Selected Sermons

Elements of Life: Gaia: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented February 17, 2008 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Green Man's Dreams: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented February 3, 2008 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

The Deinstitutionalization of Religion: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented November 18, 2007 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Ships at Sea: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented September 30, 2007 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Doubt: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented October 15, 2006 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Forgiveness: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented September 24, 2006 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Faith: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented September 17, 2006 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Whole-Hearted Spirituality: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented August 14, 2005 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Listening to the Wind: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented November 28, 2004 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Swinging David's Sling: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented on November 7, 2004 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

A Faith of Hands and Heart: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented October 17, 2004 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Dig Where You Stand: Ethics of Place: Rev. Brian Eslinger
First presented October 10, 2004 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
[MS Word] [PDF].

Dig Where You Stand: Ethics of Place

Rev. Brian Eslinger

First presented October 10, 2004 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames

I spent a lot of my life wearing an ill fitting suit. I don’t know that it started out that way, but as I grew the religion of my youth didn’t seem to fit me any more. Eventually I felt like the person in our story, twisting my life to try and fit a suit that didn’t fit me. Since that time I’ve been continually reshaping my religious garment so that it helps me to live the way I want to in the world. I’ve had many tailors who’ve helped me to refashion this theological suit so that it matches how I believe I should be in the world. Today I want to share the insights from three of these tailors.

The dialogues that follow are fictitious conversations. They’ve occurred in my head for the past eight years with the people who’ve shaped my thinking. I’ve only met one of these authors, yet each has shaped me as profoundly as any teacher I’ve known. The dialogues are real, honest discussions between me and the ideas I encountered.

It begins in 1997. I’m sitting in my new office in the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames reading the latest issue of the Humanist. Then a sentence in the essay of the Humanist of the year jumps out at me. “In day to day life, I worship the Earth as God”. What? The earth as god? In a humanist magazine? Alice Walker nods her head slowly and gives me a smile. “More and more,” she says to me, “people are decolonizing their spirits. Their not allowing the religion of the past that isn’t about them to keep them afraid and separated. This is an act that might return our reverence to the earth, thereby saving it.”

Decolonizing their spirits? What does that mean? “Simply put people are trying to come out from under the assumptions that the male-dominated western religious dogma they grew up with is the only god available. All people deserve a god who worships them. It’s fatal to love a god who doesn’t love you; the religion of my ancestors connected us to all creation. Never will mother earth find anything wrong with your natural way. Everyone deserves a god who adores our freedom. Nature would never advise us to do anything but be ourselves. So I say I am pagan, worshiping the earth.” I thought about ancestors, realizing that we all have them, those ancestors who worried about the change of the season more than the state of their eternal souls. Those ancestors who prayed that the fire would light so they could be warm and praised the rain so that they could eat. In the course of human history we don’t have to look that far back to find our pagan ancestors who knew what it was like to worship the Earth as God in their day to day lives.

I recalled what I’d read in Emily Town’s book about how love is the center of womanist theology. “Womanist” is a word coined by Walker to indicate the difference of African American women’s quest for justice. Womanist she had written is from the statement “you’re acting womish. Usually referring to outrageous, courageous or willful behavior. Womanists are committed to the survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female.” This quest begins with finding one’s own humanity, finding love for ones self, then allowing oneself to risk loving another.

Envisioning this expanding circle of love: beginning with self, leading to nature, I could see that circle, or maybe it’s really a double spiral. As we reach out to it we sense the loving embrace of nature holding and supporting our lives and then empowered by our contact, it radiates out from us.

Walker nods her head slowly, in agreement with my line of thinking. I continue, Women and African people became nothing more than property and the religion of the masters told them it was so. There is a strong link between racism and sexism, both look at human beings as things and these human beings, these women begin to believe they are things. Walker adds, “The earth, mother nature didn’t make us this way. We human beings lost our way and made ourselves slaves some slaves of the body others slaves of the soul but all losing out of that perfect love which nature intends for us. It’s been a long road to find the ability to love ourselves. When we find ourselves nestled in the acceptance embrace of Mother Nature, who loves us for who we are, then we can find the strength to fight for others.”

I consider she and I, a black woman writer and poet who’s profoundly influenced the world I inhabit, and me descendant of the race that enslaved her fore parents and brought them here. Each of us captive of our history and trying to break free. Male, female; Black white, but all part of the humanity. Walker says, “Womanist thinking is Universalist like the child who says, “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow and our cousins are white, beige and black?” Answer, “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden with every color flower represented.”

That universality leads to a desire for justice for each flower in the garden. Against the gardeners who would cut them down. But it seems there are more scythes than ever trying to cuts us to ribbons. Seeing the resignation in my eyes Walker says, “I do realize it’s pretty messy all around. Lots of suffering, lots of pain. And I have just decided that there are places where I feel I am uniquely suited to be, and causes that just fit, where I feel I can actually do this without being insulting or ignorant or unhelpful. And that’s it. I give to the extent that I can, and then I sit back and I eat tomatoes. And I enjoy them, and I look out at the landscape and I love it, and I walk and I go swimming and I love being alive. And then when I get my strength back, I go out again. You know, what are hearts for? Hearts are there to be broken, and I say that because that seems to be just part of what happens with hearts. I mean, mine has been broken so many times that I have lost count. But it just seems to be broken open more and more and more, and it just gets bigger. The thing about love that I’ve discovered in my life is that one love leads to another. It just gets bigger and bigger. You can start with a flower, but if you sincerely see it and if you sincerely love it, then it’s like the key. The flower is like a key to a big, big, big storeroom. Then everything becomes something that is lovable.”

Even through the pain of growing up in a racist, sexist world, you’re able to let your heart be broken so that you can love? How can you do that?” I ask, “Open your heart and take those kinds of risks?” “It takes practice.” She gives me a wry smile and begins to walk boldly back into my imagination. “Practice? What do you mean?” And as she disappears into bright recesses of my mind another figure steps out from the east. I find myself sitting, in the middle of this room, sun light streams in through the windows as we face the bright tapestries in the half lotus position, knees too sore for a full lotus. As I settle into my position I feel my legs and body begin to melt, slowly dissolving into the floor and soil below me all being absorbed into all. A distant voice says, “Master they will see you now.” I open my eyes to find myself in a forest path, before me sits Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. He points down the path and we begin to walk. A leaf falls to the ground before us, Thich Nhat Hanh watches with a smile. “Ah leaf,” he says, “you are pretending to die yet I can see how you are becoming one with all the elements of life, merging with the moist soil and preparing to appear on the tree in the spring in another form.” He looks at me as we walk, “Everything is pretending to die and be born, all is really part of the ultimate dimension. When we can realize this it can transform the spot you are standing on, when you realize that this spot is part of the entire universe.”

I look at the trees surrounding me and try to see the ultimate dimension in each leaf, instead I get dizzy. Realizing my befuddlement, Thich Nhat Hanh smiles and then a look of deep compassion comes over his face. I can sense as he looks at the trees that he is remembering the time when this realization became clear to him. It was after he arrived in France, exiled from his home in Viet Nam. He was painfully home sick, missing the plants and birds of his home. He sat in meditation, dwelling in the present moment and began to see in each tree in France the same beauty that he found in those of his home, in each child’s smile he saw the same beauty of the children he’d known in Viet Nam.

“ Our true home,” he says, “Is the present moment. To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now. Once we learn to touch this peace we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith it is a matter of practice.”

As we walk I begin to feel the ground in a new way, as though the soles of my shoes have melted away and I am actually touching the soil. This soil that’s bubbling up between my toes has nurtured generations of plants and animals. Parts of it have come to this place from all over the world. This simple practice of walking mindfully on the earth has helped me to touch it in an entirely new way. Practice, little moments when we intentionally remember why we are, that we are, when the simple act of breathing binds us back to the reality that we’re part of something greater than ourselves. From this practice comes acceptance, gratitude and liberation. Liberation from the striving to be something else, to be richer, or more beautiful, perfect in what ever way, what ever causes us to destroy who we are – as Mother Nature intended, beautiful as we are. Instead, we can be rooted in the present moment seeking to create. He breaks into my musings saying,” Such a change allows us to transform the ignorance that brought about wrong actions of speech, body and mind and helps you cultivate your mind of love. Shame and guilt disappear and you experience the joy of being alive.”

I begin to understand that the question is spiritual; it is at the deepest connections, the fibers that animate our lives. I’ve read many an article about the species lost and the rain forest destroyed, many books of the atrocities committed and the wages of poverty. Yet it’s too easy to intellectualize them all as happening to other people, not me. Thich Nhat Hanh asks us to go deeper than our minds, deeper than our hearts to the very core of our existence. There we realize the animating force the breath of our lives intimately connects us to all that is. The practice, I see through my teacher’s example can be as simple as walking, sitting, eating a piece of fruit. But it becomes as difficult as consciously deciding “Will I drive or will I walk? Do I really need to buy that new car? What will my decisions mean for the world?” Acting in such a way we seek harmony with nature and the people around us. People, community, I think. Then I ask, “I’ve learned of the importance of love in transforming oppression, of mindfulness in transforming ourselves, but what about communities?” Thich Nhat Hanh smiles, “the Buddha says, ‘When the student is ready the teacher appears.”

From the forest I find we’ve walked to the top of a heather covered hill. The ocean before us is whipped by waves and great stone pillars arranged in a circle surround us. A fiery voice to my left distracts me and I turn to see a bearded man reciting in more of a yell than a voice something like a poem. When I turn back, Thich Nhat Hanh is gone. I turn back to the voice, knowing immediately it’s Alastair MacIntosh.

