What are the things that endure?

Address for 11th August 2013

I came across a snippet of poetry the other day that really spoke to me:

Nothing is permanent
Except the change
Change is a necessary phenomenon
In an active system
Changelessness is deadly

So often I have spoken about the necessity of change and how it is important to allow for change in our lives, in our faith and in our worship but today I am asking you to consider not what it is that changes but what it is that endures, what lasts despite the changes that occur.

I have to admit that I struggled to find a story for today and before finding the story of Geppetto, the puppet maker I toyed with one or two other stories first.  At first I considered the story of The three billy goats gruff and had we a congregation with children attending then maybe I would have stuck with it.  I am sure you are all familiar with the story about three goats who risk their lives to get to the greener grass on the other side of the river.  In that story the goats succeed in defeating the troll and manage to walk into the lush meadow and feed on the grass there.  Often we associate this story with the idea of the grass being greener on the other side but it begs the question, is it always greener on the other side or are things always better when we make those apparently necessary changes.

This idea was explored by Ralph Helverson in my first reading when he told the story of the imprisoned senators. Sometimes it really is a case of “Better the devil you know. . . . . “

Katy Cowan wrote an article “Why the Grass is Never Greener and How to Be Happy Today”

In it she says:

“Lifestyle. Opportunities. Wealth. Just think how far we’ve come in the past 100 years—especially when you look at what we have today compared with our great grandmothers’ generation.”
She said, “My great grandmother married very young, lived in the same place her whole life, and had 11 children. She never had a “career” and never got a chance to go on (holiday). Her life was hard, poor, and lacking in any real opportunity.”

When I read that it could have been my great grandmother who had thirteen children and lived in the same place all her married life.

Katy says, “I wonder if she ever dreamed about moving to another city, or transforming her life, or about seeing the world with just a backpack. I bet she did, but back then there weren’t as many opportunities as we have today.
Thanks to technology, the Internet, and an improved society, our lifestyles are completely transformed. We have choices. We can live pretty much anywhere we want. We can travel and see the world.
We can secure jobs on the other side of the planet. We can start our own businesses and serve clients thousands of miles away. It’s definitely an exciting time.”

Well yes it may be an exciting time.  The changes that we have experienced in our lifetimes may have opened up a completely new world that was unthought-of of in our grandparents or even our parents time.  But it has not necessarily always been for the better – the wonders that we are offered by the new technologies. The internet and social networks have brought with them a whole new series of threats and problems to our lives.  We cannot fail to have heard the tragic story of the young girl who took her own life after experiencing on-line bullying.  And there is also the case of women suffering online abuse and threats just because they wanted to have the image of a woman on one of our bank-notes.  Then there are the cases of online grooming and the horrors of pornography being all too available, even to our children and to the vulnerable within our society. All these wonderful changes have brought with them a whole new set of threats and horrors that we could never have imagined when the internet and the World Wide Web was first invented. I often wonder if Tim Berners Lee, a Unitarian and inventor of the World Wide Web, could ever have envisaged how his ideals of a system free and uncontrolled and uncensored at the point of use would be used and abused as they are today.  Maybe, if he had had some foresight he might have built in some restrictions that could have offered some protection to us today.

Don’t get me wrong, I am one of the first people to sing the praises of the internet and I certainly could not envisage my life without access to it, but ....  and there it is that huge, huge little word  but.

I do wish there were some rules, some safeguards to ensure that those values that have always played such an important part of all civilised life could be upheld in this modern, interactive world of ours.

This makes me ask the question about what it is that endures, what is it that remains constant in this ever-changing world of ours?

For me the thing that endures is my faith.  But that too has undergone much change over the years.  As I have told you all before I began in the Anglican Church where I was confirmed at the age of thirteen.  I have spoken of my journey from there into Unitarianism many times and I do not want to tell it again but I do want to tell you one of the reasons why I could not return to the Anglican Church when I went on my spiritual search.  It was because when I went back to a service in an Anglican Church I could no longer recognise what took place there.  The style of worship had changed, even the language had changed and the changes seemed to highlight the problems I had with the faith in the first place. I, personally, could not find the presence of God there.

