Reverence for All

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Reverence breathes new meaning into old forms.

Reverence is our theme for the month.

We’ve affirmed being true to oneself, revering the integrity of being.

We’ve affirmed reverence for relationship, I and Thou.

Today we open up further.  A wide embrace:  Reverence for All.

I love talking with people who are discovering Unitarian Universalism.

Each conversation is unique, as each person’s story is unique.

Our life journeys are shared with others, and each is one of a kind.

No one in this room has shared every moment of your life.

While our journeys into Unitarian Universalism are unique, people share experiences with me that are common.

Often they have to do with authenticity, integrity, and determination.

Many come here on a religious journey that has had stops in a variety of settings, different religious backgrounds, different types of Christian churches, or being raised outside organized religion.

Whatever the experiences, there is something for which we are still longing.

Sometimes beliefs or doctrines just didn’t make sense.

Sometimes the rituals lacked meaning.

Sometimes leaders were not trustworthy.

Whatever the experiences, we long for something different, something more, and we are curious to discover if there is a way of being true to ourselves, true to our deeply held values, and be in community with others.

We are curious.

While reflecting on this common characteristic among what I’ll call “UU types,”

I read about the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck.

Perhaps you saw the article in last Tuesday’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Dweck is particularly interested in “why some people achieve their potential while those who are equally talented don’t.”

She believes the difference is rooted in our “mind-set.”

Some people believe intelligence is what we are given at birth, determined by genetics.

Others have a “growth mind-set,” recognizing “intelligence is malleable, not just handed out at birth, and your intellectual growth is to a large degree in your own hands.”

“…A basic tenet of neuroscience [is] that the brain changes with exercise, growing new connections every time students learn something new.”

Now isn’t that interesting: having a growth mind-set, knowing that we are not limited by our past, enables us to open to new possibilities, integrate new ideas, and become something more.

Dweck says if we believe intelligence is innate, our capacity is what we have at birth, we may feel “an urgency to prove [ourselves],… mak[ing] challenging situations threatening to [our] self-image.”

If, in our religious lives, we believe all truth has been revealed and is forever true, we feel threatened when new ideas, new propositions – particularly ones that challenge those revealed truths – are presented.

Think of the recent battles over evolution.

Imagine you believe your interpretation of the Bible is infallible, that God created the heavens and the earth about 6000 years ago.

Then you visit the Grand Canyon and see all those layers of sediment exposed.  Geologists say it took millions of years for this to form.

You’ve got to do some “creative” [or I should say, “creation”] explaining to fit the physical evidence into your understanding of truth.

It can be a stressful stretch.

On the other hand, imagine those old “truths” never rang true to you.

Imagine you have a growth mind-set, you are curious, looking for new information, new explanations.

That’s what I experience in so many conversations with people exploring if Unitarian Universalism fits their understanding.

UUs have a growth mind-set.

While it’s often difficult, we are people open to change.

We open to new truth whencesoever it may come.

It’s why we have no creed, but rather a set of principles to live by, affirming, among others, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”

As a young boy I believed God was the Spirit of Love.

This understanding may have been combined with an image of an old man in the sky with a long white beard.

By the time I was in Junior High School I had let go this understanding, and while in high school I boldly declared myself an atheist, rejecting, explicitly, that earlier image.

I entered theological school an avowed existential atheist, but, you know what, my upbringing as a UU kept me open.

Theological school was a sometimes painful confrontation with divinity – or at least with traditional Christian images of the Divine.

My growth mind-set challenged me to keep looking, to go beyond images of the divine, to explore experiences of the ineffable.

I breathed new meaning into old theological terms.

Unitarian Universalism was large enough to embrace my quest.

Early in my ministry I was on the staff of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston.

Rev. George Marshall was minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

It’s our largest UU congregation, serving about 4000 people who live scattered all over the world.

George’s office was just downstairs.  I dropped by to talk with him.

He told me about his visit to Africa to meet with Albert Schweitzer, the renowned physician and humanitarian.

Schweitzer spoke of his Reverence for Life, his experience of the divine within all.

George shared with him Unitarian Universalism’s embrace of the unity of all.

The short of the story is that Albert Schweitzer became a Unitarian Universalist, a member of the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

Now our congregation presents the Schweitzer award, to members who have given outstanding service to this church for at least fifteen years.

Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life was a challenge to me.

I was an Oklahoma kid.

Skills of my coming of age included smashing mosquitoes and crushing ticks.

I swatted wasps; stomped on tarantulas and scorpions.

I learned to catch a housefly with one hand.

Reverence for Life?  Divinity in All?  Oh, come on!

But, a seed had been planted.

Or, perhaps, it was more like Albert Schweitzer at some deep level of being, reminded me of what I already knew.

I look back on a journey of opening.

My curiosity leads me.

The years have taken me to places made holy by human expression, places that have opened my awareness, places that have kindled my reverence:

Rumi’s mosque in Konya, whirling dervishes, rhythmically turning, consciousness melding, …

Mount Abu, the ancient Jain temples, white marble carved,

tons of chips excavated, leaving rooms for prayer and intricate forms at which to marvel.

Jains revere life.  They praise life in all its forms.

They walk carefully so as not to step on ants, tarantulas, or scorpions.

Bodh Gaya, place of Buddha’s enlightenment, hum of chants, candles lit, orange petals, saffron robes, come into this present moment, breathe.

The ineffable, here, now.

Ganges flow, wide river, Varanasi, ancient site, fire of transformation, bodies burn, celebrate life’s journey into the unknown.

Smoke rising, dissipating.

Energy releases, continues in the web of all existence.

In the 12th century, Hildegard of Bingen expressed reverence for life:

I am that great and fiery force sparkling in everything that lives;

In shining of the river’s course, in greening grass that glory gives.

I shine in glitter on the seas, in burning sun, in moon and stars.

In unseen wind, in verdant trees I breathe within, both near and far.

And where I breathe there is no death, and meadows glow with beauties rife.

I am in all, the spirit’s breath, the thundered word, for I am Life.

Two centuries later, in Persia, the great Sufi Master Hafiz

expressed reverence for on-going life this way:

“The voice of the river that has emptied into the Ocean

Now laughs and sings just like God.”

Unitarian philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson “called Hafiz ‘a poet of poets’ and in his journal wrote:  ‘He fears nothing.  He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to…be.’”

Hildegard, Hafiz, Emerson, Albert Schweitzer:  Reverence for Life, Divinity in All.

My understanding was not set at birth.

My understanding grows.

I am becoming a mystic…

Last August, high in the Sierras, in the dark of the night,

I lay back and take in millions of stars.

In only a few minutes four stars shoot across – my consciousness.

I live again an Oklahoma boyhood summer.

“That’s the Milky Way.  There’s the North Star.”

What is a prayer if it is not an attempt to translate this dazzling Light into words?

O Great Mystery Beyond Our Knowing,
Cosmic Dancer, Fiery Force,
You burn within a million stars.
You burn within me, within us.
Fill us with reverence for All
that we may sing and dance in deepest gratitude.
Widen our embrace.
Keep us learning, growing, opening,
breathing Your breath
moving Your love.

Amen.

Reverence for All from UU Church of Berkeley on Vimeo.

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