Chalice Lighting
Rev. Joan Gelbein
We light the flame of knowledge; may understanding be with us.
We light the flame of love; may caring be among us.
We light the flame of holiness; may the unifying spirit be within us.
Opening Words
“Long ago, it seemed so simple.
The universe was a three-storied apartment house,
with heaven on the top floor, full of gods and stars;
earth in the middle, full of people and animals and plants;
and hell in the basement, full of terrible and scary things.
God has nothing to do but sit up there watching us.
We were the center of attention.
We were his people.
Then came Copernicus.
He said that the sun did not move around the earth at all,
but was a fixed star. He said
it was the earth, and us on it, that did the moving,
and, worse, that the earth was just one of the planets that so moved,
one among many,
and not at the center of anything at all. …
In the last few decades,
we have been entering as new vision of the universe
as radical and revolutionary as the Copernican changeover,
and we still have not worked out what it all means,
either in theology
or in our view of what humanity is
and what we ought to do with our lives.”
--Judith Walker-Riggs
We gather here today to think upon these things.
Reading
– from A Joseph Campbell Companion, Selected and Edited by Diane K. Osbon
Could God exist if nobody else did? No. That’s why gods are very avid for worshipers. If there is nobody to worship them, there are no gods. There are as many gods as there are people thinking about god. When Mrs. Mulligan and the Pope are thinking about God, it is not the same God.
In choosing your god, you choose
Your way of looking at the universe.
There a re plenty of Gods.
Choose yours.
The god you worship
Is the god you deserve.
In the tribe, deities were
personifications of power.
In later years,
they became the source of power.
All the gods of the world are
metaphors, not powers.
Eternity
is a dimension
of here and now.
The divine lives within you.
Live from your own center.
Life is without meaning.
You bring meaning to it.
The meaning of life is
whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.
The separateness
apparent in the world
is secondary.
Beyond that world of opposities
is an unseen, but experienced,
unity and identity in us all.
In living the spiritual,
you cannot despise the earthly.
The purpose of the journey
is compassion.
When you have come past
the pairs of opposites,
you have reached compassion.
Awe is what moves us forward.
Myth deities personify energies
that are around is in nature.
The divine lives within you.
The separateness
apparent in the world
is secondary.
The very great physicist Erwin Schrodinger has made the same metaphysical point in his startling and sublime little book, My View of the World. “All of us living beings belong together,” he there declares, “in as much as we are all in reality sides or aspects of one single being, which may perhaps in western terminolgy be called God while in the Upanishads its name is Brahman.
Beyond the world of opposites
is an unseen, but experienced,
unity and identity in us all.
For we are all, in every particle of our being, precipitations of consciousness; as are, likewise, the animals and plants, metals cleaving to a magnet and waters tiding to the moon.
Today the planet is
the only proper “in group.”
… we are to recognize in this whole universe a reflection magnified of our own most inward nature; so that we are indeed its ears, its eyes, its thinking, and its speech – or, in theological terms, God’s ears, God’s eyes, God’s thinking, and God’s Word; and, by the same token, participants here and now in an act of creation that is continuous in the whole infinitude of that space of our mind through which the planets fly, and our fellows of earth now among them.
Meditation
Let there be silence,
Let there be reverence in our hearts;
Let all the sounds of earth flood over us
And be heard, because
We have known how to keep silence in ourselves
In order to receive that which only silence can make possible.
Let me drop down my burdens on the earth
And feel the strength of earth
Well up through me, flow upward from the ground
Through bone and sinew, into strength
As Antaeus did, knowing himself to be whole only
As he was one with the earth.
May my heart rest in silence
And let a thousand songs I never heard before
Pour into my ears.
Let me throw open the doors of my heart to all,
And as its answer, invitation find.
My heart will be full
And they who come be filled as well.
Let there be silence,
Let there be reverence,
Let there be welcome,
And there will be wonder, in our hearts.
--Robert T. Weston
Sermon – “Spirit and Substance”
First, I must apologize to any of you who read descriptions of this service in the last couple of issues of our newsletter, The Arlingtarian.
I said that I would be attending a Liz Lerman Dance Exchange Summer Institute this past week, called, “Spirit and Substance,” and that I’d work with some of the participants to create the service this morning. It just didn’t work out as initially intended. A combination of not being able to attend many sessions and becoming concerned about the unknown outcome in such a short time, made me pull back.
The one session I attended looked to me like a rich experience for learning, practice, and personal insights. The dancers created spiritual maps, located a story in their maps, and then wrote the story in their journals. They each, then, chose a sentence from their writing, and choreographed movement to express it. Another exercise was to choose a religious text and choreograph movement for that as well. In groups of four at a time, the dancers spoke and danced their words together. Very interesting!
