“A LANGUAGE OF REVERENCE”

A Sermon Delivered to West Seattle Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
September 26, 2004
Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan

Protagoras was a Greek philosopher and teacher in 400 BC.  His philosophy focused around a central doctrine akin to our UU commitment to freedom of belief.  The Protagoras doctrine, simply stated says that nothing is absolutely good or bad, nor true or false; each individual is the final authority of their own truth. In that sense he said:  “Man is the measure of all things.” 
Here is a short essay from Protagoras on reverence being an essential quality for all of us, for the good of the social order.

 Protagoras, selections
Now man, having a share of the divine attributes, was at first the only one of the animals who had any gods, because he alone was of [kin to the Gods] their kindred; and he would raise altars and images of [the gods]them. [Man} He was not long in inventing articulate speech and names; and he also constructed houses and clothes and shoes and beds, and drew sustenance from the earth. Thus provided, mankind at first lived dispersed, and there were no cities. But the consequence was that they were destroyed by the wild beasts, for they were utterly weak in comparison of them, and their art was only sufficient to provide them with the means of life, and did not enable them to carry on war against the animals: food they had, but not as yet the art of government, of which the art of war is a part. After a while the desire of self-preservation gathered them into cities; but when they were gathered together, having no art of government, they evil intreated one another, and were again in process of dispersion and destruction. Zeus feared that the entire race would be exterminated, and so he sent Hermes to them, bearing reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of cities and the bonds of friendship and conciliation. Hermes asked Zeus how he should impart justice and reverence among men:-Should he distribute them as the arts are distributed; that is to say, to a favoured few only, one skilled individual having enough of medicine or of any other art for many unskilled ones? "Shall this be the manner in which I am to distribute justice and reverence among men, or shall I give them to all?" "To all," said Zeus; "I should like them all to have a share; for cities cannot exist, if a few only share in the virtues, as in the arts. And further, make a law by my order, that he who has no part in reverence and justice shall be put to death, for he is a plague of the state."

Rev. Victoria Safford
 “What if there were a universe…that began in shining blackness, out of nothing, out of fire, out of a single, silent breath, and into it came billions and billions of stars, stars beyond imagining, and near one of them a world, a blue-green world so beautiful that learned clergypersons could not even speak about it cogently, and brilliant scientists in trying to describe it began to sound like poets…What if there were a universe in which a world was born out of a smallish star, and into that world (at some point) flew red-winged blackbirds, and into it swam sperm whales, and into it came crocuses, and wind to lift the tiniest hairs on naked arms in spring…Into that world came animals and elements and plants, and imagination, the mind and the mind’s eye.

If such a world existed and you noticed it, what would you do?  What song would come out of your mouth, what prayer, what praises, what sacred offering, what whirling dance, what religion, and what reverential gesture would you make to greet that world, every single day that you were in it?”   

SERMON
The President of our Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. Bill Sinkford, tells us his story.  He is sitting by the hospital bed of his son, not knowing if his son would live or die after a drug overdose.  Bill has been a humanist all his life.  But here in this hospital room he lowers his head and begins to pray.  Praying first the selfish prayers for forgiveness…for the time not made, for the too many trips, for the many things unsaid, and, sadly, for a few things he said that should never have passed his lips.  But as the night darkened, he finally finds the pure prayer.  The prayer that asked only that his son would live.  And during the night he feels he is being held by a loving universe; he feels he will continue to be held no matter what the morning will bring.  His son survives. 

This was a life changing experience for Bill, one that would lead to his telling this story in a talk he gave in Dallas three years ago.  In that talk he raised some questions.  He wondered how to speak of his experience in the context of his UU faith.  He found he didn’t have the words to speak of that experience if he were to just search our UU principles.  The best words he could name for that force that seemed to enfold him were Spirit of Life, and God—and those words weren’t in the principles.  He called us to consider Professor David Bumbaugh’s (Professor from UU Meadville-Lombard Theological School at University of Chicago) call for a new humanist Language of Reverence.  He concluded that we need some language that would allow us to capture the possibility of reverence, to name the holy, to talk about human existence in the context of all that is. 

If we look at our principles, we find seven important value-ful statements which serve as guides for our lives.    They are full of ethics, processes and goals—they are the values that the world and the earth need if they are going to survive.  They state clearly our values for religious freedom, for human life, for diversity, for the interdependence of all life, …for the beauty of earth and splendor of the skies.   I’m proud of the principles.  But we need more than those values to complete our religious lives. 

