Chalice Lighting
A Lakota Prayer
Ate Wakantanka, Great Spirit,
To the east from whence cometh the rising of the sun,
And all thy living creation,
Thou hast added another day to my life,
For which I give thee thanks with all my heart.
Mitakuye Oyasin
We are all related.
Call to Worship
With worries and woes of our world weighing upon us,
we enter in.
With the wonders and joys of our friends and families elating our spirits,
we enter in.
With the awe and enchantment of this creation dancing upon our senses,
we enter in.
Enter into this beloved community of connection.
Draw strength from its past.
Find nourishment in its hope for the future.
Build a new creation with the person sitting beside you, behind you,
in front of you.
By your presence enter in and make this space a holy space,
and the world we all inhabit, a holy habitat.
Enter in.
-Jeffrey E. Brown
Sermon:
The Challenge of Religious Pluralism; The Big Answers
3. Native Religion: Alive With Spirit
Part I: Introductory Words
It was a long time ago, when the land and all of nature was sacred, when everything was alive with Spirit. Or, so it seemed to the indigenous, or Native people of our planet. They were the true inhabitants of the Garden of Eden.
The land is still with us, a little bruised and used. Much of Nature has been relegated to serving the needs of the more current Humans of our planet. The wilderness is less. Our eyes perceive Nature as Beauty, perhaps; as material for study and discovery, or Nature as alien force, but not Nature alive with Spirit. Not the same way now. Not easily anymore.
The religion of Indigenous Peoples was their life; there was no separation between nature and people – everything was connected by Spirit. They didn’t “do” religion, or go to services, or even think theology – their lives were religion; their ceremonies were their lives. The entire cosmos was, for them, infused with Spirit.
The cultures and religions of indigenous peoples may diverge, but what they have in common is a long-standing and profound connection to their land, a sense of the kinship of all life, and an intimate relation with ancestors, the spiritual world, and the Creator, or source of life.
Three religions that have developed quite directly from their Native roots are still with us. If you think of the religions “of the book,” – Judaism, Islam, and Christianity—the indigenous religions, from all parts of the world, are definitely “not of the book,” that is, all polytheistic religions. We go to West Africa for a tiny glance at the Yoruba religion; to Native Americans and their spirituality; and to modern followers of Earth-Centered Paganism.
Carolyn McDade, a contemporary Unitarian Universalist theologian and musician --- who, by the way wrote the music and lyrics of the most popular UU hymn, “Spirit of Life – wrote this call to revere the Earth
I hear in her words a life-long dream; that of developing, in our current lives, the reverence for all things that pervaded the sensibilities of our ancestors; the sense of deep belonging in the universe that can bring our world back to health.
“I have often wondered what it would be like if we dared to love this life – the fragile and the vulnerable, the endangered, daring to be humble before the magnitude of our beginnings, daring to lean our species into a stubborn and pliant wonder, until reverence shines in all that we do – until we live an economics of reverence, a theology of reverence, a politics of reverence – until it permeates education, development and health care, homes and relationships, arts and agriculture – a reverence for life, for planetary, social and personal wholeness.”
Dance Procession and Blessings
Sandra Kammann, Dance Director, Matt Jones, Drums, Amikaeyla Gaston, Vocals and the UUCA Dance Company. “Mother Earth, Father Sky.”
Spoken and Silent Meditation
Try this meditation in your garden. Try it when you read the latest report about the clear-cutting of the redwoods or the decimation of the Amazon rainforest. Don’t let it make you complacent, but use it as an antidote to despair. For the more we appreciate the miracle of breath, the more we can be inspired to protect the delicate balance that sustains life. And to do that, we will need all the creativity and imagination we can evoke.
Take a deep breath, filling your lungs completely, letting your belly expand and you inhale, pushing the air out fully when you exhale. Consider for a moment the miracle of air: nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other things suspended in a perfect mix that sustains life.
Your lungs are taking in oxygen. Your blood is carrying it to every cell of your body where it fuels the process by which food is transformed into energy/ Oxygen is itself a gift of the green things.
As they take the nourishing sunlight, they give off the oxygen that we breathe. As we breathe out, we give off the carbon dioxide that they need. Just by breathing we participate in the natural balance.
Without the gift of the green world, we cannot live. Breathe in with gratitude. Breathe out the conscious gift of love.
Breathe deeply. With every cell of your body, let yourself know the great creativity inherent in life, and inventiveness not bound to a brain, an imagination that transcends consciousness. Like a kaleidoscope, forming then shaking loose and re-forming patterns, life tries out shape after shape.
Air, that complex element, is life’s gift to life. It is the perfect mix of what we need, what the plants need. The delicate balance, sustained by life itself. Precious, primally important, sacred.
Breathe in, breathe out. Feel your part in that balance. Each breath is a gift of the ancestors. Each breath is a gift of the living world. Each breath is part of the balance.
Know that within every cell of your body lies great creativity, creativity that can turn light to food and food to energy.
Breathe in with gratitude. Breathe out with love.
