“What Does  It Mean To Be Unitarian?”[1]

INTRODUCTION: I’m sure that virtually every adult here has had the fun of interacting with children by telling fairy tales and make-believe. It may have been something so basic as Santa Claus or the “The three little pigs and the big bad wolf,” or “Goldilocks and the three bears.” But apart from the immediate fun of interacting with our little ones, what’s at work in that process? Why scare children with a scary story?

Think of children’s knowledge base as an empty jar. The jar represents the thinking capacity of a human being. When we’re very small, we don’t know very much about reality nor do we have much thinking capacity. So the jar has very little in it. But as we grow, we learn more, and more, and more, and there’s less and less empty space. Knowledge begins to fill the jar.

Now while that’s an interesting point perhaps, here’s a more significant one for today’s topic on “What it means to be Unitarian?” Because of the fact that it takes time – many years, actually – to fill up the empty space, our children choose temporary alternative data…what we call “make-believe.” They turn to stories that fill up the empty space and help to explain things that go “bump” in the night…that explain the monster under the bed…that help us address the fear of dark. It’s the reason little ones love stories told to them that resonate with their reality, that scare them but do so when someone they love is nearby to hug and hold them while they listen to the scary stories of the Big Bad Wolf or kindly monsters in which the good girls and good little boys always win.. 

That’s one of the reasons parents should tell kids about Santa Claus and make-believe. It’s the way children fill in the knowledge deficit with which they live. Children fill in their deficit with awesome and wonderful make-believe stories from our culture. They like to hear it over and over…it reinforces their understanding of the way the world is.

There are data that demonstrate that every child believes in God. That belief helps to fill the bottle, so to speak. It explains the unexplainable. It’s perfectly appropriate for little children to learn about God, Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha…in the same way that they learn about other parts of the matrix of Western civilization.

Which brings up a seemingly contradictory point: Some questions…some empty spaces…remain empty long after our childhood need for fairytales and make-believe are addressed. While little children will eventually begin to replace their empty bottle with concrete data and awareness of how things are, there are some areas in which that will not happen. The knowledge deficit will not only continue, but will grow.

As adults, we will face questions far more serious than those knowledge deficits that children face. For example, the age-old question of “why?” Why are things the way they are? Why death, disease, suffering, guilt, war, and environmental disaster?

Why do nations such as ours, on a planet such as ours, let Big Oil buy the votes of politicians through campaign contributions, thereby allowing our fragile eco-system to be raped and pillaged because of our addiction to fossil fuels? The government agency in charge of regulating drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico is the same one that a very few years ago was found to be having drunken, drug and sex-filled parties with employees of the oil companies they were supposedly regulating. In effect, the foxes had bought, boxed and wrapped with a ribbon, the very agency charged with making sure they followed costly safety procedures that go with drilling for oil at such enormous depths. What that means that our regulators were bribed into safety shortcuts and now the chickens have come home to roost. And the president, like most presidents, has announced in no uncertain terms that he is slamming the door of the barn, even though the horses are out. Does anyone not remember that it was only a few months ago that we were told he was going to ease the restrictions on drilling in the Gulf, with deep drilling oil wells being permitted closer to Florida’s beaches? There was no mention whatsoever of getting tough on the government’s regulatory agency. Why does that have to happen? Eleven people died and a catastrophic ecological disaster is unfolding as I speak.

Or why in a nation like ours, even one with a brilliant and courageous president, why do we continue to think war can bring peace? And we believe it so much that we continue to send young women and men trained in killing, to kill people 10,000 miles away, who only in the most tangential way have anything whatsoever to do with America.

