I entitled this morning’s sermon “A Whole New World” not because I imagined us spontaneously breaking into that song from Aladdin, but rather because every moment, we are living in a wholly new world. Were you reading this text, instead of hearing it, you might be relieved to know that I used the word wholly with the w and not the other one. Though truth be told, I also believe that every moment is holy….without the w.
Change happens to us instant by instant. We may think that sometimes we’re stuck in a rut, but really, there is no rut. Each time we get up on Monday morning and go to our jobs may seem the same dull routine, but there are subtle differences. Last year at the UUA’s General Assembly, I attended a workshop on Unitarian Universalist Mystics. There the Reverend Lillia Cuervo, who’s voice and rich Mexican accent reminds me so much of my Great Grandmother’s, spoke about her spiritual practice of cooking. She said that she tries to remember that every time she cuts into a pepper, she is the first being who has ever seen inside this pepper, and it’s a little miracle.
Life takes place in sometimes large changes and sometimes subtle ones.
Like Steven Epperson, I walked into my first Unitarian church about 15 years ago. I was a sort of under-developed 27 year old, who was trying to find my way through life. The man that I was dating at the time told me he thought I might really like his church, and asked to me accompany him on a Sunday.
To my 27 year-old ears, this was practically a marriage proposal.
It wasn’t by the way.
But Greg brought me to the First Unitarian Society of Chicago in the Autumn of 1995. That congregation is my home church, and they are sponsoring my candidacy for the Unitarian Universalist ministry.
What Greg understood was that while I was attending a Presbyterian church near my apartment, the theology didn’t really fit me. I was attending largely because I enjoyed the community setting. I had chosen the Presbyterian church near my home because it was gay friendly, and as a boy, for a couple of years, we attended a Presbyterian Church.
But even as a boy, I was a trouble maker.
When I was in second grade, which made me about 8 years old, and the year 1976, my family attending the Peace Presbyterian Church. It was meant to be a progressive church, new building, young pastor, etc. My Sunday School teacher’s name was Rhonda. There are two things you should know about Rhonda. Number one, she was very patient with me, and number two my Sunday School teacher had such an impact on my life that 32 years later I still remember her name. In saying that I just want to momentarily lift up just how important our teachers are.
Rhonda sent me twice to the minister’s office that year, and one time she actually physically walked me down to Pastor Jim’s office.
The first time I got sent down, it was because I, at age 7, wanted to know why Mary was not God. I knew where babies came from, I am the oldest child in my family, and I’ve always asked a lot of questions, and my parents were honest about sexuality with us. “So, if Mary gave birth to the Saviour of the entire human race, without touching a man, why isn’t Mary God?”
The second time Rhonda sent me to see Pastor Jim was during our lesson on the Holy Trinity. “When the Holy Spirit comes to earth and talks to people, does she let them know who she is?” “Joe, do you keep saying “she”? “Well, you have the Father and the Son, and you can’t tell me that they tried to pull this off without a woman involved. I mean, you can’t do anything without women.” And off I went.
Now Pastor Jim was a very nice man, and he didn’t threaten me with heresy or anything. During our little talks he twice said to me “It’s a matter of faith, Joe.” To which I replied “Pastor Jim, I don’t know what that means.”
To him “it’s a matter of faith” was an answer. For me that was just confusing.
The time that Rhonda took me by the hand down to Pastor Jim’s office was one of the last times I remember going to church. She sat me in one of his office chairs and said to me “Tell Pastor Jim what you just said in class!” I think I’d finally worn away her patience, because she spun around and went back to our classroom.
Pastor Jim looked at me. “Well?”
And I said “I said that I didn’t believe in Hell.”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked me.
“Hell is a stupid idea.” I said, “It can’t be real.”
And Pastor Jim asked me to explain this, and this is essentially what I said: The whole reason for punishment and discipline is to get people to change their behaviour, right? That’s what prisons are for, that’s what being grounded or spanked is for. It’s to get you to change what you did and to make you do things differently. Part of the deal is that you get to show you learned your lesson by changing what you do. If you don’t get a chance to show that you’ve learned something, then there is no point to punishment except cruelty. If Hell is nothing but eternal punishment, with no chance to show that you learned something, then it’s just cruelty. God’s cruelty. And you’ve been teaching us that God is Love. So either God isn’t Love or Hell is not real.
He just looked at me and said “You’re like 8, right?” I nodded. “Who’s giving you these ideas?” he asked me. I told him “No one. It’s just me.”
I’m sharing this story with your for a couple of reasons. The first is so that you’ll get a little larger glimpse of who I am at my core. I question things. I want to know why. In seventh grade, my English teacher nick-named me “ya-butt” because I was always saying that in class. “Yeah, but what about this? Or Yeah, but what about that?” That hasn’t really changed much.