Walter Royal Jones, the person who chaired the committee that guided the process for writing and adopting the principles wondered aloud “how likely is it that many of us would, on our deathbed, ask to have the Principles read to us for solace and support?”  

A former UUA President, Gene Pickett answered by saying “they describe a process for approaching the religious depths but they testify to no intimate acquaintance with the depths themselves.”  They point us in a direction, but they do not take us there.  As the Buddhists say, don’t confuse the pointing finger for the moon.

And I would add that the principles shy away from any language that names the holy—and that’s because when they were written and amended and adopted in a democratic process, we had no consensus on how to name the holy.  The Christians and humanists and atheists and agnostics could not agree.  Some wanted God language, some did not.  So we agreed to add a list of sources that are common religious paths from which Unitarian Universalists gain wisdom.  On the list are wisdom from humanist, Jewish and Christian teachings as well as wisdom from all the world’s religions.  And another source:  the words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love. 

But can you name the first of our sources?  The first one we list is this:   the direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.  Here it is that we do clearly name the importance of reverence in our lives.

But each of our listed sources of wisdom are choices for spiritual paths.  Spiritual paths lead us to know and to remember daily what our deepest convictions are about who we are as humans, how we fit into the universe, what our ultimate commitments should be, and about “what is so precious to us that we cannot betray it without losing our own souls.”  (David Bumbaugh)

As Unitarians (and I will leave the Universalists out of this critique) during the last century, we have set aside all but the intellectual mind part of spirituality.  Concentrating on debunking dogma and relying only on reason and science, we have forgotten an essential part of our heritage--the spirituality of our Unitarian Tran…scen…dentalists, who taught about our intuitions and our sense of deep connection with all life.

Humanist David Bumbaugh says—“We have manned the ramparts of reason and are prepared to defend the citadel of the mind, but in the process of defending, we have lost…the ability to speak of that which is sacred, holy, of ultimate importance to us.” 

I believe we reached this point for very good reason.  Human beings have long experienced deeply spiritual experiences.   Words were used to speak of those human experiences—such as a feeling of being held by a power greater than ourselves, or a feeling of oneness, or a connection with loved ones after death--and words tried to express our imagination of how this amazing world could have come into being …And we developed metaphorical stories to express our best imaginations about our wonder.  

We had words ike God, Eden, heaven and hell.  But as time and politics ensued, church hierarchy committed the act of what theologian Alfred North Whitehead called “misplaced concreteness.”  Over time, words lost their evolving metaphorical depth of meaning, and had become concrete—rigid and unchanging.  --those words became defined, boxed, packaged and sold for the profit of the church, the state, and the power of individual men.  So, for good reason, our liberal religious spiritual ancestors rejected those words.  They were no longer large enough words to express our sense of wonder and awe at this world.  They were no longer large enough!  They had been diminished through dogma.  They had become defined for us, leaving our human sense of imagination straightjacketed.  Some of us remember these rigid definitions from our childhood catechisms.

It was good and healthy for us to reject these rigid words.  For they contributed theologies that denied our growing scientific findings, theologies that disrespected our minds, that demeaned humans by labeling us as depraved, and that took responsibility away from us to work together to be our own salvation and trustees of the earth.   

But I fear, as does Bill Sinkford, that we have thrown out the moon when we rejected the finger pointed at the moon.  We have thrown out the language without providing a way to speak to each other about the reverence we feel when we look up into the sky and see the solar system, or when our child was born, or when we stand 12 inches from a hummingbird, or when we enter Westminister Abbey, or when we held the hand of a loved one as they died.  Reverence—that feeling of being in the presence of a life force that is beyond the mere knowledge of the table of chemical elements.  Reverence, that sense of amazement for the endless beautiful species in the world.  Reverence, that sense of wonder at how particle physics leads us to ask if the whole earth isn’t one living breathing conscious being.  Reverence, a sense that there is something beyond the mere powers of humanity, something in which we live, and move and have our being. 

Reverence is an experience that involves our whole self.  We not only think about the possibilities of our existence, we not only imagine that the earth is a living sphere and we are mere elements of it, but we feel it.

Reverence is a product of our wholeness, our mind AND our gut intuitive feeling of connection—mind and feeling working together. 