I, of course, found my way back to God through my encounter with the Unitarian message and the values of Freedom, Reason and Tolerance that I found underpinned all the differences and diversity within the different churches and chapels.  No two Unitarian places of worship are alike in their worship but all are underpinned by those all important values.

Now I know that Unitarianism is always changing, that nothing remains static but I hope that the values that underpin the faith will remain constant and endure long into the future.

I know that in the words of that poem I quoted at the beginning of this address:

Nothing is permanent
Except the change

And that:

Change is a necessary phenomenon
In an active system

And yes:

Changelessness is deadly

But I also know that the grass is not always greener on the other side of change, that what endures from the past is important too.

Robert Fulghum, author of that classic book "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" put it this way:  "The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you are." 

It is the same idea as the puppet maker Geppetto, constantly striving to make the perfect puppet. All the time building on and improving on the previous model not being satisfied until he was sure it was right.

And so may we tend the grass by bringing our everlasting values to bear upon the present world no matter what the future may hold for us.

So may it be.    Amen          

Another Epiphany

The Journey - by Mary Oliver

Story - The Stonecutter

Last week I spoke about Epiphany and in doing so I gave some definitions of what Epiphany means and the third of these meanings was: a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking (3) : an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure.

Or in other words as I said then, ‘a light bulb moment’

Today I want to explore this ‘light bulb’ moment a bit further.

You all know of my love for poetry, well the poem I shared with you this morning – the Journey by Mary Oliver – is my favourite poem of all time.  I am not sure when I first read the poem but I do know that there was a period in my life when it justvkept appearing and each time I read it, it seemed more and more significant as though it were telling me something – pointing me to a Light bulb moment.  Roger Housden says of it:

‘“The Journey” is a poem of transformation, and as much as any poem Oliver ever wrote, it is a mirror in which you can see a reflection of your own story.  It captures that moment when you dare to take your heart and your hands and walk through an invisible wall into a new life.  We do not know the personal history that led Mary Oliver to the truth of this poem. Yet what matters for her, . . . ,is that her poems invite readers to find themselves and their own experience at its centre.  “The Journey,” like so many of her poems, conjures the archetype of a fundamental human experience, and in that collective image we are each able to perceive our individual story.’

We all have our own stories and I am not sure where my spiritual story truly began but somewhere in the 1990’s I found myself going on several journey’s as I began to search for a spiritual path that I could with all honesty follow.  I explored many religious faiths beginning with an attempt to return to the Anglican Church in which I grew up.  Try as I might though I could not reignite the passion of my youth for this faith and so I turned towards what I suppose many would call ‘New Age’ spirituality, exploring many different disciplines and paths.  They were all interesting and with each one my longing to find a spiritual home was fed a little more.  And then came the light bulb moment epitomised in the opening lines  of Oliver’s poem–

One day you finally knew

What you had to do, and began, …

Well it was just like that for me when one day I opened an email from a very dear friend who knew about my searching for a spiritual home.  All the email said was, www.unitarian.org.uk.  I opened the website and after a bit of surfing around the links I came across the NUF website, I was interested in what it was saying and decided I needed to find out more about this Unitarian thing.  I sent an email to Essex hall and received a lot of material including a leaflet on where to find a congregation near me.  I was determined to go along to a service but did not do any more than find out that the nearest chapel was in Padiham.  Quite a few weeks, maybe even months went by and then I once again felt that I ought to do something about it, as Mary Oliver said,

 “I felt the old tug at my ankles”.

 I went to the chapel and it was as though I had come home.  It is surprising how often I have since heard that said from people who have found Unitarianism.  All I had needed was that little nudge, an unexpected e-mail and my whole life was changed.  It may seem such a simple thing and yet it was a significant first step that I had taken.

Some eight hundred years ago, the Persian mystic Rumi said,

Start walking, start walking towards Shams,

Your legs will get heavy and tired.

Then comes the moment of feeling the wings

You’ve grown lifting.

