Frames and all that. I think it was Patrick who wrote about that aspect of how we read, and I thank him for his contribution.

But I just wanted to say the thing about Matthew 25:36, because I like to get a little Jesus sneaked in here once in awhile.

* For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Thank you all for writing. Thank you for not identifying your congregations or your ministers (all of whom you are immensely supportive of within what sound like very conflicted systems, and bless you for that)). Please do not apologize for venting. You are giving of yourselves to your congregations heart, soul, mind and strength and I consider it an honor to hear from you.

Let me say this.

Hold on. Keep giving the best of you, keep planting the seeds of strength and health wherever you can and however you can, and water those seeds. Don’t be afraid to honestly admit that you are in a struggle for the future of an institution you dearly love. If some of the sickness does not heal, if health is not allowed to flourish, if certain behaviors are not confronted and remedied, your beloved community could die. Admit this, but don’t live in fear about it. Fear is a killer. Fear will shorten your breath and give you a suspicious eye and heart. Be not afraid. Jesus said that, not me. Don’t give me any credit for it. I just know it’s true.

Here it is: you are covenanted in fellowship and love with people you may see as troublemakers, but you can be in a covenanted relationship and still name and challenge poisonous behaviors when you see them. Asking questions is a good way to do this: ask people what their intentions are when they do things with which you disagree or find damaging to the integrity of your community. Engage with them on their answers. Be ready to explain your own perspective, to passionately speak to what you would wish for your community. Where you can build bridges, build them. If you decide that it would be best to burn some bridges, do so, but keep a careful eye on that fire and put it out safely and quickly. Where you can minister within the dysfunctionality and to the dysfunctional, do it. When you can bolster your minister’s sagging spirits, please do so, and allow him or her to do the same for you. Above all, minister to the health of the congregation.

Don’t let anyone kick you in the soul. If your soul feels punched around, get help. Start a meditation or prayer group. Hold hands with someone wise and calm. Play gorgeous music. Take a walk through the local cemetery with someone whose recent behavior or words have deeply troubled you. Ask them how they think the two of you might be remembered by the next generation of your congregation. Ask them what they think happens after death. Ask them if there was a heaven and they got there first, would they greet you when you arrived and show you around. Tell them a dirty joke. Consider that the person you so dislike might be incredibly, super insecure. Notice how small and dry their hands are and remember that they might be grieving some terrible loss. Not that that excuses their behavior, but it might give you some perspective on how huge they really need to loom in your life. Not so huge, right?

Work hard to keep your perspective. It is hard. I know.

Consider praying for the congregation — all of it, even those pesky troublemakers. Consider asking God, the Spirit of Life, or whatever your higher power is for peace, grace and accord among your people. It couldn’t hurt, could it?

When you are tempted to give in to despair, go dancing. Get a group of church friends and go sing karaoke. Cultivate joy. Make it a rule not to gripe about church politics past sundown, limit your e-mails to ten a day. If someone sends a crappy e-mail, respond with something light and brief (how I wish I had taken this advice myself all my life!). Thank them for their thoughts and sign off.
In other words, put boundaries around your unhappiness and give only an allotted amount of energy and attention to things you can’t control; like other people’s thoughts, feelings or opinions of you. Remember that many people act out in church because they don’t know how else to do church, or because they see themselves as prophets or “change-agents” or leaders who are speaking unpopular truths that no one else can see. Many of them deeply believe that they are making a contribution. Get to know them; learn about their sense of contribution. Then tell them what you think of their contribution. Explain to them what you think might be the far-reaching consequences of their actions. Just state your thoughts. Be prepared to hear theirs. This all needs to be out in the open if your community is to get past the perpetual dysfunction that you have described to me.

Don’t bother lobbying or campaigning to be liked or understood in the community. Forget about that; it doesn’t work. What does work is being totally, genuinely yourself at all times and shining forth your love for your faith and your community. Speak the truth as you understand it at all times and be prepared for someone to come to you and say, “Hey, I heard you said this about me.” Say, “Yes, I did. And here’s why.” Don’t hide anything you’re doing — be totally transparent about your goals and share them openly with anyone who cares to know them. There’s no shame in having hopes and dreams for your community; institutions can’t survive and thrive without them. If someone else has different goals, hopes or dreams, you should know those, too. When everyone is clear on what they hope for, people work together much more effectively. It’s those vague battles for power or murky, unspoken conflicts that exhaust a community and kill a church So ask “What do you think is actually going on here?” Try to find out what you’re fighting about, and ask the essential question:
“Do we want to make fighting central to our identity?”
If the answer is yes, start looking for another congregation. That’s nonsense, and it’s not what you need in your life.

