Spiritual, Not Religious
Rev. Fayre C. Stephenson
October 7, 2018
A couple of months ago, at Community Sing, I looked around the singing circle and thought, “I wish all of these people would join our church. I know they would feel right at home if they joined us.” I had also been thinking for a long time, if you don’t invite people to join your church, they won’t come. It may never occur to them on their own.
So, after we were done singing, I sort of sauntered over to one of the guys and said in my most conversational and friendly manner, “Do you ever think about coming to church?” He had his answer immediately. He said, surprise, surprise, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” I can’t tell you how many times people have said that to me. He then went on, at some length, about how he finds spirituality in nature. He is a hiker and renews his spirit on the trail.
I totally understand what he means. I get it. I too renew my spirit in nature. Many of us do. This past week I went to the northern New England UU minister’s retreat in Greenfield, New Hampshire. During one of the programs, one of the ministers described an experience she had had on a beach in Crete. She and her friend were lying on their backs looking at the Milky Way – at the Universe – and she had an out of body experience. There were no artificial lights – only the light of the sky. Words never can describe this sort of thing but she felt that the stars were part of her and she was part of the stars – she was at one with the universe. For twenty minutes or an hour, she is not sure how long, she lost herself to the universe. Incredibly her friend had the same experience.
Although I have watched the stars on my back on a beach and felt the immensity of the universe, I’ve never had an experience quite like that – but I have been having that sense of oneness since I was a little girl playing in my beloved Sand Pond swamp in Norwood, Rhode Island. I would walk through our neighbor’s back yard down to the swamp – carrying my hammer, my saw and bag of nails. I was a tree fort builder for a good five or six years of my childhood. In my best loved memory of this time, I am wearing jeans, a red plaid shirt, my dungaree jacket, and black Converse high top sneakers. What a fashion plate I was and I still can’t believe my mother let me have those sneakers. At the top of the embankment to the swamp I would look down across the woods and water and just love the place. At this time of year the swamp maples would be red and reflecting in the clear water. I remember the joy I felt as I set out on another day.
When I wasn’t building, I would float on my raft on my stomach looking down into the water. I could see turtles and fish and I would get lost in watching. Of course, when I was eight I didn’t know that what I was doing could be thought of as meditation and that the feeling of oneness I had with everything around me might be called spiritual renewal. But I did know I loved that place. I liked how I felt when I was there. I actually used to dream about the swamp and later, after we moved, thought that, if there is a heaven, it would be the swamp. Kayaking here in Oxford Hills ponds and lakes, especially, in the part of Norway Lake called the bog and paddling among the Lilly pads watching for turtles and birds has given me a tremendous sense of déjà vu. That old sense of being at one with all there is comes back.
I suspect that everyone here knows that sense of spiritual renewal in the natural world. We are hikers, gardeners, wood cutters, swimmers, sailors, porch sitters, grass mowers and more. We get it. We understand spiritual renewal in nature. And yet, we come to church. I believe we come to church for an equally powerful spiritual renewal.
Chatting with my fellow community singer, I didn’t try to describe the spirituality we find in our UU churches. It didn’t seem to be the right time and maybe I didn’t have the words. And, we needed to help put the tables back together in the Concert Hall.
What I might have said to him is that spiritual renewal in nature isn’t enough. On the most basic level, we need the spirituality that being in the community gives us – communion with each other. We human beings, like all animals, are relational. Even if we are introverts, we get sad if we’re alone too much. Last year Larry Levesque, a member of our church, told me he was worried about his old dog. That dog had always lived with other dogs and now he was the only dog. The dog was sad and slept all day. He had given up. Then Larry got a puppy. Miraculously, the old dog had a whole new lease on life. The puppy wanted to play and the old dog, achy old bones and all, got up and played. We are just not so different. We need each other especially in times like those in which we are living Today.
My Community sing friend might say that he is a member of the Alan Day Garden, or the Appalachian Mountain Club or CEBE or a yoga group or a healing arts center. Can’t he get his communal spiritual needs met there? My answer, is “no, absolutely not” All of those worthy groups have worthy goals but none are focused specifically on individual and communal spiritual growth and on ethical living. We are.
