Faitheism

This morning’s sermon was inspired by the world of two men. One of them I know and the other I only know of.

Chris Stedmen is a young man I went to seminary with. A tall hipster with an irreverent outlook, he seemed sort of an odd fit. He wasn’t a Unitarian Universalist And he wasn’t going to seminary to become a minister. He just wanted to get a Master’s of Arts in Theology.

And in fact, he is an avowed atheist.

Now that last part isn’t really so scandalous to us.

Chris now writes regularly for Huffington Post, has a new book coming out from Beacon Press in November called Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious. And now you know the origin of today’s sermon title. He is the Assistant Humanist Chaplain and the Values in Action Coordinator for the Humanist Community at Harvard.

An atheist chaplain…what is the world coming to?

The other gentleman, Allain de Botton, wrote a book called Religion for Atheists.

Mr. Botton is exactly the reason one should refrain from going into the religion section of an independent bookstore when one is one vacation.

Because it’s an independent bookstore I feel a lot more pressure to buy a book while I’m there, because, you know, independent bookstores aren’t so common any more.

Because I’m a Unitarian Universalist minister, a book with a title like Religion for Atheists is just impossible to resist at any time, but inside an independent bookstore?

So even though I was on vacation with Denis and the dog, I bought the book, and began to read it.

Chris Stedman is a bright and shining young intellectual who first really offered me a framework for the atheistic theologian, and I am looking forward to his book in November.

Allain de Botton’s book really offered some deep questions that I wanted to share with you.

Botton’s opens his book with this sentence “The most boring and unproductive question on case ask of any religion is whether or not it is true—in terms of being handed down from heaven to the sound of trumpets and supernaturally by prophets and celestial beings.”

“Attempting to prove the non-existence of God can be an entertaining activity for atheists. Tough-minded critics of religion have found much pleasure in laying bare the idiocy of believers in remorseless detail, finishing only when the felt they had shown up their enemies as thorough-going simpletons or maniacs.

Though this exercise has it’s satisfactions, the real issue is not whether God exists or not, but where to take the argument once one decides that he evidently doesn’t.”

I can not recommend this book more highly. In fact, I could’ve just gone through this book, taken quotes from various sections and read it to you, disguised as a sermon.

Sort of like what Jefferson did to the Bible to produce “Jefferson’s Bible.”

I found this text so well written that I had pull away from the text lest I commit plagiarism.

Do you all know about the Jefferson Bible? It’s actual title is The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. It was “composed” in 1804 by Jefferson when he cut passages out of the traditional bible, and pasted them into a new book, leaving out what he thought were unreasonable errors in the original text: mis-reportings by the “Four Evangelists.”


I want to talk with you about some challenges I found in Botton’s book.

1. What religion brings us
2. Secular Atheists lack the tools for community
3. Religion is good at building community through ritual
4. The challenge of Yom Kippur for seculars.

My question for my friends the atheists in our church is this: are you living a spiritual life as atheists? Part of practicing Unitarian Universalism is engaging in “The free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Are you still searching, or have you arrived at the stop called atheism and got off the bus, secure that you need search no further?

Actually, that’s a great question for us all.

Have you found your theological niche, and stopped the process of searching for a deeper meaning in your own spiritual journey?

I want to invite us, all of us, including the minister, to get back on the road to discovery.

As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I am not particularly invested in your specific theological detals. By that I mean I don’t stay up nights worried that you might be a Christian or a Buddhist or a Pagan or some hybrid mix. I trust you with that. I trust that on Sunday’s you’ll come to church and share coffee, fellowship, important life matters and theology with those you meet here, in this church.

While I find people’s personal theologies interesting, I am a Unitarian Universalist after all, that’s not the important question for me.

The important question for me, as the minister, is “Are you theologically stuck, or are you in motion? Are you widening your theological perspective…are you drilling deeper into your spirituality? Or are you at the bus stop, watching bus after bus of searchers go by you as you sit secure in the knowledge that you know all you need to know about religion?

We are a liberal faith, a faith by its very definition that is never complete, never free of critique, never settled.

It is my deepest hope that wherever you are theologically, you are a little uncomfortable and you are looking around for bigger and better answers to a deeper spiritual life.



© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
August 19, 2012

Fierce Grace

"I want to seize Fate by the throat!"

This quote is attributed to Ludwig van Beethoven.

In Beethoven, we have a famous story of a man at odds with himself. A brilliant composer slowly going deaf. His tinnitus drove him to cut off the legs of his piano, so both it and he could lay on the ground, so that he could still "hear" the music he was composing.

And such music he composed! It's been said that Bach expressed God's structure and order through his music, that Mozart showed God's laugher and Beethoven gave us God's Thunder.

What a cruel trick, then, for Fate to play on such a man as he.

Of course Ludwig isn't the only person in history who has lost physical vitality as he aged. But part of what makes his story remarkable is his remarkable gift, that he could no longer enjoy in the way he had in his youth.

When I was a young musician, this story struck fear deep into my heart, and made me weep.

And yet Ludwig continued composing.

As many have done in the past, and some are doing today, I'm sure Beethoven asked God, with tears streaming down his face, "Why?!"

And yet there must also have been moments of shocking beauty in Beethoven's life.

Like in all of ours.

What brings that to us?

One of the great topics in Unitarian Universalism today is the role of Grace in our lives.

It is a greater divider, this topic of grace.

It's messy. It's unpredictable.

It's not something that we can create with our own sheer force of will.