Here’s some advice for you to put on your bedstand and hold to your heart every night before you go to sleep and every morning before you get out of bed. Paul wrote it to a contentious group of early Christians in Philippi. He said,

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

Good advice, wouldn’t you say?

I wish you joy in your congregations. I wish you the strength of the mountains in this work you do. I wish you the peace of God, the peace that passeth understanding, in your hearts. And I wish you the “Bang” that gives your ministry the spice, the passion and the irreverent sauciness that you need to keep on keepin’ on.

“Love one another, because love is from God.”
Isn’t that wild? We generally have no idea what it means, of course. But that’s what we’re here to find out.

Peace, my brothers and sisters.
And Bang.

P.S. If you liked the post, you may like my sermon “Inherent Worth and Dignity: The Starting Point.” It basically says the same thing, but with snappier stories and illustrations. It’s one of my very most favorites.

Others said she was pathetic, obviously sick, and deserved compassion. This writer, Mary, articulated the latter position particularly well when she wrote,

I’m struck and somewhat sadden by the seeming lack of awareness and sensitivity to the fact that people do in fact suffer from mental illness, and that such illness gone untreated often does result in such offensive and unacceptable behavior. The mentally ill have long been held up to public ridicule and marginalization with little or no voice to counter such attacks. Still, are not human beings who suffer with mental illness deserving of being granted their inherent worth and dignity, as promised in the first UU Principal? I’m not defending the actions of this young woman, but I am asking that we look a little further than her mug shot. Compassion is on vacation when this country seems to need it most.

I had hoped that someone would say something like this, and Mary answered my prayers. Because I think it’s worthwhile for UUs to look at my point of view and Mary’s, and to see where they fall on the spectrum of the first UU Principle (which calls us to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every human being).

When it comes to interpreting this principle, I am definitely a Justice Scalia among my co-religionists.
I believe that if Ashley Todd was of sound enough mind to figure out this scheme, to know that if believed, she would create a media sensation and cause serious damage for the Obama campaign, she is responsible for her actions. So far as we know, Todd didn’t hear voices in her head giving her the idea. She is mentally competent enough to attend college, to drive a car, to campaign for various candidates, and to hold a job. Although reported as a mere volunteer for the College Republican National Committee, she was under contract as a paid organizer for them until the time of her arrest, at which point her contract was, um, terminated.
Ashley Todd is functioning well enough in society that we can assume she knows what she’s doing.

Todd may, in fact, be mentally ill, but that determination should not override or obscure Unitarian Universalist reflection on her obvious moral reprehensibility. For too long, UUs have chosen to pathologize and diagnose the mental health of others when we want to avoid moral discernment. I came to this concusion during a Ministry Days program at GA where the keynote speaker offered to our gathered colleagues an interpretation of George W. Bush as a “dry drunk.” This would, of course, give us all a legitimate foundation for our almost unanimous loathing of Bush. For years afterward you’d hear UU ministers earnestly dissecting George Bush’s psyche in the same terms the presenter had used. “He’s a DRY DRUNK,” they’d say, as though being able to diagnosis the president gave them some power over him. Ooooh, we got him pinned!

Of course pathologizing Bush as a “dry drunk” achieved nothing but to allow the assembled clergy a way to channel their own helpless rage. “He has far more power than all of us combined, but he’s a DRY DRUNK!” Absolutely futile. How was that supposed to serve our ministries?

I did not attend that lecture. Had we invited a theologian to speak about the question of individual evil or sin, and had we then been invited to reflect on whether we thought that George W. Bush was merely sinful or truly evil, I would have attended. I am a minister. If I wanted to apply the lens of psychology to all human problems I would have become a psychologist or social worker.

Let’s let the clinicians work with Ashley Todd to see what kind of treatment for mental illness she will pursue (as she has been court-ordered to do). As religious people reflecting on her crime, however, let’s remember that affirming our first principle does not prohibit us from claiming that some people are reprehensible and their actions morally despicable.

Not to put to fine a point on it and with all sincere apologies to Mary (who made clear that she was not excusing Todd’s actions), I believe that Unitarian Universalists too often use the first principle as a mushy, sentimental instant escape clause when they don’t want to have to say “That was morally wrong and here’s why.”

