100 Monkeys
Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and given to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
19 February, 2012
Before this morning, how many here had heard of “the 100th Monkey Phenomenon?”
On December 29, 2011, Rev Peter Boulatta, who serves our congregation in Lexington, MA, posted a blog entry called “The Liberal Church Finding Its Mission: It’s Not About You.” I don’t know what it is about shots being fired in Lexington MA, but first there was the shot heard ‘round the world in 1775 and now this one from Peter in 2011. Here I’ll quote the first two paragraphs:
Recently, a fellow who does some work for my congregation was in the building. We had never met before, and so we introduced ourselves and chatted for a while in the church office. At one point he said to me, “You know, I should tell you this story. I have a thirteen-year-old son who has been asking a lot of religious questions lately. I was raised Catholic, but we’re not involved at all, and haven’t really given him a religious education. One day, my son was with me in the car when we drove by another Unitarian Universalist church. He asked me, because he knew that I had done some work for them, what kind of a church it was. When I told him, he asked what Unitarian Universalists believe. So I told him, ‘Well they don’t really believe anything specific. It’s a religion where whatever you think or believe or feel is what the religion is all about.’ And my son said, ‘That’s the kind of church I want to go to!’” And the fellow chuckled and we had some pleasantries about his teenager being a Unitarian Universalist without knowing it.
But my pleasant façade betrayed the bomb that had just gone off in my head. Oh dear God, it’s true. We have institutionalized narcissism. Here was a person that was not involved in a Unitarian Universalist church, and yet knew something about us. As an outsider, the message he received about what we stand for is: It’s about whatever you want it to be about. It’s all about you.
There was so much response from this blog that I thought the internet was going to melt. Like many professional organizations, UU Ministers have a Listserv, which is secure and through which we can seek advice, offer opinions and be in a virtual community with each other. Even though it was no longer Christmas Eve, our listserv lit up like a Christmas tree. Opinions abound. It was actually very exciting.
Peter had touched a nerve.
And many were grateful. He had spoken aloud what many has been feeling for quite some time. There had been a shift in Unitarian Universalism, but no one had dared to speak about it. There are 95 responses on Peter’s post, which is a lot for a minister’s blog, I can tell you. If I get one or two on my blog, that’s something of note.
Peter’s blog entry contains more than just these two paragraphs. He goes on to address things like faith development and lifespan religious education.
Here are a few of the responses:
Kim C. wrote: Religion isn’t about what details you believe, it’s about how you are to live your life in order to be fulfilled. We don’t articulate it all that well, but UUs are, according to our district executive, “Much more honest than average.” That’s a start.
A person called “Republican UU” wrote It is about me And you, too. This is not so hard, people. How you relate to others, your role on Earth. No, it is not just a social club- but it is a community where we are supposed to be free to express our ideas about spiritual relationships with each other. It is definitely not supposed to be an arm of a political party, as this article and some church services would have you believe. The focus is supposed to be Me and You working together to have the world become a better place for all of Us and nurturing our spirit in the process.
And lastly, Rev. Andy Reese commented:
Well said. This will probably become the subject of my next sermon.
I remember when I first discovered this faith back in ’92 that I was trying to explain the attraction to a long time friend. I talked about the great people, the enlightening sermons, and the social justice work. She stopped me cold when she said, “Why don’t you just join the Rotary Club. They do all those things and the dues are cheaper.”
I think it was James Fowler who defined “god” as that understanding of the ultimate and the set of values around which we organize our lives. Our job, as a church, is to help people discover what their god is in this sense, to examine it critically, and to help it grow and deepen over time.
And then other ministers wrote whole blog posts themselves in response to Peter’s blog. Rev. Dr. Victoria Weinstein had a two part, two day response to Peter’s ideas. , . Responding directly to Peter’s blog, Weinstein writes:
“Peter has got it so right. So painfully right. Our religious tradition has placed its faith in the individual to determine their own “free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” and mostly failed to insist that there are faith claims made by historical Unitarianism and Universalism to which we are beholden as congregations and as members. Rather than affirming those faith claims and shaping our worship, faith formation, evangelism and social justice around them, we have spent our time and effort inventing a totally [new] definition of religion, squabbling endlessly and comically about how we will grandly allow each other (and our ministers) to talk about it and then peevishly refusing to see why are not taken seriously and why we do not grow.
We have thus far in our post-merger existence as Unitarian Universalists treated our theological legacy with white gloves: as fragile, faded archival material to be handled as lightly as possible and then filed respectfully away in an attic or basement file cabinet, or as historical curiosities to be peered at curiously over the top of our spectacles, smiled fondly over, and left in the church library to be studied by the few UUs who ask for a key to the locked stacks.
I’ve begun to wonder if I’m the 98th or 99th monkey in this chain.
One of the things that has kept some of us from speaking what we’ve been feeling about this change in Unitarian Universalism is a deep respect for our elders. For much of the middle of the twentieth century, Unitarian Universalism was deep with humanism. This was in part a reaction to the horrors of World War II. Many felt that God had abandoned humanity, which is frankly quite an understandable position to take. Look at the atrocities that took place.