Shams is a metaphor for the true heart of your own life for God if you like.  You can respond to it or you can turn away.  The choice is yours.  There may be forces that try to keep you from doing what you know you must, as Oliver’s poem says……..

Though the voices around you

Kept shouting their bad advice.

though the whole house

began to tremble and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

Suddenly in my troubled life I suddenly had that epiphany – that light bulb moment – and I turned my back on my teaching career and began my Unitarian journey.  There was no thought of where it would lead me but I was sure that within this faith I would finally realise where it was I should be going.

It is however not just the journey one has to be aware of.  However long the journey or what besets us on the way; there is of course the destination, the place to which we are heading.

T.S. Eliot used these words:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

And Thoreau said:

“Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out.”

The implication here, as in the stonecutter story, is that the journey is really a returning and yet I was not returning to the faith of my earlier years. But rather I was discovering God anew.  There was something the same and yet at the same time something that was totally different. It is like the ten Ox-herding pictures that are found in the Buddhist tradition which depict the spiritual journey: 

 

In picture 1 the herder is searching for the ox – it is the beginning of the spiritual search.

In picture 2 he finds evidence of the ox – although the struggle is difficult there is a hint of achievement.

In picture 3 he sees the Ox for the first time – the way appears but it is still unclear.

In picture 4 he catches the ox but it is difficult to tame – the mind wanders.

In picture 5 he tames the ox – the mind follows by itself.

In picture 6 the herder mounts the ox – the mind has submitted

In picture 7 he transcends the ox and stands alone

Picture 8 is an empty circle – the ox and the herder are transcended.  This is the moment of awakening

In picture 9 he reaches the origin – or recognises what he knew before.

In picture 10, the final picture, he returns to the world where he lives and teaches others.

.

The person at the end of the journey is apparently the same as the person who started the journey. Everything is the same, yet everything is different. Just like that stone-cutter who returned but this time more happy with his lot.

This reminds me of the Zen story that says:

Once, I said, “mountains are mountains and waters are waters.” After I got insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, I said, “mountains are not mountains, waters are not waters.” But now, having attained enlightenment, I say, “mountains are really mountains, waters are really waters.”

Thich Nhat Hanh the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teaches the art of a walking meditation, when he does so he is teaching the art of that journey which is deep, infinite and immediate.  He says, “I can take each step asking myself – have I arrived and then in the next step answering – yes, I have arrived, I am home.  Have I arrived?  Yes, I am home.  I have arrived, I am home.”

Home into the present moment, home into where our hearts are…

It is the same as when Mary Oliver says,

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

The stars began to burn

Through the sheets of clouds

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognised as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

In a real sense the starting point of the journey and the destination too, is where you stand and your walking becomes the path. The path is a struggle to find out who you are and to make sense of the life that is uniquely yours.  The journey never ends; it is a continuing unfolding one.

For me, it continues unfolding within the Unitarian faith, because I do not want to walk alone.  I want to walk with others, to be part of a community. I want to be with those who respond with enquiring minds to a faith without dogma or creed.

I continue to quest or search for my God but there is an ease in that searching now that was not present for me before.  This is because there is a knowledge of, or recognition of God in my life.  Maybe that was why I was so pleased when the choir chose this morning’s introit, a piece by Francesca Leftley

In you, my God, may my soul find its peace. You are my refuge, my rock, and my strength, calming my fears with the touch of your love.  Here in your presence my troubles will cease.

In you, my God, may my soul find its rest; you are the meaning, the purpose of life, drawing me near to the fire of your love, safe in your presence my yearning will cease. 

Of course within the Unitarian faith there is not a ceasing of exploration but by being here in this place to be in the company of fellow seekers I know I am in the perfect position to be the only person I can be or “to save the only life I can save” as it says at the end of Mary’s poem,

No one can know where their journey may take them, but in being willing to be on that journey you too may “save the only life you could save.” No one else can ever walk your journey for you.  You alone can respond to your call.  You are the only one who can recognise your own epiphany, you just need to be ready to see the light and say “aha  that is for me.”

