But first, each youth had to stand in the pulpit and read an essay about his or her beliefs.  To come of age, the congregation expected each youth to be able to articulate a personal statement about his or her own system of theological thought.

This was the day when, with complete confidence, I announced from the pulpit that I had seen no proof of a god that I could accept.

I don’t know how many teenagers have the opportunity to proclaim atheism from a pulpit.  And for those that do, I’m not sure what percentage can expect to meet with thunderous applause at the end of it.  But I’m willing to suggest that a Unitarian Universalist congregation is one of the only places where you’ll find that particular convergence of circumstances.

Our reading for today was from the Gospel of John.  We heard the story of Jesus visiting the apostles after he had risen from the dead.  He came to them through locked doors, showing them the wounds in his hands and his side.  They rejoiced, and he blessed them.

Thomas, however, was absent that day.  He would not believe the apostles’ account until he had seen and touched Jesus’s wounds himself.  For this reason, he has been dubbed “Doubting Thomas.”

Today, in common vernacular a Doubting Thomas is someone who will refuse to believe something without direct, physical, personal evidence; in other words, a skeptic.

Thomas has been given the blame and the burden for doubting what he did not see for himself.  He is criticized for not having “faith.”  And yet the other apostles were given the same proof that Thomas demanded—only after they were allowed to see did they rejoice that their teacher had returned to them.

Faith—blind faith—if it is not first passed through the shadow of doubt and the fire of thought, is weak and untempered.  For faith to have meaning, it must be grounded in reality.  We know this.  And Thomas knew this, too.

Because of his doubt, when his questions were answered—when he touched Jesus’s wounds with his own hands—his faith was strengthened.  Because of his doubts, he came to believe.

I wonder if Thomas, apostle though he was, was actually a Unitarian Universalist.  Like many of us, he questioned and asked for proof, rather than offering blind trust.  He searched for truth and meaning in the only way he knew how—demanding to touch with his hands and see with his eyes.

As a teenager standing in my congregation’s pulpit, I declared that I am a person who needs to see things to believe them.  Since that day, many things have changed.  But not that.  I am still a person who needs to see things to believe them.

I have simply altered my understanding of what it means to see.

Being able to articulate what we don’t believe is just as important as being able to talk about what we do believe.  Sometimes it all gets so confusing, and there are so many interfering messages, and our eyes and our hearts are in conflict, and we just don’t know where to begin.  Sometimes, the only thing we know is what we don’t know.

Sometimes, we have to begin with our doubt.

Cherish your doubt.  Cherish it.

Because it is only through doubting that we come to believe.

~*~

This sermon was written for Prof. Chris Smith’s preaching class at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities as our first assignment in the Spring Term 2012.  We were asked to write and preach a 5-minute sermon relating to John 20:19-31.  I decided to address my sermon specifically to a Unitarian Universalist audience.

The amazing youth who attend the Unitarian Universalist Church of Minnetonka are beginning to put together the worship service for Sunday, March 18, 2012.  As I help to empower them from my position as a minister and youth leader, I’ve been reflecting back on the adults who helped me find my voice when I was a youth growing up in Wisconsin.  In a burst of nostalgia, I went through my bookshelves and found my very first sermon, written as a personal essay for Doc Cass’s AP English class in 2000.  It was shared with Unitarian Church North in Mequon, Wisconsin as the sermon for the youth service the following spring.

~*~

A bright smile that reveals nothing.  A certain veil behind happy eyes, masking true emotion.  A quick handshake in greeting.  A distant nod of welcome.  Meaningless phrases such as “It’s nice to see you,” or “Yes, we’ve met before.”  This is the arsenal of words and gestures that arms the average person of today, equipping them for their daily venture into the polite world.  These manners allow them to meet people, greet people, and treat with people without revealing a single personal detail about themselves.

Am I the only person who sees something wrong with this?

Politeness today is not only manners and tact.  It is avoidance.  To be polite today, you avoid asking personal questions, you avoid topics which involve personal opinions, and you avoid expressing strong emotion.  You are expected to be quiet, mildly happy, interested, and yet distanced.  It is a useless mumbo-jumbo that allows every person to hide everything about themselves that is real and true.

Finding out a personal detail about a stranger is a subconscious faux pas of the highest order.  Once you know a detail about this stranger’s life, you remember it, and that memory forms a tie to your heart.  They suddenly have a past and a future, hopes and dreams, laughter and tears, loved ones and ones that are not-so-loved.  That this virtual stranger could so quickly form an attachment is a rather frightening concept to some people, and so the subconscious warns them never to be personal, never to get too close, or someday that tie will pull a little bit too tight, and it will hurt.

It is this avoidance of attachment that I believe is the worst vice of society today.  It is fear of the pain that is the price of attachment which makes people hide their souls away in a locked closet, far away from others, so that no matter what happens, no one will ever know who they are.

The problem with this is that the lock on that door rusts with time until the key won’t turn anymore.  Your soul is lost even to you.  There was once a time when you would bring it out in private, where no one could see it or criticize it or fear it.  But eventually it became more difficult to lock it away again, so the solution, of course, is not to let it out and make outsiders cope, but to keep it safely locked away so it can never be hurt or mocked or known.  You put on a guise of happiness and laughter and friendship, and you make your way out into the masquerade we call life.

And you can’t let that mask slip.  Never show anyone what lies beneath, behind, inside.  Sorrow, anger, pain, suffering.  These emotions upset society’s view of how life should be. And so when these emotions slip through the mask, the average outsider will try to “help” you safely hide them away again.  The strong will comfort you until you have enough control to get the mask back into place.  The weak will turn away from these uncomfortable emotions, not quite meeting your eye, waiting out of sight in the wings until you’ve learned the lesson never to be yourself.  It’s a lesson we’ve all learned, at one point or another, and I believe it is the most difficult to unlearn as we develop and mature.  Thus these emotional and subconscious restrictions still chain us to the rigid post we refer to as “politeness,” no matter what we’ve learned, who we know, or how we feel.

No one can do anything for anyone else to free these bonds.  You must learn to do it yourself.  Reach out to comfort a friend in silence.  Talk to the stranger sitting next to you on the bus.  Learn to be welcoming and open.  Learn to be true to who you are and what you stand for.  These actions will weaken the chains which have bound you since childhood.  But most importantly, learn to listen to other people and to really hear what their hearts are trying to say to you.

Remember: Rare is the person who truly understands what it means to cry.  And rarer still is the person who will sit with you and not try to wipe your face with the mask that has slipped to the floor.  But rarest of all is the person who will embrace you and love you and see through that mask to unlock the door where your soul is captive.

Raised in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, I was taught to appreciate the questions, to cherish my doubt.  I was encouraged to use reason to reach my own personal answers, relying on scientific fact, logic, and the proof of experience.  I had the Seven Principles to guide me, a youth group that danced the Time Warp at midnight, and the freedom to explore any world religion or existential idea that I wanted to. Because of this background, I became a lifelong seeker, growing into my understanding that even to question, truly, is an answer.  I learned to find comfort in the exploration, knowing that some mysteries would always remain inexplicable and unresolvable—mysteries like “what is it that makes us self-aware?” and “what happens when we die?”  We have theories, opinions, and guesses, many of which are beautiful.  But we offer no definitive answers to those big life questions.

Yet my Christian friends were given a heritage rich with answers and explanations.  Even as I boasted of my own freedom from creed and dogma, there was a part of me that wished for the ancestral stories, the common knowledge, the inheritance of understanding where my Unitarian Universalist heritage had come from.

Living in the questions has its own comfort, especially for those among us who have experienced the discomfort of being told to accept something that in our heart of hearts we cannot believe.  But without grounding ourselves in the roots of our heritage, how can we help but feel adrift?

There is an epithet that is bounced around about our denomination, both by members and non-members.  When word gets out, it is often said that we are the church where you can believe whatever you want.

As a child, I took pride in that idea.  To my young ears, it spoke of freedom, distinguishing me from those “others” who were told what they had to believe in order to belong.  This idea of “being allowed to believe whatever I wanted” gave me something to cling to, and I held it up as a shield to protect me from the spiritual violence directed at me by well-intentioned Christians who wanted me to know I was going to hell.

“The church where you can believe whatever you want.”

Eventually, that phrase began to bother me.  Because if you can believe whatever you want, then in essence, you don’t have to believe anything.  If anything goes, then there is nothing that defines you.  If you have nothing that ties you together, then how can you know that you belong?

When people describe Unitarian Universalism as “the church where you can believe whatever you want,” now I hear “The church of whatever.”