Having spent my life in this movement, I notice that whenever anyone among us rises to say, “That behavior is absolutely wrong,” another will rise just as fast and say, “It makes me SAD that you’re so insensitive to this person, who obviously has serious emotional problems/mental illness/wasn’t loved in his or her childhood/is the product of an abusive system, etc.”
And that’s where the buck stops. Right there. Want to know why our congregations are so small and so often dysfunctional? That’s it in a nutshell.

Oh, and by the way, here’s Ashley’s MySpace page, containing this headline chosen by her,

“Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her cloths [sic] off, but it’s better if you do.”

I don’t think what Ashley Todd most needs right now is compassion. I think what she needs right now is to spend some time in a cell with about 20 tall, black men who weren’t taken into custody that night in Pittsburgh but who might have been, had she been just a little more credible in her story. See, ’cause I respect Ashley’s inherent worth and dignity enough to assume that she might actually learn something from that conversation,and therefore be able to think about what she’s doing before she pulls such a prank for the third time.

She’s a sad, messed-up case all right, but also very ambitious. And if you’re an Obama supporter, you can bet she doesn’t want your pity.

The classic story of metanoia in Unitarian Universalist lore is told about the belligerent layman who battles throughout a long, contentious meeting on a difficult challenge in the parish (can someone find the source for me?). At the end of the long night, when asked by one of his exasperated fellows what he sees as the ultimate mission of the church, the man responds, “Well, I guess it’s to change people like me.”

Amazing grace how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see.

“Amazing Grace” is the best-known hymn of the experience of metanoia and reminds us that it is not by our will but by God’s grace — coming in the form of prophetic utterances that move us, community that goads us, dreams that haunt us, friends who hold a compassionate mirror to us — that we are transformed. As the previous story illustrates, half the time we don’t even know that we are in need of transformation. To exist in that particular blindness is the human condition.

My favorite recent story of metanoia comes from a laywoman in my congregation who spent years in the church participating, giving, ministering, singing in the choir, serving and enjoying herself but who had a radical shift during a time of crisis when she experienced an outpouring of support. “I always knew up to that time that I loved my church,” she said, “But it had never really occurred to me until then, when I had all that evidence, that my community loved me back.”

Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me. Being a wretch (a wonderful, evocative word) doesn’t always mean being a miserable, lowly worm before the judging Lord. It can simply mean missing a huge portion of reality that, if seen, can open an entire world of inspiration for us, a source of sustenance, and spiritual fuel for the work we are called to do in the world. Here was this woman, for instance, who was cheerfully going about having a really positive experience of church life. She wasn’t cranky and martyred — she didn’t feel that she was missing anything or lacking anything. It just never occurred to her that, as she was going about her happy business, that the community to which she was committed was loving her as much as she was loving it. The veil fell from her sight when she experienced an outpouring of affectionate care when she hit a skid. Who would ever have guessed that there was a veil clouding her vision in the first place?

I don’t think we can set out to experience metanoia. That’s not how amazing grace works.

Late Sunday afternoon I took a number and got in line to audition for a local community theatre production of a show I think is incredibly clever and incredibly topical and an incredibly worthy story to be told. I had prepared my song, I had dressed to suggest the part I wanted, and I walked in at about 4:20 to sing for the director, producer and choreographer. I knew all of these people (and the accompanist) from previous productions and consider all of them friends. But I’ve been involved in theater for a long time: when it comes to auditions, you keep it professional. You may kiss hello and joke around a bit, but auditions are competitive. The director and music director and choreographer might have differing opinions about who should be cast, and you can’t assume anything. Those may be your friends off-stage, but they have a show to cast and they want the best they can find. You may or may not be it. I’ve auditioned for friends many times and not gotten the role I wanted. That’s how it goes, you don’t take it personally.

As I finished my song, which I thought went pretty well, all three of the show staff gave me genuine smiles of such warmth and appreciation that it unnerved me. Could I skip to the end of the song and hit the big high note? Sure, I’d give it a go. They leaned forward, totally relaxed and supportive and it occurred to me,
They really want me to do well. Not just because they want a good Penelope Pennywise for this production, but because in a simply generous way, they just want me to do well. In this moment, they’re not trying to get something from me, they’re not assessing me, they’re not thinking critical thoughts about me — they’re just rooting for me to do well because it would make us all happy. The energy was so different than any other audition I’ve been to. I was very touched. The scales fell from my eyes — I realized that sometimes, even in the midst of a stressful, competitive atmosphere where critical objectivity is important, people are just plain rooting for you. For me.