Our neighbors like my Community Sing friend may have had painful experiences in churches or never had any experience in church at all. Either way, they don’t see any need for organized religion. When people tell me they have no desire to join an organized religion I stifle the desire to wisecrack. I always want to say, “Oh, then you’d really like us. We’re not all that organized and we’re definitely not very religious.” Of course, this isn’t true, but always think it is funny.
What we need to say is that we are not like other churches. We have no creed. We are encouraged to cherish and nurture our own beliefs about what is divine. Marilyn Sewell, editor of the book from which today’s readings came, wrote, “God is a spirit, a mystery beyond human understanding, and therefore we can only approach that mystery through metaphor. Our metaphors come, of course, from human and cultural understandings of the good, the loving, the just. The problem is that in the formulation of the religious metaphors we live by, women’s (and other people’s) experience has been once again discounted. God has been king, prince, lord, father, conqueror, judge.” Then she says that the poems in that particular section of her book, like Jane Kenyon’s and Maya Angelou’s poems that we heard today, describe what is divine in a different way. The idea she says is that “Such images allow a divinity of softness and vulnerability, of tenderness and nurturance. We are led to less fear and to more comfort and hope than traditional images have provided.”
When we are at our best our Unitarian Universalist churches provide spiritual homes that are welcoming enough to include everyone’s vision of the divine – everyone’s metaphor. And when we are at our best our worship services and every other communal experience at church nurture our spirits. Worship formats may vary but the goal is to renew our spirits for the journey.
If I could, I would tell my Community Sing friend one last thing. Unlike other worthy organizations, our spiritual community is devoted to moral and ethical living. Not that other organizations are immoral or unethical. It is just that we focus on morals and ethics as described in our seven principles. Our Universalist ancestors saw life as a journey toward harmony – toward the divine. This journey is what the Taoists call “the way” and we all have to get there.
For some reason, in recent years, we haven’t used the words “morals” and “ethics.” They must have taken on some sort of connotation of judgementalism – a quality we would not like to have.
However, our Seven Principles are the moral and ethical guideposts for our social action. For example, as our first principle states, we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Honoring this we would conclude that every person would have the right to decide what happens to his or her own body. Thus, we are pro-choice. Decisions, like abortion or whether to have chemo therapy, are up to the individual.
Our Seventh Principle says that we affirm that we are a part of the interdependent web of all that there is. This principle is the guidepost that leads us to care for the environment. I always think of the first and seventh principles as book ends that hold the other five principles. Together they are the moral roadmap for how we will be in this world.
We are not like other organized religions. We are inclusive, not exclusive. We are open, not narrow. I fear that the narrow outlook of our fundamentalist brothers and sisters has caused them to sell their souls. I speak specifically about the senators and congressional representatives they have been willing to elect to further their desire to seat a supreme court justice who will carry out their narrow minded agenda.
We have not sold our souls. We see the greed and the cesspool of immorality and corruption in our government for what it is. Armed with our social justice roadmap and our seven guide posts, and, together, we’ll keep on keeping on. We will not give up or sell out.
Last night Kathi Pewitt posted on Facebook an article by Howard Zinn written in 2005 after Justice Roberts was confirmed. Here is just a little piece of that article. Zinn says, “Don’t Despair about the Supreme Court. It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.”
He adds, “No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration of Independence–an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–be fulfilled.” Amen, Brother Zinn and thank you, Kathi.
The profound sadness evoked by events of the past two weeks – I might even say the past two years – is pervasive. Speaking for myself, no amount of kayaking – no amount of communing with nature – can renew my spirits when the sadness we carry is this heavy. For me, only the communal spiritual renewal we find here can raise my spirits. I’m afraid I would be like Larry’s dog if I did not have you. I would lie down in a corner and sleep. But, being with you in this spiritual community – whether we’re in worship, playing, or doing projects together – is a deep spiritual source.
I will close with a poem by Carolyn Kizer. She writes,
“Though it’s been years since I believed in me
with that utter childlike faith, I believe in you.
I believe that every day in every way
you are getting better and better;
and if the world is saved, it will be saved
by the likes of you.
Now I am able to be still and know
God is us, because so clearly God is in you.”
Amen and Blessed Be.