Ohhh ... friends we call across the seas to you from echo chamber of the soul
we call now stirred by rhythm that you drum
We call upon the triple billion year old songlines of world’s oldest rock
“ I lift a stone; it is the meaning of life I clasp” - says the bard MacDiarmid
So let us honour stone. Let us call afresh the foundational litany:
The Cairngorm Mountains and sparkling Aberdeenshire granite
The Old Red Sandstone
The Durness limestone
The idle pebbles …
tossed to and fro, round and round, inwards outwards
dark moon full moon vortexing on today’s high tide at noon
Ohhh ... the rocks the rocks the rocks
we call on you ...
Rise up from sleep sunk strata beds!
Giant women, wizened men, totemic creatures once laid down to be our hills
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up and waulk this Earth in us!
... bring back the land within the people’s care
... bring back the care to touch from hand to land

As he pauses, I remember his work to stop strip mining Mount Roineabhal on South Harris and the community buy-out that returned the land of the Isle of Eigg to the people. When he’d appealed for their help, the rocks had listened. “Alastair,” I begin, “When you call the rocks for aid, how do we know they’ll listen?”

“First, we have to be on their side don’t we? We have to be indigenous people to know the rock we call upon for strength.” Puzzled I ask, “Most of us are immigrants, how can we be indigenous?” He looks at me with those steely eyes and says, “To be indigenous doesn’t mean you can count the generations that have lived in a place. It means you advocate for the land. We must see ourselves a part of the land, not apart from it, part of the ecosystem not the lords of it all. This is Celtic ecology.” Celtic ecology, as Alastair describes it, is a learned way of being in harmony with nature. By understanding that poisons dumped into the water poison your very blood. They understand nature as having its own soul and we are part of that soul as well. When the soul of nature is abused and misused, when the land is destroyed and left fallow it is a spiritual as well as physical assault. It’s this spiritual understanding that helps us fully appreciate the necessity of our material connection to world.

Such a spiritual understanding helps sustain a desire for change. Alastair says, “If activism is not grounded in spirituality it cannot be sustained in the long run: we either burn out or sell out as the oil of life runs low. We need replenishment from the wellheads of life itself, and no matter what religious tradition we may or may not be coming from, this re-sourcing is ultimately a question of spirituality. Spiritual justice may be understood as the avoidance of spiritual delusion. Spiritual justice means seeing life reverentially, seeing with eyes that accord with God’s love and not with eyes set upon some lesser “god” such as money, status, or a human leader. As social and ecological justice follows on from spiritual justice, and as community and therefore peace arise at the confluence of all three faces of justice, it follows, as the prophets repeatedly saw, that the most fundamental barrier to creating a peaceful world is idolatry.

Seems that it would be difficult to do such work surrounded by the tumultuous, seductive times in which we live. He smiles saying, “A gentle Buddhist monk from Thailand [who had been persecuted] for organising controversial social justice activities in his home country . . . came one day and silently left a beautiful rice paper brush and ink drawing on the floor of our simple abode in the forest. It was of a rampant tiger with the caption, “The best place for meditation is in the tiger’s mouth.”

“ If we want to create change in the world we must constantly strive to strengthen community – first by making community with the soil, working with rather than against nature’s providence.” Second is making human community, sharing wealth, putting children and elderly first (their needs ahead of tax cuts and corporate bail outs). And third (but not last) we need a community of the soul. Alastair says that what ever your religion – or lack of one – we need spaces to rest, compose and compost our inner stuff. (Walking with Thich Nhat Hanh, eating Tomatoes with Alice Walker) By keeping an eye to the ground and the stars we can be more deeply present in our universe, and our lives. Then we can touch that mystery, that miracle which too often eludes us when we strive for it. Alistair adds, "We need to remember that when we let loose our wildness in creatively it is God the Goddess – or call it Christ, or Allah or Krishna or the Tao – that pours forth. It does so from within, as a never-ending stream.” Where can we start? “Test any course of action with the touchstone of service. Ask: does it help the poor? Does it restore the broken nature? Does it bring music to the soul? In short is it concerned with the blossoms?”

I remember Alice Walkers’ description of all humanity as a garden and it all makes sense.

Suddenly that ill-fitting suit of clothing I’ve been wearing for most of my life began to fit. I remembered reading about something called ‘the forest of your heart’. This place, deep inside each of us, is an echo of the primordial forest, the first forest. But this echo is different for each of us. It reflects where we are nurtured, where the love of mother earth touches our hearts and fills us with a sense of belonging. Each of my teachers asks us to seek that place in ourselves. Whether their languages came from the womanist tradition, Buddhism or Celtic Christianity, each one found their centre in loving the earth.

From my journey through my imagination, I’m here again. The forest of my heart gradually awakening. Now, it’s up to me to nurture it, help it to grow and seek the wisdom that abides there. For the most important lesson I’ve learned from these three teachers is that they can do nothing more than point the way, it’s up to me to walk the path.

A Faith of Hands and Heart

Rev. Brian Eslinger

First presented October 17, 2004 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames

"I am not religious," says my neighbor, as he hoes the rows between his beans and corn.

"Oh yes you are," I say to myself.

To plant a seed is an act of faith. To collect compost is a response of gratitude to the creator.
To water, fertilize and mulch the ground is an expression of religious responsibility.
To kneel down and pull weeds is a prayer.
To harvest is to participate in the fullness and grace of the spirit.
To protect and replenish creation is to love God.

"I am not religious, says my neighbor.

Yes, you are, say I.

The Growing Season, Sara Moores Campbell

Back in August, when I was asked to speak at our partner congregation in Transylvania I admit that I was rather intimidated by the task. I didn't even know that I'd have to mount a high pulpit and wear a great black robe - otherwise I would have really been nervous. Instead my fears revolved around what could I say to build a bridge from their land to ours? What about our share Unitarian faith would supports such a bridge? Then I remembered when our son, Thomas, who is now a teenager, was a little boy he and a friend were going to dig a tunnel. He asked me where they should make the entrance to their tunnel - I quickly suggested the sand box in the back yard. As he headed to the shed for a shovel I asked where they were planning to dig to? Australia came the reply.

As happens with young boys, their ideas were bigger than their muscles and they soon abandoned the shovels for other pursuits. As odd as the idea of digging to Australia sounds, it is probably true that if we dug straight through from Iowa we'd end up in Australia. It gave me pause to remember that the soil that so nurtures my soul here in Iowa is really part of a great garden that stretches from here to Australia and is beneath to Transylvania as well.

This earthly home of ours is a precious place. Yes, there are scars upon the earth, created by wars and drought and the careless destructive greed. Yet my faith tells me that those scars can be healed; that we human beings have the responsibility and possibility of joining together and stop the wars, aiding those in need and challenging the greed of our race to allow all to experience the beauty of creation. These two constants of our faith responsibility and possibility became the trusses for my bridge.

These ideas can be expressed through two strains of thought that have developed through our faith's story. The first Unitarian belief in unity. This could be understood to embrace the oneness of God or unity of this world which we share, an interdependent web of which we are all part. This understanding of unity and humanity's place in this natural order gives us a special responsibility. The Ancient Greeks had a maxim that is often misunderstood. On the oracle of Delphi is inscribed "Know they Self". This inscription was not meant to be some kind of pop psychology statement of being self-aware or in touch with whom you are. It meant understand your place in the universe. We are human beings - not gods. As the Greek myths tell us, when we forget our place in the natural world and think we're gods, disaster ensues. "Know they self" was a warning; know your place in the natural order of things.

Native American cultures often expressed this sentiment by the name various tribes and nations gave to themselves. For instance the Navajo refer to themselves as the Dini - the people. This did not mean they are the people and everyone else is something less - but that for the place they lived the Navajo's role is to be the people in that ecosystem. Whether it's the formulas of science, the fancy of fairies, we find metaphors and stories to help us understand the foundational unity of creation; this unity is expressed in our understanding of an interdependent web of life.

So our expression of interdependence is a reinterpretation of ancient wisdom. This has often been a counter voice to one that seeks to extol us over nature, over history itself, as anointed ones for whom the natural world is be an oyster for our consumption. In the United States our credo of Manifest Destiny lead us to commit atrocities against the native peoples and the native lands. We committed the Greek sin of Huberous - we forgot that we were not gods and acted as those we were. This misunderstanding of our proper role in the world - the whole world not just the human world - continues.

Instead, we seek to understand our unity with creation. Like the character in our readings, many times we have trouble expressing this value as 'religious" - almost as though we're religious in spite of ourselves. The creative act is one so filled with hope, with a fulfilling of a sense of responsibility. Being creative is the ultimate religious ritual for we are reenacting the quest of every human being who's come before us.

It is with our own hearts and hands that we shape this world in which we live. We face difficulties brought about by events out of our control. Yet there is still the laughter in a child's voice, the love in a friend's glance, the beauty in the sun's rise and peace of a moon's glow that remind us of the wondrous world in which we live. Much is not in our power to control or change, yet much of how we are in this world is in our own hands. Using these hands to help rather than harm, to create music or shake the hand of a friend rather than to form a fist and strike. These are choices we make that will affect our lives as well as those of all we meet. These choices e an expression of our responsibly, to ourselves and our world.

Powerful responsibility we hold in our hands, yet it's rooted in the great possibility we share. This optimistic faith in our own power to better our world rises from the Unitarian belief in the significance of Jesus' humanity. Reggie's song touched on the different approaches to what mattered in the example of Jesus, was it a divine sacrifice on the cross or a loving example of his life? In the creed that I recited growing up Jesus was born by Immaculate Conception in the first line and suffering crucifixion in the next - as though he'd never lived at all! Within Jesus' life we see the potential of that spark of hope enflamed by the belief we can create the Kingdom of God for every person here on earth. That divine spark is not to be relegated to the pages of the past, but available to each one of us, here and now. Even with all of our faults and imperfections, we have that divine spark within us.

