"THE GIFT OF HERITAGE"
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday, February 20, 2005
All
In one of the last conversations I had with my father, I wanted to find out how he first became interested in birds.
Some of you know that I grew up with birds -- hundreds of them at any one time. My father raised exotic cage birds, finches mostly, and I grew up in a house full of them. They were everywhere, and my ears eventually became oblivious to the sound of bird-song, just as fish are oblivious to the presence of water.
My father had become a widely respected expert, of sorts, on certain kinds of birds, and had published several books about them. The technical term for my father's hobby is "bird fancier," which is a very appropriate description. He "fancied" birds. He loved them.
Since I wanted to know how it was that he developed this life-long fascination with birds, I asked him.
"Homing pigeons," he said. Actually, he mentioned a scientific name, some Latin name, that elicited from me a blank, dumb stare, so he identified what he was talking about as "homing pigeons."
"Back when
I was a teenager, in
"Races?" I asked.
"Yes, races." He said.
Participants in the races would load their pigeons into a single large cage on a train. No one knew the destination, but the train would travel across hundreds of miles of unfamiliar territory before the pigeons were unloaded and then released from the cage. My father would calculate the approximate time it would take, and then stand in his back yard waiting for the pigeon. The one whose pigeon return first won a prize.
"It wasn't the race that interested me most," my father said, "It was the bird itself, the freedom, the instinct that was so magically displayed. I wanted to understand about the bird, and my interests evolved from pigeons to many different varieties of birds."
My follow-up question was expected. It is the question that everyone asks when hearing about homing pigeons. "How do they do it? What is it that gives them the ability to find their way home over hundreds of miles of foreign land? Why do homing pigeons always find their way home?"
"No one knows," he said.
"No one knows? What do you mean no one knows?"
"No one knows. But what a great gift of nature for the birds to able to do that."
It's probably some genetic thing, of course, which no one fully understands. Whatever it is, though, I can feel some of the same instinct in human beings. We go through life wanting to find a safe home to return to -- maybe not literally, but certainly metaphorically. Our home is whatever place we find that gives us security. It is a place from which we can safely venture into the world and to which we can safely return from our explorations.
I sometimes consider this image in thinking about our own UU religious tradition. We UUs are explorers and adventurers in ideas, usually not afraid to wander off into unknown territory. Eastern religions sometimes seem exciting, for example. New Age ideas look interesting from time to time. And so forth. So we explore and wander off.
But something brings us home, back to the center of our religious tradition. There is a "homing device," it seems, that pulls us back when we wander too far. To me, what draws us back to our center, to our home, is our heritage of ideas and values. Without that heritage we may never find our own way back.
However far we may explore into other ideas and traditions, our heritage provides a place for us to return to safety and security.
This observation, though, seems to beg the question. What is our heritage? What is that home that was given to us and to which we may always return? That heritage is virtually the same as it was 100 years ago for the founders of All Souls, and in fact is pretty much the same as it was 400 years ago when the Unitarians and Universalists were first organizing. I would suggest that at the center of our religious heritage we can find four vital principles:
1. A commitment to freedom of belief.
2. A commitment to reason in religious thought.
3. Respect for human worth and dignity.
4. Confidence in humanity and its potential.
We UUs are known to explore all kinds of religious ideas. But regardless of where we may choose to roam with our minds and hearts, Unitarian Universalists will return home to the principles that define us. We stray, we explore, we search, but ultimately we return to our center, to our home.
The first important principle in our heritage is always freedom. As Unitarian Universalists, this above all else is how we recognize our religious home when we see it. One of the best statements I have found of our commitment to the free spirit is found in the most extensive self-study of Unitarian Universalists which was published some 40 years ago. It says,
"One of the most distinctive aspects of our movement is our acceptance of open questions. We do not claim to be the only church to hold this view, but we find our identity in the degree to which we insist that the spirit must be unfettered in all its expressions. This principle can be stated negatively: that truth cannot be reduced to a creed. But it can also be stated positively: that ours is a church in which creedal matters are purposely kept open.
