Laurie Goodman presented the following worship service on July 13, 2014. It reflects her observations and thoughtful conclusions from last year's search for our next settled minister.

Opening Words

Our opening words are from Belief is the Enemy of Faith, an essay by our
Unitarian Universalist President, Reverend Peter Morales:

I believe the future of religion is a spirituality that is interfaith at its core. I am convinced we Unitarian Universalists have a historic opportunity to help create that future.
 
For the last several years I have spoken about the momentous changes in the American religious landscape. Young people are rejecting all religion in numbers we have never seen before.
 
While this is troubling at one level, at another level I find cause for great optimism. The good news is that people, at least in the developed world, are rejecting cultural and religious exceptionalism. By religious exceptionalism, I mean the conviction that my religion possesses the truth and, by extension, yours is false. As people mix more and more, they come to appreciate the contributions of all the great religions. All across the country we see students at college campuses engaging others from different religious backgrounds in interfaith settings.
 
Religions are not all the same, of course. Yet certain common themes and core values emerge in all of them. Among these are compassion, community, the practice of a spiritual discipline, and the pursuit of a difficult path toward a new level of consciousness.
 
We UUs have been open to other faiths for a long time. We draw from a number of religious sources. We respect and try to appreciate other traditions (well, at least the more liberal and progressive parts of them). I have sometimes joked that we are a kind of spiritual refugee center for people from other traditions. I am one of them.
 
Many current UUs came to our faith out of a rejection of the faith into which they were born. The search of many young people today is fundamentally different. They are not in flight from oppressive orthodoxy. Instead, I see them searching for something much deeper than an absence of dogma. Something new is struggling to be born.
 
What is holding back a new spiritual awakening? How can we help it emerge? How can we play a role in this great cultural movement?
 
I think we can help change the conversation. We need to think about faith, religion, and spirituality in a new way. When I grew up, I was taught that religion was about what we believed. What made my denomination different (and correct, of course) was our sound doctrine. We were right. This made religion too much about being right, about us and them. Too much attention then goes into defending our beliefs.
 
I am now convinced that “belief,” in the way we usually use the word, is actually the enemy of faith, religion, and spirituality. Let me say that again: belief is the enemy of faith. When we dwell on beliefs we ask all the wrong questions. My faith is much more about what I love than about what I think.
 
When the conversation shifts away from our beliefs to what we hold most dear, to what moves us at the depths of our being and what calls us, wondrous new possibilities emerge. We share and explore our deepest experiences. We discover what we have in common. Our attention naturally turns to how we want to live our lives and to the commitments we are willing to make. Our concern at the personal level becomes one of developing our awareness, of spiritual disciplines, of growth. At the interpersonal level, our attention turns to loving relationships. Finally, our attention turns to issues of compassion, justice, and interdependence. Faith becomes a relationship. Faith is about being faithful to what we hold sacred.
 
A new interfaith, multifaith spirituality is struggling to be born. Ours has always been a faith beyond belief. We have a historic role to play. — Reverend Peter Morales

Homily, Part I: On the Edge of All the Light You Know

Throughout our long history, individual Unitarian Universalist congregations have offered a framework for seekers to explore the meaning and purpose of their lives. Rather than teaching a set of beliefs to be learned and accepted without critical thought, our teachings provide a context in which to think about our world and to make our place in it.

There is no religious doctrine or text that binds us together. No infallible truths taught to us by a religious authority. Rather, ours is a covenantal faith, based on an agreement to uphold and live according to a set of principles. Our Seven Principles come from and are understood through the exploration of the Sources of Our Living Tradition. These sources include our own direct experience, the words and deeds of those past and present who have shown us how to bravely live according to our principles, wisdom drawn from the world’s religions that inspire us to live spiritual and ethical lives, humanist teachings which implore us to value reason and science and caution against idolatry, and earth centered spiritual teachings that instruct us how to live in harmony with nature.

