Searching for the Source @UUCM 8/4/19

 

Have you checked

Your sources?

Do you know

Why you believe

What you believe?

Have you seen it

With eyes your own?

Has the Holy

Whispered softly

Into your waiting ears?

Does science validate

Your theories

And logic wrap them ’round?

What do ancient

Scriptures teach?

Do the religions

Of the world agree?

Who are your heroes?

What would Jesus say or

Harriet Tubman think?

And through it all

The mystery

The seasons change

Summer fades to fall

When spring time comes

The daffodils

Will startle you again.

Your human heart will open

With love and hope reborn

There is always more to learn.

 

 

Most of us are pretty familiar with the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism.  If you are not, they are listed in the front of your hymnal.

 

Our principles are guides for living, an ethical framework for how we are called to live our lives.  They are what our member congregations have promised to promote.  We care about the worth and dignity of all, about justice, equity and compassion, about spiritual growth, a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, the democratic process, creating an inclusive and world-wide community, and last, but never least, we have respect for our planet.  All of those things are under threat today.

 

But why do we care about those things that are in our seven principles? What do we use in our searches for truth and meaning?  How and why do we work for justice?

 

The answers to those questions are, I believe, contained within our six sources. The sources are also listed in your hymnals.  They quite literally define Unitarian Universalism’s unique place in the world of ideas and world religions.  I quote, “The living tradition we share draws from many sources.”

Living is a key word here, as well as is the word tradition.  Our sources are from our history; they are where we came from.  But even more importantly, they are what we can use to find out where we are going.

Sometimes our sources are listed simply as a series of nouns:

• Self (or Experience)
• Prophets (or Prophecy)
• World religions
• Judaism/Christianity
• Humanism
• Paganism

The Rev. Paul Oakley has said that the verbs are more important; that the sources are also asking us to do things, specifically to:

Renew our spirits and be open

Confront evil with justice, compassion, love

Be inspired in our ethical and spiritual lives

Love our neighbors as ourselves

Be guided by reasonand avoid making idols of ways of thinking, being, and doing

Celebrate life and live in harmony with nature

Oakley says our sources are not just history, but “the wellsprings from which we irrigate our vineyards, the cups from which we wet our parched mouths.”

These sources are incredibly rich, every single one of them.

I want to encourage all of you to look at them and think about them, long term members as well as the newer folks. Some of the sources may have little personal meaning for you at this time.  That used to be true for me.  But if you pay a little more attention to those sources that haven’t moved you in the past, I think you may be surprised at what you will discover.  It is a living tradition after all.  We need to give it ways and room to grow.  The sources are the wells from which we can draw spiritual water. Sometimes one of the wells goes a little dry. A reservoir can be emptied or the groundwater from a particular well that has been over used may no longer quench our thirst. Check out one of the others when this happens.

 

The first source is:

Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;

 

What does that mean?  Several things I think.  Revelation is not sealed.  We are not a faith that believes that all religious truth was written down in ancient scriptures. Mystery and wonder are all around us.  We need to trust our own experiences and our own senses.  If we see a rainbow and think it is a miracle, maybe it is.

 

Many of us have had, in our own lives experiences which some would name spiritual.  I know I have.

 

 

There have been times where a deep realization of an important truth has left me in awe and wonder.

It is a knowing that not everything can be understood by the simply rational. It is a sense that there really are forces that both create and uphold life, even if they are forces that are beyond our understanding. This direct experience could be a sense of having a personal connection to God, but it doesn’t have to be exclusively theistic.  One of my former congregants who defines himself as a humanist tells a story about the feeling he had when he visited the Smithsonian in Washington DC. He had a moment there when he realized that everything in that fabulous museum actually belonged to him.  He was part of something much larger than himself.  We should never discount our own experience of the world around us. This source reminds us to think, see, and feel for ourselves.  It doesn’t mean we will always be right, but we don’t have to buy into someone else’s version of reality and we can affirm what is true for us.

 

 

The second source is:

Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;

 

Who are your heroes?  Who has inspired you?  It could be someone famous, but it could just be someone you know.  Maybe members of this church community have inspired you both with their words and deeds.

 

There are awesome role models here, both in service to the congregation and in working for justice. This source also leads us to look at our heroes and who they were as well as what they did.

 

Did they confront evil not only to bring about justice, but did they do so with compassion and love?  No one is perfect, but those who would lead us to hate others are not those we should try to model ourselves after.

 

The third source: Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;

 

It was the transcendentalists, people like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, that studied world religions, especially those that valued direct experience of the divine, that brought this source into the mainstream of Unitarianism in the 19^thcentury.  They dipped deeply into this well, and so can we.

 

What do the religions of the world have to teach us?  What spiritual practices from other traditions can give our lives more meaning?

 

Yoga, Buddhist meditation practice, the Hindu concept of Namaste, and the daily prayers of Islam, are only a few places we can go for help in our spiritual and ethical lives.  This source is a place awaiting our discoveries.  Most of us have not looked too closely at what the different world religions have to offer us. It is important to understand context, however.

If we simply cherry pick, we don’t do this source justice and may even be drawn into cultural appropriation.

 

 

The fourth source is: Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;

 

This source is our immediate history and heritage.  Both Unitarianism, the belief that God is one, and Universalism, the belief that God loves all of creation and that there is no hell; have their roots in very early Christianity, which of course in its beginning was a Jewish movement.

 

This history can speak very strongly to those of us who attended exclusively Christian Churches or Jewish Congregations in the past.  Some of us loved the many inspiring messages contained in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures.  Others of us fell victim to rigid and literal interpretations of those scriptures.  It can help to revisit some of them with fresh eyes and open hearts

 

Our fifth source is: Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;

 

This is the source that I think most helps to keep us honest. Whatever we believe and do must make some sense in the real and rational world.

 

Yes, we can have understandings of mystery that are beyond the realm of the scientific method, but it is dangerous ground to rely on something that is in direct contradiction to what reason and science tell us. Angels might fly, but we humans are subject to gravity.

The Bible might say one thing, but if science tells us the world is much older than 6000 years, I am going with science.  Science and religion are not in conflict.

They should both be about increasing our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

 

That brings us to our sixth source, the last official one, which is: Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature

 

How can we not live in harmony with nature when we are part of it?  This is the favorite source for many of us who have come to Unitarian Universalism from pagan traditions and practices.  There are seasons to our lives just as there are seasons in the year.  The need for harmony with nature is also in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures as well as in the various world religions. Sometimes we just need to go up on a mountain and watch the sunrise.

 

Those are our six official sources, places where we can go for inspiration and for solace.  Is anything left out?

What would you add to this list?  It is not written in stone, we can add things to it, just as we can rewrite the seven principles.  There is a democratic process to do that at our national assemblies.

The sixth source was added to the original five in 1995.  There was also a proposal to revise the wording of the sources a couple of years ago. It did not pass, but it could have.

 

What would you add?

One I might add would be something about the arts, including music, poetry, and dance as well as the visual arts.  Beauty, meaning, and inspiration can come from artistic creativity.

 

Paul Oakley said that, “We irrigate the fields not by worshiping the water but by doing something with the water.”

 

He is not wrong, but we also need to go back and drink from the wells that spiritual water comes from, again and again. Living is thirsty work.

 

We can’t afford to ignore any of these spiritual wells just because we might like the flavor of one of them a bit more.

 

We are an open minded and open hearted people.  Our sources are rich and life sustaining. May we drink deeply and be satisfied.