So may it be.     Amen          

United we stand, divided we . . . ?

John Donne (adapted)

No one is an island,  entire of itself; everyone is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were;  

From Roman’s 12: we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.. 

 Maya Angelou

“We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their colour.”

Story – Problems on the Ark - Pedro Pablo Sacristán

Reading 1:  1 Corinthians 12: 12 – 26 Common English Bible

Reading 2:  Quarrelling Quail (The Shortest Distance – Bill Darlison)

Address:

When I am preparing a service I tend to give it a name, a title that conveys something about the nature of the service so that when I look back through my archives on the computer I have something to inform me about what I have covered.  Today’s service could have had a choice of title; maybe that was why there were three different opening sentences.

The first by John Donne, would have given me “No one is an island”, suggesting that we need each other and each other’s talents to make a success of what we do.  That if we are alone then we cannot achieve as much as if we work together.  And indeed, the two stories reflected this idea.  The animals on the ark could not have mended the hole if they had not all worked together and that included the least of the creatures and even those who were not on the ark itself.  And the quail could not have lifted the nets that were capturing them if they hadn’t all pulled together.  Life in church is a bit like that – it needs all of us doing whatever it is we do, to keep the church going.  No matter if all one does is attend on a Sunday, because if people didn’t attend on the Sunday then where would we be? But however good a title this was it was not quite right.

The second opening sentence was a quotation from Romans and it set the scene for the first reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.  That title would have been “one body, many parts”.  Here is another apt description for a church, or a community.  We all know, I hope, that each person in our Community is important and that we need each other if the community is going to survive or flourish.  It echoes the no one is an island thought and yet once again this title did not really seem right.

Maybe it is because at the moment, although I see the evidence of a loving community here in Rochdale in our own congregation where we value each other, I don’t see it echoed within the wider movement in the same way.  I suppose a lot of this stems from the recent General Assembly meetings and some of the things that were said there.  In her very inspirational Anniversary Sermon, Rev Celia Cartwright said:

For a denomination not based on required doctrine, we do a lot of bickering about the rights and wrongs of the spiritual beliefs of others in our midst. Without a common enemy to overcome, we have devolved to internal bickering and lost sight of our original purpose - to be free to worship as our own conscience dictates, with a tolerant understanding that this freedom belongs to all. I sometimes wonder what's happened to our much-vaunted 'tolerance' when we, don't all acknowledge the equal rights of the entire spectrum of Unitarian and Free Christian faith.

And I think this begins to sum up some of my disquiet and is why I chose my third opening phrase by Maya Angelou, who speaks of a tapestry of diversity and yet each thread of the tapestry being needed.  Celia’s remark about internal bickering highlights the fact that there are some people in our movement who are not prepared to recognise the value of our diversity.  This was not only made evident by things said at the GA but also it has crept onto that popular social networking site ‘facebook’.  Only a few weeks ago it was a pleasant forum where I could engage with friends and relatives in a relaxed and informal way, but recently one or two groups have been created, there is the ‘Unitarian group’ the ‘UK Unitarian group’, the ‘2020 vision’ group, ‘British Unitarian & Free Christian’ group, etc – and there are some quite disturbing arguments or discussions that appear on them.  I am beginning to think, along with Celia that we are becoming less and less tolerant of each other.  I think this is dangerous for the Unitarian movement and its future.  It is a bit like those quails in the second reading.  When they worked together they managed to raise the nets and escape, but once they started bickering, arguing amongst themselves they found they were trapped once more.

So here is the title I came up with for today’s address,  “UNITED WE STAND. . .” – I didn’t complete the phrase, because I am sure we all know how it continues – “. . . DIVIDED WE FALL.”

The phrase is illustrated in one of Aesop’s fables:

A LION used to prowl about a field in which Four Oxen used to dwell. Many a time he tried to attack them; but whenever he came near they turned their tails to one another, so that whichever way he approached them he was met by the horns of one of them. At last, however, they fell a-quarrelling among themselves, and each went off to pasture alone in a separate corner of the field. Then the Lion attacked them one by one and soon made an end of all four.      United they stood – divided they fell!

