., etc.

        You too, may have felt like laying your head down upon the table and crying, “I got the wrong one.”

        I know I have. But the arena of my choice was much different than any of those things I’ve mentioned above. It was much more related to my religious self-understanding. Let me explain what I mean.

        I was reared in the very loving home of two Pentecostal Holiness ministers. Religious faith was our life. We ate it and slept it.

        After high school, I went off for four years of Bible College, and then to the University. What a shocking experience it was for my very sheltered religious outlook. The very first American literature course I took included a reading from Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason. I was devastated by what I read. I didn’t know anyone would dare to say such things, much less commit them to writing.

        But guess what? I believed them. Although I fought desperately not to, inwardly I believed every word. They seemed the most logical, reasonable thing I had ever heard. And after resisting for a few years, I finally gave in and realized that I did not believe as I had been taught and reared. I left the church of my first 26 years, and joined what was for me a very liberal denomination at that time, the United Methodist Church.

        In three years of master’s level graduate study in philosophy and theology, I found nothing to dislodge my lack of belief. But it was not only an intellectual and mental decision. My life experience also validated the change I had made. Perhaps the most forceful demonstration occurred when for the only time in my life to that point, I felt that I was facing imminent death.

        I was in East Africa, shooting a television documentary on a Masai tribesperson. There were some 20 of us. We had been in one part of Kenya, and we spent the balance of the day traveling to Tanzania. Just through the border crossing, 100-yards or so away, we saw what we thought was a water buffalo lying near the side of the road. But when we got close enough to disturb it, we discovered it was a mammoth male lion.

        It ran and we journeyed on to the Ngora Ngora Crater, and its tent city on the rim of the dormant volcano, where we were to spend the night. Everything was tents: cafeteria, restrooms, office, and sleeping quarters. It was run by one of East Africa’s well-known Professional White Hunters.

        After we were situated and turned in for the night, I had hardly closed my eyes, when in the distance, I heard the roar of a lion. I immediately thought of the huge lion we had seen on our way in. My tent mate and our guide, said, “That’s strange.”

        We lay there a little longer, and there was another roar, only this time it was louder and closer, followed by screams. I sat up in my cot and my guide said, “Don’t even think about going outside. The owner of the camp is an experienced hunter. He will take care of any problems that might arise.”

        I lay back down, and before long the loud roar of the lion was just outside our tent. I looked up at one corner of the tent, where outside a light shone, and I could see the paw of a lion batting the tent. For the first time ever, I realized the possibility of my death was very real.

        Fortunately, there was no lion. The cast and crew had dreamed up this little episode back in Nairobi just for me. They had bought a tape of a lion roaring and then had used the portable amplifying equipment we had to magnify the lion’s roar. They started at one end of the camp, walking forward and added screaming as appropriate. And someone’s fist had been the lion’s paw.

Later, upon reflection, I realized that in the midst of that experience, I didn’t suddenly revert to the faith practices of my heritage. I didn’t pray for God to save me. I hadn’t begun to cry out in fear of dying and going to hell. No, I was angry that I was in a tent on a mountain in Tanzania about to be eaten by a lion.

        The point was, in the face of death by lion, I didn’t resort to my faith heritage. But what was my faith identity? Reared and trained in the Pentecostal Holiness Church, educated and credentialed in the United Methodist Church…having served as an evangelist in the former and as pastor in the latter…I came out of that richest of experiences believing, there was no there, there.

        Then several years later, I traveled to what many call the Holy Land – the modern nation of Israel, as well as the Territories of Palestine which Israel has occupied since the end of the Six Days War in 1967. As a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University, I was conducting primary research for my doctoral project, one part of which was visiting every place that the Gospel of Matthew states that Jesus had been. From Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Jordan, the Sea of Galilee, the River Jordan, the Mt. of Olives, and on the list goes: Everywhere Jesus was supposed to have gone according to St. Matthew, I went. But in the midst of my research and visits to these most sacred of spaces, and afterwards, I thought to myself, there’s no there here either.

        Then in January 1990, as a part of my New Year’s evaluation and planning, I made an important choice…to check out the Unitarian Church. My life had undergone several significant changes and I recognized the need to get out of the hole I had dug for myself. Visiting a different church seemed a good way to start. As I sat through my very first Unitarian service, even though the sermon was delivered by a student intern, I thought to myself, this is it. There’s a there here.

But what was that “there?” What is it we have that has kept the same kind of spiritual awareness present that was there in OKC in 1990? What keeps us together as a community of faith? What is it that joins us? To whom or what are we responsible?

        In the church of my original heritage, this would be the time for the altar call, when with every head bowed, and every eye closed, we would sing the first verse of Just as I am, repeating it twenty times if necessary until you bunch of sinners realize that you are standing on a banana peel ready to slip and slide into the slimy slums of the underworld.

But Unitarian Universalists don’t think of themselves as sinners needing to be saved from hell. So to whom or what are we responsible? As my Miss Joyce suggested when we discussed the title over dinner, we are responsible to ourselves, to those we love, and to the world around us. But there’s more.

As a specific kind of liberal religious we UUs believe that education, science and openness to life and learning can add greatly in informing a life of faith. But there is more to it than science and education…more to it that logic and reason.

We believe that faith’s journey is not to reach a certain set point…a grand conclusion…or a list of beliefs. Nor do we believe that we will one day sing with the angels and listen forever to harps play and choirs perform. Nor is it about mansions and streets made with gold.

Rather, the reward is the journey itself. I wouldn’t take for my 26 years as a Pentecostal Holiness, nor for my youthful years as an evangelist. Ditto for the seven years I worked for Oral Roberts, nor the education and opportunity that higher education at two United Methodist universities provided. Ditto for the past 21 years as a Unitarian Universalist minister, and the four UU congregations I’ve served, and All Faiths makes five.

In fact, to put it very simply, the journey is the reward. Unitarian Universalists are not searching for a guru…we’re not seeking the final answers…rather, we understand that where we started, where we went, and where we are, is all a part of the reward of searching.

It’s one of the reasons that I always treasure the experience of engaging with someone who believes what I used to believe. I remember the time and the place…the pain and the joy…the reward that comes from the journey itself.

CONCLUSION

I do want you to consider this: If you and I are a snapshot of the big picture…if we are a microcosm of the macrocosm…if we are a part of the whole…then everything out there is in here. Everything up there is down here. It means that divinity is not off somewhere, but here in our world and time. And we can find that rhythm to life through recognizing the unique opportunity that we have in this liberal religious tradition.

We don't have to worry about believing six impossible things before breakfast. We can experiment. We can try different things. We can accept, reject, finish and start all over. But the possibility of a life lived to the fullest, in harmony and wholeness with all that we are is each of ours.

Remember: The journey we are on right now…that is the reward.

Namaste. Shalom. Salaam Aleikum. Amen. And Blessed Be.