I'd like to quote a 19th Century Universalist woman to you right now. Her name was Eunice Waite Cobb. She wasn't famous in her own right, though two of her sons became somewhat well-known artists. I came across this quote quite randomly.

"I do not ask for this faith because I shrink from paying the great debt of nature. But I ask for it that I may have respect for myself - that I may feel life is worth living - that good is worth striving for above and beyond its mere return of earth. And above all else, I ask for that faith because it makes life grand, and gives to us sublime possibilities. And further, it gives a substance of joy and bliss which nothing earthly ever gave, and which nothing of earth can take away."

Mrs. Cobb does not take her faith as the default position, as the lowest common denominator, as the easy thing. She challenges herself, and her reader, to strive, to work for their beliefs. And she also lays out an expected reward for her labor. Her life will be made grand by her faith, and a joy that nothing on earth can give or take away will be hers.

We rarely make statements of faith like this anymore.

My faith is not about accepting the easiest answer, a relativistic stance of believing in all things and no things at once. Like Eunice Cobb, I embrace this faith for both its work and our promise of a life made better by that work ... and by something unstated: Grace.

As Unitarian Universalists, I've noticed that we don't speak much about things like grace. We like to think of ourselves as being the directors of our own success and happiness. I'm comfortable in that theology. If I work hard and am a good person, my life will have meaning and that shall be my reward.

Except there are a lot of people who work hard who don't get the same sorts of benefits that I've gotten; that many of us have gotten.

Like the actions of the three goddesses called the Graces in Ancient Greece, we can't see what life offers us. Sometimes we get more than we deserve and sometimes less, seemingly at random, out of our control. Whereas these ancient goddess called Graces of Fates, clipped the strands of the lives of mortals, blindly, without regard to the mortals they were sending to Hades, I prefer to think of grace as a gift, a generosity from what many may call God.

Perhaps if we engage our faith more strongly, having greater intent with that unknown component of Grace we might be more willing to see our fellow humans with greater charity, no, clarity in our hearts. We might be less ready to pathologize them, and have a ready-made solution to their problems.

I'm not suggesting that this pathologizing is born from a place of cruelty. Part of human development is learning to categorize things. Ask any toddler who's just learning to talk, and you'll find out that what's known as a dog to them might be a dog, or a kitten, or a cow. Eventually that child will be able to discern patterns and realize that a dog is only one of many four-legged creatures with whom we share our world.

But also as we grow, we begin to lump things and people into categories, and unless we're careful, we may over look important details which distinguish one thing from another. We might mistake a white youngster with dreads for a homeless person, or a young person of color as a member of the hotel staff.

There are others who have worked as hard, if not harder, than we have, who will likely never see the benefits we have now.

This has been a hard realization for me. My parents are laborers. I was a laborer for most of my working career to date. But that's all changing for me, and I now find myself in a different part of the map. My employability is no longer about how many words a minute I can type, or how much I can lift, or how many tables I can serve effectively.

And suddenly I find myself the guy who doesn't operate the copy machine or take out the trash from the church office, because that's no longer "required" of me. It's no longer in my job description. However, I'm not blind to the reality that there are going to be times when I am typing, making copies, answering phones and yes, even taking out the trash.

I worked hard to get here, and I'm pretty sure we've all worked hard.

But what about grace? What part does grace play in our successes? Why do we tend to omit grace from our own reflections, not as individuals, but as a whole faith?

Is it because to focus on grace would cause us to focus on the things we can't control? That which will not respond solely to labor and reason; the things that our sheer force of will and planning, have seemingly no effect on? Is it because to focus on grace would cause us to focus on the other- worldly?

I have heard over and over that Unitarian Universalism doesn't deal well with tragedy, loss and the more difficult sides of life. Focusing on grace more often might help us to do that.

Once we know in our bones, and can admit freely, that we are not in complete control of our lives, we can begin to really know that others are not as well. Hopefully, we can then move away from a patrician model of charity and into real relationships with people who aren't as fortunate as we and from whom we can learn a lot about being in the world.

We are not bad people, and I hope you won't think for a moment that I'm suggesting that we don't try to make the world a better place.

[Here I spoke about eight members who went to the city council meeting the week before, to speak against a law that would make it illegal for homeless people to "camp out" in public.]

One might say that those citizens who show up to a city council meeting are performing a heroic deed. True, it's not dragon-slaying, and in this case those 15 citizens who spoke against the ordinance, compared to the one who only half-heartedly spoke pro-ordinance, didn't prevail. But still the efforts must continue.

One modern hero-to-many, who has worked for the past few decades to make the world a better, prettier, and frankly more fabulous place is singer, actor, super-model, and drag queen RuPaul Charles.

RuPaul became, in the early 1990's the world's first Drag Superstar. Yes, there was Milton Berle in the past, but his drag was always meant for humor. True, it was never a cruel humor directed at lady-boys, but a way to subvert the dominant gender paradigm, and get a practically guaranteed laugh.

RuPaul was a skinny black boy from the deep south, who donned a wig and heels as part of his own emerging identity.

I first saw RuPaul on television. I was watching coverage of the 1993 March on Washington for Gay Rights.

Newly out of the closet and financially unable to attend in person, I hungrily watched every moment of news coverage I could find at the time. And then I saw her, RuPaul. Tall, fierce, huge hair, and dressed like an American Flag. This was about the time that her "Supermodel" album came out.

RuPaul went on to star in a few movies, made more music and while generally famous in the BGLTQ community, wasn't making too big a splash any more.

And then she got her own show "RuPaul's Drag Race." Season 4 just ended a few weeks ago.