"We have set at the heart of our church, not a creed or statement of faith, but the principle that theological questions shall be kept open. As a result of the freedom which is ours, our members reach many different conclusions on theological and other matters. But these differences do not divide us. They vitalize us."
This statement comes as close to identifying the center of our religious heritage as any I have seen. Freedom. Whenever Unitarian Universalists are told what we must believe, we immediately know we are not home; we know we have strayed into some alien religious territory. And whenever that happens, there is a homing force, like the homing force of pigeons pointing them toward home, that points us toward our heritage, toward freedom.
The second central characteristic of our heritage is our commitment to reason in religious thought. Not all religions are necessarily irrational, but it is common among many religions to set aside reason in matters of faith, for our rational mind sometimes seems to compete with our spiritual nature. "We cannot know God's ways," we are sometimes told, " so we must believe in spite of what our minds may tell us."
The rational tradition affirms that all ideas are open to testing and analysis, and no belief is immune from critical thought. This doesn't mean that there is no room for mystery in religious thought. It doesn't even mean that there is no room for mysticism. But it does mean that our reason guides us in matters of belief, and we must defer to reason when it speaks to us.
The early Unitarians, for example, argued that the doctrine of the Trinity was not compatible with monotheism. If we truly believe there is "God is One" then reason directs us away from a Triune Godhead. The early Universalists argued that the doctrine of hell was similarly irrational. If we truly believe that "God is Love" we cannot at the same time rationally conceive of condemning people to everlasting torture as an act of love and kindness.
Unitarian Universalism understands reason to be inseparable from religion. Our reason does not compete with our beliefs, our head and our heart are not at war. And we know that whenever we are advised to believe something in spite of evidence to the contrary, or if we are asked to suspend our rational capacity, then we are wandering far from our religious home. And whenever that happens, there is a homing force, pointing us back to our heritage of commitment to reason in religion.
The third central characteristic I identify is a respect for human worth and dignity. I recognize, of course, that this is not entirely unique to us. Most religions preach respect for human dignity and, thankfully, teach that we need to treat one another with respect. But the Unitarian and Universalist respect for human dignity goes deeper than that.
One central religious creed found in some religions is our need to be saved. You need to be saved; I need to be saved. We need salvation because we are by nature sinful and evil. This is the religious theme found in many, if not most, of the religious programming on television or radio. However eloquently stated, that is the heart of too many religious messages.
Unitarian Universalist respect for human worth and dignity envisions a very different view of human nature. We are worthy creatures, we are acceptable beings simply by being human. We do not need to be saved from our human nature, but rather we need to affirm that nature in its most positive manifestations.
One of the most eloquent statements of the Unitarian affirmation of human nature was written in 1828 by William Ellery Channing. This, in fact, may be my favorite of all his writings, and I see it as a centerpiece of our religious home:
"I do and I must reverence human nature. Neither the sneers of a worldly skepticism nor the groans of a gloomy theology disturb my faith in its godlike powers and tendencies. I know how it is despised, how it has been oppressed, how civil and religious establishments have for ages conspired to crush it. I know its history. I shut my eyes on none of its weaknesses and crimes.
"But injured, trampled on, and scorned as our nature is, I still turn to it with intense sympathy and strong hope. I bless it for its kind affections, for its strong and tender love. I honor it for its struggles against oppression, for its growth and progress under the weight of so many chains and prejudices, for its achievements in science and art, and still more for its examples of heroic and saintly virtue.
"These are the marks of a divine origin, and I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race."
This is respect for human worth and dignity, in the very deepest sense of its meaning. Whenever we find ourselves being told that we are inherently evil and depraved, whenever we are told that we need to be saved from our own nature as human beings, we know instantly that we are not in our religious home, but rather in some alien religious territory. And whenever that happens, there is a homing force, like the homing force in pigeons, pointing us to our home, to our heritage of respect for inherent human worth and dignity.
And the fourth part of our heritage I identify is a confidence in humanity and its potential: recognition of our responsibility to foster justice in this world and confidence in our ability to do so.
Unitarian Universalism is sometimes described as focusing on "this world" rather than on the world "hereafter." Significantly, the focus is on what we can do to enrich the world around us, and be enriched by it.