What do you believe?  Whatever.

Where do you come from?  Wherever.

Who are your ancestors?  Whomever.

I hope that makes you as uncomfortable as it makes me.

Because I am proud of our Unitarian Universalist tradition.  I am proud of our call to “give life the shape of justice.”  I am proud of our community of inclusivity, where we do our best welcome to whomever comes through our doors.  I am proud of this congregation’s spiritual practice of generosity, supporting local causes and denominational efforts by giving away the entire offering every week.  I am proud to claim the title of “Unitarian Universalist,” and I hope that you are, too.

We are not “the church where you can believe whatever you want.”

But if that’s not who we are…then who are we?  Where are our roots?

Perhaps you’ve been anticipating the irony of the answer.  Our deepest roots are the same as those of our Christian friends.  And our Christian friends share common roots with our Jewish friends.

Those stories of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Moses, and then Jesus, Augustine, Martin Luther—traced back far enough, those stories are the roots of our shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

As we follow the growth of that family tree, our paths diverge.  It started when the Jewish branch went one way, and the “followers of the Way” (now known as Christians) went the other.  Following the Christian branch, groups of doctrinal dissenters cropped up along the way and were declared heretics.  The Greeks stopped showing up to the big church council meetings a little over a thousand years ago, and so the Greek Orthodox church today is largely unchanged from that time.

Eventually Martin Luther came along and nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany about 500 years ago, protesting certain questionable church practices.  For the first time in Christian history, there was an actual intentional rift, a revolution, where both sides survived and continued and flourished.  This became known as the Protestant Reformation.

Somewhere in there, King Henry the Eighth of England got cranky that the Catholic Church wouldn’t let him get divorced, and so he declared himself the highest religious authority for his people, and the Church of England was born.  It became a curious mix of Catholicism and Protestantism.

From that point forward, there were two main methods of being Christian—the Catholic way and the Protestant way.  At first the Protestants were all Lutherans, but pretty soon people had the choice of following Calvin, or Zwingli, or Wesley.  There was the choice of being an Anabaptist, or a Spiritualist, or a Socinian.  Socinians, at the time, were also known as “antitrinitarians,” a term which was later shortened to “unitarians.”

In the midst of all this change, the seeds of Unitarianism and Universalism took root and began to grow.

That’s another topic for another time.  But without the Jews and Jesus and the Catholics and Martin Luther and John Calvin, Unitarian Universalism as we understand it today wouldn’t exist.

Our own theological history is a reflection of and a reaction to the spread of Christian denominationalism.  We can’t truly appreciate our identity today if we ignore the history that shaped us.

The Christian scriptures were the scriptures of our own theological ancestors.  They do not have to hold the same authority in Unitarian Universalism today, though for some of us, they do.  But for us to have a true sense and understanding of our roots, we do need to accept that part of our theological and denominational identity arose out of the historical debates surrounding the particulars of biblical interpretation.

I was born a third generation Unitarian Universalist and raised in a humanist Midwestern congregation.  I have never considered myself a Christian.

But in spite of growing up in this faith tradition, I never really understood the significance of our place in the world until I began studying Christian historical theology and learning about the roots of our denomination.  It is only when we understand our roots that we can comprehend our heritage, our birthright, and our identity.

Where we come from determines where we are now.  And where we are now determines where we can go.

In our reading this morning, Unitarian Universalist minister James Luther Adams wrote:

We are all entirely familiar with the New Testament axiom, ‘By their fruits shall you know them,’ but since fruits cannot appear without roots, are we not entitled to say also, ‘By their roots shall you know them?’  In exploring our roots as liberals we may be able to achieve our sense of identity, thus answering in part the question, Who are we?

Fruits cannot appear without roots.  How obvious, and how easy to forget!  Today, Unitarian Universalists enjoy many fruits that had to come from somewhere.

We enjoy the separation of church and state, living in a country where our constitution protects our right to worship as we choose.  We can trace that idea back to the very first edict of religious freedom, known as the Edict of Torda, issued by King John Sigismund of Transylvania in 1568.  The translation reads, in part:

His Majesty, our Lord, …reaffirms that in every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well. If not, no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teaching they approve….

Such a proclamation that included multiple religions was unprecedented in the universality of its language.  And it came about partially because of King Sigismund’s open-mindedness, and partially because of the influence of Francis David, the Unitarian court minister.  The edict applied to Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Unitarians.

That is one root which bore fruit.

If we fast-forward about 150 years, we land in New England, just before the American Revolution, and we learn of Rev. John Murray, formerly a “fire and brimstone” type of Calvanist preacher from England who had been excommunicated because of his rejection of the belief in hell.  He became a pioneer minister who preached “not hell, but hope” all up and down the east coast, before he finally settled in Boston and became the minister of the Universalist society there.  Today, Boston is where the Unitarian Universalist Association has its headquarters.

Go forward another 100 years, and we find the Transcendentalist movement, which believed in the inherent goodness of both humankind and nature, claiming that we are at our best when we are self-reliant and independent.  These ideas were recorded extensively in essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Parker, and Margaret Fuller, just to name a few famous Unitarian writers.  Their ideas trickled through the roots of history and had a direct influence on the proponents of humanism in the Unitarian tradition.

John Dietrich was among the first Unitarian ministers to boldly preach that humanist thinking was the true foundation of religious liberalism.  His sermons and addresses became so widely read that the ideas of religious humanism became popularized and are now a significant element in Unitarian Universalism today.  Dietrich served as the minister of the First Unitarian Society here in Minneapolis for nearly a quarter of a century.  As a result, the Twin Cities are sometimes touted as the birthplace of religious humanism in America.

But Dietrich isn’t the only influential Unitarian minister who has ties to the Twin Cities.  We have more roots here than you might know.

James Luther Adams, who wrote our call to worship and our reading this morning, also has ties to the Twin Cities.

Adams, like many Unitarian Universalists today, grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household.  When he left his home state of Washington to attend college at the University of Minnesota, he was, in his own words, “on the rebound from fundamentalism.”  Having spent his early years proselytizing about the Day of Judgement, he spent his college years railing against organized religion and embracing an atheistic form of humanism.

And then he found his way to the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, where he heard Dietrich preaching.  It was the first exposure Adams had to a form of humanism that was at once both scientific and religious.  Because of this influence, when Adams graduated from the university here, he went to Harvard Divinity School and began studying to become a Unitarian minister.  Though his evolution of course did not take place overnight, Adams eventually earned a reputation as a nationally distinguished, spirited Christian humanist, known for his intellect, humor, and insight.

An excerpt from the Unitarian Universalist Association’s website gives us an idea of Adam’s character:

In Germany during 1935-36, Adams watched as the Nazi government of Adolph Hitler ruthlessly crushed any and all dissent as it marshaled forces for its coming march across the continent. Interrogated by the Gestapo, he narrowly avoided imprisonment as a result of his engagement with the Underground Church movement. Using a home movie camera, he filmed Karl Barth, Albert Schweitzer and others, including those who were involved in clandestine, church-related resistance groups, as well as pro-Nazi leaders of the so-called German Christian Church. Adams returned to the United States more convinced than ever that the tendency of religious liberals to be theologically content with vague slogans and platitudes about open-mindedness could only render liberal churches irrelevant and impotent in face of the world’s evils, and he stated his convictions loudly and frequently.

Adams served as a minister out on the east coast, and later as a professor at Meadville Lombard Theological School, the University of Chicago, Harvard Divinity School, and Andover Newton Theological Seminary.  In the academic world, Adams is credited with translating the works of liberal German theologians and making their works available to the English-speaking world.

It is difficult to adequately explain within the brief confines of a sermon how influential James Luther Adams was.  One of his students, George Beech, writes:

Confronting the organizational and intellectual lethargy into which Unitarianism had drifted during the 1930s, Adams became a leader in the movement to revitalize the American Unitarian Association through a powerful Commission of Appraisal.  With renewed growth and bold new programs for religious education, publications, church extension, international service, and youth work, this effort bore fruit in the 1940s and 1950s, ultimately leading to the creation of the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961.

Beech continued, in another book:

 A significant instance of Adams’s church involvement is his proposal, late in his career, of revised language for the Principles and Purposes statement of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  Among several “sources of the living tradition we share,” the statement, adopted in 1985, names the following: “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.”  The words are redolent with Biblical language and Adams’s own prophetic theology.