There are several catch phrases from the show each season that are used and over-used by the girls competing to be America's Next Drag Queen Superstar.

But there has been one phrase that has been a mainstay from the very beginning. At the end of every show, after one of the contestants have been sent home, and before the dancing begins, RuPaul asks the girls "If you can't love yourself, how the Hell are you gonna love anybody else? Can I get an Amen up in here?!?"

And the Amen comes.

And not just from the stage. Like thousands watching the show each week, at home we all shout "Amen!"

When the topic of Fierce Grace was suggested for this morning's service, my first thought was "I have to quote RuPaul!"

It may seem like a funny thing to quote a drag queen as a theologian.

Think about what it means for a human being who spent their childhood in the deep, segregated South; a little black, gay boy, who grows up to be arguably the World's Most Famous Drag Queen. What might she know about grace?

I think she knows more than a little bit about being fierce, too.

RuPaul's very humanist challenge, "If you can't love yourself ...", is something that I think we can all relate to. There is no reliance on a power higher than you in her statement, and yet grace is there, lurking between the words. No man is an island, no person is an island, and no drag queen makes it on her own. There have been kind words, helping hands and tears dried by a tender friend along the way.

Perhaps your own journey has included kind words, helping hands and tears dried by those who love you.

In so many words, a fierce grace.

I do think with grace as our focus, we might approach our justice work from a different position. In our immigration class that concluded just a few weeks ago, we put a quote up. Sometimes credited to Lila Watson, Australian Aboriginal woman, in response to mission workers, and sometimes credited to Liberation Theologian Paulo Frerie, it is on the wall: "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together."

In truth, our liberation is dependent on the liberation of all.

Allow grace to enter your lives. Allow grace to be expressed through your actions. Through grace we can help bring forth a world more just, where all are celebrated for who they are.

If we continue to recognize that the Spirit is loving and by seeking the companionship of a purpose greater than ourselves, we may become as radically loving as our best selves hope to be.

May we be so bold.

Jazz and Other Theologies

Written for and delivered to

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
June 03, 2012.

Welcome to our Annual Jazz Sunday.

I’d like to especially welcome our guest musicians!

This morning I want to challenge us, leaving us as much time to enjoy the music as we can, to think about the title of today’s sermon: Jazz and Other Theologies.

Sharon Welch, a professor of mine from seminary, wrote an article called “Lush Life: Foucault’s Analytics of Power and a Jazz Aesthetic.” In her piece, Welch quotes Foucault saying some radical things. Just one example follows:

I can’t help but dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it.  It would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep.  Perhaps it would invent them sometimes—all the better. All the better.  Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination.  It would not be sovereign or dressed in red.  It would bear the lightning of possible storms.[i]

Foucault’s dream might resonate very well with us. We dream about life enhancing criticism, or said another way: we long to discover a discussion about important topics that encourages growth, instead of just being another version of “but this is how we’ve always done it.”

Jane Lynch gave the commencement speech this year at Smith College. It was a very funny and poignant speech, it can be found on youtube[1]. In her speech, Lynch talked about her transition from a “very serious actress” to her time in Chicago at Second City, where she learned to “improv.” That’s show biz talk for improvising on stage together.

Lynch told the new Smithees to remember the lesson of “yes/and.” Yes/and means that you take what the other actor has given you, and instead of stopping the conversation there, you offer them something back to work with.

Instead of this exchange “The sky is blue.” And “Yes it is.” Which is a “Yes and Stop.” An example might be “the sky is blue,” followed by “Yes it is, and oh my gosh, do you see that giant blimp in the sky?”

Jazz is musical form of Yes/And.

On the page, we’re given a structure: chords, a melody; and that’s it. The rest is a conversation between the person who wrote the tune, the person who arranged the tune, the person up front counting the beats, the musicians reading all those tiny black dots and squiggles on the page, the soloist who is relying on all those people to support her or him as they are creating music.

And all of these people are in conversation with the listener.

All of these people are saying Yes...And.

This is part of what makes Jazz so amazing. While no music performed live is ever exactly the same piece twice, Jazz expects wild variation.

Like our own religious liberalism, Jazz expects you to do the work of engaging with the material. Even as listener, you have a role to play in the conversation.

And unlike, say Dvorak’s New World Symphony, the first piece of orchestral music I ever played, and still love, Jazz expects the unexpected.

If I broke out with a random melody during the clarinet solo that goes like: (hums the tune) the conductor would be far less pleased than Karen might!

Like other faiths, our faith is like music. We have a structure, we have a history, we have rules of engagement.

But unlike many other faiths, we allow, no, we encourage improvisation.

The key to good improvisation is not just to have a wild hair and then go off. No, the key to good improv is to know all about the structure of the song you’re playing in, to know the key, the tempo, the melody, and then to step out onto the ledge and let your spirit speak.

Each improvised melody is a critique of the song from which it grows. The solo is a commentary on the melody. It can go along with, or be a counter point to, the primary melody. But no matter which form it takes, the improvised melody is in conversation with the original tune. Let us, like Foucault, have a dialogue that is life giving, a theological yes/and.

This is the Jazz aesthetic that we seek in our spiritual lives.

Let us step out onto the very edge of the stage of life and take chances. Let us say Yes more than No, let us reach out a hand to help another, let us take our mission as a faith that shows the miracle of humanity’s loving ability…

And let us play!

---

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwuNfHSOxZI

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[i] Sharon D. Welch, The Companion to Postmodern Theology, edited Graham Ward, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers Limited, 2001.

