"The Core of Unitarian Universalism"
Rev. Tom Owen-Towle
October 15, 2006
Today I want to start by being playful with alphabetical references to the core principles of Unitarian Universalism. This exercise might prove fun to do on your own as well. So I ask: what liberal religious ideals begin with the letter A: well, how about affirmative, aspiration, accountability, action, and acceptance?
And B-s, well, I’d certainly include in my list: balance, beauty, bridge-building, becoming, and bravery. And my C-s would comprise: compassion, cheerfulness, complexity, choicemaking, character, and creativity.
But today, for no particular reason, I would focus upon the D-s. Now knowing that I can only handle three D’s for one sermon, let me refer to a few worthy D’s that I don’t have time to explore. We’re a decisive faith without being pushy. We emphasize duties more than beliefs. We’re daring doers who contend that the religious journey is a most difficult discovery full of discipline and doubts.
Detachment is also pertinent. As members of a reasonable religion, we try to be objective and realistic in all we do. And frankly, there’s no more major D in Unitarian Universalism than our mode of dealing with death. I often tell newcomers that if they really want to know what our faith looks like, then, at the earliest opportunity, please attend one of our memorial services to see how we aspire to handle death in a truthful, personal, upbeat, and loving manner…dignified yet shorn of doctrine and dogma.
So, as you can see, there exist many worthy D’s to reference, but I’ll highlight but three today. The D’s I’ve chosen are bread and butter values, oft-forgotten in our American rush for a fancy and faddish grasp of the holy. My three are dailiness overagainst the spectacular or esoteric; democracy, the bedrock process that undergirds our way of doing religion; and deeds rather than creeds.
Let’s start with dailiness.
Some folks bound from peak experience to peak experience–hankering to shoot the rapids, climb majestic mountains, and garner ecstatic experiences, as if they were collecting butterflies. But, if truth be told, ours is a hard-hat religion claiming that God dwells in daily details. The blessed is discoverable in the serendipitous and the ordinary. To be sure, mystical moments come our way, but our lives are made or broken in commonplace encounters. Unitarian Universalism unswervingly contends that every relationship or event is a potential carrier of the sacred. Indeed, every exchange is to be treated as a sacrament.
You see, for us, religion is found not in the peaks or valleys of existence so much as on the plains. As someone mused, look after the molehills and the mountains will look after themselves. Popular rhetoric to the contrary, we must sweat the small stuff, or at least pay close attention to it, for modest things often bear immense beauty and power.
Consequently, we aren’t spiritual for a few hours on the weekend; rather spirituality is how we address everything and everyone along our daily path. Authentic spirituality isn’t a slice of life like the religion section in Time magazine, but rather permeates every when and every where and every how of our existence. Our religion’s downright daily.
Hoping to obtain some lofty teaching, a novice once asked master Chao-chou: “I’ve just entered the fellowship and am anxious to learn the first principle of Zen. Will you please teach it to me?” Chao-chou responded, “Have you eaten your supper?” The novice replied, “I have.” “Okay, then go wash your bowl!”
As Unitarian Universalists we hanker not for dazzling epiphanies or altered states of consciousness but rather the daily unclogging of our ears and the steady opening of our eyes that we might fully experience the mundane realities right in front of us. Mature religion turns on whether we ignore or address what Emerson called the “emphatic trifles” of everyday.
Tucked away amid lurid, grandiose news items in a metropolitan newspaper was this terse comment on the death of an actress: “She played minor parts exquisitely.” Indeed, our lives are a mosaic of minor parts: dishwashing, writing letters, taking walks, answering phone calls, driving, paying bills, breaking bread with family or friends, getting ready for bed…performing a hundred such pedestrian tasks.
And how we play out such prosaic roles in our daily drama marks the depth and expanse of our true character. I always tell youngsters in our religious exploration program that you can detect the fiber of one’s faith by following someone around for a day, observing how they compassionately relate to everyone and everything that crosses their pathway.
So, ours is a faith that downplays the fancy and fantastic and majors in the simple, the ordinary, the daily.
The second D for today’s sermon is democracy. At the core of our Unitarian Universalist identity and practice is an unbending commitment to the democratic process at every level of existence. As Unitarian forebear Theodore Parker spoke, and was later quoted by Abraham Lincoln, ours is a faith “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Our bedrock commitment to democracy begins in a theological understanding of the equality of human beings before Creation, before the Eternal Spirit.
We belong to the tradition of non-conformists who argued against the established church in England, claiming that God wasn’t impressed by the achievements of the human world–either academic degrees or ecclesiastical appointments, let alone measures like material wealth or political power.
And remember our congregations aren’t run either by denominational leadership in Boston, or by a synod, or by any resident clergy. We’re governed strictly by our own membership. Ours is a polity that comes about as close as one can get to a religious version of participatory democracy.
Therefore, whether in governance, liturgy or religious growth we’ve always held that each person’s ideas and responses were as valued as everyone else’s. And, democracy is inextricably related to two other D’s at the heart of our heritage: dignity, where the inherent worth of every person is cherished and diversity, where different viewpoints aren’t merely tolerated but celebrated as valuable. As Theodore Parker also wrote: “Democracy means not that I’m as good as you are, but that you’re as good as I am,” the emphasis always being placed on equality not ego, on our neighbor rather than ourselves.