James Luther Adams is one of those rare Unitarian Universalist theologians who is known, quoted, and respected outside of our denomination.  He is remembered by his students with genuine love and affection, having welcomed them into his heart and into his home, creating a family of friends and colleagues.  One of those students is Wilson Yates, a former president of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities and now professor emeritus.  When I had the chance to speak with Professor Yates last semester, he mentioned that he was one of the last people to visit James Luther Adams before he died in 1994.

As Unitarian Universalists, we have roots we can be proud of.  But they don’t do us much good until we internalize them, learn from them, and draw upon them as a source of strength, vitality, and inspiration as we move forward into the reality of our own making.  We look back upon our rich and varied history, and by recalling our predecessors we learn who we are.

We are the culmination of their life’s work.  They are the roots of our heritage, and today we enjoy the fruits of their labor.  But as we cast our visions of the future and start to make plans, we must remember that we have our own spiritual descendants.  Today we are participating in the creation of the roots that will nourish the future generations of Unitarian Universalists, as they continue on the path of our liberal faith tradition.

What sort of fruit do we want to bring into being?  What will be the legacy that they will inherit?  We are the creators of the future of our faith.  May we prove worthy of the heritage entrusted to us.

So may it be, and amen.

~*~

This sermon was presented on January 22, 2012 to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Minnetonka in Wayzata, MN, where I am currently serving a part-time ministerial internship.  Readings included Responsive Reading #591 (I Call That Church Free) and an excerpt from James Luther Adams’s essay “By Their Roots Shall You Know Them.”   Hymns included #123 (Spirit of Life) and #354 (We Laugh, We Cry, verses 1 & 4) from the UU hymnal Singing the Living Tradition.  For a story for all ages, we read “The Tomato Plant” from Rabbi Marc Gellman’s book Does God Have a Big Toe? Stories About Stories in the Bible.

~*~

 I was invited to preach this sermon as a guest speaker at Minnesota Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on Sunday, February 5, 2012.  We used similar readings and music to those listed above.

~*~

Last week, Rev. Kent Hemmen Saleska, the minister here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Minnetonka, presented a sermon that outlined a vision for the future of this church.  It followed the unexpected news that our congregation was successful in its federal lawsuit against the City of Wayzata, meaning that we will be able to build and move into our new church within the next six years.  Kent ended his sermon by saying:

Conflict becomes an opportunity for intimacy when we engage it with a sense of humility, knowing that we hurt… we get scared… we make mistakes…[and] we are imperfect beings, too.

Over the past three years, particularly in the realm of our legal struggles, we’ve been providing leadership … by engaging in a lot of doing.  Maybe it is time that we lead simply by being….

This is our … chance at emergence and evolution.  As we learn to lead by being, may we learn to be the change we want to see in the world.

Kent’s challenge to you was to learn to “lead by being.”  I’m curious how you will carry out this vision of being the change you want to see in the world.  We are, after all, human beings.  Last week, Kent also made some connections to our Puritan roots.  He said:

It seems to be ingrained in us that if we are not doing something, then we are useless.  Even closer to the bone, perhaps, it seems to be our sense that if we are not doing something, then we are not worthy or worthwhile people.

With this sentiment, we sometimes think that we are human doings instead of human beings.  I wonder, when we all come together on Sunday mornings, are we expecting to do worship, or be in worship?  Can we ever really accept that “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but rather, we are spiritual beings having a human experience”?

Doings.  Beings.  Human beings.  Being human.  …Doing…human?

Are we doing human?  Or are we being human?  Are we any good at it?  Do we consider ourselves worthy of our humanity?  And what in the world does it mean to be human, anyway?

And here I bet you were wondering what you could possibly teach me this year!  Or maybe you already suspected that such lofty questions were yours to explore with me.

The question I have for you is this: How does your humanity relate to the ongoing efforts to build a new church and relocate?  What does being human have to do with the way we move forward?  I hope to hear your thoughts on that.

But first we need to explore what it means to be human.  Is there one singular, definitive trait that  encompasses our humanity so thoroughly that, without it, we would no longer be human?

In the fall of 2010, I signed up for a Unitarian Universalist Worship class.  Our first assignment was a short paper—only three pages.  And within those three pages, that was the question we were supposed to answer.  Define one archetype of human behavior.

I’m sure it wasn’t meant to stump me.  But the enormity of the question boggled my mind.  What does it mean to be human?  What sets us apart from other animals?  If a gorilla has characteristics that make it a gorilla, and a dolphin has qualities that separate it from being a whale or a shark, then do we humans have some sort of non-physical quality that makes us definitively, uniquely human?

This assignment sent me on a quest for answers.  I have spent the past year and a half posing this question to all sorts of people—challenging my classmates over the lunch table at school, posting it as my status on Facebook, bringing it up at family gatherings (which I’m sure they appreciated).  And I’m sure that I will spend the rest of my life teasing out answers to this question.  One sermon is nowhere near enough space to explore the full potential of our shared humanity.  But it is a starting point.

The problem I ran into wasn’t that I couldn’t think of any answers at all.  I’m sure that just within the past couple of minutes you’ve already started thinking up your own answers.  But the problem I had was that, for every answer I came up with, I could think of another animal species that exhibited the same quality.

For example, I thought of language.  Whether we speak English or Spanish, Tagalog or Tzotzil, or even sign language, humans around the world all communicate their ideas to one another with words and phrases.  And yet, I listen to the rest of the animal kingdom, and I can hear the echoing underwater songs of whales and dolphins, and even the subsonic rumblings of elephants.  Scientists have already been experimenting with speaking back to these animals in their own languages.  And earlier today, we heard about Koko the gorilla, communicating with over 1,000 words in American Sign Language.  So while language is something that humans do, it does not define us.

I also explored the idea of coming together in community.  We humans gather together in pairs and clumps, defining ourselves by our social groups.  We sign up to be members of secular organizations and religious communities.  But while our intentions may be somewhat more sophisticated, humans certainly aren’t the only animal that has social groupings.  Wolves have packs, bees have hives, birds have flocks, fish have schools, horses have herds.  Within various animal groupings, we can find evidence of social structure and hierarchy.  Humans are certainly not unique in their desire for a community in which they can find belonging.

So I moved on to the earmarks of civilization—art, music, math, agriculture, religion.  I’ve seen paintings done by gorillas and elephants, so it would seem some other animals are capable of producing art, and though those paintings don’t approach the caliber of Picasso or Monet, they did show another animal’s ability to grasp abstract concepts.

As far as music goes, I think of course of songbirds and whales, even wolves.  There’s no doubt that these animals sing.  But is it “music” in the same way that humans compose music?  Perhaps not.  But I still don’t think that the distinction between mockingbirds and Mozart, or between bluebirds and Britney Spears, is enough to define all of humanity.

I thought perhaps math or agriculture could be something that defines us, but I can’t even claim that the majority of humans are capable of solving an algebraic equation or running a farm.  And then to top it off, I look at the complex math that honeybees instinctively use to build their hives and harvest pollen, and I watch leaf-cutter ants using bits of foliage to farm a specific species of fungus that they use to feed their colony, and I don’t see that humans necessarily have the advantage after all.

So is there nothing, then, that separates human beings from other animals?  Some would say so.  But this negation of our distinctive humanity presupposes that nothing separates different animal species from one another—that an eagle is just a sparrow with a bigger beak, or that a polar bear is just a panda without the black.  In my experience, there are traits that make these animals distinct from one another not just as physically individual creatures, but as an entire species.  And so there must be something that defines humanity, something that is accessible to every person on the planet, something that other animals don’t have.

The first quality I found was that humans are adaptive in ways that no other animal species is.  Human beings have found ways to survive in almost every environment ever discovered: tropical rainforests, arctic glaciers, barren desert, high altitude, deep ocean, outer space.  And it isn’t physical evolution that allows certain groups of our species to survive in these places—an individual human being can take the appropriate measures to adapt to any one of these environments in his or her lifetime.

This means that human beings are capable of perceiving the future.  We don’t just live in the present moment; we remember our history, and we find patterns that allow us to predict a likely future based on our present circumstances.  Unlike any other species, human beings have the ability to plan for the future in a way that moves beyond our survival instincts.  We are able to envision a new and better reality, and then work toward achieving it.

This congregation’s dream of building a new and better church is possible because, as human beings, we are able to imagine a different reality, and then work toward achieving it.  As you come together to plan this bright future together, remember that it is your humanity that allows you to do so.

Part of this ability is due to our physiology.  In the book “A General Theory of Love,” we learn that humans have a triune brain, which means there are three layers to our brains, and each layer has a separate function.  The reptilian brain is wrapped around our brain stem, right at the base of our skull.  This is where all of our survival and defensive instincts come from.  It is also the part of our brain that monitors our involuntary functions, like holding our breath underwater or making sure our heart keeps beating.