I sort of blame/credit the Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell, who in an article for Huffington Post from June 5, 2011, dared to claim that Unitarian Universalism has a theology . Now I’m joking about the “blame/credit” but it was a daring move.
I personally was quite shocked that someone had the audacity to do this. I encourage you to read her article. It’s terrifically written and it may change the way you see ourselves as a religious people. I’ll tell you what she wrote about a Unitarian Universalist theology. She makes 8 statements of belief, and per usual, the text of this sermon will be on-line in a couple of days, so you can re-read them, her article or any of the blogs I’ve quoted today. So don’t worry about not being able to remember all 8 points when we’re done today. Just take these in:
• We believe that human beings should be free to choose their beliefs according to the dictates of their own conscience.
• We believe in original goodness, with the understanding that sin is sometimes chosen, often because of pain or ignorance.
• We believe that God is One.
• We believe that revelation is ever unfolding.
• We believe that the Kingdom of God is to be created here on this earth.
• We believe that Jesus was a prophet of God, and that other prophets from God have risen in other faith traditions.
• We believe that love is more important than doctrine.
• We believe that God's mercy will reconcile all unto itself in the end.
This is some exciting stuff.
I know that you’re not used to me quoting other people with the frequency and quantity of today’s sermon, but I really wanted demonstrate the idea that something is happening in our faith.
When I entered seminary 5 years ago, I had a sort of feeling that there was a movement, deep in the earth of our religion. But I wasn’t entirely sure. I couldn’t tell it this grumbling quake was just the “youthful” enthusiasm of a new seminarian, or whether something really surprising was happening.
I don’t know the eventual shape of what’s happening to us. No one does, no one can predict the future and I’m not so bold as to forecast like that.
But I do know, like Victoria mentioned earlier, that we have let go of our history. For the life of me, I don’t know why. It’s a rich history, full of hard-working people. People who challenged the system, fought for righteousness, worked for equality and made mistakes.
In Toronto last year I attended a lecture series by Rev. Dr. Robert Lathum, who is our Interim Executive Director here in the Pacific Central District. The series was on growth. Robert Latham included in his lecture information gathered from the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. He quoted a poll that showed that in our midst: Christians feel ostracized; Humanists feel threatened; Pagans feel oppressed and Mystics feel ignored.
Here’s what I, as a minister, as a pastor, do not want. I do not want the Humanists here to feel threatened. I do not want Christians to feel ostracized, Pagans to feel oppressed and the Mystics to feel ignored.
What all of this blogging and conversations among ministers says to me is that change is coming, yes, but not doctrine. Not creed. No formal test of your theology will ever be required for us to belong here.
To do so would be to turn our back on centuries of history.
What this change can mean is that we begin to refocus the practice of our open theology in ways that foster deep connection to our community and our expression of spirituality. It’s going to require work. It’s going to require a change from the consumer model of church, which is “what can the church do for me?,” or “How satisfied am I with what’s going on in church?”, to a new model, which might look like “What about my life gives it value?”, and “No, even though I’m a natural humanist with strong Buddhist leaning, I didn’t hear anything that ‘spoke’ to me today, does that mean I’m going to be focused only on my needs, or do I consider that someone else, maybe some in a green chair, or one of the pink ones, really heard something that their heart needed to hear today.” And then be truly glad in that?
Change is coming. It’s always coming. And for us, in our liberal religious tradition, that is one of the reasons we are here. The UCC churches have a national slogan they’ve been advertising “God is still speaking.” I love that. We might say it like this “The universe is ever revealing more of itself.”
And this change can be scary and good.
I knew a man, Wallace Rusterholtz, a dear friend of mine, who was excommunicated from the Unitarian Church of Erie Pennsylvania in 1930 because he admitted that he was a homosexual to the minister. I have a copy of the letter of excommunication. I gave the original to Boston to put in the UUA archives.
Don Goodloe was a Unitarian, a good man, who worked hard for the education of African Americans early in the 20th century. He graduated from my seminary, but no Unitarian church would even look at him because he was black.
We lift up our faith’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s with great pride. True, there were more Unitarian Universalist ministers in Selma, then those of any other denomination, proportionally. But even that move was a change, and a frightening one at that. Two of our people died there. New to the faith, Viola Liuzzi, mother of 5, drove her white Chevy station wagon from Detroit to Alabama to become a driver, actively taking part in the now famous freedom rides. She was shot through her car window. Rev. James Reeb, upon leaving an integrated restaurant, was beaten with clubs, and died of head wounds. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his eulogy.
When Wallace came out in 1930, it was unthinkable that an openly gay person could be, for example, a minister. When Don graduated as a minister, it was unthinkable that a Negro could be a minister.
Through hard work, though, people in our own faith have re-shaped our own religion for the better. It has never been a direct, pardon the pun, straight line toward a City on the Hill though. There have been set backs along the way. But forward, we do march.
It is our faith that gets us, as a people, through such difficult topics as racism, homophobia, loss of job, loss of home and the death of a loved one. We come in from the rain, into Unitarian Universalist churches where we feel like we’ve found a home, and then we don’t want the home to change. Or we grow up here, and remember a favorite chair of a beloved parent, and we don’t want to let it go. But change we must.