My friend the director talked to me about the audition later. I had, of course, frozen up and screwed up the dance audition although I had actually mastered the combo pretty well during the practice times when we were dancing unobserved in big batches. I confessed my embarrassment to Michael. “No — you totally nailed it!” he said. “We were scoring people before they even officially got up.” He went on to praise some of my moves, because he’s a sweetie and incredibly supportive. But what a great metaphor for amazing grace, and for metanoia: we go through life thinking we’re being regarded through critical eyes and that it is for our gaffes that we are likely to earn the most attention and generate the most energy. Meanwhile, God and people who look through the eyes of love are watching us when we are dancing in the third row, moving with confidence and joy because there’s no pressure to be perfect yet. And they are noticing, and they are loving our moves.

My take-away, which may resonate with you: When people are watching us closely, it isn’t always to judge and assess, to learn or to get something. Sometimes it’s just to groove on our goodness, and to wish us well. Ain’t that a good news? And wouldn’t you like to pass that spirit along?

God, in your grace, transform the world.

You have asked if we consulted Jewish leadership to the meeting with President Ahmadinejad and others. We did approach each of the Jewish peace movement organizations with whom we interact regularly through the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership and who are members of FOR. I talked on more than one occasion with, for example, Rabbi Waskow at the Shalom Center, Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun, and Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb of Shomer Shalom. I did get helpful feedback on my opening message from Jewish colleagues. They were all invited to be a part of the meeting and while they declined they did not discourage us from facilitating.

There were a number of Jews present at the meeting, including some who have been to Iran with FOR’s civilian diplomacy delegations, and including one Rabbi.

Rabbi Gottlieb, who led our last delegation to Iran delivered remarks at the Thursday evening interfaith dialogue dinner, which was organized by other organizations.

If you read the questions presented and the full document which are available through our blog site, you will note that questions were presented concerning the Holocaust, issues of state, religious tolerance, etc.

It may also not be entirely clear that we did not extend an invitation to President Ahmadinejad to attend this meeting; we accepted an invitation from the Iranian Mission to the UN to invite members of the peace movement for a conversation with the President and others from the government of Iran.

As a Unitarian you will also have noticed that Rev. Bill Sinkford was one of those who asked a question of President Ahmadinejad.

Peace,
Mark

Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Fellowship of Reconciliation

I appreciate having this information, and I appreciation Mr. Johnson’s giving permission to share it with the readers of this blog. And I wish Mr. Johnson and the FOR all good will and godspeed in their mission, which I ardently support even as I critique their decision to attend a meeting with President Ahmadinejad.

I’ve had a number of off-line responses from UUs and other readers expressing everything from sadness to outrage about this meeting (I still don’t know why they won’t comment on the blog under a psuedonym, if necessary), and some commenting on the blog have also been critical (and some supportive). The general consensus among the critics — whose position I am trying to represent — seems to be that the Fellowship and Reconciliation team were, to use Unitalian’s term, “useful idiots” in a PR stunt meant to shine up Ahmadinijad’s image in the press while simultaneously shooting pigeon droppings into the eye of US foreign policy leaders. This is not to say that the men and women who are committed to peace-making efforts and who attended this meeting are literally idiots. It is to say that, in my opinion, their starry-eyed idealism and spiritual egos were made use of by very canny strategists from the Iranian Mission to the UN.

To speak again about the Unitarian Universalist presence at this meeting, I echo the UUs who say that this is nothing to be proud of. If we claim to “Stand On the Side of Love,” then our president should have been among the protesters at the UN, not at the table with the human rights abuser being protested. That is our tradition, and that is our place. We are not Standing On the Side of Photo Ops and Headlines, but standing on the side of those who have no voice, are imprisoned, harassed, mortally threatened and executed in a climate of intolerance and injustice. In this case, to show solidarity with those brothers and sisters, our leader should have been with the anonymous crowd protesting the Iranian president, not inside with him, giving him the opportunity to evade questions and skirt issues with a smile and a clever talking point.

I believe that Rev. Sinkford owes the Unitarian Universalist community more reflection and explanation of his decision to attend this event, beyond those published here. I would specifically appreciate it if he would speak to the reality that his decision has embarrassed and distressed members of the association of congregations he represents, and provide an opportunity to dialogue about that issue through some on-line or public forum. If nothing else, this would provide a good model for the future UUA president, who will be elected at this summer’s General Assembly.