Wrapped around the reptilian brain is the limbic brain.  The limbic brain is what allows us to form social connections with others—whether they are friendships, family units, or the bond between a human and another animal.  Any animal with a limbic brain also uses vocal communication, including singing or murmuring to their young.  And the limbic brain permits playing—an activity that has nothing to do with survival.  For animals—including humans—play is physical poetry.

The outermost brain is the neocortex, and in humans, it is the largest of the three.  This is the center that controls our conscious will, our ability to think abstractly, and our rational processing.  Human beings have the largest neocortex-to-brain ratio of any creature, which confers upon us the ability to reason through problems and come up with creative solutions.

Evolutionary psychology, based in the reptilian brain, urges us to hoard our resources; instinct tells us that we could run out, and this might mean we don’t survive.  All animals have this instinct—it is what urges us to eat and drink, to save food for the winter, to hibernate and conserve energy, and to migrate to more hospitable climates.  In human society, this evolutionary instinct compels us to create savings accounts, or have a nest egg, to keep our pantries stocked, and to not give too much away in case we later find ourselves wanting.

(Remember this instinct when your dream for a new building includes members of your finance ministry asking for financial contributions!)

Our own animal psychology tells us to hold on to our money and our belongings.  And yet these are only instincts.  They form our subconscious habits.  But habits can be broken.  Humans have the ability to overcome our own evolutionary psychology with an ethic of generosity, and this is due to  that outermost brain.

Because of our enormous neocortex, humans have the ability to adapt to extreme external environments, to reason our way beyond simple survival instincts, and to think of such abstract concepts as “the future” and plan accordingly.  When you stop to think about it, that’s pretty amazing.

But then I ran across this June’s issue of National Geographic, and I read about Gobekli Tepe, the world’s first temple.  11,600 years ago, before any other form of civilization or agriculture was conceived, human beings came together to worship.  It doesn’t matter what they worshipped, or whom they worshipped.  All that matters is that they worshipped.  The uniquely human desire to worship could be what sparked civilization.

As Unitarian Universalists, we think of worship as something that allows us to give shape to that which we find worthy.  Or another way of putting it is that when we worship, we allow ourselves to be shaped by that which is most worthy.  Emerson’s warning to be careful what we worship is good to remember, because what we are worshipping—what we are lifting up as most worthy—we are becoming.

So what is it that we find worthy?  And how is it related to our humanity?

Our unique brain lets us perceive the future, adapt to changing circumstances, and reason our way through complicated questions.  We have a unique urge to worship—to pause on the edge of the Grand Canyon at sunset, to gaze up at the stars and make up stories of how we came to be here, to come together in gatherings like this one to wrestle with the questions whose answer is beyond our current understanding.

Our human understanding allows us to envision a better reality, a new way of being in the world.  Our human brain allows us to dream of a brighter future, one where we are able to gather in a building that suits our needs and reflects who we are; where we are able to be in right relationship with our neighbors and our city.  We can dream of a future where peace exists among nations, where no creature is left to starve, where diseases have cures, where all people have inalienable rights.  We are able to dream of justice.  Somehow, in the middle of the messy jumble of who we are, our humanity is tied up in our ability to dream of justice.  Unlike any other creature, we are able to adapt and make plans and work together to make this world a just place.

So what does justice look like?  I think that question finds its answer within our houses of worship.  As James Luther Adams said, “Church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human.”  And if building justice is an essential part of our humanity, and church is where you practice being human, then church must also be the place where we come together to figure out what justice might look like.

All I know is that when we’re talking about justice, I can hear the grief and longing in people’s voices.  I hear a yearning for welcome and belonging.  I hear love and compassion and humbleness, but also hope and passion and incredible courage.  We come together, in all our humanity, to lift these things up as most worthy, to ask our questions, and to dream of justice in a future where all people can have a place.

When we worship—when we really worship—we can feel our hearts leaping with all these emotions.  Then our lives continue, and we go back to doing the daily tasks of living.  We go back to doing human.  But I hope, as we conclude our time together and move out into the world, we can remember that even as we are doing human, we are being justice.

So may it be, and amen.

~*~

This sermon was presented to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Minnetonka in Wayzata, Minnesota on January 15, 2012.  The original draft was presented to The Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockford, Illinois on November 27, 2011.  Readings included Responsive Reading #437 (Let Us Worship), #441 (To Worship), #563 (A Person Will Worship Something), the beginning of Rev. Kent Hemmen Saleska’s sermon “Worship? To Whom? For What?“, and excerpts from “The Birth of Religion” in the June 2011 issue of National Geographic Magazine.   Hymns included #298 (Wake, Now, My Senses) and #2 (Down the Ages We Have Trod) from the UU hymnals Singing the Living Tradition.  For a story for all ages, the Rockford Church used “Is There REALLY a Human Race?” by Jamie Lee Curtis, and the Minnetonka Church used the story of Koko the gorilla.

~*~

The boy was waiting when she arrived at work.  His cheeks were pink on pale skin as though he were feverish.  He was playing with a pen while examining the menu on the counter.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “I don’t know what I want.”

“Let me know when you figure it out.”  She stashed her backpack under the counter.  Her coworker waved as she left to go enjoy what remained of her night.

“Do you have any suggestions?” he asked.

“Depends on what you’re in the mood for.”

“I guess.”  Then he said, “I don’t like coffee.”

“And yet you came to a coffee shop.”

“It seemed like the thing to do.  Good place to get work done, anyway.”

“Speaking of work, have you made up your mind yet?”

“No, not yet.  What’s an Americano?”

“You wouldn’t like it.”

She went to the espresso bar and scrubbed the crusted milk off the steam wand, made sure the brew heads were clean.  She glanced around the shop, vaguely hoping that another customer was approaching the counter.  A group of kids in the corner was watching a foreign film on a laptop.  Another guy was working his way through a pile of books.

Finally she said, “We have smoothies and steamers, if you like.”

He looked up from the menu.  “Steamers?  What’s a steamer?”

“Hot flavored milk.”

“Appetizing.”

“I try.”

He smiled.  She noticed his eyes were brown.  “I’m Paul.”

“I’m Jen.”

“Hi, Jen.”

“Hello, Paul.”

“You know, Jen, you have a great sense of humor.  Very dry.  I like it.”

“Thank you, Paul.  Are you ready to order?”

“Surprise me.”

“Surprise you?”  The words came out flat.

“Yeah, I have two dollars.  Have a field day.”

“A whole two dollars, you say?  Wow.”

“Hey, we’re both poor college students, here.  Gotta work with what I got.”

“I’ll make you a steamer.  Then you’ll still have change to leave me a tip.”  She tried to make a joke of it.  But she was tired of going home with only two or three coins to rub together.  Her body heat warmed them too quickly, and she would forget they were there.

“I’ll tip you if it’s good,” he said.

“How am I supposed to know what you like?”

“Good luck.”

“Bastard.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, Paul.  Skim or two percent?”  She grabbed a metal canister on her way to opening the refrigerator.

“Half and half.”

She frowned.  “Half skim, half two percent?”

“No, make it with half and half.”

“Sorry, we don’t do breve.”

“You have creamers, don’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

“So use a bunch of creamers.”

“Twenty bucks.”

“What?”

“Do you have any idea how many of those little creamer things I’d have to go through to fill this cup?  I’d charge you twenty bucks for it.”

“Come on!”

“No.  Two percent or skim?”

“You mean crap or shit?”

“Two percent it is.”

She splashed the milk into the metal container, then paused before the forest of bottlenecks.  “You sure you don’t know what flavor you want?”

“Two bucks.”

“Right.”  She did a pump of amaretto, Irish crème, and caramel, then plunged in the steam wand and cranked the knob until it screamed.  She heard Paul speaking over her shoulder and called, “Sorry, I can’t hear you right now.”  The milk took a long time to heat up.

When she had handed him the cup and topped it with whipped cream, he said, “I was just saying that there’s a way you can get it to stop making that noise.”

“You don’t say?  I’ll have to ask my manager about that.  Dollar fifty, please.”

“Yeah, you should do that.” He handed her the money.  “What’s your major?”

“English,” she said, and gave him his change.

“Really?  Why’d you pick English?”

“Because I was too stupid to major in anything else, Paul.”

“I’m sure that’s not true!” he exclaimed, and he was so sincere that she almost felt bad.

“How about you?”  She looked at the Sierra Club logo on his shirt.  “I take it you like the environment or something?”

“Hey, yeah, I’m gonna be an environmental science major!  How’d you know?”