I want to thank Celeste Miller, our Resident Artist from the Dance Exchange, for having invited me to participate, and as usual, open up the possibilities. And I’m grateful to the participants for allowing me to sit in and observe, and sorry I couldn’t get firmer or clearer on how to work with them. Perhaps some other time.
I was strongly drawn to the title of the Institute – “Spirit and Substance” – in the first place, so I chose to remain with the subject.
First thing to do is make a list of what is usually thought of, when those words are considered:
Substance is what is seen.
Spirit is what is hidden from view, or seen only with the inner eye.
The Sioux holy man, Black Elk, wrote:
I am blind and do not see the things of this world; but when the Light comes from Above, it enlightens my heart and I can see, for the Eye of my heart sees everything. The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye.
William Blake, artist, poet, mystic, sees with the eye of spirit:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Spirit is unverifiable; it is the mystery within and around us. Substance relates to the tangible, the proven. Substance is what is known, considered to be real, and available to our continued exploration and measurement. Spirit has to do with faith and trust; substance with experience and visible matter.
Spirit draws us into an inner journey of depth. It is related to spirituality and psychology, dreams and insights. Substance draws us forward on an outward quest.
It is action, discovery, self-confidence.
Rather like this sentiment in Walt Whitman’s poem:
Alone and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I am myself good fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
Spirit and Substance! Is truth to be found in either, or both?
That’s what religion is all about, isn’t it?
Millennial religion poses one of those BIG Questions: What is Real?
Is Reality what meets the eye, or, as in Metaphysics, the knowledge of being and knowing, can an assumption be made that Reality is more than what meets the eye?
Huston Smith, America’s great scholar of comparative religion, considers probing the nature of WHAT IS to be life’s most essential and moving inquiry. “I don’t think that’s simply a personal quirk,” he says, “but very close to the heart of what religion is. The underlying message of the great faith traditions is that there’s another reality radically different from the one that we normally experience daily. You may not believe that. If it is true, however, you may be certain that it’s difficult to understand—at least as hard as quantum mechanics.”
Now let’s switch gears closer to home. Here is a headline from The New York Times on Sunday, December 8, 1996, almost five years ago: “Unitarians Striking Chord of Spirituality; Response Reflecting a Sign of the Times.”
Several years ago, the article said, a shift was noticed “within the Unitarian Universalist Association, [which is] a small movement long known as a home for people who would put their faith in reason and social action, rather than in God.” … “Lately,” the author continues, “Unitarian clergy members say, their congregations are increasingly exploring ritual, forms of prayer and meditation, candle-lighting, and music drawn from Western, East Asian, [Native] American … and other religious sources.”
The author of the article also lets us know that we – Unitarian Universalists - are seen as a barometer by some social scientists; “a barometer of what is happening between organized religion and the larger society.” (Religion-as-Focus-Group!)
“Nancy Ammerman, a professor of sociology of religion at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, said that for decades, Unitarians had been known as no-nonsense humanists, believers in the human ability to tackle any problem, an approach that she said reflected the ‘dominant motif’ of Western culture since the Enlightenment. But now, Professor Ammerman said, ‘they are recognizing the degree to which we live in a very pluralistic society, and their incorporation of spirituality is very pluralistic.”
Denny Davidoff, who just stepped down after 8 years of being the highest elected lay official of the UUA, was quoted in the article as saying, “A lot of people, myself included, who had grown up in a God-based family and culture, and who walked away from a theology of hierarchy and patriarchy, found ways to redefine God. … The growing ease that Unitarians now feel in talking about God, has coincided with our willingness to go out and work with other people of faith.”
The author of the article illustrated some of our “Sunday rituals” by telling us that the minister of the Arlington Street Church in Boston encouraged people to light candles at Sunday services, and to share their hopes and anxieties before the congregation.
A minister of the Unitarian Church in Cambridge, MA is quoted at the conclusion of the article. He said that, as for the broader interest in spirituality, “Our denomination really romanced with humanism’ for decades.” He called that process of Humanism “very progressive and very daring” for its time. “Now,” he added, “there is a rich exploration of spiritual alternatives to humanism.”
Spirit and substance. Does this represent a dichotomy? The rational/The spiritual. Science/Religion. Substance/Spirit. Are they opposites? Are they quite separate entities?
As seekers of truth for the new millennium, we are invited to discard the simplistic dividing lines of old dualities. We live in a unified world; it’s the connections rather than the divisions that can and must engage our wisdom and imagination.
The job of being a barometer of what is happening between organized religion and the larger society may be a bit uncomfortable for UU’s, but someone’s got to do it, and we’re the best bunch for the job. We’ve always been heretics!