It is my observation that within the guidance of these sources and principles, each congregation has evolved along its own path. A congregation's culture is influenced by the experiences, interests and priorities of the members, the wisdom and leadership of the minister, and the backdrop of history and current events. The widespread acceptance of congregational self-determination over the past half century has led many of us to view Unitarian Universalism as a group of loosely affiliated congregations rather than an Association of Congregations. In too many cases, the relationships that people who identify as Unitarian Universalists have with other UUs are limited to the people within their own churches.

Within each of our congregations, we love our fellow parishioners, our culture, and our dominant theology. Why would we contribute so much time and treasure to our churches if it were otherwise? However, this lack of consistency from one congregation to the next that I just spoke of is likely to be a major factor in what is currently limiting the growth of our membership. The individuality of practice and message from one UU church to the next makes it challenging for each of us to see the bigger picture of Unitarian Universalism as it exists beyond our own sanctuary doors. And we are sorely
challenged to explain what we're about or what we contribute to the larger culture. When members of each congregation describe their congregation's culture or their own personal beliefs as the definition of Unitarian Universalism, how helpful is this to a religious seeker?

When we're satisfied with the status quo, with who we are and how we “do church,” we limit ourselves. We limit our growth as individuals, we limit our vision of who we might become, we limit our connections with Unitarian Universalists and people of other faiths outside our own small congregations. Perhaps our greatest loss is in failing to harness the power and momentum we have within reach to create the world embodied within our seven principles — where every person is valued; where all basic needs are met and no one lives hungry, homeless, or lonely; and where our efforts can be directed toward fulfilling the meaning and purpose of our lives. 

When we’re satisfied with the status quo, with who we are and how we “do church,” we risk becoming isolated, stagnant and out of touch by only attracting new members who are just like us — who think like us, look like us, share similar life experiences, and believe what we believe. The risk is becoming a congregation that is predominantly inwardly focused on each other rather than living our UU values and principles to create the world we envision.

One of the predominant themes expressed by members of our congregation through the Ministerial Search Committee’s information gathering phase was reluctance to, or fear of, change. Our members value the stability and consistency that having two long-term settled ministers has given us over the past half century. It turns out, we like the way we do church, we like each other, we want to maintain our congregation’s dominant theology, and we like the culture we have created for ourselves.

Words for Reflection

To Be of Use by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Homily, Part II: Stepping Off

I think that the majority of the members of this church have gotten the message that Unitarian Universalism is changing. If we didn't know it before, the last two years of our ministerial transition period has given us a glimpse of this. But conclusions reached only through the experience of Sunday worship services may be misleading.

As I mentioned earlier, the congregational discernment process conducted by the Search Committee uncovered a level of anxiety about the changes that might come about with a new settled minister, particularly in regard to theology. Will our services become more Christian? Will there be a lot of God talk and prayer introduced into the services? Will the minister feel a stronger commitment to the Unitarian Universalist Association than to the wishes of the majority of members of the congregation? Will the minister wear a robe?!

The best answer I can come up with based on my experience at regional UU events, my past experience on the Board of Trustees and the Worship Associates, along with my work with the Search Committee is: “Well, maybe.” Yes to some of these questions, anyway. (I’m going to leave these answers for Gary to address in his service on Coming to Terms with the Terms in two weeks, if he chooses to do so. If not, let’s chat and I'll do my best to share what I think I may know on the subject.) The most important thing I've learned, though, is that none of these concerns really matters when you take a look at the focus of the changes taking place within Unitarian Universalism.

Unitarian Universalism is changing, make no mistake about it. And it’s not about to change. It has been in the process of major transformational change now for several years. The impetus of the change is not theological, but there are theological implications. The impetus of this change relates to Rev. Morales’ Belief is the Enemy of Faith essay that I started with today.