I listened the other night to General Stanley McCrystal, the commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, being interviewed about the status of the war effort there. He did a great job in the interview. It was clear he knew what was happening, that he had a plan, and was doing everything possible to ensure its success. But never once did he mention things like, “It only took us 14 young American women and men getting killed to secure that area.” Or “I really appreciate the 5,000 mothers and fathers who gave the military their sons and daughters to be killed.” Or, “Let me take a moment to tell Ms Sherry Smith I’m so sorry she won’t have a husband to help her raise that little two year old;” or to tell Ms Laura Johnson, “I’m sorry about your being pregnant and losing your husband or father to be in Afghanistan.” Or “I know that you who have lost a loved one will be happy to learn that we killed 148 Afghans, who were also husbands of wives and sons of mothers.” Oh yes: “Gosh, it was too bad about those little Afghan children who got blown up in one of our anti-insurgency expeditions.”

Nothing like that will ever be said. Why? We Americans can’t even handle newspaper pictures or television footage of the death and destruction we’re causing, much less a general who might tell us the truth and not hide behind statistics and made-up campaign names and slogans.

So like little children, we listen to the General McCrystals and fill up our information bottle with garbage about campaign and battle strategies, and peace initiatives. Meanwhile, young men barely shaving…young women who never had their babies…have been given a gun, and they die dead. They bleed. Their bodies are ripped apart.

And their buddies are watching…they survived and they store that information…and if and when they get back to the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” one day they’re walking down the sidewalk to the restaurant with family and friends, and a firecracker goes off. That former soldier screams. His training to kill, which you and I paid for with our taxes, kicks in and those memories he stored take over and he can’t keep them suppressed. He’s back in Iraq and fighting for survival.

He’s Baker Acted, and they take him to a mental ward or maybe eventually to the Vets hospital, but they’re overcrowded and understaffed. And one day he’s released and when he tries to get a job, no one will hire an ex-soldier who has been in a mental ward. Now he’s at the access road of the intersection off of I-75 and Colonial. He’s begging for money to buy food, but what he really wants is money to buy a drink, but not one drink, another drink and another drink, and another drink that will hopefully erase the pain and the memory of the family or families he killed and the blood he spilled, and the horror he saw.

At some street intersection the other day, I gave a man a $1 bill who purported to be a homeless veteran. He probably was, since vets make up a significant segment of the homeless. They also comprise a disproportionate number of those struggling with mental illness, which in many cases involve former fighting women and men – that is a euphemism for being not only trained to kill, but killing. And when they get home, they return to the routines of life in America, and they are acting perfectly normal. Then one day, they turn a dark corner and suddenly that stored information, from a past “turning of a dark corner,” rushes to the present, and they “go crazy.” Why? because we human beings are not meant to be professional killers. Killing other human beings, even though we call it “war,” violates our natural propensities.

Why, for God’s sake, do we have a form of government that requires millions upon millions of dollars to run for election? And when a man and occasionally a woman is elected, she or he has of necessity to cater to those who paid for the campaign. Especially those for whom the engines of war are money-making, multi-millionaire producing, war profiteering, machines of industry – the military industrial complex.

You and I have filled our knowledge jars with all kinds of garbage to help us avoid confronting the reality of being citizens of a nation that keeps getting better at killing the oppressed, the dark-skinned, the Muslims…that has made enormous strides in keeping the killing off of TV and out of the news…and we rest at night with no awareness of the horrible things going on around the world, in our name, in wars of choice which we initiated.

That veteran on the corner is an unpleasant reminder that our jar is filled with hokum. So next time you see one begging, lock your door and roll down the window. Give him a dollar. Look him in the eye. Ask him how he’s doing. Say, “I wish I could do more.” Treat him like a human being.

Pardon the digression. But, it’s not a digression. My point is, sometimes life deals us more than we can handle. And when that happens, we need comfort data…data that help us make it to Friday. Sometimes that’s religion that preaches God loves you, that Jesus cares for you, and wonderful things will happen to us when we die.

And in the same way that we don’t tell little children there is no such thing as Santa Claus, we should not be telling people there’s no loving God, no resurrected Jesus, no heaven with 42 virgins awaiting. Those are comfort data to some…and it’s only when you are willing to live with ambiguity…with uncertainty…to live the questions…that you can begin to build a life based upon a new kind of understanding.