“I’m just smart like that.”

“See?  There’s that dry humor again.  I’m loving it!”

“I’m glad.”

She didn’t know why he didn’t leave.  She didn’t know what humor he was talking about.  He liked her humor, and she wasn’t really trying to be funny, but he stayed anyway.  As with many accidental things, she was sure it would stop sooner or later.  She would stop being funny, and he would lose interest.  She wanted him to go away while he still thought she was funny.

“So are you a freshman?”  He was talking to her.

“No, I’m not.  But you are.”  The comment slipped out before she even realized she’d thought it.

He looked down at himself as though he would discover a sign in his lap.  “How can you tell?”

“You’re still talking to me, aren’t you?”

“So?”

“So an upperclassman would have gotten bored by now.”  She suddenly felt irritated with this entire farce.  He wasn’t her friend.  She didn’t want him to be her friend.  She didn’t need anyone else prying into her life, because in every innocuous question she felt there was a hidden reprimand for not having a different answer.  “Don’t you have homework?”

“It’s Friday night.”

“Oh pish.”  She looked over at the blender.  It looked like it could use some washing.

“What about you, Jen?  Why do you have to work on a Friday night?”

“I don’t.”

“Well, now, that’s interesting.  I think it says something about your character.  Why would an attractive lady choose to work on a Friday night?”

Lady?  Was he hitting on her?  She felt like a bug under scrutiny by an overeager six year old.  It made her grumpy, and there was more bitterness in her tone than she knew.  “So that I can ignore the fact that I don’t have a life.  I could sit on my ass at home, or I could sit on my ass here and get paid.  Money wins.  I don’t have anything better to do, and I have a lot of worse things to do, so I choose to work on Friday and Saturday nights.  It keeps me from thinking too hard.”

“And you want to avoid thinking?”

She didn’t answer.  Instead, she turned knobs until water splashed in the sink.  As she squirted soap in to the blender, she wasn’t quite sure why she had been so honest.  She attributed it to the lateness of the hour.  That, and her narcissism seemed to be flaring up again.  It was hard to resist an audience as attentive as Paul, though she wished he’d picked a more interesting topic.

He took a long drink from his steamer while watching her dry out the blender.  The steadiness of his gaze was getting to her.  He reminded her in that instant of another boy with steady eyes whose hands were a little less disciplined.  It was a memory she preferred not to revisit.  “Do you like your steamer?”

“I find you a very interesting person, Jen.”

“I’ll assume that’s a yes.”

“Every time you open your mouth, there are a million little things that I realize I don’t know about you.  I feel like no matter how long I know you, there will always be something new every time I see you.”

“I’m like an onion,” she quipped to cover her confusion.

“What?”

“Layers,” she explained.  “Or like a parfait.”

He laughed.  “Talking to you is better than watching TV.”

“Talk about low standards.”

“Would you rather I said you’re better than homework?  Because that’s the alternative.”

“Rock and a hard place, Paul.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with me saying I like talking to you?  It passes the time, doesn’t it?”  He was playing with his empty cup.  “I mean, you’re a writer, Jen.  When you meet a stranger who has interesting things to say, don’t you want to hear their stories?  Don’t you want to get to know them better?  How can you have anything to write about if you don’t talk to strangers?”

“Some people are destined to stay strangers, Paul.”  Jen couldn’t even tell why this boy frustrated her so much.  She wasn’t being pleasant.  She wasn’t trying to be his friend.  “You can’t befriend everyone.  You’d run yourself dry.”

“Explain that to me.”

“What is there to explain?”  She realized she was standing there with the blender in her hands and turned to put it away.  “You only have so much time.  Friends take time.  And energy.”  She turned to him.  “I don’t have enough energy to be friends with everyone I meet.  I hardly even have time to keep up with the friends I already have.”

“Well then it’s a good thing I have time.”  Did he not get the hint?  “I’ll come visit you every Friday and Saturday night while you’re working, when you have time.”

She stared at him, trapped.  “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“I like talking to you.”

And suddenly she felt like a schmuck.  “I see.”

“Hey, Jenster!” a boisterous voice called.  She turned to see Josh crossing the mostly-empty room towards the counter.  “I can see this place is hopping.”

“Yes, it’s very exciting, what with it being eleven at night.”  She smiled with relief at his appearance.  “How’s your night going?”

“Meh.  The tri-Kapp party is a bit noisy.”  He hoisted himself onto a stool down a ways from Paul.  “The whole cops and robbers theme makes for a lot of gunfire.”

Paul watched Jen laugh.  It made her turn nervous.

“Paul, do you know Josh?”

Paul’s hand shot out and started pumping Josh’s half-offered one.  “Hi, I’m Paul.”

Jen smiled.  “Paul, this is Josh, my boyfriend.”

Josh smiled.  “It’s nice to meet you, Paul.”

“You two are going out?”  Paul twisted his head to look at Josh, and then he smiled too.  “Cool, I’m happy for you.”

“Ah…thank you.”  She turned to Josh.  “So, what are you up to tonight?”

“Well, I was just swinging through and thought I’d stop in and see how you were doing.”

“Wow, what a nice guy,” Paul said.

Josh looked over at him.  “You know, I really am.”

“Hey, if you’re going out, you must know Jen pretty well, right?”  Paul’s eager eyes were latched onto Josh now.  “Why don’t you tell me something about her?”

Josh’s eyebrows crept up.  “Like what?”

“I don’t know, just something real.”

Josh leaned back with a wide grin.  “Who’s to say what’s real?  Jen, here, is a real mystery woman.  No one knows much about her.  I think that’s why we’re going out.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I have no idea why she’s going out with me.  She talks a lot, but not usually about herself.  For example, I don’t know what she does with her time when we’re not together.”

“You knew she was working here,” Paul pointed out.

“Well, yeah.  But so did you.”

“We just met.”

Jen wasn’t sure whether she or Paul had said it.

“Oh.”  Josh cleared his throat.

“Well, since you came all this way to see me, can I get you anything while you’re here?” Jen asked brightly.

“Oh, no, that’s okay.”  Josh stood.  “Like I said, I was just passing through.  I’m going to head back to my room.”  He glanced at the clock.  It was shaped like a teacup with squiggly lines of steam rotating to show the hour.  “God, it’s late.”

“It sure is.  Too bad I’m stuck behind this counter.”

“Cheer up.  Tomorrow’s Saturday, you can sleep in.”

“Can’t.  I have to get everything ready for Spanish Club before noon.”

“Man, sucks to be you.”  He sauntered towards the door.  “See you later.”

“Bye, Josh.”  She glanced around the coffee shop again.  The guy with the books had left without a trace.  The kids with the laptop were intent on their film.  She imagined she was in a glass cage with Paul.  Now she knew why her gerbils scrabbled at the glass even when their tiny claws couldn’t catch on anything.

“So, now you’ve met Josh.”  She turned to go get a rag out of the bucket of bleach water.  She could feel Paul’s eyes on her back as she started wiping down the counters.

“He didn’t seem to know much about you.”

“Well, I guess that’s what makes me a woman of mystery.  If my boyfriend doesn’t know me, how can you expect to know me on such short acquaintance?”  She found herself staring at the flawless black countertop.  It hadn’t been that dirty to begin with.  Still, it was part of closing procedure.  It was necessary for proper sanitation.

“I’ve been trying to get to know you.”

“No, you’ve been asking a lot of questions.  Besides, Josh and I have only been going out a little while.”  She felt a lid coming unhinged inside her.

“How am I supposed to get to know you if I don’t ask about you?”

“What are you, a reporter?”  She sounded peevish even to her own ears.

“No….”

“Look, Paul, it’s late, and I’m tired.  I’m not going to get any sleep tonight, and the prospect makes me more than a little cranky.  I’ll answer one question, but I brought homework to do, and I really need to get it done.  So ask, and then leave me alone for tonight, okay?”

When he didn’t bounce back with a ready question, the silence started to make her feel sick with herself.  In the back of the shop, the foreign film jabbered on, and she found herself trying to understand the conversation.  She couldn’t even tell what language it was in.

Then Paul laughed.  “You know, I figured that if you wanted to get rid of me, you would have thrown a heavy object at my head or something.  That’s the way most people take care of it.”

She frowned.  “Take…care of it?”

“You know, get me to shut up and leave them alone.  It’s cool.  At least you were nice about it.”

Nice?  She’d been nice?  She doubted she knew anyone who confused her as much as this boy did.  How could she go from almost throwing him out of the coffee shop to wanting to hold his hand and comfort him in less than five seconds?  She felt one of her migraines coming on.