Three more links, one critical (and whose characterization of the UUA press release on the event as “crowing” I find particularly apt and one cautiously supportive, and one from
Boy In the Bands, who names it when he says that Sinkford, and by association all UUs, got played.

I remember feeling this way about seventeen years ago when I was trying to articulate my personal theology and came across Emerson’s essay “The OverSoul.” After I read it I felt mighty dumb for having believed that I had ever had one original theological idea. I started divinity school and people would ask me for my Big Statement of Faith, you know, and I just wanted to hand out “The OverSoul” and say, “What he said.”

I still feel that much that way about my BFF Waldo’s essay although my theological ideas have been greatly influenced by becoming a Christian shortly after discovering it. You might wonder why. All I can say is that it was not a conversion experience so much as it was a response to my direct experience of God’s presence in my life and in the world.

I believe that creating a covenant is a way a community can respond to their shared experience of God’s reality and presence.

And I keep reading because frankly kids, I’m terrified to start the writing process!! But I’m presenting a chapter in class next week, so it’s time to put my fingers to the keyboard and produce some thoughts of my very own.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek

I don’t know how this will work, but since I’d like to include little podcasts on this blog while I’m on sabbatical I thought I’d make a trial run without any help from Scott or Dan (although I know you’re both out there and willing to help, bless your hearts). In the future the podcasts will be short, pithy interviews with people, or just little musings from the road.

This podcast is something I call “Preacher’s Commentary.” The rest is self-explanatory. You can read the actual sermon here if you’re interested, or listen to it here, especially if you want to hear me warble “Tomorrow” at the end of the sermon (when the congregation joins in, bet you’ll get a big ole lump in your throat).

Hearing these, I realize we could be doing a much better job with sound quality, but this is a learn-as-we-go process. I’m pretty pleased with how much we’ve been able to do with a $40 digital recorder, actually. I also recommend recording, and listening to yourself if you’re a preacher, ’cause it’s pretty humbling. In this one, for instance, I caught a couple of factual errors (e.g., TVUUC is in the Thomas Jefferson District, not the Southwest District), a few grammatical mistakes, and a head-smacking moment of regret that I failed to mention all of the Sources of our liberal religious wisdom in favor of focusing on our Christian and Humanist heritage. Well, we’re works in progress, people. We’re works in progress.

READING from “Our Covenant” Alice Blair Wesley

We human beings are promising creatures, in the sense that we can only do great and worth things – indeed we can only survive – when we make and keep promises of loyalty and faithfulness to the ways of love with others. For distinct and different as we are as individuals, we are also thoroughly social creatures. The options and choices we have as individuals are effected and affected by those of others; our decisions and actions and inactions effect and affect many others. None of us can fulfill our promise as individuals without the faithfulness and loyalty of many others. Therefore, the aim of our worship services is a renewal of our sense of gratitude for and loyalty to the spirit of love which summons and creates and re-creates right loyalties within us.

The mutual spirit of love is alone worthy of our greatest, our ultimate loyalty. For when we kill it, life loses its savor and we open ourselves to destructive, deadly evil, unworthy doing.

We human beings, especially in a culture so complex as ours, are part of many communities. We need one – our freely covenanted church community – in which our purpose is to be reminded of, and to take account of the promising character of human beings in the widest possible sense, that we may answer the summons, the call of all that is holy, to live with authenticity and integrity and joy and resolve.

THE SERMON “The Basic Human Covenant” Rev. Victoria Weinstein

I’m going to start in a strange place, with some thoughts about capital punishment. I was having a conversation with a friend about ten years ago, and we were talking about serial killers. I said that most of the time I really can’t support capital punishment – but when someone totally violates the basic human covenant so egregiously, they deserve to die.

This isn’t a sermon on capital punishment (which I do not support… on most days). It’s about that word covenant, and what it means, and what it demands of us. I think that conversation with my friend was one of the first times I had ever used the word “covenant” in casual conversation. It isn’t the kind of word that comes up in typical chit-chat. I don’t know how or why it came out of my mouth – this was long before I came to this church and engaged in our covenant revision process with you. I remember feeling a bit startled as I heard myself say the words “violate the basic human covenant.” What did I mean by that? What is the basic human covenant?