James Luther Adams wrote ““Nothing is complete and thus nothing is exempt from criticism.” Nothing is complete. Change is part of life.
If 100 Monkeys can learn to wash potatoes, than 100,000 Unitarian Universalists can improve the lot of humanity. It will be harder work than dunking a sweet potato into a stream to remove the sand, but the results may be just as sweet.
A Prayer for Living in Tension.
If we have any hope of transforming the world and changing ourselves,
we must be:
bold enough to step into our discomfort,
brave enough to be clumsy there,
loving enough to forgive ourselves and others.
May we, as a people of faith, be granted the strength to be:
so bold,
so brave,
and so loving.
Many blessing to you on this, our shared journey.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Pig Skin & Life Lessons
Pig Skin & Life Lessons
© Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and given to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stansilaus County
February 5, 2012
In college, I was a history major. I majored in American History with a focus on protestant religious groups, and I had a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies. Because I was a history major, my college within the university was “Liberal Arts and Sciences.”
What this means is that there were a lot of classes that I had to take that had nothing to do with history, religion or the celebration of women.
One of those classes was “Theatre 101.”
Now I enjoy a good play as much as the next guy, but did I really need a whole 16 week course on theater?
It turns out that I did.
Just like a lot of classes I’ve taken, and workshops I’ve attended and adult enrichment courses I’ve attended, they all add up to my body of knowledge, which enriches my life experience, and my life’s experience.
Theatre 101 helped me with this very sermon, on football.
Surprised? Me, too.
I learned that one of the driving reasons behind the development of Greek Theater was due to the belief that the Ancient Greeks had about democracy and a well-functioning society. The idea is that if you want a whole society to behave like gentlefolk, caring for each other, and generally being polite, you have to offer them a venue in which they can express their baser impulses.
Hence theatre.
When Starr King School for the Ministry student William Dufford was here, he told us in his sermon “Ishly” that one way that a group of people really bonds is by singing together. The very act of singing together helps foster community.
So does laughing and crying. Hence the development of theater.
Laughing and jeering and cheering and crying help a sense of community.
What happens at sporting games?
I was in Marching Band in high school and college….I know a little about this.
I’ve often been puzzled by Sports teams and the identification of some people with a local professional team. I enjoy a ball game, really I do. I play softball. I really enjoy going to baseball games, and football games. I’m devoted in a perhaps un-settling way to the artic sport of curling…
When I’m at the game, I really enjoy myself. I get all tense when there’s a pop fly, or a long pass, of the puck gets shot way across the ice. I cheer when “my” team scores, and I boo at bad calls.
I do this in a stadium, with a crowd.
Like the Ancient Greeks and theater.
But for me, at the end of the game, that’s it.
I don’t think about the stats. I don’t worry about the team’s chances at being in the big playoffs at the end of the year.
As some of you know, I was born in Detroit. And so my Dad and Brother are die hard Detroit teams fans. The Lions, the Tigers, the Red Wings. They have shirts, mugs, a quilt even. I’ve just never caught the bug.
But I think there is something big and true here in this topic, lurking just out of sight. Like capital B and capital T.
When I was in seventh grade I enjoyed a very brief period of popularity. It wasn’t my feathered hair, it wasn’t my Nike shoes and we certainly couldn’t afford Jordache jeans. For a little while, probably half a season, I played football.
And playing football taught me a lot.
I had been a kid who spent most of my childhood wearing a back brace. I have scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, and this brace was meant to help contain my scoliosis until I was old enough to have surgery. Starting at age 4 I wore the brace 23 hours a day. By junior high I had successfully badgered my doctor into allowing me NOT to wear the brace to school any more. And also, I had changed school, so none of the new people in my life knew about the brace.
And so, in seventh grade, as soon as I had been able, I joined the football team.
I learned that I was a lot stronger than I thought. And when we were told to run laps around the school yard’s “Back 40” which was really only about back 3, at first I couldn’t manage it. I felt like a total failure, like a loser, like the fat kid that everyone made fun of. But with the help of a couple of friends, and coach who mercifully never tried to motivate us by denigrating women, in a couple of weeks I was able to not only run the field a couple of times, I was in the middle of the pack.
And this was a profound lesson for me: I could do many things that I thought I couldn’t.
What I didn’t learn, however, was the play book.
It was utterly baffling to me. Here’s what I did know. I was a starting player on both the offensive and defensive teams. I was either a full back or a tackle.
That was my entire body of knowledge with regard to football.
I studied that stupid playbook for hours. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
Happily, I had a friend, a best friend actually, named Bob Cukr. Bob knew football, and Bob was happy to help me out.
In every huddle when the quarterback called out a play, Bob would sneak up to me and say “Go past Cosart, and hit number 44,” or whatever the appropriate thing I was supposed to do. The system was practically flawless.
And so I went on with life, going to football practice, getting stronger, making new social connections, sitting with the popular kids at the lunch table. Life was good.
And then Bob had to stay home sick one game day.