“Listen, Paul.”

He had gotten down from his stool, and now he stood half-turned, looking at her.

She took a deep breath.  “I majored in English because I loved to play with words.  I loved to write.  No one could stop me from writing.  My teachers would threaten to lower my grade if my paper was too long.  When I discovered that I could major in it, I thought I’d found my life’s purpose.  What could be better than getting a degree doing something you love?”  Her voice trailed off in confusion, and she frowned at the dirty grey register.  She couldn’t remember what she was going to say next.

Slowly, Paul slid back onto his seat, eyes wary.  She wondered if he really thought she was going to throw something at him.  When she made no move, he said, “So what happened?”

“I hated it.”  She started laughing.  “Can you believe it?  I hated it.  I wish more than anything that I’d had the sense to major in something I didn’t like.  Like economics.  That would have been a smart thing to do.  At least I would have gone in knowing I hated it.  My opinion of it could only improve then, right?  Instead, I’ve gone and destroyed—something.”  She stopped to consider her words.  “Something—precious.”  She jammed her hands into her pockets.  She found she didn’t want to look at him.  She didn’t want to see him looking at her with those steady eyes.  She felt like a fool for having even opened her mouth.  It always happened.  She started out with something to say, and then the words just drained out of her.  Just like when she felt the tug of a story that was waiting to be written, only to have it falter before the glare of a starkly blank word document.

“So,” he said when a moment had passed, “do I still get that free question?”

Jen blinked her way out of her reverie.  “Why do I get the feeling you’re never going to ask just one question?”  But she found that her anger had drained away, leaving that part of her hollow.  “Go for it.”

“Can I have a hot chocolate made with creamers?”  He looked so hopeful.

It took her a moment to remember where she was, that she was working and had a job to do.  Then she breathed and packed herself back into the box, convinced herself that everything was fine.  She finally came up with a smile.  “Sure thing, chief.  I’ll even give it to you at half off.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  Ten dollars.”

“What!  You’ve got to be kidding me.”  But he was reaching for his pocket.

She regarded him curiously.  “Are you really going to make me do it?”

“Would you really do it for ten dollars?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, well, you also said Josh was your boyfriend.”

“Ah….”  Embarrassment washed over her, and she looked away.

He was quiet while she fumbled for an explanation, then reached into his pocket and withdrew the two quarters she had given him earlier.  She startled as they jingled into the tip jar.

“Thank you,” she said.

He shrugged.  “I don’t have ten dollars, or I might very well take you up on that offer.”

She managed a smile.  “I’ll make you a creamer steamer whenever you can pay.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He stood again, and this time she made no move to stop him.  He hefted a large backpack onto his shoulder, and Jen felt all her stories pushing against her skull, at the backs of her eyes, deep in her ears, but none strayed onto her tongue.  She willed him to ask a question so that she could speak, so that she could relieve some of the pressure.  She needed to be given something to say.

In that moment, it seemed that he would never leave.  He would stay, hunched under his backpack, warm cheeks bright against the pallor of his skin, forever.  She would never sleep, never close the shop.  They would be paused here, waiting for….  She was waiting for…waiting for what?  Waiting to stop.  Waiting to speak.  She needed words.  She needed something.  The word was…something.  Her temples pulsed under the pressure building inside her brain.  She thought, it has to end soon.  Something would give.  The pressure couldn’t be maintained indefinitely.  Nothing was this strong, something would collapse under the strain, and the whole thing would thunder down in an avalanche of blood and words.

She imagined herself exploding and wondered if anyone had died from untold stories escaping the prison of their errant creator’s head.  If she melted under this pressure, would those half-caught stories ever be told?  Would they fly out of her head and into someone else’s?  Would they just vaporize into the ether?

She shuddered and forced herself to look up.  Paul was gone, and this confused her.  Had he ever been?  He had been so solid a minute ago, she was sure he would have stayed.  In the corner, the movie viewers had fallen asleep on the couch.  The laptop flicked light over their faces, lending them an underwater pallor that made her think they would never wake.  Time was frozen in this instant.

She listened again to the voices coming out, compressed and tinny, from the computer speakers.  Arabic, she thought.

She pulled a book out of her backpack and began to read.

© 2006, Leslie Mills

 ~*~

 This story was composed as part of a senior seminar taught by author Robert Stone when he was serving as the Mackey Chair at Beloit College.  It was presented to an audience of faculty, friends, and family in 2006 as part of my graduation requirements before I was granted my BA in Creative Writing.  Special kudos goes to the reader who can figure out what famous story inspired the style of this one.

I was approaching a red light when I saw the first one.  Cautiously slowing my car, I glanced out my window to make sure no one was about to slide into me.  And I saw a yellow light flickering up above me in the dark sky.

My first thought was that it was just a reflection in my window, perhaps of the streetlights, or someone’s headlights.  And then I thought it was most likely an airplane, since I live under the westbound flight path of the MSP airport.  But it was neither of these things.  I looked closer.

It was…flickering.  And it seemed to be not flying, but floating silently through the sky, heading south, the same direction I was going.  And it was a lot lower in the sky than an airplane would have been.

The first thing I could think of was a fairy.  High up in that cold, rainy sky, there was a fairy floating over my car.  Or a will-o-the-wisp.  Or an angel.  Call it what you will, but it was etherial and magical, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

The stoplight turned green, and I kept glancing up at the strange light as I crept along the empty street.  My scientific mind kept insisting it couldn’t be a fairy (or an angel), but the rain was obscuring my vision, and I couldn’t see well enough to make out more details.  Then I saw another yellow glow following about 100 yards behind the first one.  And there was another one beyond that.  They were all floating towards me.

I had to know.  I pulled my car into a darkened parking lot, turned off my headlights, and rolled down the window.  Freezing rain pelted my face as I peered up into the clouds, and one of the “fairies” passed directly overhead.

It was a candle.  Protected from the rain and wind by a fragile paper lantern, the heat from the burning wax warmed the air inside the lantern, causing it to rise like a hot air balloon.  Somehow it had avoided the silent buildings and was floating serenely above the nearly empty streets. As I watched, it rose higher, and it disappeared into the clouds.

I sat there with my face getting wet, feeling a kind of bemusement and wonder as I watched these airborne candles disappearing into the night.  As the last one was ascending, I went to turn on my headlights…and there were several more candlelit lanterns rising above the distant buildings, heading my way as the wind carried them along.

I realized that these New Year Fairies weren’t some leftover relic of a distant celebration; they were actively being lit and cast off by mysterious strangers as I watched from my parking lot a mile away.

I don’t know how long I sat there watching fairies floating off into the storm.  I wondered who the candle-lighters were, and what they were thinking about as they sent their lanterns off into the dark unknown.

I realized that the answer doesn’t matter.  I sat alone and watched the hopes and fears of strangers float past my window.  I watched them mourn loved ones who are gone and celebrate new life in this world.  I bore witness to their dreams of the new year and to the casting off of that which must go.  I honored their memories, their wishes, their prayers, their sorrows, their burdens, their joys, their pain.  Alone in a cold rainy parking lot, I watched the light of humanity processing into the night.

And how like life that is!  We all sit, at some point, on the eve of a new beginning, trying to protect the light of our hope against the dark and the storm.  We cast our hopes into the unknown future, and we watch their light disappearing into the impenetrable clouds.  We may never know what comes of them.

But we also never know what stranger is sitting in that dark place, holding our hopes and helping them on their way.

-lm

It boiled down to two things:

1.  Mindful practice
2. Ethical warfare

In retrospect, I realized I’d had some preconceived notions about what a clergy sleep out would be like, and those notions were not in alignment with the reality of my lived experience that night.  When I tried explaining my unsettled feeling to someone who hadn’t been there, I was told, “Oh, you’re just feeling guilty for having too much fun when you thought you should have been miserable.”

But that’s not quite it.  I was plenty miserable at a previous homelessness simulation, and I was still miserable the next day; and I’d had fun at a previous homelessness simulation, and I felt great the next day.

It wasn’t until I was on my way home this time around and I saw that man standing there with his sign that I realized we’d spent the entire event not mentioning homelessness at all.  We were an interfaith group of clergy, and while I was there we hadn’t even said a prayer.  In hindsight, I was so intent on making sure I didn’t freeze to death that I didn’t spend much time at all thinking about the people who didn’t have a choice about where they slept at night.  Perhaps the assumption in this group was that they had already done so many awareness events with their congregations that they felt there was no need to speak about it to each other.