William Ellery Channing, one of the founders of Unitarianism in the United States, believed we have the power to develop this divine spark within, but we too often don't begin to realize our possibilities. As Channing wrote, "Of all the discoveries that people need to make, the most important is that of the self-forming power treasured up in ourselves. There is more of the divinity in it than in the force, which impels the outward universe." Here is our faith in possibilities. When we recognize the divine spark in ourselves we realize the possibilities before us. We also recognize that spark in others and begin to understand what it means to see every man as our brother, every woman as our sister, and every child as our own. In such moments of recognition we begin to realize we are all part of the great human family. Then the doors of our heart are opened, opened in compassion for those around us, opened with love for all of creation. With our hearts so exposed we can take the risk to care. It means we risk trusting others when that can be so difficult to do. Yet through such risks we grow that divine spark within into a flame. Our hearts guides our hands and that little light becomes a beacon to tell the world of the strength of our faith, our confidence that with our open hearts and willing hands we make a difference in this world.

Our faith offers us many ways to make that difference. For instance we may pray unceasingly, some with hands folded, some using those hands to write letters, others to hold signs of protest, all pray for an end to war. And a hope that some day soon all people will understand the unity of our human family and in that understanding seeks justice for everyone and study war no more. We pray that the hopelessness that drives the terrorist and the fear that drives our response will end. But that day is not today. Where in our faith do we find hope?

Unitarian minister Rev. A. Powell Davies wrote: "When someone asks where now is thy God, we can answer that the sacred is where it always was: in the struggle. In the pain of our hearts, in the growing clearness of our minds, in the sharpening edge of our conscience, in the welling of courage, in the purpose we cannot forsake and never shall." A leading advocate for civil rights in the United States, Davies knew what it meant to struggle. He saw the effects of injustice and what a lack of mercy could do to people. Humbly, he brought his community together to change all that. Knowing deep down that black or white, the color of ones skin had no bearing on the right to have a job, a home, or simply justice. Davies' Unitarian faith in possibilities of humanity created a Church that was force for change, the courage to look injustice in the eye and say no more. That power resides in each of our hands. I know what you're thinking in my hands? What power do they have? Join hands; Feel the touch of another human being, the pulse of their heart, the sweat of their work, the tension of their hopes and fears.

Release your hands. Close your eyes and think of your weaknesses -short comings that worry you when hear the challenge of changing the world. Take a look in your left hand - there, in your palm are those weaknesses. Now, close your eyes again, think of your strengths, we all have them, what are the gifts you bring to this world, those qualities about you that shine through. Look at your right hand, three they are in your palm. Now hold hands again. Notice that your weaknesses fit right into your neighbor's strengths? In this circle of hands we form a community of support, a community strengthened by the hands joined. This lesson for our group is central to the gospel of Unitarian Universalism, everyone person has strengths, very person has weaknesses. When we join our hands together we are made stronger and when we realize this interdependence we have the power to change the world. This is where I find hope. Those hands have the power to make a meal to feed someone whose hungry, to lift a sign in protest or support, to mark a ballot on Election Day. Each of these acts expresses hope, especially when joined with all the other hands in this room.

I thought about this power last Thursday when I led the noon devotions at the Habitat blitz build over in Nevada. And I told the young people there this American folk tale that I'd like to share with you. It's the story of a farmer named Joe who had lived on the same farm his whole life, right next to a farmer named Jack. They'd been neighbors their entire lives, married, raised their children together, and buried their wives side by side. Yet one day a calf waded through the creek that separated their lands and ended up in Joe's pasture. Joe was angry that Jack hadn't kept a better eye on his stock and when Jack came to get it Joe said, "What calf? It looks like one of mine." Jack stomped away and the two didn't speak for more than a month.

Then one day a stranger happened along carrying a carpenter's tool box. He knocked on Joe's door and explained that he was traveling from place to place doing any odd jobs that people might have. "I've got a job for you," said Joe. "I want you to build a fence all along the creek there so I won't have to look at my neighbor's house. " He pointed to a pile of boards and said, "There should be plenty of boards there to build it nice and tall." As the stranger began to move the boards down by the creek Joe told him that he had to go to town for some supplies and would be back by night fall. As Joe rode away in his wagon he could hear the sound of the hammer falling in the distance and smiled a rather angry smile. Later that day Joe returned from town looking forward to seeing that fence blocking out the view of Jack's farm. Imagine his surprise when he crested the last hill and instead of a fence saw a beautiful bridge stretching across the creek.

Joe angrily jumped off his wagon and began to stomp over toward the stranger who was putting away his tools. But before he could begin to say how mad he was, here came Jack walking across that bridge, with his hand extended saying, "Joe, I don't know how we ever let that calf ruin our friendship. I should have kept it penned in, you keep it." Surprised, Joe met Jack at the edge of the creek saying, "No, I was being petty, it's your calf." The two shook hands and clasped each other's shoulders the anger of the past month melting away. They both looked over at the stranger, who was just picking up his tool box and Joe said, "Thank you young man, I've got a couple other projects if you could stay around for a while." To which the stranger replied, "I'd like to Joe, but I've got a lot of bridges yet to build."

With our hearts and hands we're building such bridges. They may not bring angry farmers together, but might help people understand the importance of our relationships to each other. By helping us understand our responsibilities to the world and our possibilities to make a difference in it, Unitarian Universalism provides us the tools to be such bridge builders, crossing oceans, crossing the boundaries of different beliefs and finding a common ground in the divine spark that resides in every person, on the holy ground which is where ever we stand.

Swinging David’s Sling

Rev. Brian Eslinger

First presented on November 7, 2004 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames

I can imagine how the Hebrew people of David’s time felt when they were surrounded by those giant philistines like Goliath and everything looked really grim. Giants have long served as a metaphor for obstacles that seem insurmountable. The giant of Jack and the beanstalk could easily represent Jack and his mother’s poverty, the giant Goliath represents the seemingly impossible task of this little band of people surviving in their new hostile homeland.

We have our giants today as well. Not that many of them were talked about in any real depth during the last election. We heard a lot about national security, but I think that’s really missing the point of the real giant, the injustices that exist in the world that we really need to try to defeat. When he had President Bush’s ear soon after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners, said to him, “Mr. President if we don’t devote our energies, our focus, our resources and our time on overcoming global poverty and desperation we will lose not only the war on poverty but we’ll lose the war on terrorism. Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which the mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we’ll never defeat the threat of terrorism.” Indecently, that was the last time the president asked Mr. Wallis for his advice.

It seems that unlike in the old stories we have more trouble recognizing our giants. Maybe we’re more like those soldiers who bustled around camp, too scared to really look the giant in the eye and take him on; instead we divert ourselves toward easier foes, ones we know we can defeat. We are in need of real heroes who are willing to seek the giants that really threaten our society.

The heroes in giant stories are also very similar. They’re the little guys, in more ways than metaphors. In the story of David and Goliath there is a lot of background that happens before we get to the great battle scene. David is a shepherd, not one of the nobility or a great trained warrior. He’s the youngest son – which in the society he lived meant he was little better than a slave, he certainly wasn’t going to be inheriting any wealth or prestige, much less any of his father’s favor. In fact he’s the one who has to tend to the sheep while his older brothers are off seeking glory at Saul’s side. Poor old David is stuck out in the fields. Then to add insult to injury he has to take food up to his brothers like a common servant. When he does so, he overhears the challenge from the giant, Goliath, who’s scared the Israelites out of their wits. They’ve run before him for the past 40 days and nights as he’s issued his challenge to single combat.

David happens to hear this challenge and says I’ll take him. What’s interesting from here is how David’s difference is accentuated. He tries on Saul’s armor and it doesn’t fit – he relies on his tool that he’s learned how to use fighting lions and bears. David is not a helpless boy who faces the giant, he’s been tested by living in the world, the harsh world of the fields where he’s faced lions and bear. Instead to the sword of the king, David reaches down and picks up five smooth stones from the valley floor.

We’ll get back to these five stones in just a minute.

When he goes before the great warrior Goliath, Goliath laughs at him – he’s down right insulted that these up start Hebrews have sent a boy, a boy to fight him, the mighty Goliath. And this boy’s weapons, how can they prevail? No, Goliath says to David “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the fields.” What Goliath doesn’t know is that David is on intimate terms with those birds and wild animals; he knows them far better than does this arrogant giant. So relying on his crude weapons and his faith, David prevails, knocking Goliath out with one stone and cutting off his head with Goliath’s own sword.

Battle stories are often hard ones for me to come to grips with. As we hear the casualty count grow in Iraq and know that we’re not hearing a tenth of the suffering of the Iraqi people, I can’t rejoice even at the triumph of a mythic warrior. This story is an old folk tale that’s been borrowed to give David, the future king, a great entrance into his people’s narrative. It’s such a familiar tale that it’s part of our culture, but the underlying metaphor is a potent one for our times.

I don’t want us to think of the giants that challenge us as other people. No one is a giant that deserves our physical assault. That’s the point of giants; they are bigger than any person, seemingly insurmountable obstacles that require us to use our wits, our faith, and our strength to overcome. Singer song writer Peter Mayer expressed this brilliantly in his song, Rosa Parks, as the chorus says, “Rosa Parks sat down sending great Goliath to the ground from a will of stone that struck his crown the Giant came down.” Here it’s little Rosa Parks taking a seat on a bus and in so doing smashing the goliath of racism in the head. Rosa Parks is one of those heroes who was willing to look the giant in the eye.

These giant stories all tell us that we have to be the heroes. This story of David and Goliath is one of the earliest incidents of an Israelite succeeding without God’s direct intervention. Yes, David relies on his faith, but God does not intervene to insure his success. While this could indicate that the story originated in another source (such as a folktale) or that it does have some historical value that’s been preserved, I think it’s also instructive has to how we call upon our faith in times of trouble.