Covenant is a serious word. It is weightier and more serious than the words agreement or promise, or even law or vow or oath. It is a weighty word and a solemn idea that, in the Western world, has its origins in ancient biblical history. Although all societies and cultures honor the concept of covenant, the idea of covenant as we know it in the West originated as a kind of legal agreement between God and his people as recorded in the books of Genesis and Exodus. The idea of covenant evolved over time to refer to a spiritual commitment voluntarily held between members of a community, and with the entire community and their God. There is therefore a horizontal dimension to covenant – between equals – and there is a vertical dimension – between a people )or a person) and Ultimate Moral Being, however one defines that.

That was the understanding of covenant which the men and women who founded this congregation had in 1642 when they covenanted to walk in the ways of faith and to do God’s will as best as they could understand and discern it together.

And so we do to this day. We have a congregational covenant that we revised in 2002, and we’re clear on what it asks of us. We affirm it every Sunday in our worship service, and I think it’s a beautiful statement that guides our sense of purpose as a community. There’s a lot more to our covenant than meets the eye, too. For instance, cultivating reverence is a simple phrase but it is not a simple task. You don’t look around you once, say “Wow, this is an awesome creation,” and be done with it. Cultivating reverence is the inner work of a lifetime. If we commit to an attitude of reverence, we see the world as an “ensouled” place – not just a playground for our happiness but a garden to tend with care and a sense of responsibility and stewardship. Sacred ground.

The rest of our covenantal promises are just as demanding and just as deep. If we all posted our covenant on our fridge or bathroom mirror and referred to it every day to guide our thoughts, words and deeds, we’d be making a beautiful commitment with lasting benefits to ourselves, our families and our world.

With this in mind, let me share with you these beautiful words from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Therefore inscribe these words upon your heart: bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, and teach them to your children-reciting them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.”

But returning to the comment I made to my friend all those years ago: what did I mean when I said that someone violated the basic human covenant? I was so sure back then — but I’ll tell you something: I’m confused about that question today. I’m really confused about it. It seems that every time I look up lately, what I might intuit as the basic human covenant is being egregiously violated somewhere – and greed and nationalist zeal are almost always the cause, although sometimes it happens out of good intentions gone wrong.

Something that benefits one group of people has a detrimental or even destructive effect on another. Protect my freedoms and safety and totally violate someone else’s. Try to protect an endangered species and destroy the livelihood of an entire human community. Come to the rescue of one suffering region and use resources that therefore can’t be used to alleviate suffering somewhere else. Globalization has made the question of how to define the basic human covenant a monumentally difficult one to answer.

Is there a basic human covenant that transcends any group, any class, any race or creed, that is truly universal and universally agreed-upon? If so, please tell me what it is. Where is it written? Who got to write it, who signed onto it, and how do we all, globally, hold each other accountable to it?
Could we find a workable basic human covenant in a United Nations document? Is it best articulated in the Constitution of the United States, or the Declaration of Independence? How about the Ten Commandments, or perhaps in something Buddha or Mohammed or Jesus said?

Maybe the basic human covenant for the 21st century could come from the treaties of the Geneva Conventions. Or … our own Unitarian Universalist Seven Principles. If we beamed them up into space and they could be read or heard in every language by every person on this little blue planet, could we agree that they’d be the basic human covenant? Here they are, as a reminder. They are promises to affirm and promote:
• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

I could certainly sign onto that with a drop of blood from my finger, and I know you could too. That’s why you’re here. But I’m afraid that not everyone sees things the way this community does. We’d have to endure a lot of revisions and deletions before we got a working document. When I think of how long that would take, how many hours of debate, how many translators working diligently, how many squabbles and how many angry walk-outs by various delegates of the human community (with no representation whatsoever by delegates from any other species), I get very sad.

Is it our destiny that some members of our species will always be alienated from some others?

This is a question-asking sermon, and we’re going to leave here this morning with more questions than we have answers. That’s not any more comfortable for me any more than it is for you, but some questions are just that big. I started to write this sermon on September 11, 2008 — a day heavy with horrible memories and with implications for what it means to affirm anything like a “basic human covenant.” I thought that I was clear on at least my own nation’s sense of basic human covenant before 9/11, but since that terrible event that plunged us into moral chaos, I have watched it erode like a sand castle as the tide comes in.

Was it just a castle built on sand in the first place?

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine at the beginning of the American Revolution. He might have written, “These are the times that try men’s covenants.”
We live in such times.

Two things have become clear to me since 9/11. First, no matter what noble and carefully-crafted covenants humans make with each other, abject terror can and very likely will lead them to renounce them or to interpret them in “creative” ways that undermine their integrity. When that happens, it is of utmost importance for people in power to take responsibility for what has happened and to re-covenant together, humbly and in the spirit of reconciliation. When those in power model this moral leadership, the people can follow.