To emphasize our commitment to concerns for this life does not deny that Unitarians can choose a more spiritual or even mystical path for their personal religious life. Many do make such choices. After all, the transcendentalist movement was born in Unitarianism. But the spiritual is not seen as a sufficient end in itself. Spiritual paths within Unitarian Universalism are paths that enhance the quality of living effectively in this world and with other people.
Confidence in humanity and its potential has been particularly keen in our Universalist heritage. A concise statement of the Universalist view is offered by Clinton Lee Scott, a scholar of Universalist history:
"Early Universalism was a protest against the generally accepted religious teaching that most of the human race at death was going into an afterlife of everlasting torment. The larger faith of Universalists rejected the idea that people deserved such punishment, and that God was such a monster as to order it. The instinct of the Universalist founders was right. Today we are as insistent as they were on the worth of persons and the need of confidence in humanity.
"The grossest unfaith is not doubt in the existence of God, but distrust in the integrity of our own human kind.... A better life for us all rests upon a hearty, realistic confidence in human beings -- in all human beings wherever they live. Nothing less than this can dispel the suspicions between nations, eradicate racial discriminations, and end religious bigotry. There is no larger hope than that we with our natural equipment can, in spite of our current fears, foibles, and foolish ways, build for ourselves on earth a life of holiness and happiness.
This is an eloquent statement of confidence in humanity and its potential to create a better world. Whenever we hear that human beings are incapable of solving their own problems, or that we need some kind of benevolent authority -- whether that authority is divine or human -- to solve it for us, we know instinctively that we are not in our religious home, but rather in some foreign religious territory. And whenever that happens, there is a homing force, pointing us toward home, toward our heritage of confidence in humanity and its potential to make the world better.
That heritage has brought many of us here this morning. Like an instinct found in certain birds and other animals, it guides us back, from our many fanciful wanderings -- back to the center of our religious identity. There is nothing particularly wrong with our fanciful wandering -- I enjoy them all as much as the next UU -- but like a traveler exploring new lands, there must also be a return.
I announced four characteristics of our religious heritage, but I shall close with one more, for it demands recognition. What more is needed, to make this heritage a true home, is attention to our sense of community.
In a home, there exists a respect for the diverse members of the household. In a home, there is safety in being yourself. Home isn't a place. Home is being accepted, being respected, and being among people who care.
I am not worried that we will ever lose our devotion to these principles I've outlined this morning. Every Unitarian Universalist congregation I know shares these principles, and I cannot conceive that they would be in jeopardy here. But to build a community around these central principles does not come naturally, and cannot be taken for granted.
The homing instinct of Unitarian Universalists is not as spectacular as that of homing pigeons, I suppose. When we gather like this, people don't look on in wonder and ask, as they do of pigeons, "how in the world do they do it?" But some might ask "why" we do it. I don't know how the homing pigeons do it. But I believe something that is in them is in us also. It is something that urges us to turn home, a homing force that drives us back to the center, to our heritage.
I spent the better part of a year and a half exploring the history of All Souls because of our centennial. In the flux of world changes -- wars and depressions, changes in technology and society -- what impressed me most was the continuity of values and principles from the founders in 1903 to today.
An important lesson from studying history is that however new we may think our world may be today, it is always a continuation of what came before. The book of Ecclesiastes was partly right with its famous adage, "there is nothing new under the sun. That famous observation is correct, if only in a limited sense. It is correct to the extent that every event, every idea, every hope arise from something that precedes it. Commenting on those words from Ecclesiastes, Charles Stephen had this to say:
In truth there are no pure beginnings, only continuations, lives flowing into lives, age flowing into age. . . . Today has come slowly; it did not suddenly appear. It was grown, created, constructed. . . . We live in a world of continuities."
"Today has come slowly." Stephen wrote. "It did not suddenly appear. It was grown, created, constructed."
This is the blessing, the gift of heritage: that we have a home, a center, something from which we can explore into the future, and something to which we can return safely. It is our responsibility, I believe to care for that heritage and preserve this home, keeping it healthy for the generations yet to come.