It was David’s faith that gave him the courage to face goliath, which gave him that same will of stone as Rosa Parks. But he drew the strength needed to defeat the giant from the world in which he lived. His strength came from years spent protecting his sheep from the dangers of the world. When he reached for a weapon to face Goliath the text is very plain in saying he reached down and picked up these five smooth stones from the valley floor. This valley was a special place, a home to the people who’d been without one for so long. And it was from this place that David drew his strength.

That strength needed faith to put it in action. Faith is needed to summon the will to look the giant in the eye. When I hear people talking about changing positions on issues in order to win elections I think of David trying to put on Saul’s armor, he couldn’t even walk in it because he didn’t have faith in that armor. Loosing faith in our beliefs will not win elections, but turn us into those who feed the giants of injustice. Those positions on issues are statements of faith that people’s lives matter, that justice has a chance in the world. I will not stop advocating for a living wage, I will not stop advocating for civil rights for gays and lesbians; I will not turn my back on the environment I will not stop protesting against war in order to win an election. For these are the issues that express my faith and to abandon them would be to loose my faith.

We don’t express our faith in God the way that David did in this ancient story, so on what is our faith based? It’s liberal religion that calls us together. It’s our history and common tradition. The sentiment regarding liberalism expressed in by James Luther Adams could have been written on the morning of November 3, 2004 instead of 1939. I would not go so far as to say we are facing the threat of a Nazi-like take over that Germany did. I would not go that far. That said, the restriction of civil liberties, the increased secrecy of our government, the demonization of the poor and other people, the centralization of media, as well as the climate of fear are all creating a form of government that is not what I believe our great nation should stand for. In that way we are staring down a giant.

As in the time Adam’s was writing, it’s not been easy to be a liberal during the past decade. In 1939 when this teacher and theologian found himself facing down a giant, like David, Adams reached for five smooth stones and his faith to help him in his fight. What five smooth stones did Adams pick up from the valley’s floor? He calls them the “five smooth stones of liberal religion”. The first is the principle that revelation is continuous. This means that our symbols, our rituals and words themselves are only referents to reality and can’t encapsulate it. Our experiences and discoveries will help deepen the meaning of those referents and our understanding of the world. Living this principle means that we can actually learn from history and apply those lessons to contemporary situations. Adams describes this continuous revelation as “god being in the process of self-fulfillment in nature”. Acknowledging the complexity in using the referent God, he described God as the inescapable commanding reality that sustains and transforms all meaningful existence”. Not exactly the same definition that David might have given nor the one I learned in Sunday school. For Adams god provides the structure or process through which meaningful achievement is possible, the working reality in which all of us are destined to live. So we are free and limited in this idea of God. Reality is then no human contrivance, and it’s only in this reality that human good can be realized and understood. Here Adams adds is where liberal theist and religious humanist can find common ground. The first stone that we reach for in the age of injustice is “We put our faith in a creative reality that is re-creative. Revelation is continuous."

Adams second major principle is that relations between humans ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not coercion. There are times when coercion is needed wrote Adams. For instance he says that state compulsory education is one time when we recognize the need for certain restrictions on personal freedoms for the greater good. But free choice must be a central principle, for this allows us to engage in free inquiry to help each of us most full realize truth and justice. When such freedom is present our faith, our inquires, will lead us to fully acknowledge human worth and dignity. Jim Wallace described faith as cutting in many ways, saying “when it’s not triumphal it can move us to repentance and accountability leading us to reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it’s designed to certify our righteousness that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside. There’s no reflection.” Wallace goes on to say that real faith leads us to deeper reflection and not – not ever – to the thing we humans most want – easy certainty.”

The third stone in Adam’s bag is the affirmation of the moral obligation to direct our efforts toward the establishment of a just and loving community. He asserts that a faith not bound to justice will lead us to grief, thwarting creativity and divine possibility, robbing us of our birthright of freedom and robbing our community of the spiritual riches latent in its members. Creating a just community means that we ask ourselves how our community treats those among us who are in need, real need of food, shelter and medical care. My partner Lisa and I were talking after the election as we watched the stack market climb realizing that more tax cuts will probably be on the way. One of us commented that for us financially this was a good election – but we have never based our politics on what was best for us financially. Creating the just community is something we must strive to do here, in our own homes, on our own street, in our own town. Many religious people call out Jesus’ name while pointing to the sins of others, sins that Jesus never named. Yet they will ignore his obvious and recurrent cries to care for the poor by creating a justice community – a kingdom of God which is always at hand if we will lift our hands to create it.

Adam’s fourth principle states that virtue and good are social incarnations – only realized through the institutions we create. Our faith must be expressed through our religious communities, our schools, the social and political organizations we create. Without them freedom and justice are impossible. Freedom, justice, good don’t exist anywhere independently of human creations. Only we can bring these ideals into being. We all have power; we don’t always see it and often feel like we’re powerless cogs in some great machine. But we create these machines and we have the power to influence the values they express. Too many of our institutions are created for personal gain – or for the few to exclude others. We can stop basing what we create on values of selfishness and greed – instead basing our institutions on love and compassion. We need to refine our language so the world understands the religious values from which this impulse rises. Don’t give up your power because it feels like it doesn’t matter. Each one of us through this congregation, through our schools through the many social service agencies that we can join can express our faith in our deeds.

These deeds relate to Adam’s fifth and final smooth stone of liberal religion. This is an attitude of ultimate optimism that the resources are available for the achievement of meaningful change. We recognize the tragic qualities of human existence yet choose to live in a dynamic sense of hope. I was dismayed to see all of the initiatives banning gay marriage on ballots across the country. Yet, ten years ago this wouldn’t have even been a question for people to vote on. How long did it take for the slaves to be freed? How long did it take for women to gain the right to vote? Justice does not move quickly but it is like a slow growing root that forces its way through the seemingly impermeable bedrock of hate and fear to crack those rocks open and allow the light of freedom to bring new life where once there was only darkness. Even today, such justice my friends is growing deep roots in dark places.

Such optimism gives us the strength to seek solutions. There are hungry people in our community, let us join together and feed them. There are families without a roof over their heads, let us join together and build them shelter. While we minister to the needs of many let us also be ready to look the giants in the eye and when ever possible hurl a rock its direction for one day the giant will fall. As we wait for that day, let us always be ready to lift our voices together, at all times. Sometimes it may feel like all we have is our voice, but never doubt that when we lift that voice in song there is power in it.

Listening to the Wind

Rev. Brian Eslinger

First presented November 28, 2004 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames

A couple of weeks ago while preparing for a presentation at our district ministers' retreat I was leafing through a lot of old memorabilia. Along with the report cards and class pictures was a newspaper clipping from when I was in Indian Guides. I must have been about seven years old, kneeling in the front row of a group photo bedecked in my vest and headband with one feather sticking into the air. My blonde crew cut was a cultural contrast to the headband and feather.

I remember those Indian Guides meetings, making crafts and sitting cross-legged in circles. And these memories came flooding back when I encountered the book by Philip Deloria called Playing Indians. Deloria's central thesis is that when Europeans came to what they called the 'New World' they wanted to distinguish themselves from the old by trying to become indigenous, by playing like the people who already lived here. While they should be referred to by their tribal or nation's name, the indigenous peoples of the Americas have also had many collective names through history, Indians, Native Americans, First Nation's people. Usually they haven't part of that naming process. So when I refer to them as a group I'll name them as Deloria does - as Indians (except when I slip and call them something else). This process of naming is an example of the issues that we face as we try to be honest about our history, the legacy of Euro-Americans toward the native populations, and the extreme power differential in this process as the Indian people themselves fought to maintain their place as the people of the land while Euro-Americans sought to supplant them.

Playing Indian began very early in our nation's story. We all remember the Boston Tea party. Pictures in my elementary history books showed the feather-bonneted colonists tossing casks of tea over the side of a ship. I always imagined those little barrels as holding great quantities of iced tea and maybe even some slices of lemon, my only experience with tea had been instant from a jar. Along with my ignorance about the state of the tea, I didn't realize that the perpetrators of this celebrated act of civil disobedience were part of a group seeking to legitimate European's Americanness by adopting native costumes and creating their own Indian legends. Called the Tammany Society, this group embodied their claim of sovereignty in America by mimicking characteristics of indigenous people.

Yet while the Bostonians were dressing up in buckskins the Pennsylvanian frontier was awash in warfare, creating the conflicting image of the Indians as both savage and saint. The savage/saint dichotomy began nearly from the time the Pilgrim's landed at Plymouth Rock. James Wilson, in writing the Earth Shall Weep, tells how the pilgrims (whose feast we celebrated this past week) immediately found themselves in a conflicted relationship with their Wampanoag neighbors. Upon their first arrival the pilgrims and those who came with them survived on the corn found by foraging. This found corn was foraged in deserted native villages that surrounded their settlement. Indian populations suffered greatly from European disease such as small pox and chicken pox. Squanto, a central figure in many pilgrim stories, was the sole survivor of his village's encounter with small pox. 75 to 90 percent of many village populations were wiped out. After four months it became apparent that this found grain would not sustain the colonists. Squanto, who was living with the Wampanoags encouraged their leader Massasoit to form an alliance with the new comers at Plymouth. The different understanding of the meaning of this alliance shows the seeds of discord due to differing views of how the world works.

The Wampanoags believed this treaty joined them with the pilgrims in a mutually dependant relationship, one that valued reciprocity. They sought to cement neighborliness by stopping by to visit, assuming they'd be extended the hospitality they showed their visitors. Instead the settlers sent word to those with whom they'd negotiated the treaty with that visits were not welcome. (This leads me to wonder about those thanksgiving paintings showing the happy colonists and Indians sitting together) Unlike the Wampanoag who believed that courtesy and trade were ritual acts demonstrating the mutual dependence necessary for survival, the Pilgrims sought isolation from these new neighbors.