My coach was angry with me when I confessed to him what Bob and I had been doing. So angry that in fact, he told me to turn my back on the game, and not even watch it. And I sat in the autumn afternoon, looking at some school, that wasn’t mine, waiting, feeling doomed, for what I expected was going to be a VERY awkward and uncomfortable bus ride home.
It was the end of my football career, my sitting with the popular kids, and the end of my time with the “in” crowd.
But I had learned that I could do many things I thought I couldn’t, and that lesson has been a gift to me many, many times over.
Just last year, when visiting my folks, I had the chance to meet up with some people from high school, almost all of whom I hadn’t seen in 24 years. My coach, and math teacher, was there. I got to meet his beautiful wife. And when he reminded her that I was the kid who he’d coached who didn’t understand football, we all had a good laugh about it. He told me back in 1981 and again in 2010, that he was just really concerned that in my ignorance I would get hurt. He’s a good man, and when I reminded him that he made me spend the whole game with my back turned, his wife—also a teacher—clucked her tongue at him and hit him playfully on the shoulder and said “for shame, Bill,” which brought more laughter.
So the Big Truth that I alluded to earlier? I think it partly has to do with the story that I just told you.
We men are raised from boyhood to be solitary beings. We are taught that to cry is to be weak, that you can only depend on yourself and that every other man is competition.
Just as women are assaulted by advertising about body image and the beauty myth, so are men instructed in lessons and un-truths about our own personhoods.
In many species in the animal kingdom, the males of a species is NOT part of the pack. They are sent off at puberty to make their way, so as to not challenge the lead male for mates. Lions, primates, elephant seals all do this.
I’ve begun to suspect that team identification is one way, one safe way, that men can be in tribes together. It’s one way that we can bond together, that is acceptable to the greater culture. One that is not seen as weak, emotionally awkward, vulnerable and I hate to say it because every fiber of my being rejects this sentiment: womanly.
Men, too, need catharsis. We also need a way to vent emotions, but for us, this can be a dangerous game. Yes, it’s a trap that we men created for ourselves, but we are in it, and I don’t think we know how to un-construct it.
It’s hard to be brave enough to defy what society teaches you about your gender and the “natural” expression of that gender.
Intellectually, we know that gender is a construct, like race is a construct. And yet emotionally, there, deep in the back of our minds, are the lessons we learned young. Boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls.
I would submit that even the very existence of feminism is a product of girls being taught to be nice and to cooperate with each other.
There is no “masculinism” counter movement, because mainly, we men stand alone. Even when we stand alone in clusters.
Men are allowed to “have a piece of sand” in their eyes at sporting events. We’re allowed to get teary when we hear the national anthem, with one hand over our hearts. We’re allowed to express emotions that are not acceptable in polite society at games.
Maybe this is why professional sports is such a huge business. Maybe not.
I do know that when I’ve been to a good game, I am emotionally wrung out, just as if I’d been to a really good play.
And for the record, Denis and I are going to make it the Modesto Nuts opening day. I’m looking forward to a new baseball cap.
This is not the sermon I set out to write. In fact, I almost scrapped it and started all over again. I felt awkward, I worried that it focused too much on the spiritually of men, and might feel as though I was excluding women.
But I decided to stick with it. I know that women also feel these ways. I know that no gender-expression is monolithic. I learned just this month at the minister’s study - retreat, that there are at least six genders. That makes the whole boys get trucks, girls get dolls idea turn on it’s head, doesn’t it?
Just this week, Diana Nyad, Hall of Fame Swimmer and sports commentator wrote about the quarterback for the Denver Broncos: Tim Tebow. For those who don’t know, Tim is one of the many sports figures who prays when a good play happens. Tim is an unapologetic evangelical Christian. Tim’s level of religious expression is remarkable enough for him to have been spoofed on Saturday Night Live. Nyad’s blog post about her discomfort with Tim’s proselytizing while in his work uniform has been spinning around the web, and Diana has felt the need to respond to the criticism in a short video.
Diana’s complaint about Tim isn’t that he’s a Christian or a man living his faith, it’s about the fact that he’s doing it while representing his team, and by extension sports in general. Her concern is about team cohesion, not whether or not she shares his world view. With regard to his reportedly constant praying into his microphone, Diana writes:
“I say take it into the locker room… As was true at the University of Florida, doesn’t this constant Christian promotion, in a Broncos uniform, trump the other common bonds of the team? Doesn’t Tebow separate himself from his non-Christian teammates?
Or am I just the kid who in first grade went to the principal to demand that I not be forced to speak aloud the words “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance to the flag? (Point of interest: The original Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, did not have the words “Under God”. President Eisenhower in 1954 requested that Congress add the two words, despite the protest of Bellamy’s daughter.)”
When I read this blog, and the part about “Under God,” I thought about Martin, who died this last week. Many of us know that Martin was chair of our social justice committee and a long time ACLU member. Even though Martin didn’t get to show his faith to millions of Americans at once, by getting on his knees and pointing to the sky in a stadium full of people, and on television, Martin, too, lived his religious values.
If we are intentional about living our lives, we can accomplish so many things we didn’t think we could.
We can make space for people to fully experience their emotions. We can let men cry and let women be strong….without shaming them.