As with any transition to new forms for new times, we’ll need to use imagination, intuition, creativity, and our capacity to marvel. The whole planet is our home, and no one religion contains all truth. We knew that! Religious and scientific ideologies as well as inherited dualities need to be left behind. We are now, at the start of this twenty-first century, looking for the connections, and living our connectedness. We journey with the universe rather than in the universe. The new message is not about living in an evolving world, but co-evolving with it.
I hope we accept our call to being Bellwether or Barometer as we search for the underlying unity that almost surely will take a new religion and spirituality past divisiveness and fragmentation.
I think you already know where the newest theology is emerging; it’s emerging in science, in physics, and in cosmology. There is mystery and meaning inherent in quantum theory. It’s not an attempt to make science sacred, and it isn’t a new way of exploring the dialogue between science and religion. It’s more. It’s likely a whole new creative threshold that will push both the scientific imagination and the religious fascination to previously unknown frontiers.
Back to the fundamental religious question, “What is Real?” New knowledge may require futuristic perceptions. Quantum theory in its strictly scientific sense studies the nature of reality at the subatomic level, beyond the perceptions and comprehension of our daily observations.
Early proponents had strong intuitive hunches that this theory points to something much larger and more engaging, with far-reaching implications not only for the scientific pursuit itself, but also for our understanding of life at every level of existence.
Einstein started this with his special theory of relativity, which includes the idea that things can be understood only in relationship, never independent from or isolated from each other. Scientists in the 1920’s really began to push the frontiers of the human imagination; even Einstein couldn’t keep pace. The classical concept of a world of solid objects, governed by fixed laws of nature, came under fresh scrutiny. There began to emerge, a distinctive sense of an alive universe; and, instead of being isolated, everything seemed to connect, interact, and interrelate.
At a perceptual level, the theory evokes a new way of viewing and understanding our world. In essence, it states that everything we perceive and experience is a great deal more than it looks like; more than meets the eye! Common things we perceive as solid, like a chair or a tree, aren’t. At a subatomic level, they’re made up of the same particles that are in our bodies and in the whole of the universe.
At the quantum level, everything is about relationships and connections. And, if that weren’t enough, the world of particle physics teaches us that the human observer turns out to effect what is being observed.
We are participants in what we see, and probably influence what happens. We help bring reality into being. We are participants in a co-creative process that depends on communication and mutuality.
Life is not determined, but is affected, for better or worse, by the quality of our respect for its inherent processes, and our willingness to interact with all life forms in a gentle, non-exploitative, cooperative manner.
Now, that’s theology if I ever heard it, and it sets the stage for a whole change in our way of being in the universe. I don’t see how religion can ever be the same with our growing awareness of this radically new and original story of truth and meaning.
Everything is effected or caused by everything else. The poet Francis Thompson wrote, “Thou can’st not stir a flower without disturbing a star.”
Nothing in a quantum universe is predictable or determined. The quantum scientist makes sense of reality by using these kinds of words: Surprise, expectancy, wonder, creativity, beauty, and elegance.
In modern physics, the image of the universe as a machine has been transcended by the alternative perception of the universe as an indivisible, dynamic whole, whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process. We are so intrinsically a part of these patterns of cosmic process that you might say, along with Fritz Capra (who wrote “The New Physics” in the 1980’s), “There are no dancers; there is only the dance itself!”
Neils Bohr, physicist, said, “Anyone who is not shocked by Quantum Theory has not understood it.” His words are an imperative to get with the program – start reading if you haven’t already – start throwing out all dusty old ideas in your mind of dualities like spirit and substance. Get ready for a scary and beautiful new life!
Norman O. Brown once claimed that meaning is not in things but in between. It’s not in events, nor in objects, nor even in proven discoveries, that ultimate truth (or reality) lies, but in the process of seeking, searching, experimenting, and discovering.
We must get very adept at seeing the all in all, at loving thy neighbor as thyself, even, – dare I suggest? – at hugging trees! Feelings of cynicism, prejudice, and alienation are a waste of time. Let a whole new way of looking at reality wash over you, like a cleansing rain. We have to get used to these new ideas and talk about them together. What revitalized forms will our lives take as mystery becomes substance through the creative act of re-framing our perceptions?
The surface is scratched!
Substance beckons to the dancing spirit, and Spirit takes form in the mirror.
It’s time to come to the edge.
Appolinaire said, “Come to the edge.”
And they said, “We can’t, we’re scared.”
“Come to the edge.”
And they said, “It’s dangerous. We’ll fall.”
“Come to the edge.”
They did, and he pushed.
They flew.
So may it be!
Closing Words/Benediction
An e. e. cummings poem:
I thank You God for most this amazing
Day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
And a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
Which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(I who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should this tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Participate in the world – it is our birthright!
Go in peace,
Amen, Shalom, and Blessed Be