And within the minds of the European settlers a conflicting understanding of what the indigenous people represented must have been dawning. Without the Indian's food, which some settlements relied on for decades, the Europeans would never have established their foothold. Yet without removing their saviors from the land they could never possess it. How could they admit that they owed their survival to people they believed where their cultural, religious inferiors, and how could they take possession of the land without finding a reasonable excuse for removing them? Thus began the image of the savage, who didn't properly use the land. The whole idea of the savage is not a historically credible one. The Indians were called savages in spite of the reality. In war fare their European allies derided them for not being violent enough; their religion was ridiculed as pagan and simplistic (often given as sufficient reason for persecution). To be historically fair, the Indians were called savages as a pretext for their elimination, not for any other reason.

It wasn't until the mid to late 1700s that the European colonists began to think of themselves as having a non-European identity - even then many did not. But this is where Philip Deloria picks up the trail. The primary image used by political cartoonists to represent the colonies in America was that of an Indian maiden. In a widely circulated image she's shown being abused by the wigged and top-coated men, characters of England. Tammany Societies fostered a sense of Indianness in their members. Both became potent images of rebellion.

Once securely free from their European masters, settlers continued to violently push native peoples off their land and eulogize them as saints at the same time. Throughout the 18th and 19th century Red Man societies sprang up through out the colonies. While battles still raged in the south and west, these societies searched for real Indians to help guide their role plays. In modern times that same extinct Indian of the past is a central image of our national identify. The dominant one is that of the plains Indians.

The image of the Plains people is so strong in our national consciousness that if we close our eyes and visualize "Indian" many of us would see the feather bonneted warrior portrayed in Hollywood movies. I remembered sitting in a theater in Waterloo as the lights came up after the movie Dances with Wolves. My father in law (a part Lakota who spent part of his childhood near Pine Ridge) turned to me and said, "Look what your people did to my people." It was on the plains that one of the last chapters of our history with native people was written - the final military conflict, stuff of movies and legends. Wilson calls it "the most potent symbol of the triumph of manifest destiny".

This theological conviction, "Manifest Destiny" became very potent as our nation expanded west. When I attended elementary school in California the concept of Manifest Destiny was an important feature of our history curriculum. It was this that brought people to the West, God's goal for colonization of America. Treaties signed by different tribes were broken by settlers who believed it was their right to take the land. At issue was what it meant to use the land as "God had intended". At the time of colonists the proper use of the land was to put it under the plow, clear it and cultivate it. Anyone not using the land is this way should be displaced. Lest we forget that it was the Indians who taught those colonists how to grow crops here and they did cultivate a great deal of land. Some was lying fallow intentional and some was cleared, but gone to seed due to the effects of disease mentioned earlier. Yet on the plains they were nomadic hunter - because this (as many a failed farmer found) was the most productive way to live on the land.

A quick aside or maybe a confession. I always grew up with the subtle bias nagging in my brain that said, you know we did defeat the Indians after all - so whatever we give them they should be grateful for. Yet this isn't true (beyond the fact that a nation should feel obligated to fulfill its promises to others-the United States has signed more than 370 treaties with Indians and everyone of them has been broken by US citizens) not every treaty was written after the Euro-Americans defeated a tribe or nation. For instance, the black hills were deemed to be the property of the Sioux after years of warfare resulted in a standstill at best. President Grant's Secretary of the Interior estimated that it was costing almost $1 million per Indian killed and the government conceded defeat in 1868.

But it really didn't matter what native peoples did or won. When the government signed a treaty they did little to enforce it and the conflicts based on culture, religion and world view meant that the tension of having this other in the midst of a holy enterprise could not continue. At the time of the 19th century there were two completing views toward the Indian question. One was for totally eradicating the native peoples, the other was to try and integrate them into Euro society as quickly as possible. Both of these positions denigrated Indian culture and ignored their world view. Both allowed for the types of atrocities such as the trail of tears and Wounded Knee.

The ultimate bureaucratic expression of this world view conflict came with the Dawes act. Senator Henry Dawes, its author, formed his answer to the Indian question after a visit to the Cherokee nation. He reported that each family had its own home. There was not a pauper in the nation and the nation did not owe a dollar. They'd built their own capitol, schools and hospital. Yet he found a defect in their system that would keep them from becoming "civilized," they owned their land in common. He said, "There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens... they will not make much progress."

Greed, therefore, needed to be forced into their world view so that the Cherokee would become civilized. The result of the Dawes act was to break up tribal land holdings and attempt to destroy native customs and traditions that reinforced their belief in a reciprocal world view. But it was precisely this selfishness that was antithetical to their traditions. It was precisely this selfishness that prevented Euro-Americans from joining them as the people of the land.

Dressing up in Indian style, as the members of the Boston Tea party, the Redman's Societies, Indian Guides all miss the mark of what was central to being indigenous, what's central to what made the native people the people of the land. Even much later when Euro-Americans sought to embrace the spirituality of the Indians, we missed the centrality of the world view that these traditions represent. As our highly individualistic society practiced the rituals of the sweat lodge or attempted vision quests we individualized the message rather than understanding that its goal was to help not our individual souls but deepen our commitment to, and find our gifts for, our community. A friend of mine in seminary, Renee Whiterabbit told me of a sacred tree of her people. When whites learned of it, they stripped pieces of bark from it, one little piece at a time until they killed the tree. These people went to the tree for their individual glorification, thinking that by owning a piece of it they were special. This living tree had represented a communal connection to the earth for Renee's people.

While there are definite differences between tribes and nations, there are similar characteristics. These include that sense of reciprocity. From the Europeans first encounter with native people there was conflict over the idea of mutual dependence, on each other and on the natural world. Vine Deloria Jr. (Philip's father) in God is Red describes the difference as expressed through sacred space versus sacred history. For the Indian peoples space, place is what is held in reverence. All is an embodiment of a divine energy or creator and human beings have their particular role in that creation, never over and above it but totally within creation. Balance is the ultimate aim and that balance is achieved in this world, as a sense of harmony maintained through ritual acts which reinforce the interconnection and human dependence on the natural world.

Sacred history believes that we are part of a plan being acted out in time, Good versus evil or the divine road map. The world is merely the stage for this action. The Euro-American vision of sacred history was and too often is expressed as a divine right, to conquer lands and the native people there. The earliest settlers believed they were sent by God to create a new Eden, everything here serving as fodder for that creation. This idea of creation morphed into Manifest Destiny. The protestant work ethic reinforced the idea that a person's wealth was a measure of holiness, of favor with God.

While the sacred stories of the Euro-Americans were about conquest and a unique righteousness, Wilson says the sacred stories of the Indians were about the holiness of place and how to live in harmony with the environment. Author activist Carol Lee Sanchez defines the difference saying, "Euro-American people waste their resources and destroy the environment in the Americas because they are not spiritually connected to this land base, because they have no ancient or legendary origins rooted to this land." She describes how tribal culture restored damaged ecosystems and imbedded mistakes into their stories so they could remember what happened and not repeat their mistakes.

In order for us to begin to heal, we need to follow this example. Allow our history to reflect what's really happened so that we might learn from these mistakes and not make them again. This means being honest about how the country came to be as it is, the lives lost in the conquest. Beyond this honest reassessment, we must attempt to become people of the land, whose stories seek harmony with creation, whose sense of hospitality extends to every living creature, whose understanding of interdependence does not seek to own land, but protect it.

When we begin to live in this way, we may be able to heal the deep wounds that still exist with the Indian people with whom we still share this country. Guilt, remorse or continued fictionalizing of our history won't help us to heal. Give them what is rightfully theirs, land, respect and an apology for many wrongs done. But for all our sake, let us not stop there Let's stop trying to take on the surface characteristics and learn from their indigenous worldview, awakening in ourselves a realization of what it means to be indigenous people, a people who know their home is with this land and only by seeking harmony with all will we ever find peace within.

Sources:

Philip Deloria. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Vine Deloria Jr. God is Red. Golden Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 1994.
Carol Lee Sanchez. "New Tribal Communities" in Weaving the Vision. Edited by Judith Plaskow. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1998.
James Wilson. The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America. New York: Grove, 1998.

Whole-Hearted Spirituality

Rev. Brian Eslinger

First presented August 18, 2005 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames

While traveling with our youth on their Boston Heritage trip last week I had the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the site of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. There I looked on the same body of water that inspired Thoreau to write the prophetic words Mark just shared with us. The walk to the site is one of simple beauty. The trail meandered from the sheltering woods to the edge of the pond and past boggy wetlands where the mists still lingered at midday. We were surrounded by stands of white pines, then emerged to look across the waters that inspired a generation. The day was clear and warm. A brilliant blue sky peaking through the deep green boughs. The path approaching the cabin is well-worn. We were lucky enough to arrive when no other visitors were present would disturb our moment of silence, as we looked on the outline of the simple hut that had served as Thoreau’s home for his two-year two-month sojourn. There he lived simply. From there he went out to change the world. His spirituality encompassed his whole heart, nurturing it as well as setting it aflame when he saw injustice.

This idea of the heart enflamed in the peaceful woods set me to thinking about spirituality, its purpose in our lives and our in our religious tradition. It leads me to reflect that we too need a whole-hearted spiritually. Our hearts have four chambers, two atria that draw our blood in and infuse it with oxygen and two ventricles to pump that blood back into our bodies in service of our lives. We need all four chambers of our hearts – just as we need all four elements of spirituality. Spirituality in its earliest definitions meant to breath. Spiritual practices help our lives to have breath, bringing vitality and purpose to our existence. The four elements I’ll describe are my classifications you’re welcome to create you own. My four elements include silence, study, creating community and serving the world. A whole-hearted spirituality embraces all four of these elements, seeking to create a balance in our lives. This balance is needed so that, just as our blood needs the oxygen to feed our bodies, our souls have the sustenance to help us be creative in the world.