And this is something that the people in this faith can do. We’re well equipped for it. After all, we have both the history of a radically loving God who cherishes every being and we have the intellectual chops to argue with just about anybody who says different.
We have the radical message of the Transformative power of Love. Our Young Adults started a campaign called Standing on the Side of Love through which we gather in ever greater numbers, wearing t-shirts in a color no-one looks good in, to demonstrate love made manifest in our world.
Like the Ancient Greeks, we embrace the ideals of democracy, and community. May we, as a people of faith, strive like so many generations before us, to make the world more fair, more just, more loving.
Amen.
© Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and given to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stansilaus County
February 5, 2012
In college, I was a history major. I majored in American History with a focus on protestant religious groups, and I had a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies. Because I was a history major, my college within the university was “Liberal Arts and Sciences.”
What this means is that there were a lot of classes that I had to take that had nothing to do with history, religion or the celebration of women.
One of those classes was “Theatre 101.”
Now I enjoy a good play as much as the next guy, but did I really need a whole 16 week course on theater?
It turns out that I did.
Just like a lot of classes I’ve taken, and workshops I’ve attended and adult enrichment courses I’ve attended, they all add up to my body of knowledge, which enriches my life experience, and my life’s experience.
Theatre 101 helped me with this very sermon, on football.
Surprised? Me, too.
I learned that one of the driving reasons behind the development of Greek Theater was due to the belief that the Ancient Greeks had about democracy and a well-functioning society. The idea is that if you want a whole society to behave like gentlefolk, caring for each other, and generally being polite, you have to offer them a venue in which they can express their baser impulses.
Hence theatre.
When Starr King School for the Ministry student William Dufford was here, he told us in his sermon “Ishly” that one way that a group of people really bonds is by singing together. The very act of singing together helps foster community.
So does laughing and crying. Hence the development of theater.
Laughing and jeering and cheering and crying help a sense of community.
What happens at sporting games?
I was in Marching Band in high school and college….I know a little about this.
I’ve often been puzzled by Sports teams and the identification of some people with a local professional team. I enjoy a ball game, really I do. I play softball. I really enjoy going to baseball games, and football games. I’m devoted in a perhaps un-settling way to the artic sport of curling…
When I’m at the game, I really enjoy myself. I get all tense when there’s a pop fly, or a long pass, of the puck gets shot way across the ice. I cheer when “my” team scores, and I boo at bad calls.
I do this in a stadium, with a crowd.
Like the Ancient Greeks and theater.
But for me, at the end of the game, that’s it.
I don’t think about the stats. I don’t worry about the team’s chances at being in the big playoffs at the end of the year.
As some of you know, I was born in Detroit. And so my Dad and Brother are die hard Detroit teams fans. The Lions, the Tigers, the Red Wings. They have shirts, mugs, a quilt even. I’ve just never caught the bug.
But I think there is something big and true here in this topic, lurking just out of sight. Like capital B and capital T.
When I was in seventh grade I enjoyed a very brief period of popularity. It wasn’t my feathered hair, it wasn’t my Nike shoes and we certainly couldn’t afford Jordache jeans. For a little while, probably half a season, I played football.
And playing football taught me a lot.
I had been a kid who spent most of my childhood wearing a back brace. I have scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, and this brace was meant to help contain my scoliosis until I was old enough to have surgery. Starting at age 4 I wore the brace 23 hours a day. By junior high I had successfully badgered my doctor into allowing me NOT to wear the brace to school any more. And also, I had changed school, so none of the new people in my life knew about the brace.
And so, in seventh grade, as soon as I had been able, I joined the football team.
I learned that I was a lot stronger than I thought. And when we were told to run laps around the school yard’s “Back 40” which was really only about back 3, at first I couldn’t manage it. I felt like a total failure, like a loser, like the fat kid that everyone made fun of. But with the help of a couple of friends, and coach who mercifully never tried to motivate us by denigrating women, in a couple of weeks I was able to not only run the field a couple of times, I was in the middle of the pack.
And this was a profound lesson for me: I could do many things that I thought I couldn’t.
What I didn’t learn, however, was the play book.
It was utterly baffling to me. Here’s what I did know. I was a starting player on both the offensive and defensive teams. I was either a full back or a tackle.
That was my entire body of knowledge with regard to football.
I studied that stupid playbook for hours. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
Happily, I had a friend, a best friend actually, named Bob Cukr. Bob knew football, and Bob was happy to help me out.
In every huddle when the quarterback called out a play, Bob would sneak up to me and say “Go past Cosart, and hit number 44,” or whatever the appropriate thing I was supposed to do. The system was practically flawless.
And so I went on with life, going to football practice, getting stronger, making new social connections, sitting with the popular kids at the lunch table. Life was good.
And then Bob had to stay home sick one game day.
My coach was angry with me when I confessed to him what Bob and I had been doing. So angry that in fact, he told me to turn my back on the game, and not even watch it. And I sat in the autumn afternoon, looking at some school, that wasn’t mine, waiting, feeling doomed, for what I expected was going to be a VERY awkward and uncomfortable bus ride home.
It was the end of my football career, my sitting with the popular kids, and the end of my time with the “in” crowd.