But if I had it to do again, I would have stayed up through the whole night, keeping vigil in the cold, sending prayers for safety and healing into the dark.  If I had done that—if I had spent the night with my thoughts trained on someone other than myself, thinking about something other than my own comfort—then perhaps I could have met the homeless veteran with more equanimity in the morning light.

It somehow seemed like a double blow, seeing that he was a veteran.  Here was a man who had given so much—endured so much—for his country, for those he loved, for those he didn’t love, for me.  And there was I, a bleary-eyed seminary student wearing seven layers of clothing, driving home with her cardboard box in the back seat.

This incident happened in the days following our class discussion about the ethics of warfare.  As I reflected on my experience with the veteran, I thought back to the claim that warfare can be practiced ethically.  For review, here is the excerpt we discussed from Doing Right and Being Good, David Oki Ahern and Peter R. Gathje’s article, “A Typology of Christian Responses to War and Violence: Pacifism, Just War, and the Crusade” on pages 160-161:

In its fully developed form, the just war doctrine holds the Christian presumption against war, but recognizes that it can be right to enter into war (jus ad bellum) only if it meets these criteria:

1. Just Cause: The war must confront a definite and real danger, such as to protect innocent human life against an aggressor or to defend a just political order.
2. Right Intention: The participants have the right intention of establishing peace with justice, and not simply to destroy or punish the opponent.
3. Last Resort: The violent act is undertaken only after all peaceful means of resolving the conflict have been exhausted.
4. Proportionality: The inevitable harm of the war must be less than the good that is sought through the war.
5. Legitimate Authority: The war must be sanctioned and carried out by those responsible for the common good, typically a legitimate governmental authority.  This forbids private feuds and vigilante justice.
6. Comparative Justice: There must be the recognition that no party has absolute justice on its side.
7. Reasonable Likelihood of Success: There is a reasonable likelihood that the party can achieve its war aims, so that the suffering and destruction that war inevitably produces at least may bring about the good of protecting innocents and restraining aggressors.

If entrance into war or violence can be justified, the means used must themselves be just (jus in bello).  Traditionally, the just war theory measures acts of violence and war against these criteria:

1. Discrimination: Those carrying out the act of violence must discriminate between combatants and noncombatants, so that direct and intentional targeting of civilians is forbidden.  Theologians in the Middle Ages developed the implications of the “principle of double effect,” which recognizes that a single act may have multiple effects, some of which are intended, some of which are foreseen but unintended, and some of which are unforeseen.  According to these theorists, some limited foreseen killing of innocents may be justifiable if they are an unintended consequence of targeting combatants.
2. Proportionality: The violent action must be proportionate to the desired end.  A just response should use an economy of force, that is, limit destruction to the minimum amount needed to accomplish a just objective.

These criteria were intended both to place roadblocks in front of questionable wars and to limit the destruction of even those that are justified.  Today Christian ethicists debate if this theory, which arose to deal with the hand-to-hand fighting of ancient and medieval warfare, is adequate in the face of nuclear weapons, totalistic wars of nation against nation, terrorism, popular revolutions, civil war, and wars of extermination.

This document does not outline any ethical practices to follow in the aftermath of a war.

I would add to this debate that we have an ethical responsibility to look out for our veterans and make sure that they receive the medical and psychiatric care they need, access to affordable drug-free and alcohol-free housing, as well as any necessary job training to make sure they have a place in civilian life.  The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimates that “107,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. Over the course of a year, approximately twice that many experience homelessness. Only eight percent of the general population can claim veteran status, but nearly one-fifth of the homeless population are veterans.”  The VA also has a plan to end veteran homelessness in five years, though I could not find anything specific on their website to outline how they intend to carry out this plan.  The list of supportive programming they have in place, however, is extensive.

In short, I think that the justification for ethical warfare that was outlined above has merit.  But if we are basing all of our war-related ethical decisions on a document that has obvious gaps, such as the ethical treatment of those who fought in the war, then there is an immediate need for a review of these standards, especially since we have the largest homeward-bound mass of veterans since Vietnam heading our way, having left Iraq today after nine years of war.  ”The quiet U.S. exit, shrouded in secrecy until it occurred, closes a war that was contentious from the start and cost the nation more than $800 billion.”

During this season of advent—which means ”coming”—we are awaiting the arrival of the newest generation of veterans.  As leaders in various faith traditions, we point the way toward the moral path for those who choose to listen to what we say.  Let us all have the courage to use our prophetic voices and speak out in favor of building a more just, more hospitable, more loving country for those who have sacrificed so much.

Let me explain.

I spent last night (December 8, 2011) in Plymouth, Minnesota sleeping outdoors in a box.  (I use the term “sleeping” very loosely, as I am relatively certain actual “sleep” didn’t happen.  Thus, my apologies for any lack of polish in this entry.)  Temperatures crept closer to zero as the night progressed.  In spite of wearing seven layers on top, four layers of pants, a scarf, windproof gloves, a wool hat knit by Sherpas in Nepal, and waterproof knee-high boots designed for -40F, the frigid temperature numbed everything below my waist and made my nose start dripping within minutes of leaving the warmth of the indoors.

I should mention that I went through this ordeal by choice.  I was participating in an event run by Interfaith Outreach and Community Partners (IOCP), helping to raise awareness about local homelessness.  Last night was the annual interfaith clergy Sleep Out; Rev. Kent Hemmen Saleska, my supervisor at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Minnetonka, invited me to participate in this yearly December ritual with various other pastors, ministers, preachers, friends, and supporters from around the western suburbs of the Twin Cities.

I met many wonderful people at this event, all from varied faith traditions.  I arrived at about 10:45pm, and was quickly invited into lively conversation with those already present.  Around midnight, our band of troopers progressed outdoors; some chose to hunker down for the night, and the rest of us built up a fire and crowded around, enduring the smoke for the sake of the heat.  Hours passed to the sound of laughter, stories, and theological debate (what do you expect with a bunch of interfaith clergy?) as Orion, Ursa Major, and Cassiopeia wheeled slowly overhead, chasing the full moon.  Around 2 or 3am, we saw a pair of coyotes trotting under a streetlight, making their way north on Highway 101.

I was the last to turn in for the night—I’m a night owl by nature, and disinclined to feel sleepy when I can’t feel my toes.  But around 4am, I realized I would be hosting a lonely vigil for the next two hours, and really, I was supposed to be participating in a Sleep Out. So I hauled my cardboard box out of my car, trudged through the snow, unrolled my tarp, camping mat, and two sleeping bags, donned my thick wool poncho (layer #8), and crawled in to attempt some shut-eye.

My eyes did shut.  But as I lay there in my snug little box (only large enough for me to slide in, feet first, up to my armpits), sleep, as I had predicted, eluded me.

At first, I was toasty from the exertion of setting up my box.  My smug satisfaction lasted less than five minutes, as the frozen ground quickly began to leech away my body heat, even through all the layers of insulation I’d tried to provide myself.  My rump was the first to go numb, followed by my toes and face.  I curled my fingers up inside the palms of my gloves.  I pulled my wool poncho over my face.  I began to shiver.

Then a truck roared by, barely fifteen feet from my head.  A couple minutes later, another.

Though sunrise was still two hours away, traffic began passing ever more frequently.  Buses began to run, stopping fifty feet up the sidewalk from where I lay; I began to hear the footsteps of strangers within five feet of my head as they hurried through the cold to meet their waiting transportation.

You might wonder, dear reader, why we had set up our tent camp on the side of the highway, knowing that there would be this kind of noise.  The honest answer is that the residents of the apartment building on the far side of the parking lot had lodged a complaint and banned IOCP fundraising partners from setting up camp in their quiet “back yard.”  The only other unpaved space was the narrow strip of snow-covered grass by the side of the road.  It would appear that part of our homelessness simulation involved sleeping in undesirable places so as not to offend neighborhood residents; it provided an unexpected twist of realism.

After what seemed an eternity, I finally heard a woman’s voice: “Time for pancakes!”  In reality, I’d been in my box for just over an hour.  Gratefully, I clambered out and hauled my gear back to my car.

Once every one was up and about, we headed to a little countryside diner that was bustling with pre-dawn breakfast eaters.  (I am rarely voluntarily one of that crowd.)  Good conversation accompanied our warm meal, and then we bid each other farewell and went about beginning our days.

I felt a bit at a loss as I headed home.  I was finally warm, thanks to the heat of my car, and with a belly full of food, my body started to drift into a sleepy stupor.  But the sun was a few inches above the horizon now, and I was concerned that if I went to sleep when I got home, I’d wake up around 8pm this evening.

