[Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, as quoted in David Johnson’s We Light This Chalice, 1997]
When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the
girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for
this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in forests of fall,
and down winter and spring for years.
Then one day I was walking...thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it.
I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame.
I stood on the grass with lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed.
It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.
The flood of fire abated, but I am still spending the power.
Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing.
I
had my whole life been a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was
lifted and struck.
I have since only rarely seen the tree with the lights
in it.
The vision comes and goes, mostly goes,
but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars
in space through the crack, and the mountains slam.
As many of you are aware, the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), our denominational body, took place late last month. Among the reports to the gathered delegates was one given, as usual, by the Commission on Appraisal. The commissioners, a group of nine elected volunteers, are charged to “review any function or activity of the Association which in its judgment will benefit from an independent review.” They study questions of special interest to the Association, offering their thoughtful presence, their “attentive ears, observant eyes, and open minds and hearts,” as they say, “to Unitarian Universalists all over the continent [from the Report to the 2003 GA]” in all kinds of public and private, individual and group settings, in hearings, workshops, and surveys. They work on a given question for four years, reporting annually on their progress and then they publish their final reports.
The report published in 1998, Interdependence: Renewing Congregational Polity, looked at how our independent congregations relate to one another as voluntary members of the UUA. The 2001 report, Belonging: The Meaning of Membership, looked at what we expect and what we offer as individuals in voluntary association in those congregations. Last year, the Commission chose a new topic, which I am going to talk about today. They are asking the question: “Where is the unity in our theological diversity?” A member of the committee, Mark Hamilton, said in a GA workshop this year that the most common response when he states the question is “Wow. Great topic. Good luck.” It’s a big question, and an old question, a dicey one and therefore a hot, hot, topic. And this topic arises—I think not coincidently—at the same time that we are asking another hot question about whether or not UUs have or should have a common language of reverence and what exactly, if we did have it, that language would sound like.
It has been said [Khoren Arisian, in a sermon in
I see the evidence and do not interpret it as supportive of the empty center theory. I believe we have a center and that this center is full. The center of our faith is filled with Unitarian Universalist believers. Each UU believer holds at his or her own center two more or less overlapping sets of beliefs. Each has (or could have) a personal theology in terms of which a corporately-held set of theological assumptions are supplied with meaning and energy. Let me repeat that sentence. Each of us has a personal theology in terms of which a corporately-held set of theological assumptions are supplied with personal relevance and energy to use and give away. This is how I frame my answer to the Commission’s question. I surmise that the “emptiness” we are anxious about does not result from a lack of content or even a lack of unity, but from a lack of resourcefulness about how to actually engage and tap the energy that we hold there in our individual and in our corporate “theological center.” Thus the problem becomes twofold. It is partly a problem of discovering an acceptable and available language. We need a way to speak to one another about matters that are at best difficult to articulate. And I mean here language in an expanded sense. I mean more than elegant, moving, articulate, public and personal verbiage. I mean also symbolic language, ritual language, the language of music and art, of the body, of drama, of memory, of dream. Secondly, we need strategies to get us to “talking,” methods for meaningful encounters on the religious quest.
OK, so are you with me? The theological center is not empty. It is full: full of UUs with their own theology and a corporate theology, dual sources of potential power for healing and action. Problem: the language and settings for tapping that power. So now here is where I am going with this. First I want to describe what I see as the “corporate theology” part—the “unity in our diversity.” Then I want to talk for a minute about the “our own theologies” part, and in so doing I will suggest some factors that prevent us from finding common language and space for harvesting the energy of the living theologies we walk around containing.
So first, corporate theology. UU minister John Alexie Crane and two companions in ministry, Roy Jones and Frances Manly, had a great idea. They decided to look “under the [seven] Principles” for the answer to the unity question, to look for the “principle behind the Principles.” There they thought they might find, in a set of what they called “reality assumptions” or “hidden commitments,” a core UU belief [http://www.geocities.
com/uu_santapaula/sermon1.htm, unknown date]. I borrowed this tactic (with every intention of returning it when I was done!) and came to my own conclusions. To wit, six core theological ideas underlying our seven principles:
1. Each sensate, intelligent and creative creature on earth is not only dignified and worthy, but essential to the whole—as a body, as a mind, as a voice, as a will.
2. We are radically free. We have direct access to insights regarding the meaning of the Whole and we have the ability and responsibility to act on our discoveries for the good of that Whole.
3. The web of life is endangered in multiple ways and requires (needs) all of us humans to act as responsible component beings, whether that action is constituted by intervention in the system or by limiting our interference. Our job is not just to operate, but to cooperate.
4. Purposeful religious identification and spiritual development is not just an ego-driven self-indulgence or the routine process of acquiring another label but imperative for meaningful cooperation with the healthy functioning of the web.
5. Our church communities are laboratories for learning ever better methods for acting lovingly and responsibly in the universe beyond the church walls.
6. We believe in the possibility of intentional personal and cultural transformation and spiritual evolution toward the most healthy manifestation of the web of life. We are about fostering the individual quest for wholeness, and tapping the power that dwells there, in the service of the larger need.
This is what I find when I look under the principles for the assumptions upon which they are established. This is our corporate theology. There are many places in which the words God, or salvation, or sacred, or holy, or atonement, or heaven, or love could be, but were not, used. Not using them makes these statements no less theological.