But I had learned that I could do many things I thought I couldn’t, and that lesson has been a gift to me many, many times over.
Just last year, when visiting my folks, I had the chance to meet up with some people from high school, almost all of whom I hadn’t seen in 24 years. My coach, and math teacher, was there. I got to meet his beautiful wife. And when he reminded her that I was the kid who he’d coached who didn’t understand football, we all had a good laugh about it. He told me back in 1981 and again in 2010, that he was just really concerned that in my ignorance I would get hurt. He’s a good man, and when I reminded him that he made me spend the whole game with my back turned, his wife—also a teacher—clucked her tongue at him and hit him playfully on the shoulder and said “for shame, Bill,” which brought more laughter.
So the Big Truth that I alluded to earlier? I think it partly has to do with the story that I just told you.
We men are raised from boyhood to be solitary beings. We are taught that to cry is to be weak, that you can only depend on yourself and that every other man is competition.
Just as women are assaulted by advertising about body image and the beauty myth, so are men instructed in lessons and un-truths about our own personhoods.
In many species in the animal kingdom, the males of a species is NOT part of the pack. They are sent off at puberty to make their way, so as to not challenge the lead male for mates. Lions, primates, elephant seals all do this.
I’ve begun to suspect that team identification is one way, one safe way, that men can be in tribes together. It’s one way that we can bond together, that is acceptable to the greater culture. One that is not seen as weak, emotionally awkward, vulnerable and I hate to say it because every fiber of my being rejects this sentiment: womanly.
Men, too, need catharsis. We also need a way to vent emotions, but for us, this can be a dangerous game. Yes, it’s a trap that we men created for ourselves, but we are in it, and I don’t think we know how to un-construct it.
It’s hard to be brave enough to defy what society teaches you about your gender and the “natural” expression of that gender.
Intellectually, we know that gender is a construct, like race is a construct. And yet emotionally, there, deep in the back of our minds, are the lessons we learned young. Boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls.
I would submit that even the very existence of feminism is a product of girls being taught to be nice and to cooperate with each other.
There is no “masculinism” counter movement, because mainly, we men stand alone. Even when we stand alone in clusters.
Men are allowed to “have a piece of sand” in their eyes at sporting events. We’re allowed to get teary when we hear the national anthem, with one hand over our hearts. We’re allowed to express emotions that are not acceptable in polite society at games.
Maybe this is why professional sports is such a huge business. Maybe not.
I do know that when I’ve been to a good game, I am emotionally wrung out, just as if I’d been to a really good play.
And for the record, Denis and I are going to make it the Modesto Nuts opening day. I’m looking forward to a new baseball cap.
This is not the sermon I set out to write. In fact, I almost scrapped it and started all over again. I felt awkward, I worried that it focused too much on the spiritually of men, and might feel as though I was excluding women.
But I decided to stick with it. I know that women also feel these ways. I know that no gender-expression is monolithic. I learned just this month at the minister’s study - retreat, that there are at least six genders. That makes the whole boys get trucks, girls get dolls idea turn on it’s head, doesn’t it?
Just this week, Diana Nyad, Hall of Fame Swimmer and sports commentator wrote about the quarterback for the Denver Broncos: Tim Tebow. For those who don’t know, Tim is one of the many sports figures who prays when a good play happens. Tim is an unapologetic evangelical Christian. Tim’s level of religious expression is remarkable enough for him to have been spoofed on Saturday Night Live. Nyad’s blog post about her discomfort with Tim’s proselytizing while in his work uniform has been spinning around the web, and Diana has felt the need to respond to the criticism in a short video.
Diana’s complaint about Tim isn’t that he’s a Christian or a man living his faith, it’s about the fact that he’s doing it while representing his team, and by extension sports in general. Her concern is about team cohesion, not whether or not she shares his world view. With regard to his reportedly constant praying into his microphone, Diana writes:
“I say take it into the locker room… As was true at the University of Florida, doesn’t this constant Christian promotion, in a Broncos uniform, trump the other common bonds of the team? Doesn’t Tebow separate himself from his non-Christian teammates?
Or am I just the kid who in first grade went to the principal to demand that I not be forced to speak aloud the words “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance to the flag? (Point of interest: The original Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, did not have the words “Under God”. President Eisenhower in 1954 requested that Congress add the two words, despite the protest of Bellamy’s daughter.)”
When I read this blog, and the part about “Under God,” I thought about Martin, who died this last week. Many of us know that Martin was chair of our social justice committee and a long time ACLU member. Even though Martin didn’t get to show his faith to millions of Americans at once, by getting on his knees and pointing to the sky in a stadium full of people, and on television, Martin, too, lived his religious values.
If we are intentional about living our lives, we can accomplish so many things we didn’t think we could.
We can make space for people to fully experience their emotions. We can let men cry and let women be strong….without shaming them.
And this is something that the people in this faith can do. We’re well equipped for it. After all, we have both the history of a radically loving God who cherishes every being and we have the intellectual chops to argue with just about anybody who says different.
We have the radical message of the Transformative power of Love. Our Young Adults started a campaign called Standing on the Side of Love through which we gather in ever greater numbers, wearing t-shirts in a color no-one looks good in, to demonstrate love made manifest in our world.