Let’s begin with the sustenance side. Just as blood comes into the atria to be infused with oxygen we need practices that infuse our lives with that deep something, as important and invisible as oxygen. For instance, even a raging extrovert like me needs time for silence. My primary practice of silence is walking. Each morning I begin my day at 6 AM with a half hour walk. I am accompanied by my dogs, who are able companions in my silent ritual. I’d never thought of these walks as a spiritual practice, until last winter. On those cold dark mornings I took to carrying a walkman so I could listen to music or the news of the day. After a few mornings I noticed that I was out of sorts as the day began, finding it harder to focus. I was more restless and even angry. I realized that I’d sacrificed my time of silence, the time when I’d notice the state of the trees, the quality of the air and the feeling of the earth beneath my feet. I needed that time because it was then that my being would remember its connection to all those elements. I ditched the walkman and found peace returning.

I think we’re often afraid of silence, afraid of where our own insights might take us, unwilling to turn off the noise so that we can experience our simple connections to the world. It was in his silent sitting by the pond that Thoreau realized he was partly leaves and vegetable mould himself. Such connections are the source of beauty and joy. Sure they challenge me each day – but the challenge is one of love not guilt. It is a challenge whose rewards are beyond measure.

How to begin a practice of silence? One of the simple practices that I might do when I’m on a bus with 22 youth somewhere between here and Boston and we’re lost again -- (or some other situation that might give rise to anxiety) is meditating on my own heart beat. I would like to invite you to join me for a few moments of this practice. As thoughts come into your mind, let them go and feel you heart beating in your chest, feel that rhythm. – practice --

That beating is like a rhythm of the universe. It’s always with me and easy to focus on. This is my practice; it may or may not be yours. In Hinduism they have a belief that each person follows their own path, developing the practice that suits their needs. For you this time of silence may be one of prayer or sitting mediation or something I’ve not even thought of. What that Hindu belief stresses is that we seek a path.

Our other atria of spiritual practice are study. Again what you choose to study is up to you. But I know that study is central to my well being. My primary spiritual practice of study is music. While practicing music everything I’m immersed in something that allows everything else to disappear and my being to focus on this art. While I enjoy playing tunes I already know, I find that learning a new tune, challenging myself to grow, is when I am most engaged. I also know that at times only in music can I find connections. When I find the gist of a rhythm and understand what the writer intended it’s a moment of revelation and joy. The music fills me when I’m empty and reveals beauty when I’m open to it. Just as the plucking of the harp strings spoken of a goodness universal to Thoreau, so too each time I take up my pipes it is a learning experience.

Study is a very broad term. Many traditions encourage us to study sacred texts. What makes a text sacred is the way it affects us. Poetry of all sorts is a favorite sacred text of mine. On the advice of a colleague, I’m trying my hand at memorizing poems. By knowing something so thoroughly it becomes part of us. Then it can be available to us as reminder of what’s sacred or important. I’ve begun to memorize my second poem, Sunflowers by Mary Oliver:

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines

creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and so many,
fill all day with the sticky
sugar of the sun.

Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy

but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young -
the important weather,
the wandering crows.

Don't be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,
which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds -
each one a new life! –

hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garment of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.

The images of this poem could be studied a life time and still filled with richness. The rows of seeds remind me of my place in the universe. Their lonely celebration, my intimate connection to all that surrounds me. And the words themselves echo the beauty that is, even amid the pain of our constantly changing world. As is obvious by my need of notes, I don’t have it memorized, yet.

The one poem I do have memorized is Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Night”. When I first heard of the value of memorizing poetry as a spiritual discipline, I realized that at moments of struggle I’ve said those last lines from Frost’s poem “Miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep.” These words, uttered in silence to no ears but mine, remind me that this moment is but part of a longer journey. At times, those simple lines help me to keep going.

If you don’t have a favorite poem to begin to memorize I’d encourage you to look in the back of the hymnal. There are many wonderful selections there, and during the slower parts of the service this could give you a chance to occupy your thoughts with something productive. This type of spiritual study is similar to the lecto divino of the Catholic tradition or Jnana Yoga in Hinduism or even koans in Buddhism, seeks to engage our being in depth questions. It’s not just our minds at work, but as they roll from our tongues and vibrate across our bodies they involve our entire self. Through this avenue we pave a deeper understanding of why we believe what we do, beyond a conscious understanding to the very core of our being.

Liberal theology has been accused of not having moral values, as if freedom, compassion and acceptance weren’t moral. Instead I think we haven’t always had the spiritual practices that help us to root and express those values. Yet by infusing our beings through silence and study with this deep knowledge our actions in the world take on that humble certainty, a knowledge that we are acting from our best and deepest selves. This is a sense of value that is born out of our feelings of connection – our inescapable sense of responsibility to the beauty that surrounds us and the desire for all to have the opportunity to experience such a joy. For me this is a powerful basis of knowing to sustain our lives and not allow us to be swept up in the latest fad or swept away by the despair of the times needs. This knowing for me is the sense of eternal connection to the forces of life that infuses all which surrounds me. It’s that connection known through silence and study that gives me the will and strength to act in the world.

Action, acting in the world is where the next two chambers of our whole hearted spirituality take us. As our prophet of the morning Thoreau wrote, “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.” So as we replenished our blood with these internal practices; it needs to be sent into the world. Spirituality that does not lead us to creative participation in the world is self-indulgent and bankrupt. Like the right ventricle beating in our chests, the third chamber of our spiritual heart leads us to create community around us. Here, today, we are engaged in that creative act. Coming to Fellowship on Sunday morning is a spiritual discipline. When we don’t use the newsletter like a TV guide (selecting only those programs that look appealing) but instead seek to part of a community so we can engage ourselves in the search for what matters then we have a spiritual practice. Creating community isn’t easy – it means taking risks. At a recent meeting we were discussing coffee hour. A number of the folks expressed their discomfort with this time of ritual fellowship, not knowing what to say, afraid of saying the wrong thing. One feared foe pa that comes up frequently, (which occurs because with two services we don’t know everyone) is people mistakenly ask someone if they are new whose been attending for years. My solutions is to ask how long someone’s been coming, rather than if they are new. Or better yet, ask “What brings you to the fellowship?” Then you’ve created an opportunity to learn about what matters. Knowing what matters to each other is how we connect. Connections create compassion and caring and eventually community.

This is why I believe our milestones are a spiritual practice. Here we seek to share what’s important in our stories and incorporate them into the larger narrative of this community. The act of telling and sharing is a sacred act, it’s how we understand life on a deeper level – our own and those with whom we share this space and time.—milestones

Part of the common story of this fellowship is its role of caring for the larger community. Here we discern how to be present in the world. This is the second ventricle, the final chamber of our whole-hearted spirituality, engaging the world in which we live. This may occur through larger groups like our own social action projects such as the Industrial Areas Foundation. It may be through other national or international organizations, it may be through peace marches or (as in Thoreau’s case) civil disobedience in the face of injustice. It is the means of exercising our values in the face of injustice. There are times when standing in a sea of people gives us heart, confidence in the power of untied action. Then there are times when it feels like we are uttering a whisper trying to shout down the ocean. At such moments, when despair might lead us to give up, we need to heed the words of Martin Luther King when he said he had little faith in decades but great hope in centuries. This isn’t a call to complacency but an admonition to never give up. It’s a reminder that we need the depth of our connections to sustain us and remind us of the beauty for which we strive to create. It’s also a reminder that the communities we create are prophetic beacons of what we believe to be possible.

Henry David Thoreau walked those same paths upon which I trod; he found solace and revelation in the waters of the pond, on the wings of the hawks and the mists of the morning. In his cabin he sat by the light of a candle and wrote his reflections and studied his teachers. Then, he engaged his community and sought to change the world. His life went on to influence people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, two other prophets who understood the connection between our internal spiritual lives and our impact on society. Prophets are everywhere, one is sitting right next to you and one lives in your very soul. Each morning the sun rises and hangs a signal, its message is that life begins again, as the sunflowers turn their heads in acknowledgement of that message they invite us to their celebration. As Mary Oliver reminds me each time I try again to commit that verse to memory, it’s not easy. But let those up burning faces set our hearts flame, inspiring us to nurture that prophetic voice with silence and study, and then let it sing in our community and the world. May it be so.

Faith

Rev. Brian Eslinger

First presented September 17, 2006 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames

Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton

There is joy in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard, dies young.

In her poem, Welcome Morning, Anne Sexton reflects how I'd really feel about each morning—if I paused to give it much thought. Instead, I let it go unspoken, not recognizing the joy that is latent in each breakfast I prepare for my family, in each walk I take with our dogs. Yet mingled in that disregard I know that, for me, each morning is a statement of faith. Each day when I put my feet on the floor and greet the day with such casual disregard, I'm committing an act of faith, a faith that continues to develop as I look out on struggle, doubt, and joy through the window of my life.

Why do you decide to get out of bed each morning? We can say that we have to, but we don't. And if you choose to get out of bed each day-and to come here on Sundays—it means you, too, are looking for a window on why you make that choice or are trying to find the words to paint that thank-you on your palm. We're all seeking to understand and solidify the faith that gets us through our days so that the joy we've found doesn't die young. That's an act of faith.

This is not the understanding of faith that I grew up with. Back then, my faith was more like a test. Trust and obey. There was a significant moment when I realized that I just didn't have faith in the teachings I'd grown up with. Eventually, I came to see it wasn't that I didn't have any faith-just that my faith was different, based on something other than what I'd thought it was. Then began the ongoing process of building my faith.

This faith journey hasn't been a linear one. Yet it has led to a firmer foundation built on experiences of and in the world, on words and deeds of those smarter and holier than me, and on a sense of love and acceptance that defies logic. My understanding of this journey gained some structure last summer, when I had the chance to spend the day with Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg. She described the journey of faith as having three interlocking stages: bright faith, verifying faith, and abiding faith.