The phrase also appears in the New Testament, albeit in slightly different language. Mark 3:25, "A house divided against itself cannot stand"

Returning to Celia’s sermon, she says:

My congregation in Kendal includes, Unitarian Christians, Pagans, Agnostics, a couple of Atheists, a Unitarian Sikh, a couple of lapsed Catholics, a humanist or two and a fair number of people who simply relish the idea of the spiritual journey that does not require them to wear specific label. I have my own theological understanding yet I need to speak to all these people, where they are, in order to fulfil my role as their minister. This does not compromise my beliefs. It allows me to explore my faith in the light of others' faith, and in the light of new wisdom. It is not in agreeing with each other that we become strong, but rather in the agreeing to be different, while remaining interested in each other's spiritual and religious journey.

For a recent service at Kendal Chapel, John Pickering wrote a reflection on the idea of 'Individual Spiritual Journeys' in which he concludes, 'Doctrine and dogma have divided people throughout history - but when our focus is on shared values: compassion and understanding, we do not need to fear other beliefs for they are all part of the rich diversity of humanity's spiritual journey. Once we understand this, we are free to be who we are; free to build bridges between people instead of walls. '

Wise words, these words from Celia and John, but for me the question is when. 

When will we begin to recognise, once again, that we are a diverse group made up of many parts? That we are one body?  Surely this was what Unitarianism was all about, recognising the worth of the individual and yet embracing it within the fold.

In one of the groups on face-book, Barry Bell wrote:

A thread in the closed group "Unitarians" asked us to express our hopes and vision for the Unitarian movement. The relatively small input caused one Unitarian to ask whether the lack of input suggested a lack of hope and vision.

This was Barry’s reply -

I have extremely high hopes for what can be achieved when more people out there can adopt the uniting Unitarian approach to the challenges of being human and responding to our spirituality, but have already expressed them - in various different forms, hoping that at least some will resonate - all over various Unitarian (and wider) forums. Here's one way of putting my vision and hope.

I would love to think that Unitarians, Universalists, Unitarian Universalists, Unitarian Christians and Unitarian Anythings are aware our unity comes from seeing our different personal faith and beliefs as being different responses to the same innate spirituality which is a part of being human.

The challenge is to help others comprehend that this lies at the heart of a much-needed and more uniting way of enabling spiritual growth than the divisiveness inherent in seeking spiritual growth only with others whose response to their spirituality involves faith-based belief in one set of speculative answers to the big spiritual questions.

I see Unitarianism as having moved beyond being a small part of one religion, and even beyond being a separate religion, to being a broader and far more uniting approach to being human.

It is an approach which seeks to enable spiritual growth - becoming less selfish, more caring human beings - by allowing every human being to respond to our spirituality in their own way through the holding of personal faith and beliefs which drive them, but in the company of others who are responding in different ways and so learning how to avoid division and to find unity in the Good which is within and around us.

At the moment this general malaise has not found its way into our church, but there are churches within the denomination where internal bickering is beginning to be evident and this trend deeply disturbs me.  I came into Unitarianism to celebrate difference, not to question it and certainly not to alienate through it.

Returning to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, where he was speaking to a group of people who were undergoing their own period of disagreement and intolerance, the essence of his letter says that:

As in the natural body of a person, the members should be closely united by the strongest bonds of love; the good of the whole should be the object of all. All, in our case, Unitarians are dependent one upon another; each is to expect and receive help and respect from the rest. 

I do not want to define people with different titles such as, Unitarian Christians, Unitarian Pagans, Unitarian Atheists, Unitarian Humanists or Unitarian Universalists.  I do not want Unitarian Anythings, I want just Unitarian – recognising that we are all different and that it doesn’t matter that we are, in fact that it enriches us because we are.

So let us then have more of the spirit of union within our religion once again. For surely, no matter how diverse we are, “No one is an island” –we, whoever we are, are part of one body, and as Aesop said:

“UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL.”

And I don’t want us to fall, do you?