The second clarity I have about covenants since 9/11 is related to the first. It is simply this: covenants call us to live out the best of our natures, and will therefore necessarily be violated when people cannot or will not live into their best, whether for legitimate or for immoral reasons.

James Luther Adams, our great Unitarian theologian, reminds us that because we are not perfect beings, our covenants will not be perfect. He wrote that “[humans] are the only animal that makes promises. We are the “promise-making, promise keeping, promise-breaking, promise-renewing creatures.”

As I think about the myriad evils perpetrated by corrupt and contemptible individuals and institutions in the past century, my head spins. There is not a continent upon which we cannot find terrible oppression and devastation of people, of landscapes, of cultures, of human rights. I admit that I am complicit in some of it. Is this just the ancient story of human nature continuing as it has always been, and we just know more about it now thanks to mass communication? I don’t think so, but to make my argument would require another sermon.

I will argue this, though. As people of faith, we have an important choice to make and an important stance to take. I think it is this: in spite of evidence to the contrary, we must believe in the power of mutual promises, human covenants, to call forth something basically decent and honorable in the soul of a man, woman and child. We must believe, affirm and witness to the essential usefulness and goodness of making promises and crafting covenants and then earnestly trying to live by them.
Our covenants will not be perfect and neither will our living of them be, but if there is to be a center that holds in the madness of the modern world, it can only be found in the promise-making center in the soul of the human being.

Just words, you say? Not muscle-y enough?
I don’t think so.
I don’t think so.
There was a time when a solemn oath meant more than it does today.

I believe that there is a primordial desire in most men and women
to be regarded with respect and to be included in the honor roll of humanity.
Let’s keep faith with that. And let’s do more. Let’s bring that desire forth, let’s treat it as the greatest natural resource we have going for us, and let’s dare to build a vision of the future on the promise-making, promise-keeping form of life we call humanity.

(Note: This sermon was inspired in large part by Dennis McCarty’s article, “The Tyger & The Lamb,” UU World, Fall 2008.)

I didn’t write a book.
I didn’t start my dissertation.
I didn’t even get a book proposal finished. Hell, I didn’t start it.
I didn’t lose another ten pounds.
I didn’t become a great salsa dancer.
I didn’t read the books in my pile (but I read a different pile).

What I did do this summer was work really hard issues in therapy (and I don’t mind telling you that), adjust to having a very active puppy in my life, learn how to grill steak, go out salsa dancing twice, attend my first Zumba class on a personal dare, do a little bit of gardening, catch up with friends who had been neglected during my SweetieBang period, see a slew of films, watch Red Sox games, clean and organize my study (yes, praise the Lord I got THAT done), sleep a LOT, play outside, go to the beach and friends’ pools a few times, and feel my feelings — which actually takes a lot more energy than I have ever realized.

I continued to attend Weight Watchers meetings, held on tight and not easily to a 25-lb. weight loss, avoided retail therapy in favor of saving money for sabbatical travel, and blogged.

As the summer winds down, I give up on my big goals. I’m not going to achieve them. My will is strong but in this case, my soul had another agenda and its needs overruled those of my will and my ego. I don’t like it. I don’t like being out of control this way. I am generally a disciplined and ambitious person and when I set a goal, I accomplish it.

My soul, however, doesn’t care what my ego desires. It had a lot to communicate to me this summer, and it made me listen. There were entire weeks when I required almost absolute solitude. There were days I did nothing but sleep, listen, record what the insights I received in my journal, fix food for myself and the four-leggeds, let the dog out to pee and poop, and return to silent listening and journaling. I would make plans to DO something and find myself flapping helplessly around the house, absolutely unable to get myself together to accomplish whatever it is I had set myself to do.

This was definitely not my Summer of Love. It was, I suppose, my Summer of Prayer in some way. It was my Summer of Feeling, attending to my inner life after a prolonged period of trying very hard to figure out other people and to understand failed or profoundly disappointing relationships. It was a time to tiptoe closer to my essence than I have ever crept before, to genuinely question how much authentic regard I have — and have been encouraged to have — for that essence — and to ask if at the age of 42, I finally accept and embrace it.

I do.

I do, and I had no idea how far I have traveled emotionally and spiritually in order to be able to say that. This isn’t about self-esteem. It is about something far deeper: a soul giving itself permission to be at home in the world. This permission comes not from accomplishments or even from the praise, affirmation or love one receives from others. It is an existential resolution; a laying down of arms against oneself not out of self-esteem but out of justice and compassion.