Like the Ancient Greeks, we embrace the ideals of democracy, and community. May we, as a people of faith, strive like so many generations before us, to make the world more fair, more just, more loving.
Amen.
The Theology of GPS
The Theology of GPS.
(C) Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and delivered to
the Unitarian Universliast Fellowship of Stanislaus County
Since I’m still relatively new to town, I’ve been relying an awful lot on my GPS. Need to find the Church? Use GPS. Need to find the Walgreen’s? GPS. Need to find just about anything? You go it: GPS.
I purchased my first GPS during my first year of seminary. I had been in Chicago for about 12 years at that point, and I knew pretty much knew every nook and cranny of that place, but when I had to take a class in Washington DC and then a class two weeks later in Saco Maine? I had never been to either place before, let alone driven there. What if I got hopelessly lost? GPS was the answer.
My trusty car at the time was a Honda Civic I named Thomas Paine. Yes, I’m a bit of a history buff. When my GPS arrived in the mail, I called her Patience, because she didn’t seem to have any when I made a mistake and she had to re-calculate her directions. Thomas, Patience and I drove the width and breadth of this country. From almost the 49th parallel to Mississippi, and literally from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
You can see why the loss of Patience was pretty upsetting to me. She had lead me to far away classes, to General Assembly twice, to my year as an intern minister in Vancouver Canada and to San Francisco.
And then she was gone. Stolen! I had to learn to navigate the streets of San Francisco without her. And I missed her voice.
In some ways, Patience was like a little god who traveled with me in my car. True, she was no beauty, being about 3x4 inches and a little gray box and all, but she was reliable. I could depend on her…most of the time.
The loss of my GPS reminded me a lot of losing the God of my Childhood.
That God was all powerful, and all knowing.
And like Patience, I went along with that God, but somewhere in the back of my mind, there was always a little bit of doubt.
See, Patience had once or twice, led me astray. In DC I had told her that I wanted to go to the Smithsonian. Dutifully, I’d searched for the Smithsonian under “Attractions,” which should’ve gotten me to where I wanted to go. After all, there was a button for it.
Instead, I ended up in an increasingly suburban looking area. I became suspicious, but because Patience had never yet failed me, I stuck to her plan.
See, I had supplicated myself, and done what I knew to do to appease my god, and still she failed me.
When I arrived at “The Smithsonian Institution” I was in a cul de sac, in suburban DC. A dead end.
I’ve heard that this has happened to other people, too. That their GPS took them to the wrong place.
Or even more fun, took them on a very circuitous route to their destination.
But when you’re new to an area, you don’t know it’s a circuitous route, do you? You happily plug along, listening to NPR on the radio, and following instructions from your own little God of Directions.
It’s only later, when you get to know an area, or there is a blatant error, like the Smithsonian being at the end of a cul de sac, do you begin to doubt and argue with your little God of Directions.
And to be led astray causes one to feel some of many things. Betrayed, disappointed, lost, confused, helpless.
And none of us really likes to feel any of those things, do we?
Maybe this has, in part, been part of your experience with the Divine.
But also, there is the joy of the journey, isn’t there?
For me, as long as I’m not in a rush to make an appointment, or visit someone in the hospital, I’m okay being taken the long way around. You never know what you might see along the way.
My second GPS is really just an app on my iPhone. It’s fun and all, and it has some features the old one didn’t have, and lacks others. I mean, it’s perfectly serviceable, but I haven’t named it.
What are we left with after the loss of our first “God,” and how can a second idea about what Divinity is possibly compare?
Earlier Marcia talked about the Universalism of her childhood, and how it was much easier to believe in all the tenets when she was young, before she experienced “more and more of life.” Yet still she believes some version of her childhood faith. She believes that loving one’s neighbor brings love into the world if the other party cooperates. She believes that she looses nothing by trying and that good results may yet appear.
Marcia’s life has been a journey, and the exact theology of her youth no longer fits her. Her adult mind and spirit cannot and will not see things the way she did in her childhood.
And yet she comes here to this church, to this community, to live out her adult, matured and maturing faith. She gathers with people who are also working on their faith.
Like many of us gathered here today, Marcia has taken a journey, perhaps only metaphorically guided by a GPS. ;-)
And she has found herself here, this morning. Rejoicing in the good of world, concerned about difficult things in our world. Perhaps you are doing something similar.
What weighs on your heart this morning? (long pause.)
I am thinking especially this morning of the people of Syria. I’m also thinking of the fans and family of Whitney Houston who died just yesterday. If you wish, please name something that’s on your heart right now.
Today we are welcoming 8 new members into our Fellowship. 8 people have decided to become fellow travelers with us. This is good.
This is good for our congregation, good for our spirits. Literature is full of stories of trusted companions on adventure.
One example is about two women in the Book of Ruth from the Hebrew Bible:
15“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
Like Ruth and Naomi, we gather from our origins as different peoples, beginning with differing faiths, but now we are one people. We are joined together not by marriage, not by becoming in-laws to each other, but by our membership in a beloved community.