Our mind committing to humility, knowing that we don’t really know as much as we think we know, knowing that what we will soon know may give us a whole new understanding of the world, knowing that arrogance is the height of ignorance.  Those are ways the mind approaches a state of reverence.  But is is more than mind.  Our whole being is involved in reverence.  Our body conveys to us a reverential feeling in our chest and gut.

Reverence-- to feel awe and gratitude for what lies outside our control--truth, beauty, life and death.  As Paul Woodruff said in his book Reverence said, “Simply put, reverence is the virtue that keeps human beings from trying to act like gods.”  

Reverence is a virtue that the Greeks saw as essential in human relations.  Reverence for each other was a respect for each person’s life and being.  As we heard in our Protagoras reading earlier, Zeus sent Hermes to earth to rectify the evil deeds that humans foisted upon each other.  Hermes was instructed to distribute reverence and justice to all humans, for cities cannot exist if only a few share in these virtues.  How desperately our world needs this sense of reverence today—we have lost touch as a people and as nations with our sense of reverence for all life.  And so we kill and deplete all that lives on earth. 

Reverence is available for all of us, regardless of our religious beliefs, for reverence is beyond dogma.  Whether you are Christian, atheist, agnostic or Buddhist, or any other faith, or no labeled faith, reverence is a destination on your spiritual path. 

I turn again to David Bumbaugh who writes, “The Humanist language of reverence…provides a story rooted not in the history of a single tribe or a particular people, but in the sum of our knowledge of the universe itself.  It gave us a doctrine of incarnation which suggests not that the holy became human in one place at one time to convey a special message to a single chosen people, but that the universe itself is continually incarnating itself in microbes and maples, in hummingbirds and human beings, constantly inviting us to tease out the revelation contained in stars and stones and every living thing.”

So what is the Language of Reverence?  It may be the old word of God reclaimed to be a three letter metaphor for the amazing mystery of life and universe, we ought to feel free to use this reclaimed word here in this fellowship to express this amazing mystery that we live; or newer words such as “Great Mystery”, “Spirit of Life,” “the divine”    It may be using the words “awe” and “wonder” for the power of life that is beyond us, and the occasional deep intimate feeling of connection. 

Ultimately though I believe that reverence is an experience that doesn’t lend itself well to spoken language.  It is not just a mind experience but a full body experience as well, and so it is non-verbal.  We feel reverence in our flesh.  As such, reverence is expressed in prostrations in Temples.  It is felt and communicated in the silence of cathedrals, and in sacred spaces we create… and in nature.   It is conveyed in sacred touch when all that we wish to share is beyond words and the trusted hand of a friend shares our wonder.  Reverence is ultimately in the temples of our own hearts and in the connection of our hearts with one another. 

This is what enriches our lives, and it is this that we seek on our deathbeds.

I will close with these words from a Midwest UU, Patrick Murfin:
 “Cathedrals” 
 We have seen the great cathedrals,
  stone laid upon stone,
  carved and cared for
  by centuries of certain hands;
seen the slender minarets
  soar from dusty streets
  to raise the cry of faith
  to the One and Only God;
seen the placid pagodas
  where gilded Buddhas squat
  amid the temple bells and incense.
We have seen the tumbled temples
  half-buried in the sands,
 choked with verdant tangles,
 sunk in corralled seas—
 old truths toppled and forgotten.
We have even seen the wattled huts,
 the sweat lodge hogans,
 the wheeled yurts,
 and the Ice Age caverns
 where unwritten worship
 raised its knowing voices.
But here we build temples in our hearts.
Side by side we gather.
We mix the mortar of the scattered dust
  of the Holy of Holies
  with the sacred water
  of the Ganges;
lay Moorish alabaster
  on the blocks of Angkor Wat
  and rough-hewn Stonehenge slabs;
plumb Doric columns for strength of reason,
  square them with stern Protestant planks,
  and illuminate all with Chartres' jeweled windows
  and the brilliant lamps of science.
Yes here we build temples in our hearts.
  Side by side we come,
  scavenging the ages for wisdom,
  cobbling together as best we may
  the stones of a thousand altars, leveling with doubt,
  framing with skepticism,
  measuring by logic,
  sinking firm foundations in the earth
  as we reach for the heavens.
Here we build temples in our hearts—
  a temple for each heart,
  a village of temples,
  none shading another,
  connected by well-worn paths,
  built alike on sacred ground.

May it be so.  Amen.