Recall, Rev. Morales talked about the changing expectations of today’s religious seekers. Rather than fleeing a denomination rife with religious doctrine that they don't relate to, they are searching for something to give their life more meaning, more relevance, and able to give them the tools they need to accomplish a new vision of religion, a vision that includes fairness and justice for all, one that includes rather than isolates, one that empowers, one that brings people of different religious beliefs together for common purpose rather than common religious ideology.

The changes in Unitarian Universalism relating to theology are about inclusiveness, not about converting non-believers into believers or believers into non-believers. Remember, it’s not about what we believe ... it’s about what we love, what we hold most dear, and what we are willing to sacrifice to bring about the needed changes in this world. When you open up a faith such as ours to include people of common passion and purpose, people with life experiences different from our own, inclusiveness means broadening our practice and language, as well.

The Reverend Tom Schade is the former minister of the First Unitarian Church of Worcester, and he shared some of his ideas on the changes taking place in Unitarian Universalism in a UU World magazine article called Religious Community is not Enough: Unitarian Universalism's purpose is much bigger than gathering with like-minded people for mutual support. Well, that title pretty much sums it up, but I’ll elaborate.

Reverend Schade thinks that today’s UU congregations have largely settled on building communities of faith as our most important work. These communities are safe havens in which we support and care for each other, share our stories, and act as a village for our children. He acknowledges the value of these supportive congregations for the people who belong to them, but believes that many religious seekers are not interested in belonging to congregations that exist just for the sake of meeting their own needs. If the main purpose of a church is to maintain its membership, to uphold a long held tradition, or to preserve a beautiful landmark building, these are simply not compelling reasons for newcomers to join.

According to Rev. Schade,

Liberal religion has a purpose, and it is bigger than we think, and certainly bigger than gathering with like-minded people for mutual support.

And the purpose is not carrying out social justice work, such as helping to change some laws or ushering in a needed social reform, though he acknowledges that is important work. Rather, he says, the work of our congregations is to develop people who would care about an issue and feel the strength to act on that conviction.

For too long, he tells us, UU congregations have been acting as a safe place for progressive thinking people to hunker down, protected from the harsh culture outside. The real purpose of our congregations, in his estimation, is by word and deed to change the world by encouraging people to live a different way. Building religious community is primarily and most importantly a means to this larger end.

So to sum up, let me share with you what I have come to believe is at the center of the new Unitarian Universalism. It’s a vision we in this congregation may be coming to a little later than many other congregations, due to the cocoon of comfort we have been wrapped in after two very long ministries, but one I believe we are well prepared to embrace and grow into with our next settled minister:

I have come to understand that Unitarian Universalism is moving toward the expression of a deeper spirituality that reclaims and reinterprets religious language in a way that encourages greater compassion, empathy and understanding of ourselves and others; that encourages us to let ourselves be vulnerable within the safety of our faith community, in order to feel what it is to be vulnerable and to be held up, honored and respected in that vulnerability. It is about learning to listen first and to engage as fully with our hearts as we do with our intellect. It is language that calls us to action to live our values more fully, to be more fully present, and to be accountable to the interconnected web of all life.

This, I believe, is the new Humanism:working toward a greater understanding of what it can mean to become more human and more in touch with our human nature. This is the new Atheism: no longer defined by what we do not believe, but rather to what we can become through a growing understanding of our own humanity and the responsibility inherent in that knowledge.

Unitarian Universalism is a vessel that holds us together as we explore life’s deepest meaning and mysteries. It provides context, opportunities, shared language, and common experience to create a world in which differences are seen as opportunities for growth and understanding, rather than excuses to divide us.

Closing Words

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime. — W.E.B. DuBois

Extinguishing the Chalice

When you come to the edge of all the light you know
And are about to drop off
Into the darkness of the unknown,
Faith is knowing that one of two things will happen...
There will be something solid to stand on,
or you will be taught how to fly. — Barbara J. Winter

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From the Ministerial Search Committee — We welcome your thoughts and feedback, as one of our objectives is to foster a congregational dialog about what we have experienced and learned. One way to do so is to leave a comment responding to this or any of the blog posts.