But what has changed, is the phrase “it’s a matter of faith, Joe.”
Faith is not an answer. Faith is not what gets one safely from point A to point B. It is not a ferry boat that takes you to Victoria and back. It’s instead closer to the idea that Faith is what lets you get on that boat, assuming it’ll get you safely to Victoria and back.
There is no proof. It can’t be reasoned. Faith can only be embraced. Faith is that thing that is just beyond the intellect and all the academic training we may have. It boils down to, “It’s just what I believe.”
Change is constant. Sometimes it’s a grand sweeping change, sometimes it’s subtle. I can’t tell you exactly when “It’s a matter of faith, Joe” went from being a wholly unsatisfactory answer to one that I can accept and embrace.
Change is necessary for growth.
Earlier Meredith presented a reading, written by a 40 year old woman from my former home town of Chicago. I selected this reading was because it talked about change. This author, who identified herself only as “BC from Chicago,” is confronting change in a big way. Much of her self-identity was being challenged because at 40, she’s no longer the 30 year old she once was, and this is shaking her to her foundations. One can easily imagine that she sees 40 as a little bit of dying.
But she needn’t see 40 as that at all. If she could just shift her perspective a little bit, she could see 40 as a time to really step into her own power. How can she do this? Change. Can she do it alone? No. There is too much cultural baggage and too many businesses relying on BC’s fears, who are selling her that lip-gloss.
As a culture, we need to change to show BC that 40 is not the end.
One of the things they warn you about in seminary is putting too many sermons in one sermon, so I’ll save my thoughts on feminism for another time.
There are times when change comes at us like a slow train coming. And there are times when it comes like a tiger out of tall grass.
Change is a spiritual challenge. When it comes slowly, like a train, we must do what we can to prepare for it. This could come in the form of an child going away to college, a partner getting some very terrible health news, or a new degree from a college or seminary, that’s coming soon. In each of these scenarios, we owe it to ourselves to prepare for these shifts in our reality as thoughtfully and purposefully as we can.
When change comes like a tiger, we must do what we can do adjust and not lose ourselves wholly and permanently in transition. We must mourn a loss, or celebrate an promotion, and we must try to find balance. This is not to say that mourning should be artificially abbreviated, we must mourn for as long as we must. But we musn’t stop living.
When I told my Dad that I was going to seminary to become a minister, his first words were not “Congratulations!” or “Have you lost your marbles?” But instead his first words were “What will you tell people when their child dies?” My second brother, Christopher, died at 11 months old, in 1970. Some mourning goes on a lifetime.
But even so, we must go on living our lives. We owe it to ourselves to live as richly as possible, to experience this, our lives. We should absolutely rejoice in cutting open a green pepper and looking inside of it, experiencing the small miracle of being the first to see inside.
Change happens.
According to Charlotte Rasl, author of “If the Buddha Got Stuck”, these are 10 traits of people who get stuck.
1. A Sense of Helplessness or lack of entitlement at one’s core
2. Negative Thinking
3. Keeping life chaotic
4. An inability to calm or soothe oneself in healthy ways
5. Difficulty connecting with other people and a lack of support system
6. Looking to external sources for a sense of happiness
7. Lack of an adequate concept of self-care and setting limits
8. A sense of self that is identified with images, concepts and beliefs
9. Repeating the same behavior and hoping the outcome will be different
10. Focusing on the overwhelming, how bad life is and the terrible state of the world.
I can safely say that I can identify with some of those traits at different points in my own life. She also offers a list of 8 traits of people who stay “unstuck.”
1. Confident in one’s capacity to problem-solve and take action
2. Unwilling to remain in extremely unhappy or stressful situations indefinitely
3. Able to give and receive support from friends and family
4. Do not attach their identity or ego to success of failure
5. Willing to experience, try new ways of doing things, make mistakes and then try again with a new plan
6. Able to tolerate frustration and uneasiness in the interest of taking on a challenge
7. Possess a sense of humour and lightheartedness
8. Demonstrate profound care and concern for the well-being of all life.
I know that the above lists are long, and I’ll be happy to share them with anyone in written form later, or to recommend Dr. Rasl’s book. But for now, just try to see where your commonalities with these lists lie.
The story of the two wolves that I shared with the young folks this morning demonstrates, that we have agency in our own lives. We can choose to feed the wolf who resists change unhealthily, or we can feed the wolf who tries to embrace change as best as possible, even though it sometimes hurts and is frightening.
Change is a challenge. But it is the very stuff of life.
Our lives swing from the greatest happiness to the deepest sorrow. As part of my spiritual practice, I try to think about that daily. Let each of us look for the courage within ourselves to consider the changes that life brings to us, and in so doing live a life deep with meaning.
Joseph M Cherry
Delivered Unitarian Church of Vancouver
26 September, 2010