Jazz and Other Theologies

© Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Mother's Day 2012

Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.

Pearl S. Buck

Rev. Joe Cherry; middle-aged, brown hair, brown beard turning to grey When you close your eyes and think about the imagery of Mother's Day, what comes to mind?

Do you see children clumsily making a breakfast, to be served to their Mom in bed, and do you see a woman graciously eating it, no matter the actual edibility of the meal?

Do you see a family, in their Sunday best, piling into a big, shiny, chrome laden car, heading off to church, girls in Mary Janes, boys in clip-on ties, and Mom with matching hat, gloves and bag?

Are there a lot of flowers and flowery cards in your image?

Do you hear the poem by Sojourner Truth, the one entitled "Ain't I A Woman?"

What did you expect when you woke this morning?

Like many holidays, Mother's Day is heavy with expectation and emotion.

As hinted at in this month's newsletter, Mother's Day didn't start off being about breakfast in bed, flowers, and pretty cards.

It started out as a call to action. 19th Century Unitarian Woman, Julie Ward Howe, writer of the poem "Battle Hymn of the Republic" wrote her "Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870. Even as we listen to her words this morning, knowing that peace and peaceful resolution of conflict is preferable to war, we remember and acknowledge with open hearts that even today, many mothers have children in military service.

Arise then ... women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs." 

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe out dishonor,

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil

At the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace ...

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar but of God -

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

It's a far different tone from the Battle Hymn of the Republic, written in 1862, when the country was in the early Civil War, Howe, an abolitionist, trying to inspire troops to carry on as the war was not going well for the North.

Shocked by the carnage, the loss of a generation, she wrote her declaration five years after the conclusion of that war.

Also shocked by the arrival of war on her doorstep, Clara Barton, 19th century Universalist, became a nurse, following closely Florence Nightingale, British Unitarian who established the world's first non-religious nursing school.

Credited by Abraham Lincoln as "the little lady who started this great big war," Harriet Beecher Stowe was both the daughter and wife of Unitarian ministers. As an abolitionist in her own right, in 1852 she authored "Uncle Tom's Cabin", in serial form, for a paper called "The National Era."

A less dire, but no less influential, book was written by domestic scientist, Fannie Merritt Farmer. In her revolutionary cookbook, Farmer introduced the United States to standardized measurements and a more scientific approach to cooking and baking. If you doubt her influence, just try to find a recipe that uses phrases like "a pinch."

Lest you think that influential Universalist, Unitarian and UU women went out of fashion with the Gibson Girl hairstyle, Sophia Lyons Fahs, who lived from 1876 to 1978 - yes, 102 years - was a religious educator who changed the way we treat our children for over a century. Sylvia Plath and May Sarton are two very influential poets in the 20th century, and Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley was a vital part of starting the conversations about healing around race and class issues within our own faith.

Marjorie wrote our Litany of Restoration. Please open your hymnals to reading #576, and read with me:

If, recognizing the interdependence of all life, we strive to build community, the strength we gather will be our salvation. If you are black and I am white,

It will not matter.

If you are female and I am male,

It will not matter.

If you are older and I am younger,

It will not matter.

If you are progressive and I am conservative,

It will not matter.

If you at straight and I am gay,

It will not matter.

If you are Christian and I am Jewish,

It will not matter.

If we join spirits as siblings, the pain of our aloneness will be lessened, and that does matter.

In this spirit, we build community and move toward restoration.

From these famous women we turn to the countless number of women whose names will never be recorded in books, the presidents of congregations, the Sunday School teachers, the treasurers, the tenders of our gardens.

Who mothered your own spirit? What aunts / grandmothers / personal heroes / mentors / teachers do you have? Please share their names with the congregation now.

[Pause, while the congregation said names aloud.]

Thank you.

So, to paraphrase Julia Ward Howe:

Arise, as you are able, you women of today!

Arise and be recognized for the work you do in the world that makes the world a better place!

Arise and be celebrated for the work you do in this very Fellowship that keeps it running as smoothly as it does, even today!

Arise and recognize the Sisterhood of women that goes back to the mythical Eve and Lilith!

As there is joy in womanhood, there is also sorrow.

See these candles burning to my right? They are candles burning bright with the hope of healing. Earlier this morning we held a service from which it is hoped that healing may be encouraged. [note 1]

For many, Mother's Day isn't just a day to celebrate the women who gave them birth, or the children they themselves have born.

For some it can be a bitter-sweet day.

Remembering their Mom who has died.

Remembering a child who has died.

Remembering abuse.

Remembering being abandoned or shunned.

For this part in each of us, let us pause now for a moment, and gaze upon the candles of hoped for healing.

[Pause observed.]

It is good for us to remember both the sorrow and the joy in life. For together they represent the fullness of our time here together on this planet.

Often we loose track of what brings us happiness. In the hustle and bustle of our day-to-day lives, it's easy to forget things. Like how absolutely amazing it was the first time you looked into the eyes of someone you loved. Or the wonder you first felt when you held a new baby, especially if that former baby is now working very hard to push the envelope, or your patience, on a regular basis.

Think back for a moment to the story that Denis told. The old man in the story had to be reminded that he had a good life. It took a cacophony of animals to get him to re-appreciate the gentle sounds of his partner, happily knitting beside him. [note 2]

These are our challenges:

to not wait until a holiday to have a good look around and appreciate that which we have;

to allow ourselves to mourn and feel sorrow as our spirit calls us to;

to realize that everyday can be made special in some way, if we engage in the spiritual practice of being aware, or mindfulness.