Be glad today in our abundance. Expressed in pot luck and new members. In new children to run up for story time, in new laughter and with the strength of even more hands. Let us give thanks.
Blessed be, and Amen.
(C) Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and delivered to
the Unitarian Universliast Fellowship of Stanislaus County
Since I’m still relatively new to town, I’ve been relying an awful lot on my GPS. Need to find the Church? Use GPS. Need to find the Walgreen’s? GPS. Need to find just about anything? You go it: GPS.
I purchased my first GPS during my first year of seminary. I had been in Chicago for about 12 years at that point, and I knew pretty much knew every nook and cranny of that place, but when I had to take a class in Washington DC and then a class two weeks later in Saco Maine? I had never been to either place before, let alone driven there. What if I got hopelessly lost? GPS was the answer.
My trusty car at the time was a Honda Civic I named Thomas Paine. Yes, I’m a bit of a history buff. When my GPS arrived in the mail, I called her Patience, because she didn’t seem to have any when I made a mistake and she had to re-calculate her directions. Thomas, Patience and I drove the width and breadth of this country. From almost the 49th parallel to Mississippi, and literally from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
You can see why the loss of Patience was pretty upsetting to me. She had lead me to far away classes, to General Assembly twice, to my year as an intern minister in Vancouver Canada and to San Francisco.
And then she was gone. Stolen! I had to learn to navigate the streets of San Francisco without her. And I missed her voice.
In some ways, Patience was like a little god who traveled with me in my car. True, she was no beauty, being about 3x4 inches and a little gray box and all, but she was reliable. I could depend on her…most of the time.
The loss of my GPS reminded me a lot of losing the God of my Childhood.
That God was all powerful, and all knowing.
And like Patience, I went along with that God, but somewhere in the back of my mind, there was always a little bit of doubt.
See, Patience had once or twice, led me astray. In DC I had told her that I wanted to go to the Smithsonian. Dutifully, I’d searched for the Smithsonian under “Attractions,” which should’ve gotten me to where I wanted to go. After all, there was a button for it.
Instead, I ended up in an increasingly suburban looking area. I became suspicious, but because Patience had never yet failed me, I stuck to her plan.
See, I had supplicated myself, and done what I knew to do to appease my god, and still she failed me.
When I arrived at “The Smithsonian Institution” I was in a cul de sac, in suburban DC. A dead end.
I’ve heard that this has happened to other people, too. That their GPS took them to the wrong place.
Or even more fun, took them on a very circuitous route to their destination.
But when you’re new to an area, you don’t know it’s a circuitous route, do you? You happily plug along, listening to NPR on the radio, and following instructions from your own little God of Directions.
It’s only later, when you get to know an area, or there is a blatant error, like the Smithsonian being at the end of a cul de sac, do you begin to doubt and argue with your little God of Directions.
And to be led astray causes one to feel some of many things. Betrayed, disappointed, lost, confused, helpless.
And none of us really likes to feel any of those things, do we?
Maybe this has, in part, been part of your experience with the Divine.
But also, there is the joy of the journey, isn’t there?
For me, as long as I’m not in a rush to make an appointment, or visit someone in the hospital, I’m okay being taken the long way around. You never know what you might see along the way.
My second GPS is really just an app on my iPhone. It’s fun and all, and it has some features the old one didn’t have, and lacks others. I mean, it’s perfectly serviceable, but I haven’t named it.
What are we left with after the loss of our first “God,” and how can a second idea about what Divinity is possibly compare?
Earlier Marcia talked about the Universalism of her childhood, and how it was much easier to believe in all the tenets when she was young, before she experienced “more and more of life.” Yet still she believes some version of her childhood faith. She believes that loving one’s neighbor brings love into the world if the other party cooperates. She believes that she looses nothing by trying and that good results may yet appear.
Marcia’s life has been a journey, and the exact theology of her youth no longer fits her. Her adult mind and spirit cannot and will not see things the way she did in her childhood.
And yet she comes here to this church, to this community, to live out her adult, matured and maturing faith. She gathers with people who are also working on their faith.
Like many of us gathered here today, Marcia has taken a journey, perhaps only metaphorically guided by a GPS. ;-)
And she has found herself here, this morning. Rejoicing in the good of world, concerned about difficult things in our world. Perhaps you are doing something similar.
What weighs on your heart this morning? (long pause.)
I am thinking especially this morning of the people of Syria. I’m also thinking of the fans and family of Whitney Houston who died just yesterday. If you wish, please name something that’s on your heart right now.
Today we are welcoming 8 new members into our Fellowship. 8 people have decided to become fellow travelers with us. This is good.
This is good for our congregation, good for our spirits. Literature is full of stories of trusted companions on adventure.
One example is about two women in the Book of Ruth from the Hebrew Bible:
15“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
Like Ruth and Naomi, we gather from our origins as different peoples, beginning with differing faiths, but now we are one people. We are joined together not by marriage, not by becoming in-laws to each other, but by our membership in a beloved community.
Be glad today in our abundance. Expressed in pot luck and new members. In new children to run up for story time, in new laughter and with the strength of even more hands. Let us give thanks.
Blessed be, and Amen.
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