My bright faith burst forth while practicing Zen and when my partner and I found our first Unitarian Universalist church. In both experiences, I saw possibilities I'd never dreamed of. As I followed the lights that shone for me, I found a path that made sense and experienced a joyous connection that was mind-blowing. These were heady experiences, sitting across from my Zen teacher, thinking, "Man, this guy has got it together! If only I could be so wise." There were moments in our Wayzata church when I'd think, "Why can't the whole world be like this?" But If I'd stopped there, the faith wouldn't have sustained me. As events soon showed, faith had to rest on something deeper than just a teacher or even a community.

At the church by the lake in Minnesota, I experienced board meetings that dragged until midnight, infighting, and pettiness that I'd never thought would emerge in a faith community. I discovered that people are always people, that sometimes the passion of faith causes emotions to run higher and arguments to become more personal. But I knew that the church community was still struggling to find how best to live this faith, and it and I were both bound to make mistakes. I also learned that those mistakes didn't cause them or me to abandon one another.

Bright faith is an exciting time, and it can also be a dangerous time. It's the pitfalls of bright faith that lead so many of us to develop negative attitudes toward faith. Too often during that rush of excitement, while that openness to this heady emotion is paired with vulnerability and innocence, people are taken advantage of. My Zen teacher, this person whom I greatly respected, who really taught me the meaning of the Buddhist practice that's been central to my faith, took advantage of his position with a student. He initially denied accusations of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a member of the Buddhist community. When confronted, he finally admitted his wrongdoing and resigned from his position as teacher. His actions had great ramifications in his own life and within his family, as well as in the faith community that he had founded.

Many people, disillusioned with the actions of their teacher, left the sangha; many may have left Buddhism altogether. That can happen when faith is rooted in a teacher or scripture rather than in the practice itself. The Buddha understood this issue. That's why he said, "Don't cling to what I say; see whether it works in your life. If its does, then follow those teachings; if it doesn't, then throw it out." I think the Buddha would be dismayed to see how many followers have made him into a god.

Some of the stories told of Sufi teacher Nasrudin help us realize that teachers aren't meant to be put on pedestals. One such story tells of a student who saw Nasrudin dropping bread crumbs around his garden. He asked his teacher why he was doing that, and Nasrudin replied, "to keep away the tigers." "But master, there aren't any tigers within a hundred miles of here." Nasrudin replied, "Effective, isn't it?"

Bright faith can become blind faith when we are too attached and don't question. When the teacher or book or experience runs into a moment in reality that it hadn't anticipated or prepared us for, then the attachment is either dogmatically reasserted (ignoring reality and bowing to authority), or it is destroyed. When the attachment is destroyed, the bright light of faith is extinguished, and that faith is gone. Authority is an important component of faith. But all sources of authority are fallible and open to abuse. None deserves absolute, unquestioning, unfailing loyalty; if a source demands it, then it's really time to ask questions.

This is why Salzberg encourages the continuation along the path of faith to her second stage, verifying faith. Verifying faith is the practice of deepening faith. We engage our brains and our own experiences as faith moves from out there to inside us, as authority moves from something external to something inside. Part of this practice is defining and refining what our faith means. At this stage, everything is open for questions. The teacher, the text, the experience are all subject to reflection and deeper discernment. Faith is less an experience and more a practice, an effort to enlarge our understanding and deepen our personal connections.

Salzberg likens faith to looking at the world through a straw. During the bright faith stage, we peer through a narrow straw. When events in the world happen outside of our little straw, we don't know how to deal with them. As we test our faith during the verifying stage, we're forced to enlarge that straw, allowing more of the world in. This means being willing to let other views into our worldviews and being willing to listen and learn. We grow our faith through questioning what we're told and exploring what we don't know. My Hebrew Bible teacher in seminary, Carolyn Pressler, said knowledge is like the air inside a balloon: The more you know, the bigger the balloon gets. But the air outside the balloon is all the things we don't know. So as our balloon gets bigger and touches more of that air, we begin to understand how little we really know. During this process of verifying, we gain a sense of humility.

If an article of faith can't stand up to reason, then doubt needs to guide us to deeper inspection of that belief. Does our faith help us deal with real suffering in the world? Does it help us in such a way that we aren't externalizing or demonizing or ignoring most of the world in order to make sense of how things are? Does it help us to, if not understand, at least come to some peace with our own mortality and the death of those we love? From sitting at the bedside of those who were dying, I know there are many paths to finding acceptance with death.

Life after death, rebirth/reincarnation, even death as the final stage-all can provide comfort in the face of the unknown, as well as an imperative to act ethically in this life. Whether my rebirth is affected by my current actions or whether my current acts must stand on their own merits, there remains an imperative to take seriously what we do in the here and now. My personal theology rests most comfortably with the belief that, upon my death, my animating energy and material reality will merge back into the cosmos from which I came, to be recycled by the planet that gave my molecules birth millions of years ago. For me, that's enough. In this faith, I feel the certainty of my connection to something greater. This is a part of faith verified for me; I don't claim it is reality, but I claim it as my faith.

During the verification stage, we discover experiences that have deeply affected our faith, even if we weren't aware of that impact. For instance, sometimes our own suffering connects us to others. During my work as a chaplain at St. Joseph's hospital in St. Paul, my supervisor noted that I seemed to relate very well to patients dealing with long-term illnesses. He asked where that ability came from. I had no idea; I told him I'd never had any traumatic incidents in my life. He leveled his piercing stare, his unmoving eyes that seemed to look deep inside me. After wracking my brain for some answer that would deflect his gaze to another direction, I came up with something. "Well," I began tentatively, "I did have mono for six months in college. I had to drop out because of it-twice when I had a relapse." Diverting his gaze hadn't worked; he looked at me even more intensely. "You don't think that was traumatic? It sounds pretty traumatic to me." I realized that the compassion at the center of my faith had its roots in my life.

Just as those meditation experiences and times in my church in Wayzata didn't really have meaning until I'd explored the depths of the connections they created, neither did this until I could really understand that my way of being in the world is faithful because of these experiences. When we grow, through verification, to trust our own experiences, then we understand abiding faith.

In abiding faith, Salzberg says, we orient our lives around what Paul Tillich calls our "ultimate concern." It's our touchstone, our place of meaning, the force that gets us out of bed in the morning. Naming it may be difficult; it may be easier to relate those experiences of knowing we're in alignment with it. What we do in our daily lives becomes an expression of this growing awareness of our interconnections and deepening compassion. Abiding faith is born out of our lives; we can trust it because it's ours. We don't rely on borrowed concepts but the bone-deep knowledge of our lived understanding as embodied. A passage Salzberg wrote about seeing a rainbow after her teacher died was an experience of breaking though the pain to a deeper sense of faith, a deeper connection to all of her teachers, and the knowledge that she was now her own Buddha. Salzberg says our suffering doesn't occur for our edification, but it happens nonetheless, and we can react by deepening our faith or sinking into despair.

Despair is the opposite of faith. It's despair that can keep us from getting out of bed in the morning. Her pain wasn't gone; it was transformed. The loss of her teacher wasn't diminished. But, by letting go of her attachment to him, her compassion replaced despair as the depth of her faith connected her to joy in the ephemeral qualities of life and the beauty that that rainbow represented. Abiding faith, Salzberg says, is when we trust in ourselves that we have a faith strong enough to hold the joy and sorrow of the entire world in our hearts and survive.

Salzberg's favorite example of abiding faith is the Dalai Lama. She notes how unaffected he is by fame and prestige, how utterly compassionate he is in a room full of people and how able to accept people where they are. People who appear to me to strongly embody their faith are comfortable with doubt and ambiguity.

In a recent Newsweek interview, evangelical preacher Billy Graham described how his suffering as he's aged has changed his faith. He said some of the certainty he once held is no longer important to him, adding, "There are many things that I don't understand." He doesn't believe Christians must take every verse of the Bible literally, saying instead that it's OK to disagree about details of scripture and theology.

He says, "As time went on, I began to realize the love of God was for everybody, all over the world." Graham's sense that God's love is for everyone, not just those who share his faith, shows an embodiment of compassion. His foundational beliefs in God and Jesus Christ haven't changed, yet his process of verification borne out in his own suffering has led him to a faith in love for all and a greater tolerance for ambiguity.

Who would have thought that I'd seat Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Sharon Salzberg and Anne Sexton all around the same breakfast table? It shows me that faith isn't the problem in our world today. Living a blind, shallow faith is. Such faith exists in every religion and philosophy, as do testaments to abiding faith. Unverified, disembodied, shallow faith allows despots to rule through fear and promises based on fantasies. It allows nations to wage war, calling all doubt disloyalty. Faith isn't the issue; the problem is blind faith being manipulated by people with power. We need a deep, abiding faith to get us out of bed in the morning and to live compassionate, connected lives so that we can lead the blind not to our truth but to their own. "Faith," said Mahatma Gandhi, "is not something to grasp; it is a state to grow into." May we allow bright faith to seduce us but not trap us, verified faith to encourage our doubt but not fuel our cynicism. And may we arrive at an abiding faith that brings comfort to our lives, compassion to our actions, and justice in our hearts.

Forgiveness

Rev. Brian Eslinger

First presented September 24, 2006 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames

Choosing a Place, a Yom Kippur sermon
by Karla Goldman, historian in residence at the Jewish Women’s Archive

If we are able to remember every day that we are shaping our world, shaping those around us, and shaping the future, then it may turn out that even the everyday, seemingly mundane periods of our lives matter much more than we may have thought. And we should realize that, if we take our responsibilities seriously, if we appreciate the impact of what we do as Jews or as human beings, then we will realize that, although we cannot always turn frustrating situations to our liking, if we cannot find a way to effectively help a friend or challenge an institution or find a mode of worship that meets our needs or even do something to address the pain that is currently afflicting Israel, we still need to remember that our efforts matter, that they will not be lost on those around us.