Democracy also demands that we recognize that there exist many pathways to the Infinite One. In my Unitarian Universalist and You class completing tomorrow night, I remind folks that you can find your way to God or wisdom through science or the empirical method, as did our religious forebear Joseph Priestley; or through reason, as did William Ellery Channing; or through mystical insight as did transcendentalist sister Margaret Fuller; or through loving action, as was the case for Clara Barton…or, as I personally favor, some combination of all four: experience, reason, intuition, and action. Truth may be one, but the pathways toward truth are as diverse as the members of our family.
So, in a world that most frequently displays either the autocrat or the abdicrat, it’s no modest achievement to salute the path of democracy–where power is shared and everyone is held accountable. One of our Universalist forebears, Adin Ballou, said in the mid-19th century: “All members of every community shall stand on a footing of personal equality–irrespective of sex, color, or any other natural or adventitious peculiarity.” And we haven’t veered far from Ballou’s bold and radical 1841 pronouncement.
On his deathbed, the Buddha urged his disciples, “Do not accept a statement because it is found in our books, nor because it is in accord with your belief, or because it is the saying of your teacher. Be lamps unto yourselves.” Wow, how utterly revolutionary was the Buddha’s imperative to go beyond and beneath tradition, books, and gurus, however worthy or revered…by challenging us to seek enlightenment within our very own souls!
Therefore, in democratizing the spiritual journey, the burden lies upon you, the questor. We can confer with fellow travelers, we should, but you and I stand accountable for crafting our own beliefs and practices in Unitarian Universalism. There exist only two necessary criteria to uphold: our convictions must prove both truthful to ourselves and respectful of others. Or as Brenda Ueland put it: “No lies and no cruelty!”
My final D, this morning, is deeds rather than creeds. Yes, our way of religion majors in embodiment; our words must become flesh. Ultimately, our mission is to do the truth not just pursue it.
So, I turn to the Hebrew prophet Micah for our marching orders: “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” Or as a newer translation frames it: “What does the Eternal ask from you but to be just, and kind, and live in quiet fellowship with your God?” Either way, this passage expresses the core moral-spiritual mandate of our religion.
We Unitarian Universalists sincerely believe that if we pay heed to Micah’s three imperatives of justice, kindness and humility, our religious house will stand in good order, both individually and institutionally.
The first thing to note is that Micah contends that these ethical demands (another D) arrive from beyond human ego or imagination. They come from the Eternal Spirit, from Yahweh, from the heart of Creation. So, they’re not intriguing, optional challenges we somehow dreamed up. They’re transcendent claims on our lives. They’re what’s expected, make that demanded, of us as religious pilgrims.
The first requirement is to do justice. Not to think or feel or imagine or visualize justice but actually to perform some justice, every waking day of our lives not merely when we feel like it. Minor or major deeds will do. At home and at work. Privately and publicly. And justice simply entails mending a broken world by making sure that what belongs to people gets to them: be it freedom, dignity, or resources.
And what does God require of us but to do justice, then to love kindness. In Jewish tradition it’s spoken with unmistakable clarity in an old proverb: “the highest form of wisdom is kindness.” No footnotes or amendments need be made. Kindness is simply the ultimate measure of one’s humanity.
That’s what our liberal, liberating religion is really all about, isn’t it, at highest common denominator: being kind? When in doubt, to be kind; when frightened, to risk kindness; when bitter, to try kindness. To be kind privately and publicly, within these church walls and throughout all corners of the cosmos.
As Unitarian Universalists we empathize with the sentiments of the brilliant philosopher Aldous Huxley when he wrote: “It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by the way of advice than this: try to be little kinder.”
And what does the Eternal require of you, but to justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Again, all three imperatives are actions, are deeds: doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly.
We need humility because our overweening egos often hanker for personal credit rather than shared accomplishment. We need humility, because, although we human beings are marvelous handiwork, we’re neither the Creator nor the whole of the creation.
So walking humbly means, first off, with ourselves, then with our neighbors, followed by all living things, and finally, walking humbly means sauntering neither in front of God in arrogance nor behind in servility but alongside as a bona fide partner in sustaining the interdependent web of all existence. And note that Micah directs us to walk humbly with our God: that is, our own grasp of the Infinite or Ultimate, not somebody else’s version.
But walking humbly doesn’t allow us to wander about in idleness or off in trivial pursuits. Just because we can’t do everything, it doesn’t mean we can’t do somethings–indeed, the very things you and I are singularly gifted and charged to do.
So, that’s my take today on three core principles of Unitarian Universalism: dailiness, democracy, and deeds. There are plenty more principles I’ll be exploring throughout the year, but three will suffice for one sitting.
So I challenge you, my spiritual comrades, to come up with your own A, B, C and D’s of this beautiful and blessed faith you’ve claimed. No rush, you’ve got the rest of your lives to choose your own core principles, then to live them…day by day by day.
Tom Owen-Towle
October 15, 2006