Such as, most of the gods of most religions are comfort data…constructions to fill the void…to enable life to be lived. But to try and prove that beliefs about God, Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, the Buddha, are mythologies, miss the point. They are not only comfort data, but they may also be “truthful” insights to the reality before which we all stand. “Truthful” is not the same as the truth. Myths may be the baggage carrying truthful insights about reality. Those truths may well be poetic in a way that resonates with our innermost beings as nothing else can.

Last Sunday, Darlene Mitchell, sang from our hymnal, “Precious Lord, take my hand.” I knew every word of that gospel hymn; I once sang it with a gospel quartet, harmonized it with my sister in a duet, and when I hear it now, all the wonderful rich memories of the past flood my awareness. I was almost ready to have an altar call when she finished.

But listen a moment: That hymn was really no different than Einstein’s asking the question, “Is the Universe a friendly place?” The hymn was saying, I hope so, and if it is, would you help me a little…would you take my hand… would you take the lead here, because if you don’t I’m going to be in deep jell-o.

So one part of what it means to be a Unitarian is to understand that, “All religions are not fact based; but all are mytho-poetically based.” Why is that? Because life is not a fact. Nor is living a fact. Nor is dying. Nor is grief. Nor is sadness and depression and disappointment and hurt and pain. Which is why we have to have more than facticity to make it to Sunday. We have to have more than the negativism of atheism. We have to have more than humanism. We have to have something that will take us by the hand and lead us to the promise of a better tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

So listen for a moment, and I’m going to lay out some comfort data, that can also be thought of as theological facts.

1. We are born with an innate sense of confidence in the created order. When care-givers hug and hold their babies and toddlers…when they respond to the cries of their infants…and feed them when they are hungry…and change their diaper when they’re dirty…those care-givers are reinforcing the trust and original faith that we all have in the world of which we are a part. We all have it.

2. At some point in life, we began to be aware of bigger than life issues. That’s really the point of the Buddha myth. His father had sought to shield him from the realities of life, but on his own he discovered suffering, aging and death. Realities larger than we are. In our society, it’s usually an awareness of what most call God.

3. It’s then that we make choices about how we address the gaps in our database. It’s at this stage that we may make decisions that duplicate the religious choices of our parents or we may choose a 180 degree different option. Later, life may challenge our choice and cause us to reject or to search for a different way of filling up the void. That’s the story of many Unitarians.

CONCLUSION.

So what does it mean to be Unitarian:

First, it is to understand that all religions and creeds are mytho-poetic in nature. The creation stories in Genesis, Moses on Mt. Sinai, the resurrection of Jesus, the angel’s visit to Muhammad, the Buddha’s princely discoveries, Joseph Smith’s golden tablets. All are mytho-poetic….

Secondly, while mythologies are not facts, they can be carriers of truthfulness about life and the human condition. The message of Muhammad was so powerful, it changed an entire continent…the followers of Jesus overthrew an empire…and Moses gave us a people who have made vast contributions to Western civilization. The Buddha has become a source for connecting to our inner self unlike anything else available. Recognizing that they are mytho-poetic in origin is not to diminish them, but to elevate them above the level of history books and facticity.

And third, we believe the Universe is more friendly than unfriendly…which if put mytho-poetically is another way of expressing faith in God. That at least 51% of the time we believe this Universe is an incredible place to be living. And until a Hurricane Charlie comes along, or an incompetent oil-man who spells his name right takes us into a totally unnecessary war, it may even be 60 or 70% friendly for those of us living in Ft. Myers, Florida USA.

So sing and rejoice. Tell the old, old story. Hear, O Israel. Proclaim the discovery of the prophet. It’s okay. It’s what it means to be a Unitarian.

Shalom, Salaam Aleikum, Amen, and Blessed Be.