We define ourselves by our choices and our commitment. And even when we are bound to fail, those to whom we offer support will not forget, and others will learn from our passion. Our stories may focus on the extraordinary, symbolic moments in our lives as individuals or as a people, but how we define ourselves in those moments is built upon whom we've chosen to be everyday.

Conclusion of the African folktale The Blind Man and the Hunter

The hunter and his blind brother-in-law returned the next day to the spot where they had set their traps. The hunter found a little, gray bird in his trap but discovered a bird with beautiful green, crimson, and gold plumage in the blind man's trap. He thought, "He'll never know the difference; he can't see them!" and handed the little, gray bird to the blind man, saying, "Here's the bird that was in your trap." They began to walk back toward their village.

Soon he asked, "If you're so clever and you see with your ears, then answer me this: Why is there so much anger and hatred and warfare in this world?" And the blind man answered: "Because the world is full of so many people like you, who take what is not theirs." And suddenly the hunter was filled with bitter shame. He took the little, gray bird out of the blind man's hand and gave him the beautiful green, crimson, and gold one instead. "I'm sorry," he said.

And they walked and they walked, and then the hunter said, "If you're so clever and see with your ears, then answer me this: Why is there so much love and kindness and gentleness in this world?" And the blind man answered: "Because the world is full of so many people like you, who learn by their mistakes."

And they walked and they walked until they arrived home at their village. And from that day onward, if the hunter heard anyone ask, "Blind man, how is it that you are so wise?" he would put his arm around the blind man's shoulders and say, "because he sees with his ears-and hears with his heart."

As we drove with the Teton mountain range in our rearview mirror, we marveled at the continued beauty as we passed in and out of river valleys. Then, passing through the western Black Hills, we watched the landscape change, becoming more barren. We saw a sign noting that we'd entered the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We'd taken this southern route home to visit the Wounded Knee massacre site. My partner, Lisa, had family involved at the massacre and, by genetic memory, so does our son, Thomas. So we thought it would be good for Thomas to see some of the land and learn more of the history of his family. As we neared the site, a Lakota man waved us over to a small, dusty parking area on the south side of the road. After we got out of the car, he met us and shared some of the history. He also described the struggles of reservation life-90 percent unemployment, no jobs, and no prospects. He invited us to take our time and walk around the site. The hill where most of the Lakota people were killed is now a cemetery. We walked up to see the mass grave from 1891 and many more contemporary graves. Thomas noticed the mixture of Christian and Native American symbolism on the markers. We also noticed how many veterans and teenagers occupied the hilltop cemetery.

After we walked back to our car, the man stepped over to my window. I lowered it and, after a few words, he said that his water heater was out and he had no money to fix it, and he asked whether we could help. He added that he and his wife could manage, but his kids needed hot water to bathe and have clean clothes. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the loose bills, handing them to the man, who put them into his pocket and stepped away with a thank-you. As we turned onto a narrow country road driving into the Badlands, I confronted how incredibly uncomfortable I felt about what had happened. It wasn't being hit up for money-I'm used to that. It took me a long time to figure out what bothered me so profoundly about this interaction. I realized the incredible feeling of guilt I had, driving home from our vacation and happening onto a glimpse of the life of a family whose daily struggles are rooted in injustices that I can't begin to fix-yet I still feel responsible. I felt guilty and helpless at the same time.

As I thought back on this experience, my longing for forgiveness for this continuing offense, I also thought, "Doggone it, I have enough things for which I need forgiveness in my daily life. Do I have to add the sins of the nation to my list?" The Jewish High Holy Days served to help me understand that my dilemma is not unique. The answer that I found isn't easy or totally satisfactory, but it does help me to see the importance of this multilayered necessity of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a complex human need. The days beginning with Rosh Hashanah, which started at sundown Sept. 22, and extending through Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown Oct. 1, remind our Jewish friends and neighbors that forgiveness begins within ourselves, extends to our neighbors, and encompasses our land. Wrongs committed against another person need to be rectified with that person. Those committed against God go to God. This year, the Jewish High Holy Days coincide with the autumnal equinox, reminding me how the balance of the universe is entwined with the balance in our lives. And forgiveness is a necessary component for us to reach and sustain that balance.

The process starts with being able to forgive ourselves. I'm one of those people who lie awake at night remembering wrongs I've done, even those I've been forgiven for. Misspoken words that hurt unintentionally or ill-spoken words that were meant to have barbs; not visiting when I should have or intruding when I meant to help-those sins of commission and omission. Karla Goldman's sermon reminds us that we need to take our responsibilities seriously but shouldn't be paralyzed by what we can't do. Sometimes we have to begin by forgiving ourselves so that we can let go of the past and be open to who we are without that baggage. Forgiveness is a moment of change, necessary if we truly want to grow. This poem by Emily Dickinson reminds me to take advantage of that possibility while I still have the chance:

All but Death, can be Adjusted-
Dynasties repaired-
Systems-settled in their Sockets-
Citadels-dissolved-

Wastes of Lives-resown with Colors
By Succeeding Springs-
Death-unto itself-Exception-
Is exempt from Change-

A portion of the Torah that will be read during this season says, "I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity." "Choose life," the Torah instructs, choose life. We choose life when we understand the importance of forgiveness, as well as of our responsibility not only to ourselves and those around us, but equally to those who will come after us. If we have the ability to forgive ourselves, we can extend forgiveness to those around us and seek it when we have wronged.

Forgiving ourselves and others requires letting go, but avoiding a buildup up resentments may take us even further. This was a lesson taught by a Taoist sage who gave a disciple an empty sack and a basket of potatoes:

"Think of the people who have done or said something against you in the recent past. Carve each name on a potato, and put it in the sack." The disciple came up with quite a few names, and soon his sack was heavy with potatoes. "Carry the sack with you wherever you go for a week," said the sage. At first, the sack wasn't so heavy. But soon it became a burden, and after a few days, the potatoes gave off a ripe odor. Finally, the week was over. The sage summoned the disciple. "Any thoughts about all this?" he asked.

"Yes, master," the disciple replied. "When we are unable to forgive others, we carry negative feelings with us, much like these potatoes. It becomes a burden and, after a while, festers."

The master said, "That is what happens when one holds a grudge. So, how can we lighten the load?"

His student answered, "We must strive to forgive."

The master nodded, "Forgiving someone is the equivalent of removing a potato from the sack. How many of your transgressors are you able to forgive?"

"I have decided to forgive all of them."

"We can remove all the potatoes." The sage then said, "Were there people who transgressed against you this last week?"

There were. The disciple panicked when he realized his empty sack was about to get filled up again. "Master," he asked, "won't there always be potatoes in the sack?"

"Yes, as long as people speak or act against you in some way, you will always have potatoes."

"But, we can't control what others do. So what good is the Tao in this case?"

"You can figure it out. If the potatoes are negative feelings, then what is the sack?"

"The sack is that which allows me to hold on to the negativity. It is something within that makes us dwell on feeling offended. Ah, it is my inflated sense of self-importance.""And what will happen if you let go of it?"

"Then the things that people do or say against me no longer seem like such a major issue."

"In that case, you won't have any names to inscribe on potatoes. That means no more weight to carry around and no more bad smells. The Tao of forgiveness is the decision to not just to remove some potatoes, but to let go of the sack."

What causes us to take offense? How do we react when it happens? This story of the Tao asks us to see how often offense is taken because it tarnishes our self-image, an illusion. A story from Africa provides another image of seeking forgiveness by showing how a person is not living up to who they could be. Rather than damning a person, the villagers remind them of the story of who they really are. They re-craft the narrative of that person's life so they are part of that flow that connects them to the community. This is a forgiveness that seeks reintegration rather than retribution.

There may well be times when that reintegration, as ideal as it may be, might seem impossible. Ethicist Lewis Smedes understood this when he wrote:

I worry about fast forgivers. They tend to forgive quickly in order to avoid their pain. Or they forgive fast in order to get an advantage over the people they forgive. And their instant forgiving only makes things worse. ... People who have been wronged badly and wounded deeply should give themselves time and space before they forgive. ... There is a right moment to forgive. We cannot predict it in advance; we can only get ourselves ready for it when it arrives. ... Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long. ... If we wait too long to forgive, our rage settles in and claims squatter's rights to our souls.

One former prisoner of war asked another whether he'd ever forgiven their captors. "No, never," was the reply. "Well then, they still have you in prison." Offering forgiveness can be a step toward freedom.

Granted, there are many painful wrongs in the world. But sometimes a bit of perspective helps us to see them in a different light. Meditation teacher Jack Kornfield tells this story of a woman who approached Roberto de Vicenzo, a famous Argentinean golfer, in a parking lot after he'd won a tournament. She congratulated him on his victory and then told him that her child was deathly ill. Touched by her story, he endorsed his winning check over to her and said, "Make some good days for your baby." The next week at a country-club luncheon, a golfing official approached him and said the woman was a phony. "She fleeced you, my friend," he said. De Vicenzo replied, "You mean there was no dying baby?" The official nodded. "That's the best news I've heard all week!"

De Vicenzo's response was an expression of what was ultimately important to him. Asking for forgiveness from God, for me, means seeking to understand where we've deviated from living in alignment with our source of ultimacy and seeking to realign our lives. I resonate with the traditional Jewish idea that my deeds need to be oriented toward creating heaven in this life. The covenant I hold sacred is with a creative force of possibility in the here and now. When I ask forgiveness, it is when I've come up short in my covenant to take seriously my responsibility to shape my world, to live my commitments to peace and harmony. When I can ask this forgiveness with honesty, then the creative energy opens up new possibilities As Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams wrote, this divine love emanating from our ultimacy always has the characteristic of loving "in spite of" or of "forgiveness." Each day is a succeeding spring.

This is where the actions we take as individuals intersect most strongly