Be inspired by our Universalist, Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist fore-mothers. Be inspired by those who have mothered your own soul, and nurture the souls around you to the best of your ability.

And when imperfection happens, and it will, be gentle with yourself.

Blessed Be.

Rites of Spring

Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
May 06, 2012.


Life is cyclical.

Those “close to the land” don’t need to be reminded of this. They see it every year. The sprouting of new plants and crops, a new set of lambs, calves, pups and kittens. It’s hard to miss.

Those of who have a more casual relationship with the land, due to allergies or apartment dwelling, we need a little more reminding about the nature part, but still, we too know that life is cyclical.

And as it as a micro chasm of so many things, this Fellowship reflects Life in this way, too.

We return again to Spring, and Annual Meetings.

For those who are new to this part of the cycle, the Annual Meeting is one important place that Unitarian Universalists practice the 5th principle, “the use of the Democratic Process in our churches and in society at large.”

At every annual meeting, held in every Unitarian Universalist congregation, we both reach back deep into our history and reach forward into the future.

A future we can’t predict, guarantee or as in the case of the far-off future, even see.


In Cambridge, MA in the year 1648, the leaders of several churches got together and created what’s known as the Cambridge Platform. This is a very important document to us, even if you’ve never heard of it.

In fact, you’re more likely to have heard of Robert’s Rules of Order. Mr. Robert was a member of the 1st Baptist church in New Bedford MA.

In Cambridge, these leaders of Puritanism got together to discuss how churches should be in relationship to each other. It’s quite a long document, and if you’re curious, I have a re-print copy of it that I can show you. It’s actually very interesting.

The part that I want to lift up today, though, is the cornerstone of our church polity. Polity is defined as: “a form of political organization.”

All church systems have a polity. We share ours with our cousins, the United Church of Christ. There are others who share a similar system of polity, but the predecessors to the UCC and the processors of the UUA, loosely, were the Puritans, and at one time we were all one church, supported by the government.  In every town in New England people paid taxes and some of those taxes went to support the town church. Whether you went to church or not, some of your money supported the institution.

This is part of why we have the separation of church and state. It was our own Unitarian ancestors, especially John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who pushed for this separation.

Anyway, back to the Cambridge Platform. Because of the polity spelled out by our, yes our, Puritan ancestors, each of our churches is a legal entity onto it’s own. With the power to build, raise funds and call a minister.

This Platform and our polity proclaims that is it only the congregation that has the power to ordain a minister, and no other power structure may do so. In September 1971 the First Universalist Society in Franklin MA, ordained Bill Greer. The First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco ordained Leroy Egenberger on October 22, 1972 and Denis Paul on March 29, 2009. My home church, the First Unitarian Society of Chicago ordained me last May 14th.


Frequently, you’ve heard me say that we are a free church, independent and essentially, for good or ill, on our own.

This truth also comes directly from the Cambridge Platform.

Yes, it’s true, this congregation is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, but the UUAC has no legal or fiscal responsibility for us.

What does this have to do with Spring, Renewal and Annual Meetings?

Because we are a free church, out here in the Central Valley, it takes a lot of volunteer hours to keep this place running smoothly. It takes people who are willing to do all the things that people are willing to volunteer to do around here.

And some of it is less pleasant than others.

Lately, the Board, the Finance Committee and the Stewardship folks have been having a bit of a hard time of it.

I want you to know that they have been working very hard.

All of their work, their service, is inspired by their love for this Fellowship.

By now you either already know, or you’re going to know very soon, that this year’s pledge campaign has not gone as well as hoped.

The congregation is growing, and we are doing a lot of good things in the world, and between us. Just last week, when Vance Whitaker’s Mom died, 11 people from the Fellowship showed up to do volunteer duties to help Jewel and Vance at the memorial service.

That’s about 10% of the entire Fellowship. They just showed up, split up the duties, and made sure that Vance and Jewel could do the grieving they had to do.

To me, that is really amazing.

And it is only one example of the sort of things I see around here a lot.


And so what I want to do at this moment is ask you to remember all of the hard work these volunteers on the Board, and the Finance and Stewardship Committees have done, and are continuing to do, when you have a really good look at the budget the Board was forced to pass on May 1st.

Because of the by-laws of the church, the Board of Trustees is mandated to offer the congregation a balanced budget, in writing, two weeks before the annual meeting. This is so that the congregation can either approve or make adjustments until approval is granted.

In part because of the Cambridge Platform of 1648, this is part of the duty of our free and independent church. The congregation decides, not some other entity.

In order to balance the budget, the board had to make some hard choices about how the Fellowship functions.

In the end, the Board had to cut lawn service, cleaning services, landscaping many other things and staff hours. What this means is not only will the congregation have to find volunteer hours to do weekly cleaning of the campus and lawn mowing services, there will be no new flowers and plants, there would be, in short, a lot of changes. There will be tasks to be done that had been done previously by staff members.



There is so much good going on here. This is what we need to focus our energy on: How can we continue to nurture that good, that growth.

It’s hard for me to talk about money and fundraising in general, and from the pulpit, it’s down-right uncomfortable. I worry that somebody is visiting us for the first time, and potentially the only message they’ll hear about Unitarian Universalism is that the minister talked about money from the pulpit.

And I can’t help but feel like I’m listening to Cap Radio.

So instead, I want to talk with you about what religious community means.

At least what I think it means. (insert list here.)


We are a life-affirming church. Anyone is free to walk through our door and sit with us. We will never tell a visitor or a member what to think on a topic.

