Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Last week, someone asked me what my sermon title was for today. I answered, “Masculine Spirituality.” They said, “What’s that?”

So I have a series of questions I would like to ask you, and to have you respond to them aloud. The correct answer is either “women” or “men.” So here goes:

1. Who wrote the 39 books of what Christians call, “the Old Testament” – women or men?

So in one sense, if we want to identify what “masculine spirituality” is, we have only to examine where many of us came from – the masculine religions of the mainstream.

Now before we go further we need to define the difference between “religion” and “spirituality.” Some have suggested that in the reaction to and rejection of the 1960s to organized authority and established institutions, religion fell within those rejected categories. But since human beings have a seeming innate need to be religious, the option of being “spiritual, but not belonging to any organized religion” became a somewhat common option.

But does it have to be “either/or,” or can it be “both/and?” To me, the major difference is that “spirituality” is one’s personal and private religious life. Religion, though, refers to one’s public religious activities. Given that definition, one could be religious but not be spiritual; one could be spiritual, but not religious; one could be religious and spiritual. I think many of us here try to be both.

Regardless of which of those choices we make, the truth of the matter is that religion has most nearly always fallen within the purview of male domination. It’s had male only priests and clergy, male bishops and leaders, male deacons and church officials. Equally important, it’s also true, that because these public avenues were closed to women, they then turned to spirituality as a field where they were relatively free to explore and express themselves privately.

In fact, when one studies early religious environments, there was sometimes considerable tension between male religious leaders, and female spiritual practitioners who gained wide public acclaim. Women, by strength of their lives and devotion, became religious leaders, and hence, a threat to the established order of things where men had exclusive control.

1. Religion is public; spirituality is private. Or to put it another way, religion is external; spirituality is internal.

2. Women historically turned to spirituality when significant arenas of religious leadership were denied to them.

3. The upshot of those developments is twofold: It is still more culturally acceptable for men to fill positions of hierarchical leadership, and it is not surprising that women have a more richly developed orientation to spirituality than men. Now since there were several nuances and caveats in that sentence, please let me repeat it: Because of our history, men are accustomed to holding positions of leadership in religion, and, not surprisingly, some women are supportive of that; however, on the opposite end of the continuum, precisely because women were denied leadership in public religion, they have a much deeper historical tie to spirituality, and a more natural inclination towards spirituality.

That being so, then the question posed is, what kind of spiritual options has male dominated religious hierarchical leadership provided us? (Please note that those are descriptive terms rather than pejorative, even though in today’s society, they are usually viewed negatively.)

Last year, in July, Dr. Amanda Evans made a presentation during our summer series, which explored some research that Kay Riegler had initially shared with her. It challenged popular and scientific research suggesting that both women and men have a “fight or flight” function, when threatened. The research suggested rather, that it was a male trait, and not female.

The studies also showed that in primitive times, that trait among men was a survival issue, arising when men were facing predators and dangerous situations. But today in civilized society, though men still have that residual capacity, it’s more likely to show up in their reaction to stressful situations. Men are more likely to cope with stress via social withdrawal, substance abuse, and aggression…which may also be why they die earlier than women on average.

Women, on the other hand, research shows, are much more likely to “tend and befriend” or “network and nurture,” than stay and fight or to run away. They are more likely to cope with stress through seeking or providing social support. They turn to others both to receive and give help. This pattern of “tend and befriend” suggests that in times of stress, women are more likely to demonstrate protective responses to stress in their family and those in their immediate circle.

Another distinction between the two kinds of responses was made by one scientist who characterized the tendency of men to direct their fight or flight actions in an "against" or "away from" manner, while women tend to direct their actions in a "for" or "towards" manner. Let me repeat that:

Men tend to direct their fight or flight mechanism in an "against" or "away from" manner, while women tend to direct theirs in a "for" or "towards" manner.

Now with that said, let’s transition to this question: If our religious institutions reflect our historically male, dominating perceptions, what kinds of theology has it produced?

1. Separateness. There are many competing issues masculine theological traits, but perhaps the most lasting has been the notion of separateness, transcendence, and the supernatural. In other words, God is separate and apart from everything…operating within a special divine sphere…and not subject to the limits of the created order. This separateness reflects a masculine understanding of our separateness portrayed religiously from one generation to the next.

But as Einstein has so often been quoted in saying, "A human being is a part of the whole called by us ‘the universe,’ a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest, which is a kind of optical illusion of consciousness."

Our science is exploding that myth, especially in genetics. From a nonscientific perspective at least, it seems that we are on the cusp of making phenomenal breakthroughs in genetic understanding. It may even enable us to address many of the most ravaging diseases of our species, including the possibility even aging itself.

But apart from these hopeful signs, there is one very pervasive reality: We are connected in ways never imagined. Studies showed that even Barach Obama and Dick Cheney are distant relations, for crying out loud!

So while we still carry the residue of masculine spirituality’s underscoring our sense of separateness from the Universe – this “optical illusion” – more and more we are realizing how incorrect it is, and in a very real sense, how tragic it is. We are not separate, our planet is not separate, and God is not separate.

