When offered the opportunity to speak today, I of course immediately said I’d love to - but then when I thought about the title I realized it wasn’t going to be as easy to explain as I had initially presumed. “Why I am a Unitarian Universalist” - my initial reaction was “ I’m not, I’m a U.U.”. Unitarian and Universalist are religious words used by spiritual people when what they really want is a faith that describes their belief or non-belief in god. It’s the words that get in the way. It’s the words that make communication difficult. Think about each one - spirituality, religion, faith, god. Before I can start to understand anyone else on this I need to take my definitions and throw them away. When I use the word spiritual it means something different than what you understand and when someone over here speaks about religion it’s not the same thing that someone over here hears. When lifelong U.U.s speak of faith they may not mean the same things as someone who grew up Catholic, Anglican or Jewish. And when someone speaks of god it will certainly summon up different feelings and emotions in each of us because it means something different to each and every one of us. Many people may not even spell it G-O-D. In my notes I certainly haven’t spelled it with a capital G or given it a gender.
In many ways I think that my first four or five years as a member of this congregation, probably leading up to the point where I actually felt comfortable describing myself as a U.U., were spent believing that I had found a way to escape those words. And I still think its true, except that for me what I am escaping from are the old childhood definitions. What I now realize I need are my own constantly shifting definitions.
I’ll start with spirituality. The more I heard people talk about their spiritual journeys the more I began to think about my own. Of course being a good U.U. I had to reject other people’s concept of a journey and come up with some construct of my own, and so I started to work on my spiritual jigsaw puzzle. A turning point came during a telephone conversation with Helen Cohen as she was working on her sermon that I had bought at a church auction. The topic I had chosen was simply “Spirituality” and as I described how I was putting my jigsaw together, occasionally completing a section of understanding, or connecting two large sections together, or sometimes getting lucky and finding a straight edge, she casually suggested that perhaps my jigsaw puzzle had no edges. The earth literally shook. Could it be possible that the question of “What is spirituality?” that I had attached such importance to, had no definitive answer? That was when I first started to understand what spirituality might be. Now that I know it has no edges I just carry on with the jigsaw for the sheer joy of it. If I can’t find a straight edge - I don’t keep on looking for it. If the pieces don’t fit - maybe they aren’t meant to. And maybe, just maybe it’s worth putting some of those nasty little pieces with squirrelly edges in the trash.
If you want to advance your own spiritual journey or start your own jigsaw puzzle there no better place to do that than with a covenant group. Sure you’ll get to talk some but more importantly you get to listen, and who knows you may come up with some new questions.
Sometimes those troublesome words - religion and faith - are presented as the nemesis of science. I’ve certainly interpreted them that way in the past, before I discovered Unitarian Universalism. But our religion respects science and we are comfortable using our faith where science ends. The scientist in me is able to explain how we can see the colors of a rainbow - but not why it’s beautiful. I understand human biology - but can’t explain why one person loves another, or hates someone else. My high school botany can explain how a tree grows but not why people flock to see the glory of Vermont in autumn. I have a degree in Zoology and have dissected more animals than I can count but that education won’t help me know why us soft skinned humans finds so much beauty in the striped coat of a large carnivore that could kill and eat them. Put two people together and you get more than the sum of the parts, put a group together and you get a symphony. Listen to a choir, watch a sports team, share an argument, hold hands with a lover, read a book. Our religion brings us together to share with each other. Our faith is one that recognizes the value of everyone and the interconnectedness of all things. This faith we share is a religion sorely needed by the world. Our voice needs to be louder, our presence larger and our congregations everywhere.
I’ve only seriously reconsidered the word god in the last couple of years. Although the first inkling I had that there was something about god I didn’t understand was about 11 years ago. Sally and I were youth group advisors and we took our junior high teens over to meet with the youth from The Church of Our Redeemer, the Episcopal church across the street. I remember cringing ever so slightly when one of our youth asked the question “What is god to you?” “Oh jesum crow!” I thought, “Here we go”. But what happened was astounding. The teens had an amazing discussion in which - had I not know who was who, I could not have told the difference between the Redeemer teens and our own. I couldn’t discern any significant differences between the two groups as they talked about what god was - and what god wasn’t.
If you want to be challenged, rewarded, take pleasure in the sheer joy of life, learn about the meaning of spirituality, know how to think about god and why you are a part of the U.U. religion, I would recommend talking to Lynne today to get yourself on the list to act as a youth group advisor. For the braver souls out there I’d recommend the Junior High.
Now, fast-forward 10 years to Cape Cod where I spent a weeklong retreat last summer with a large group of 40 U.U.s at the Northeast Leadership School. One of the exercises was to stand somewhere on a continuum that represented our understanding of god. The image of the white haired, white bearded god that Michaelangelo cemented with his fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling was at one end and a devout atheism was at the other extreme. We first stood on the continuum to represent the god of our childhood, and I was right there with Michaelangelo. The continuum and my new found friends from NELS stretched along the wall through the personal god of creation and control, through the impersonal god of universal design, through all sorts of people labeling themselves as theists and deists of different flavors. The line continued through agnostics, humanists and to the farthest end of the line where a couple of us vied for the very last spot on the continuum to represent our adult atheism. And yet the surprise for me was not that someone else was willing to fight harder than me to anchor that end of the line. It was the realization that were it not for the language of my childhood I would be comfortable aligning myself with that large group of people who stood a ways down the continuum and who felt comfortable speaking about god as connection, , god as the indefinable thing that’s something more than the purely physical world but something less than a sentient controller, or designer, god as the fabric connecting the known from the unknowable. And frankly, today, I’d still be fighting for that last spot on the continuum, but at least when I’m talking with other U.U.s I can hear the word god and translate it into a concept that means something I can connect with. If you need a diagram - here it is – I’ll leave it in front of the pulpit so you can look at it after the service.
Sally sometimes describes me as a contrarian. She says black and I say white. The worship committee invites me to speak on “Why I am a Unitarian Universalist” and I say “I’m not. I’m a U.U.”. I contemplate the title a little more and can’t help but think I should just get up in the pulpit and read Tony Larsen’s sermon “Why you should not be a Unitarian Universalist”. Maybe Sally’s right. I am a little perverse sometimes. But then again maybe that’s why I’m here in the U.U. faith. We are all willing to accept a little perversity from one another as long as we are willing to pass the high entrance requirements of our faith. Here, we don’t give anyone the answers. Here, the challenge of our faith is to ask yourself the right questions so you can help others answer their own questions and maybe form a few more. We mustn’t lower our standards so that just anyone can become a U.U. We must not hand out the answers to people unwilling and unable to ask their own questions.
In fact I am now realizing that the journey we are on as U.U.s, the spiritual jigsaw puzzle I am trying to assemble, is in many ways questioning the meaning of those words that I spent a good portion of my life trying to avoid. This transition in my own thoughts was painted on a large canvas for me only a few weeks ago during yet another junior high youth group meeting I was running with Scott Kyle. I floated the question “What is god?” What transpired, besides another great youth group discussion, was that two of the youth were arguing with each other and that argument could easily have been the “rabid atheist” Rodney of 1992 arguing with the “god as connections” Rodney of 2005. The eye opener for me was that I could agree with both sides of the argument - but now I don’t feel that the argument is necessary, both Rodney’s are correct..
Are you still wondering “Why is Rodney a U.U.” ? Well, where else can a spiritual man of faith find a religion where he can talk about god and still proudly profess his atheism? … and you’ll notice I formed that as a question.
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