But this doesn’t mean that we, as a congregation, don’t serve a vital role in people’s lives.

Since that was a double negative, I’m going to re-phrase that:

We, as a congregation, serve a vital role in people’s lives.

Institutions in our lives that play such an important part in our lives deserve our support.

As I have come to know this congregation, I have met more than a few amazing people. I guess this shouldn’t surprise me too much, but either way, it has been a great joy for me. For the vital role this congregation plays in the lives of its members and friends, it deserves to thrive.

For the people out there in the rest of Stanislaus County, who haven’t yet been exposed to our Gospel, yes Our Gospel of good news, of a Loving community, of transformation encouraged in a supporting community, of grief held in the hearts of an entire gathering of people, this church needs to thrive.

Because, just like there was a time when you first walked into a UU congregation somewhere, maybe here, maybe not, and thought “Finally, I’m home!” there are others out there, looking for us. And we need to be here for them.

May we, as a free people of faith, find a way to lovingly support each other in this difficult time, may we find a way to see each other through the next few weeks as we figure out our budget concerns. May we thank the people who are doing the hard work of the Board and the Finance and Stewardship committees.

With our precious religious freedom comes a responsibility. May we rise, joyfully, to the task.

Blessed be and Amen.

Rites of Spring
© Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Prescott Estates/Whispering Woods

© Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
April 15 2012.


Whispering Woods is an apartment complex not far from here. In fact, when we were new in town, we looked at an apartment there.

As you may already know there was a stand-off and two deaths there on Thursday.

That there was trouble in Whispering Woods might not be shocking to you, if you’ve lived here longer than I have.

Whispering Woods has a history. The Modesto Bee used the unfortunate title “Neighborhood has a dark history,” which I think borders on racism.

Here’s the thing: at first blush this story has no relationship to Baseball and False Nostalgia, right?

Except it does.

Once, Whispering Woods was known as Prescott Estates. Prescott Estates was built to be a middle-class condo development. And with that goal in mind, the builders of Prescott Estates were engaging in the game of false nostalgia.

While obviously most developers develop properties to make money, while they are developing these developments, they are creating a narrative about this new place they are creating. The are imagining the families that will move in, and what they’ll be like.

As I said, we looked at these apartments when we first arrived. The rooms are nicely sized, there is plenty of green space around each 4 unit building, each unit has a garage spot.

The developers of Prescott Estates were not looking to create a neighborhood where all the “poor, undesirables” would be ghettoized. I’m sure that the sales brochures produced in the 1970’s for the place showed people smiling, laughing and talking with neighbors. Happy children, new cars and back yard barbeques.

But through a series of housing bubbles and bumps, the place was so bad that in 2000 there were 1,225 police calls there a year, that’s about 4 times each day.

Nobody…nobody develops housing hoping that the police will be there 4 times each day.

In about 2002, the name of the place was changed from Prescott Estates to Whispering Woods, in an attempt to wipe clean the slate, to erase the past, to offer a new start.

Now can you see the relationship between this story and false nostalgia?

The story of Prescott Estates/Whispering Woods was from its very beginning, based in part on a fiction.


There is another, important component to this story that took place on Thursday. The Prescott Evangelical Free Church, right across Prescott from Whispering Woods opened its doors to the community. Associate Pastor Russ Cantu was interviewed for the Modesto Bee.
He talked about the church’s relationship with the neighborhood, and how this opening of their doors, and hosting a Red Cross Evacuation center, was a natural outgrowth of their relationship with their neighborhood.


And this got me thinking. Why did this story about the church opening its doors warm my heart so much?

Part of the reason, I think, is that this is how I see the church. This is part of my narrative about church. Church responds to the needs of the people in and around it.

Isn’t church, too, though, victim of a history that isn’t completely based on fact?


I will admit to you that I watch TV shows about ministers. Probably more than most do. Call it occupational hazard if you have to, but I enjoy them. I’m also on guard for shows that aren’t about parish life specifically, but have the occasional clergy person in them.

While I was living in Canada, I became a giant fan of a TV show called Little Mosque on the Prairie. The title is obviously a play on the TV show from the 70’s, Little House on the Prairie. The Little House show was based, somewhat loosely, on the Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author who introduced five-year-old Joe Cherry to what would become his lifelong love of history.

The Little House show had a town pastor by the name of Rev. Robert Alden, portrayed by Dabs Greer. Rev. Alden often offers little bits of loving advice to the growing Laura Ingalls. He is a gentle presence to the town of Walnut Grove, Minnesota. He does however have a past. After the death of this family, Alden became a serious alcoholic until called by the Lord to be a good Christian.

Little Mosque on the Prairie chronicles a modern Imam, Amaar Rashid. Amaar is a Toronto attorney who hears God’s call to become an Imam. His parents are not amused. He takes a job in the fictional town of Mercy Saskatchewan, population 14,000. Among Amaar’s difficulties is that he doesn’t have a beard, so the conservatives don’t trust him, and the mosque is located in the rented hall of the local Anglican Church. Oh, and they’re a group of Muslims living in Saskatchewan, which is roughly the Canadian equivalent of Kansas.

And then there are the BBC clergy persons: the Vicar of Dibly, and the poor, long-suffering Vicar of the church that Hyacinth Bucket attends.


In each of these stories, at some point, the local House of Faith opens its doors to those in need.

The Prescott Evangelical Free Church opened its doors to an urgent need.

Weekly, we make sure our doors are open for various recovery groups every week.

Fiction meets reality. Quite nice, isn’t it?