Now, about our personal theologies. As I said earlier, each of us has a personal theology in terms of which a corporately-held set of theological assumptions are given personal relevance and supplied with energy. We often hear that one of the unacceptable things to say in response to the question “What do UUs believe?” is “UUs believe anything they want.” The standard correction is “We do not believe what we want to believe; we believe what we must believe.” I love the twist that the Reverend Ron Knapp gives to the word “want” when he talks about what we “want to believe” versus what we “are required by the careful deliberations of our own minds to believe [Ronald Knapp, “What Has Been Kept,” in O’Neal, The Transient and the Permanent in Liberal Religion (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1995)].” Let me explain by telling you about Rebecca, a student member of a campus ministry group I led a few years ago.
Rebecca was raised Catholic and loved the rites, the music, the community. All her beloved family were fervent members of the Catholic church. She had every reason in the world to remain Catholic, but she showed up in the UU student ministry group because “wanting to believe” wasn’t good enough. In her heart she wanted to believe what everyone else at least seemed to believe. But eventually she was moved to know what she must for her own sake believe and we were there to help her in that task. And many of you here today know what it feels like to have that place in you affirmed that shouts a loud “NO!!” to things that just don’t make sense. In her religious past, Rebecca, and most of you, were given a set of unchanging revelations, truths, and rules to guide your life. At some point there was likely some comfort in that. Any doubts you accumulated, though, you had to keep to yourself. Eventually it became more important to be able to talk about what you were really thinking than it was to believe with no freedom to question. In coming to us, telling her story, and searching for her own truth, Rebecca freed an enormous amount of energy for use in her life—in our life, our common life.
But this is what happens with many of us Rebeccas.
We come into the church. We are nearly overcome with the wonderful feeling of
homecoming. We engage with the community and involve ourselves in all sorts of
programs and committees. And it is very heady and thrilling for a while. And
then it dies. The problem is not that there aren’t compelling shared and
individual theologies and fascinating pathways between them to explore. The
problem is that we have not learned how to overcome the barriers which tend to
abort the theological “conversation” which is capable of sustaining the energy
of religious conviction. And I mean “conversation” here in the widest possible
sense. This is how bad it gets. The Commission on Appraisal came for a hearing
to my school,
To put it mildly, folks, this is really quite a shame! We UUs as a group are uniquely positioned to figure out how to think and talk about theology, apply what we learn to our own lives, and make a real difference in the world as whole, spiritually integrated people-about-town. We are well-educated, creative, talented folks with experience in a wide variety of disciplines, equipped with a wide variety of real skills. We have a well-deserved reputation for liking to think and talk. We hold positions of power in the world. We have, as a group, a whole lot of money and privilege, as well as the smarts and power to draw marginalized voices into our circle. We have (or could have) leisure time and opportunities to gather and interact. We are free to think outside the box, to gain new perspectives on old problems! And we actually believe our theologies because they are (or could be) our very own. We therefore potentially have the energy of religious motivation available to us 24/7 in every setting of our lives.
So what stops us? Why does the center seem to be empty? Why are we afraid we are going to fly apart at the seams as a church? I think it is because we are afraid to engage in intimate relationships around religious matters. The 1998 Commission on Appraisal report Interdependence identified the following barriers to theological unity in our Association:
§ Uncertainty about the meaning of theology.
§ Lack of interest in theology (And as an aside I will mention that I had a therapist once who believed that “lack of interest” or “boredom” almost always translates to some kind of “fear.”
§ Lack of openness to theologies other than our own.
§ Association of personal theology with the creedalism we abhor.
§ Reluctance to open old theological or denominational wounds.
Embedded in these I would speculate that there is an array of other, more basic, fears, some linked to deeply inscribed patterns of shame. We do not enter the theological realm for some of the same reasons we do not find a way to share most of the things in life that really move us. We are afraid of the ridicule, rejection, and judgment of others. We are afraid people will find out who we used to be or what we used to do or who we really are. We are afraid we are intellectually limited or intellectually lazy or negligent. We are afraid of being inarticulate, not being able to say what we mean, of being caught in confusion or contradiction. We are afraid of stumbling upon an apparent emptiness in the center of our own selves. We are afraid of admitting that we still really do hang on to supposedly irrational and rejected beliefs from our past. We are afraid of being forced into a permanent position by the mere act of declaration. We are afraid of hearing “better theologies” than ours, or (worse?) of being influenced or seduced by a theological concept that we did not invent! And some of us may be afraid of finding no way to convey in words a theology that is primarily affective and embodied—made of feelings and intuitions, not words.
I believe we do have the centering power of theological unity as well as the creative power of theological diversity in our movement. The more critical questions for me are: How do we create safe and encouraging spaces for theological dialogue and spiritual development? How do we encourage people to be vulnerable to one another in the work of spiritual self-integration? And how do we link the momentum of personal theological conviction to the religious mandates and action plans of our churches and our Association? The real potential tragedy here is that Unitarian Universalists, even with all our gifts and blessings, might not be able to find a way to effectively harness our theological perspectives in the service of this precious life, in the service of this beautiful Earth community.
I have tried three little strategies this internship year.
Last winter I offered a class called Story Theology. And in the spring there
was Building Your Own Theology. Both were powerful, moving experiences for the
folks who participated simply because we were able to penetrate some of the
barriers I listed earlier. Beginning Wednesday
AMEN.
©Margie Allen, Summer Minister
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