This dilemma was still rolling around in my head when I pulled up to a red light.  A few yards away from my car was an older man wearing jeans, a knit hat, and a jacket that couldn’t possibly be warm enough.  He was holding a cardboard sign that read, “Homeless Veteran.”

After a night like the one I’d just had, what else could I do but roll down my window, wave him over, and empty all my spare change into his keeping?

He came over to my car, but rather than holding out his hand or a cup, he extended a small fishing net toward my open window.  With sadness, I wondered what experience had befallen him that he used this method to approach a bleary-eyed woman who was offering him money.  There was already such a distance between our lived realities—age, gender, profession, privilege—but not even being able to drop my coins directly into his hand seemed, in my exhausted mind, to make the gap completely unbridgeable.  He was barely even looking at me as he mumbled his thanks.

Not wanting to be just another generic stranger bestowing pity, but instead wanting to reach out and make some sort of memorable human connection before my light turned green, I said awkwardly, “I spent last night sleeping outside in a box, trying to help….”  My voice petered off.  How to finish such a sentence?  ”Trying to help people like you?”  Or maybe, “Trying to help raise money and awareness for Interfaith Outreach and Community Programming so that they can continue helping individuals and families transition out of homelessness?”  My brain fumbled and stalled.

But now he looked at me as he said, “Yeah?  Well I’ve spent the last two years sleeping in my car every night.  And I’ve gone to every state agency, and they can’t do anything to help me.  The VA office can’t help me.  I’ve tried everything.  And I’m still stuck out here, living out of my car.”  He took a breath to continue.

“Have you tried IOCP?” I asked.  ”They can help you.”

He shrugged.  ”Never heard of them.”

The light turned green.  ”IOCP is in Plymouth.  They can help you,” I said.  He was already turning away, eyes scanning other cars for potential income.  ”I’m sorry, sir,” I called.  He didn’t respond.  I pulled away, feeling somehow shallow, two-dimensional; I realized that I also felt a little stab of resentment that he hadn’t treated me with more courtesy, and was then appalled that I could feel resentful toward a person I had been trying to help.

What else could I have done?  Probably nothing.  But as I drove, the question changed: What else could I still do?

I marched into my house with new purpose.  I logged on to my computer and printed out maps, contact information, and services offered by IOCP.  I hurried back out to my car and set out for the intersection where the veteran had been standing.  I thought I would give him the information I’d printed out, ask if he needed a tank of gas, or maybe he’d like to join me for a meal.  What better way to spend these unexpected morning hours?  As I drove along, I went over different ideas of how to approach him, and preparing myself for the possibility that he might just dismiss me and want nothing I had to offer.

When I arrived back at the intersection, he was gone.

I turned around and drove past the intersection again.  Then I tried the next one over.  I drove to the nearby Perkins, my foggy brain telling me that maybe I’d find him walking over there for a cup of coffee.  Would he want me to join him?  The question proved moot, of course, since he wasn’t there either.

I turned around and drove home, slowing at every lighted intersection to cast a look around for my adopted veteran.  I didn’t find him.  About a half an hour had gone by since I’d dropped my coins into his outstretched net.

I felt all my energy drain out of me in a rush.  By the time I made it back into my home, I was so tired that it was taking conscious thought to remind myself to breathe.

Yet I couldn’t get the images of the past twelve hours out of my mind.  So I sat down to write to you, dear reader.  Maybe I just wanted to put my thoughts down so I could articulate them.  Maybe I was hoping my thoughtful readers would have some reflections to share.  Maybe I just wanted to confess my experience to a wider audience, but I don’t know if I’m looking for sympathy or absolution.  If it’s the latter, I doubt the one who could offer such forgiveness would have an internet connection where he could read this entry.

The papers about IOCP are sitting on the passenger seat of my car.  Would I even recognize this particular veteran if I saw him again?  If he switches jackets, then probably not.  But I’m going to keep those papers handy.  And the next time I find myself waiting at a red light with a person holding a cardboard sign outside my window, I’ll be able to offer them something more meaningful than a handful of quarters and an awkward apology.

-lm

As we’ve been hashing this argument out for the past two weeks, I keep remembering something Dr. Sharon Tan said in class on October 7th:

The law gives voice to the lowest common denominator of social behavior; it provides a baseline.  People start thinking that they are living a “good life” as long as they don’t get in trouble with the law.  Yet the law of secular government doesn’t take into account the “moral law,” or the law of kindness.  And the laws are not made by the marginalized….

So perhaps Paterno toed the line.  Maybe he fulfilled the letter of his duty, thinking that this meant he was “being good.”  But in doing so, he only obeyed the lowest possible rule of “acceptable” social behavior.  The main argument I’ve heard in reaction to this is that he had a higher law, a moral law, to live up to.  Some have called it the “natural law,” saying that nowhere in nature is it permissible to rape children.  I would call it, rather, the moral imperative.  We each have a calling—inescapable, compelling—that commands us to live up to our highest ideals.  The moral imperative demands our best, and points our minds and hearts in the direction of right relationship.  To refuse to live up to the moral imperative is to fracture our humanity.

Paterno did not live up to the moral imperative.  This is what has people riled up.  He had an ethical obligation to report this matter further than he actually did.  He failed in his larger responsibility as a role model and as a hero.

The question that has been bothering me is this: If Paterno, who was not involved in the crime itself, had a moral imperative to report the situation, did the victims, as direct witnesses, have a moral imperative as well?  And if so, what is it that their moral imperative would compel them to do?

I realize this is a very sensitive subject, and it is not at all my intention to cast any blame whatsoever on the victims who have suffered the aftermath of these horrendous crimes.  And I know that my question will likely trigger some emotional responses, many of which will not actually be typed out in response to this post.  In an effort to move the discussion away from the Penn State situation, let me change the parameters by offering a different scenario:

Many of my classmates have taken Introduction to Pastoral Care with Rev. Dr. Bob Albers.  On the last day of class, we were shown a video to teach us about the power dynamics that can lead to sexual misconduct.  While the outfits were outdated and the acting was bad, I still found myself profoundly moved and disturbed by the end of the film.

In the movie, young woman comes forward to report that she had had sexual relations with her internship supervisor several years ago.  She had kept silent until now, but felt obliged to speak up when her former supervisor came up for a promotion that would set him up as a figure with even more power, and she fears that he would abuse that power by taking advantage of more women.  As the movie continues, we learn that this supervisor has taken advantage of other women—one had been in an unhappy relationship, and he offered her comfort and understanding; another woman had thought she and the man were dating with the intent to marry, but he kept offering excuses for her to keep their relationship a secret.  All three women thought at the time that it was consensual, but later came to realize that he had abused the power of his position to manipulate them into having sexual relations with him.

In this scenario, it was one of the victims who came forward; she acted upon a moral imperative, desiring to protect any additional women from coming into contact with this man.  The other two women did not come forward on their own, but agreed to tell their stories after the first woman led the way.

So do victims have a moral imperative?  If so, what is it?  Are they obligated to come forward?  Are they obligated to focus on healing themselves in the aftermath of the abuse?  Do they have a moral imperative at all?

It is a complicated question, and I don’t know if there is an answer.  I look over the list of virtues listed in our textbook—Temperance, Courage, Prudence, Justice, Faith, Hope, Love.  Which ones are triggered by the moral imperative?  And if a victim were to act upon some or all of these virtues, following a moral imperative, what would those actions look like?

I suspect victims ask themselves these questions, and my guess is that they have an even more difficult time finding an answer that they can live with than someone would who is not involved in their situation.

-lm

I would like to invite you to read my current Guatemala posts on the UTS Global Trips blog.  While I considered simply copying and pasting the entries here, the voice and purpose are slightly different from the one I have grown accustomed to using as “Leaping Loon,” and I would prefer to leave the posts in the blog for which they were intended.

To give you a brief background on the other blog, it was started by a seminary friend of mine when his class went to El Salvador in March 2010.  The students were required to write a 10-page paper responding to the trip, and my classmate asked the professor if he could start a blog and use the entries as his paper.  The blog ended up also serving the purpose of giving friends and family back home an opportunity to “travel along” in spirit, and it gave them a way to enter into conversation with their traveler about the trip when he or she returned home.  The comments section in that blog serves as a “letters from home” space, and we welcome your thoughts and voices in our journey together.  When I signed up for the Chiapas trip, I asked my friend to let me continue the tradition; I ended up having such a wonderfully rich experience writing for the UTS Global Trips blog that I started this blog as a result.

I would be honored if you would take the time to read, travel, and learn with us.

Many blessings,

-lm