As you may be able to tell I was quite saddened by the shootings at the Whispering Woods Thursday, and I was very heartened to hear about one way our neighbors in faith responded.


What are your personal ideas about what a church is? About how a faith community responds and engages with your own life?

Are your own ideas and ideals about how the part that this community plays in your life hindering or enriching your own experience here?

++++++++++++++++++++

Just like Prescott Estates has both a fiction and a reality, so has baseball, and what baseball represents.

Baseball is America’s game, right? Many of us grow up playing some version of it, whether poorly or well, in fields and streets of this country.

Baseball, Mom and Apple Pie.

When you say the word baseball, images pop into mind, don’t they. You can almost smell the hot dogs from the stadium vendors.

Like the fiction of Whispering Woods, Baseball’s story is not as simple as it first appears. There are nuances. And if we fail to look beyond the simple picture portrayed for us, we are doing a disservice to all involved.

Baseball, largely in its current form, has been around since… well, it’s hard to say. Here is an image from a book in 1744.

Both Abner Doubleday and Alexander Carthwright have been given credit for the “invention” of modern-day baseball, though the evidence is dubious at best.

Certainly no serious historian, myself included, can see enough evidence to credit either man.

But the story of baseball isn’t always just about facts, is it?

Baseball has a romantic quality to it, doesn’t it? We see images of Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantel and Joe DiMaggio. But the truth is so much deeper than those images.

Yes, Jackie Robinson broke through the color lines in 1946 to play ball for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but it was still 20 years before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s.

While America was trying to convince itself that our world looked like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, the reality of many was vastly different.

The danger of this false nostalgia is people will speak about “The good old days.” Blogger Ed Babinski had this to say:

[Here is] The Assertion of Religious Right: Society today is worse off than it used to be. Things were better in the "good old days."

Counter: Exactly when were the "good old days?" In one episode of the TV series, Dave, his wife tells him, "I just want our kids to grow up in the same world we did." To which Dave replies, "You want our kids to grow up in a world with bomb shelters, polio, and separate drinking fountains?"

There may have been prayer in school back then, but there were also lynch mobs, communist "witch hunts," segregation, open anti-Semitism and Catholic-bashing. There was child abuse and spousal abuse, but it went mostly unreported, unnoticed, unpunished. And it was OK then to bar women and people of color from various professions and to pay them far less than their due in any work situation. Were those the "good old days?"

The danger is when people really begin to believe that the past has some hold on perfection. This leads to all kinds of behaviors and laws which are antithetical to our modern lives.

Just as we know that we are better off today than we were 60 years ago, there are those who feel that the exact opposite is true.

They want to go back to a “simpler time.”

Except a simpler time is a lie.

What they want to go back to is blissful ignorance of the suffering of the world around them.

And we can’t allow that, can we?


As much as anyone, I can understand the desire for a time when my understanding of life and the universe was much less nuanced than it is now.

Do what is right, get rewarded. Do what is wrong, get sent to your room.

But we know that this is not how the world works.


In our efforts to heal the world around us, we too must let go of our older views of reality. Religious Conservatives are not evil. They are not all backward. They are people, like us.

They want what we want: a happy place to live, where they feel safe, where they can hit a good sale at their favorite store, and they can go to bed, secure in the knowledge that all is well.


Our response to the world around us is a different one than theirs. Where their response tends to be akin to circling the wagons for protection, ours tends to be a seeking of a place of inclusion.

Partly our job in this is more difficult than theirs. If are really going to practice what we preach, we have to include them in our worldview, too. Not just tolerate, but include. We have to make a place for them.

We are also called to make a place for the stories of the habitually oppressed.

The latter is more natural to us.

So what can we do about the story of Prescott Estates/Whispering Woods?

We can reach out to our neighbors.

We can make a plan, so that, may the heavens forbid, should a similar tragedy happen where we are the closest house of worship, we know exactly what we are going to do.

We will have a plan for reaching out to our neighbors, a plan for comforting and assisting the people we live near.

Tragedy will strike again. This is part of life.

But if we are prepared, if we know that the idea of the good old days when things like this just didn’t happen is a lie, we can get right to the business of healing our neighbors, our city, our world.

What Improbable Things Do We Believe?

Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
April 8 2012.

Easter is the highest of holidays for our Christian friends. It is a story forever intertwined with Passover, a holiday marked first by the Jewish people. Passover commemorates the end of their time as slaves in Egypt.

For Christians, Easter marks the central miracle of their faith, the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

For Unitarian Unversalists, this time can be marked by discomfort. We don’t know what to do on Easter.

What many have done in the past is talk about how the Christians co-opted other Spring festivals, or how many similarities the story of Jesus has with other “son of God” myths.

Sometimes this has been done in the honest intent of exploration.

More often, though, I have witnessed this as an exercise born out our less than highest ideals.

Passover and Easter are a cultural force. They are part of the Western Cultural Lexicon. Our own culture is steeped in the stories of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Many of us in this sanctuary came to Unitarian Universalism from some other faith tradition. And we left that faith because it didn’t suit us. It didn’t fulfill our needs, we couldn’t reconcile some part of its practice with our heart and mind.

And then, in order to create safety between ourselves and the old faith, we, as a people, we have said things like “I’m a recovering Catholic.” Or we have gut reactions to words that some people find sacred; God, church, altar, obligation and many others.

I am not immune to this.

Hell is the reason I left Christianity.

I could not reconcile the idea that people who had not accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior, would suffer eternal punishment.