2. Prayer. A second hallmark of our inherited “masculine spirituality,” is how we connect with the Source of all that is. If God is “up there” – even though there is really no “up” in the Universe as we know it – again, if God is “up there,” and we are “down here,” then how do we reach him, her, it or that? How do we connect to the reality before which we all stand…the encompassing Mystery of our existence?

The answer from masculine spirituality is through “prayer.” From our isolated separateness, we send up our concerns and petitions to God, and hope for the best. (Studies show that in double-bind experiments, prayer worked 25% of the time.)

I love to tell the story of a church retreat I once participated in. One of the members had a heart attack while in the shower. He was a dyed-in-the wool atheist. When he was recovered, we had great fun relating that his wife accused him of offering this prayer in the shower: “To whom it may concern: Help!”

As a child growing up in a Pentecostal Holiness minister’s home, it was a nightly ritual for our family of seven, to listen to a chapter from the Bible, and then find a place to kneel in the living room, while Dad prayed. And one component he always closed with was to name each of us five children, and then our mother. Sometimes it was just general; other times, it was uncomfortably specific. But as I reflect back on those times and places, I remember his deep and resonant bass voice, invoking God’s care and concern for those of us there, as well as any others who came to mind.

So even though I don’t follow that same practice, I do remember it with warmth and caring. I still remember Martin Luther’s exhortation, “We pray, my sisters and brothers, not to inform God, but to inform ourselves.” It’s a way of loving…a way of informing…a way of focusing.

3. Consequential religious history. Finally, there is one other trait of masculine spirituality – along with a sense of separateness and emphasis upon prayer – that shapes much of the spirituality evoked by the religious world. It’s this:

Proclaiming that something which happened hundreds or thousands of years ago as somehow determinative for us today.

Hence, the followers of the prophet Muhammad, who was the instrument chosen by God to receive the Qu’ran, have also insisted that it is and was the final and culminating revelation from God. Everything beforehand has been superseded; everything afterward can only be valid if it is subsumed within the message of this most sacred of Islamic texts. What happened 1,300 years ago is said to be crucial for us today.

The same is true for Christianity. In what many find a very brutal model for a father-son relationship, God the Father sends his son, Jesus, to Earth to be put to an agonizing and humiliating death, as a way of appeasing for humankind’s sins. We are told over and over again, that we have to believe that the efficacy of that event for our lives to have fulfillment and to gain admittance to heaven when we die – we have to be “saved.” The key, as in Islam, is to accept the validity of the past as crucial to the present and future.

In Judaism, the Torah, contained in the first five books of the bible, and then explicated in the Talmud, are said to be the commandments of God to Moses: 613 things to do and not to do. And although Judaism has moved far beyond these ancient proscriptions and prescriptions, they still are a bedrock of historical self-understanding.

Ditto for the Buddha and his four noble truths, and the eight-fold path to righteous living. It seems almost to be a masculine thing: to assert that what happened in history centuries and millennia ago has currency for now, this moment in time. So what about it?

Masculine spirituality proffered by male dominated hierarchical religion has taught us that we are separate from the divine, and the Universal; it has taught us that the way to contact the divine is through prayer; and it has emphasized past events as crucial to the present and the future. What are our choices? Can we find good and bad in them, or only good or bad?

1. I think the first thing to do in an enlightened era for spiritual persons of any gender is to realize that making God a proto-type of our species – bigger and better – continues to do more damage to understanding what we mean by that word than anything. I read recently what the artist Archie Rand, a nonobservant Jew, said about God: “It’s a location to which we can direct our gratitude.” Let me repeat that: “God is a location to which we can direct our gratitude.”

2. While many of us understand meditation as being more appropriate than prayer in accessing the Universe, I like to think of them both fulfilling needed spiritual dimensions. Meditation is inward, seeking to explore below the surface, including the use of sacred repetition to dig beneath the conscious mind. Prayer, however, is a conscious focusing, an intentional use of the intellect to increase awareness of what’s going on within. Meditation tries to beyond the conscious mind, and prayer uses the conscious mind.

3. Finally, what happened on a cross to a prophetic voice of hope 2,000 years ago, what happened when Moses was on the mountaintop, what happened when Muhammad received the Qu’ran, or when the Buddha received enlightenment under a tree, all of those things are treasures of our civilization. But they do not in any way control, take away, or add to the present moment, to the power of now. This is the moment we have to live. We can make a vow to live it to its fullest based on the wisdom of the ancients. But it’s up to us, whether woman or man.

I quoted Einstein earlier addressing our sense of separateness. Here’s the concluding sentence of that quotation: “Our task must be to widen our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” That’s spirituality.

We will pause now for 7½ minutes of brief questions as a part of our Conversation Café. The Service and Support Council will provide microphones for you to speak into.

[1] A sermon presented June 08, 2008, as the second sermon in “Unitarian Summer 2008,” followed by the Conversation Café of All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.