-Margot Adler
[Silence]
Music – “Breaths” Words by Birago Diop and music by Ysaye M. Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock. Sung by Amikaeyla Gaston and Matt Jones.
Sermon, Part II
There certainly are pagans among us! This church has an officially affiliated Pagan group called Moon Fire. The Unitarian Universalist Association also has a national affiliate group called, CUUPS, or, the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And, in the early 1990’s, the UUA “officially” recognized Earth-Based religion as part of the Living Tradition Unitarian Universalism is drawn from.
At the bottom of the listing of UU Principles and Sources is this: “Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision.”
The words “Pagan, Neo-Pagan, and Paganism” are general terms for followers of Wicca, and other shamanistic and polytheistic Earth-based religions. In the 1980’s, Wicca was resurrected and transformed from the dark days of the hatred and murder of witches and misogyny in general, to a new and viable religion for women, or, better-put, a religion for Feminists, which does include men. The serious figure of the Goddess rose once again to bless our modern society with a symbol for equality between men and women, and started flourishing department for Women’s Studies in colleges and universities.
Pagan men’s groups will often pick up on the Earth-based symbolism of Green Man, and practice Native American ceremonies and spirituality.
Neo-Pagans and Wiccans brought an environmental awareness into their theology, along with feminism and goddess lore, experiential ritual and spirituality. Why, Starhawk even initiated popular summer “Witch Camps” in which women were taught to cast a circle and call in the four directions for ritual, to love their bodies, about to become political. I know there are some women in our congregation who went to Witch Camp – but I won’t tell!
Starhawk teaches us to listen to the voice of the land. She knows that “learning to hear this voice is a long process. To recognize the pattern is a task for more than one lifetime..” She writes, “If I were indigenous to this place, if I came from people that had been rooted here for hundreds of generations, my culture would have oriented me to this song from birth. Its rhythms would determine what I ate, what I did, what songs I sang, what ceremonies I performed. Its accumulated wisdom would alert me to any dangerous changes in the pattern. Any missing voices.”
She tells us that because we’re not indigenous, we’ve lost that deep connection to place; “we’ve even lost any real understanding of what that kind of bond may mean. “
Starhawk is always asking, How do we re-establish a deep connection with place? “Can we, as mobile, postmodern, overly literate, internet-addicted people, become indigenous? Can we do it in the city?”
“What if,” Starhawk wonders, “for our psychic and emotional health, we need interactions with plants, animals, and birds, with the complexity of a natural environment, especially when we begin tapping deeper layers of consciousness? We need that real connection with real earth in order to bring forth the energy that transformation and healing require.”
As part of our study of Native religions and how their teaching relates to our lives, I ask you to consider this question.
Starhawk wrote the following prayer invoking the spirit of the goddess. It happens to be in our hymnal. In it we celebrate the feminine principle in the universe, and seek the masculine-feminine balance once known and celebrated on the Earth.
Hear the words of the Star Goddess, the dust of whose feet are the hosts of heaven, whose body encircles the universe:
I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise and come to unto Me. For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe. From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return. Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold—all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals. Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you. And you who seek to know Me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the mystery: for if that which you seek you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.
Dancers, musicians – “Star Goddess”
The people of Nigeria belong to over 200 different ethnic groups, each with its own language, customs, and traditions. Of these groups, 10 constitute over 90% of the population. The Yoruba, the 3rd largest, inhabit parts of south-western Nigeria. The Yoruba number 12 million in Africa.
Ancient ancestors of today’s Yoruba people honored divine spirits called the orishas.. These deities are still honored today in Earth-based religious traditions in parts of Africa, North, Central, and South America. The orisha are archetypes, patterns of behavior. The spiritual power they possess is called ashe (ah-shay), “the-power-to-bring-things-to-pass.”
Three powerful orisha are named Oshun, Yemaya, and Oya. Oshun is said to come from the sparkling headwaters of the river. She’s fresh and quick, and quite alluring. The story goes that each of the male gods tried to make her his own but, because no goddess can be controlled, all have failed. Yemaya is the ancient mother goddess, also known as the Holy Queen of the Sea. With the people’s help, she provides them with the treasures of the sea. Oya is known as the Goddess of the Whirlwind. Her anger in the face of injustice is powerful.
These, and other, orisha, these divine spirits, are humanized in rich storytelling, made available to the people’s rich imagination. They can select an orisha that relates to their own lives and create personal power in the relationship. There are many personal and communal altars and great celebrations created for the orishas. Art, dance, and storytelling flourish.
African cultures have long been participatory societies in which complex ideas are communicated to and appreciated by ordinary people through art. Art and religion is fully integrated in Africa. Dance is, of course, an integral part of ceremony – stilling the rational mind as the body moves so that deeper wisdom emerges.
Native religions offers us a rich reminder that religion can be much more than a spectator sport. We can vivify our own world with the shapes and colors and movements … serious “play.” Not the play of children, but the creative and powerful play that gives the deepest joys and sorrows of our lives a chance to breathe, expand, move into other forms that teach us and heal us. Words and tears and friends who help and hold are only part of grieving. New dimensions can be opened in the song and dance and art that has its own unique and human way of approaching the mystery of living. The expressive arts are incredibly rich tools for our incredible range of ideas and feelings.