I had one particularly close friend who I lost over this discussion. His name is Jose, and as we started college, he became a born-again Christian. The more he embraced his new faith, the more “inflexible” I experienced him to be, the deeper I dug my own heels into the ground, resisting his new narrative.

I became smug with the best of them.

As my anger with Jose over his new faith grew, our clashes over religion became more intense. He saw his mission as one that expressed love. He loved me, and he wanted to save me from what he saw as an honestly deplorable future. I wanted to convince him that his new friends were the problem, that they were using this threat and fear tactic to brainwash him.

And in the process, I was losing my friend.

I wasn’t self-aware enough then to notice that a lot of my energy was coming from grief.

After a couple of years of increasing divide between Jose and I, we stopped talking. That was 23 years ago. I think about him now and again, and I wonder if he’s still strong in his faith, if it still brings him comfort.

And back then, who knew that I’d be here today, preaching to a faith community, on Easter Sunday?

With apologies, I’m going to quote my younger self.

How could Jose believe such a ridiculous story? How could this very smart, smarter than me, young man, believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead three days later? I was annoyed, I was angry…

And also I was scared. When I first arrived, I spoke about my concern that I might be wrong, and that being wrong, too obstinate to believe, well what if there were consequences?

And this is where I think much our energy in our own relationship with Christianity comes from.

In our fear, we use the potent power of our minds to make distance.

How else can one explain how a people so committed to diversity, can have such short wicks when it comes to Christianity?

I used the term “Sexton” here once in church, and actually watched a person instinctively recoil.

And that’s the thing, these reactions I see are too quick, too almost instinctual to be rational. There is something almost animal in them.

So, this brought me to the question of “Why?”

I love this question. I’ve been asking it my whole life.

A lot.

So…. Why? Why would these people, these Unitarian Universalists I have known since 1995, why would they so easily tolerate faiths like Buddhism, Paganism with nary a batted eye, but the minute Jesus is mention, get all rankled?

I suspect it has to do with pain.


If our rejection of other faiths was based solely on our rejection of their own improbable beliefs, then what chance do any of them have?

Buddhists believe in reincarnation, right? There is no evidence of reincarnation, is there? And yet, many of us will claim to be Buddhist-inspired.

Pagans believe, often, in a Creatrix and her male consort. This isn’t much different than believing in the story from the Jewish Book of Genesis, is it?

And yet few if any members of this Fellowship would react as strongly to portions of these two stories with the energy and venom with which they react to someone mentioning Jesus in church.



In his book 1981 book Stages of Faith, James W. Fowler developed a theory of six stages that people go through as their faith matures based on the work of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. The basic theory can be applied, not only to those in traditional faiths, but those who follow alternative spiritualities or secular worldviews as well.

The names are somewhat clunky, and if I read the stages to you, it would sound like me reading a book report from up here, and none of us want that. So I’m going to just give you a VERY brief overview of three of the stages.

Stage 4 is called “Individuative-Reflective.” This is a very difficult stage, when people begin to think outside of the boxes they grew up in. Depending on the environment they come from, the very act of entering this stage can be traumatic and leave deep emotional scars.

Fowler’s 5th stage is called “Conjunctive Faith.” It is rare for people to reach this stage before mid-life. This is the point when people begin to realize the limits of logic and start to accept the paradoxes in life. They begin to see life as a mystery and often return to sacred stories and symbols but this time without being stuck in a theological box.

The 6th stage is called “Universalizing Faith,” and according to Fowler, few people reach this stage. Those who do live their lives to the full in service of others without any real worries or doubts.

I’m not just bringing this information forward because I want to prove to you that I actually went to seminary, and we did more there than contemplate our navels.

I think that Unitarian Universalism, as a whole, is stuck in Stage 4, Individuative-Reflective. As an institution, we are not yet “old” enough to deal comfortably with the paradoxes in life. We are not yet ready to let go of our death grip on logic and enjoy the ride.

In some ways, we are like people on a roller coaster. We want to be able to remove our hands from the safety bar, but we can’t quite..yet. We can rationalize that thousands of people have ridden this ride before and few, if any, have died doing so. We might even resent those on the coaster who are able to let go of the bar and lift their hands up and experience the true, deep joy of the ride.


We Unitarian Universalists have our own improbable beliefs.

We believe in things as far fetched as “world peace.” A world were every person will be treated with dignity and have their worth reflected back to them.

We’re comfortable in the knowledge that we, with our efforts, can work toward these goals, even if we think that it won’t take place during our own lifetime.

I have a favorite Chinese proverb on our fridge at home “One generation plants the tree, and the next generation enjoys the shade.”

That, my dear friends, is faith.

It is not the same kind of faith as our friends who are celebrating the central mystery of Christianity today. But I hope that we can see that faith is faith, that it sometimes helps one to endure. That it is ultimately a tool that we can use to get through difficult times, and that can remind us to be mindful and grateful for the joys in our lives.


As we share the beauty of nature this morning in our Flower Communion, see our own faith in humanity expressed here.

Smell the glorious fragrance, in the full knowledge that some are allergic.

See the diversity of color and function, and be glad that we also don’t all look alike

Feel the delicate petals and leaves, and be reminded of the gentle touch of true friends in times of sorrow and celebration.

May we, as a people of faith, remind ourselves and each other, of the beauty of diversity of people, who come in all shapes and sizes, all age ranges, and physical attributes. That our diversity of income, political point of view, gender expression and affectional orientation are a strength to us as a whole.

As the Unitarian heretic and minister Francis David said 400 years ago: We need not all think alike to love alike.

Go forth from this, our sacred space, and spread love.

May it be so.