The psychic and spiritual energy it took to finally and honestly acquaint myself with the truth of my essence, to deem it acceptable, and to sever relations with the Inner Critic who has dominated my inner life for most of my life, was tremendous. But it had to be done. For someone to make it her life’s work to preach the everlasting love of God and the inherent worth and dignity of every person to the world, and then fail to confront, challenge and exorcise a toxic Inner Critic who rules her spiritual life is one of the saddest and most common hypocrisies there is. I did not enjoy this work. For a woman of my flamboyant temperament, it is actually easier to indulge in energetic self-flagellation than to abide with the complexities of life without such distracting dramatics.

I am quietly grateful. First and foremost to my friends, for holding up the compassionate mirror for me all these years, and for helping to me to experience and know that being flawed and human is not something that deserves punishment, but rather understanding and love. I am grateful for the insights of Jungian depth psychology and for the teachings of Universalist and Unitarian Christianity, which brought me from intellectual curiosity about amazing grace to a direct experience of it. I am grateful for all the people and institutions that make personal spiritual growth a possibility for me, for the work of ministry that makes it a priority.

And I am grateful to you, dear readers, for participating in this fascinating 21st century experiment with me: to make private spiritual experience public almost as it is happening (rather than to share it years later as a memoir), to affirm the struggle we all share in real time, and to thereby strengthen and celebrate the interdependent web within which we are bound as a moment-by-moment, blessed phenomenon.

And on the same subject, or thereabouts, I had an interesting experience yesterday. A woman reader of my Beauty Tips for Ministers blog wrote me a long, impassioned letter about why I should turn away from the sinful ignorance of the Unitarian Universalist church and become a Catholic as she did.

Now, I have been very tired of Catholic-bashing in the UU church for some years now, as it seems to be a too-easily tolerated UU sport in my heavily-Catholic area, and one that does us no credit. So many of our members are come-outers from the Catholic church, it isn’t uncommon for lay sermons or introductions to start — or at least include –some casual put-down of the Catholic past one has left behind. When I am working on drafts with lay preachers and see this sort of thing, I encourage them to speak their truth in a less negative way, and we explore where their sarcasm or hostility is coming from so that they can acknowledge it, honor it, and not feel the need to bring that tone to the pulpit.
In my past six years in this parish, I have tried to speak against Catholic-bashing whenever I hear it by affirming the many beautiful aspects of the Catholic tradition, distinguishing between corrupt ecclesiastical structures and the life of Catholic faith, and reminding critics of the impressive history of Catholic social justice and liberationist theology.

I’d have a hard time mustering the energy to voice that defense today, though.

I said that the letter I received was “long and impassioned.” Actually, that’s not true. It was more like long, impassioned, condemnatory, insulting and hateful, but all of those latter qualities were wrapped up in such pious language and false agape that I wasn’t supposed to be able to ferret them out. God knows the writer herself likely believed she was writing in the spirit of love. But gads — I could smell her fear and loathing of personal and theological freedom emanating from the screen as I read it.

My reaction was interesting. I wasn’t so much angry as I felt genuinely horrified — and to be more specific, psychically threatened. The writer claimed to have my best interests at heart. She called me “honey.” It felt as though someone was advancing on me with a chloroformed rag in hand, ready to render me helpless and unconscious, speaking vicious threats in a sweet tone –trying to hypnotize me into waiting obediently to be delivered into oblivion. It was so, so creepy.

In my several years as a religion blogger I’ve had a good number of off-line letters from readers trying to get me to convert, repent, or just plain shut up. This was by far the creepiest, most misogynist, sex-phobic, deeply self-hating invitation to “come to Christ” I’ve had yet. And because it so insistently claimed that the Catholic Church was my only way to salvation, it left me with a very bitter anti-Catholic feeling. One part of me wants to flush that feeling out of my heart as quickly as possible. Another part of me wants to sit with it awhile, reflect on it, and use this experience as a way to better understand how some of my own parishioners come to my own church so profoundly spiritually wounded and angry.

Remember in the film “Silkwood” after Karen Silkwood had been exposed to plutonium and had to be thrown naked into the shower and scrubbed raw with metal brushes? After reading that letter, I definitely needed a Karen Silkwood scrub-down. And a drinks and tapas date with my Catholic friends to really and truly make it all better.