The native religious traditions in the huge continent of Africa, where it is thought that the cradle of all civilization began, have in common, spirituality in arts, dance, music, and wonderful story-telling.
What are your family’s stories. How often are they told? This is a way to honor those who came before – our ancestors – and highlight their unique paths to teach us – to keep us in touch with our roots. Not biographies! Stories! Colorful, incandescent stories that say who we are, as a celebration of life.
The orisha meet in nature, enliven the everyday, and make the Earth alive with spirit.
Music – Vocal “Yshe Oh Lua,” Swahili Blessing Chant, with drum
Part II – Native American
Native American religious practices sprouted from encounters with spirit, plants, and animals. But, these practices are not belief systems as are so many religions we know in modern culture. It is instead, a worldview.
The term, worldview, suggests that religions have to do with the ways in which people see the world – in cooperative or competitive terms. Their beliefs and practices form an integral and seamless part of their very being.
Native Americans have a profound and astute understanding of the relatedness of all beings. Instead of salvation, they express more of a morality of caring relationships with all beings and forces within the universe. In Native American languages today, there is no word for religion; it is an undifferentiated part of everyday life. They care little for institutionalized religions and beliefs constructed on the written word and revelation fixed in dogma.
A Native woman once compared Christianity with her sense of spirituality:
“If you take the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. Our bible IS the wind.”
The Lakota were the typical nomadic, equestrian Plains Indians who lived in tipis and hunted Buffalo. They have a story about the origins of their Sacred Pipe ceremony.
Two young men went out on a hunt, because the people were very hungry. They saw a beautiful woman on a hill and approached her.
The woman said, “I have come to help your people. This bundle I will take to your people, and I will tell them what is in it and how to use it.”
One day the beautiful woman came to the camp with the bundle, and opened it in front of the people. Inside was the Buffalo Calf Pipe that she gave to the people. She told them how to use it as an offering to Wakantanka, and she left.
At some distance, the people saw the woman change into the rare white buffalo which then vanished. From that day they knew the pipe was holy.
The pipe is filled with sacred tobacco; each grain represents part of the thousands upon thousands of things in the universe. The fire of the great universe is thought to make the person smoking it become all parts of the universe and be able to feel the Spirit’s presence within. The smoke rising is the visible prayer, and the entire creation is thought to rejoice, and all things are at peace with each other.
Before the smoking of the pipe occurs, a ceremony is conducted, making, again, the world and everything in it alive with spirit…
Peace Pipe Ceremony from the Lakotas. Dancers and musicians, which included this reading spoken by four dancers.
Now I light this Pipe, and after I have offered it to the powers that are One Power and sent forth a voice to them, we will smoke together. So I send my voice.
Great Spirit, you have always been, and before you no one ever was. You yourself, everything that you see, everything that has been made by you.
The star nations all over the universe you have finished.
The four quarters of the earth you have finished.
The day, and everything in that day, you have finished.
Great Spirit, lean close to the earth so you may hear the voice I send.
Great Spirit, while darkness comes over us, we pray in Thanksgiving for all
the blessings given us from the bounty of your love.
You, towards where the sun goes down, behold me! Thunder Beings,
behold me!
Great Spirit, we need your strength to heal us and the earth; to be our
friend every day. We will be patient and wait for your sign.
You, where the White Giant lives in power, behold me!
As I hold the sacred pipe in prayer, for you to see and hear, lead us, Great
Spirit, and shield us from evil spirits.
Here the sun shines continually, whence comes the day-star and the day, behold me!
Great Spirit, guide us so that we will not destroy your gifts, or be wasteful– but conscious of the needs of our companions at all time.
You, where the summers live, behold me!
You, in the distances of heavens, and eagle of power, behold me!
And you, Mother Earth, the only Mother, you have shown mercy to your children. Behold me!
Hear me, four quarters of the world – a relative I am!
Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is!
Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, so I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.
Great Spirit!
Great Spirit, all over the earth the faces of living things are all alike. With tenderness have these come up out of the ground. Look upon these faces of children without number and with other children in their arms, so they may face the winds and walk the good road to the day of quiet.
The voice I sent is weak, yet with earnestness have I sent it.
Hear me!
Now, my friends, let us smoke together so there may be only peace and good will
between us.
Benediction
Take these answers that are given you from the dark past of civilization.
Take what is good from their answers to life’s meaning.
Feel your senses touched by spirit
Through art, dance, music, story-telling.
Look to trees and streams and creatures as no more or less than you – animated, as you are, with the spirit of life.
Touch the earth, bless it, never, never forget your mother!
Find your place in the universe and learn it well.
Wherever you are is home
And the earth is paradise
Wherever you set your feet is holy land…
You don’t live off it like a parasite.
You live in it, and it in you,
Or you don’t survive.
And that is the only worship of Spirit there is.
-Wilfred Pelletier and Ted Poole
Go now, electric with Spirit—
Amen, SHALOM, and Blessed be!
