Sermon June 3, 2001

SERMONS

Our 50th Anniversary

Rev. Mary Katherine Morn
June 3, 2001

Ours may well be the longest observance ever of an anniversary ever. The actually anniversary was over a year ago. We began our celebration last August with monthly observances of each of the five decades in our history. We finally got to the 1990’s in February. So, it is no longer our 50^th anniversary—but we’re not quite finished yet. We felt it would be fitting for you to hear all the music Jason wrote for our anniversary together in one service. Thank you, Jason, and choir for your hard work.

I also wanted an opportunity to look forward from this particular vantage point. Now what? One thing that comes to mind is we can get back to the present. As the worship committee and I met last week to review the year and do some planning for next year they reminded me we’ve done a lot of history this year. I’d already almost forgotten. I like doing history. It grounds me. It reminds me of the strength and the struggle that I come from.

But all of the current literature in the field of spirituality agrees: being in the present moment is where it’s at. So, now that we’ve finished this anniversary celebration, maybe we can get on with that. The present.

I appreciate the admonition to live in the present. It helps me live well. It helps me be more than a spectator in my life. When I remember to be open to the moment, right here, right now, I can actually see it and experience it. This is an important key to living well, I believe. And yet this morning I’d like to explore a slightly different approach.

There is something in this “present moment” philosophy that doesn’t quite match my experience of living. The present moment is still. There’s a certain stasis there. It is a moment. It’s almost as though we could see it—sitting out there on its own. What’s missing for me is movement. I’m not sure there is such thing as a present moment, really. What’s real is the movement from this moment to the next and the next. That’s what I live. It’s under construction, as they discovered in the story of “Answer Mountain.”

And yet it is not only our contemporary writers on spirituality who reinforce our somewhat static understanding of reality. The metaphysics we inherited from Plato (which was appropriated by Christianity) saw the world in two arenas: the experience of change, time and real relations, this world we know and experience, and (secondly) the timeless, changeless, unrelated “Being.” In Plato’s words, the first is “the twilight of becoming and perishing,” and the second is “the absolute and eternal and immutable.” The first world, the inferior one, is not actually even real. The world we know, the experience of growth and change, birth and death, and relationships with one another, this experience finally has no significance. All that really matters, according to classical metaphysics, is what IS. The unchanging, timeless essence of reality. The already-created.

This ancient thought has translated, of course, into the understanding of God that so many embrace today. From Aristotle many Christian thinkers imagined a God who is Being. A God who does not change, is eternal. God with a one-way relationship with Creation. A God not touched by the world we know. As early as the sixteenth century, though, there was some challenge to this kind of idea of God. It came from Unitarian Fausto Socinus. He was the leader of a liberal religious community in Rakow, Poland. We are fortunate that the folks in Rakow had access to a press—and so his ideas touched many, including Unitarians two centuries later in this country. One of the more surprising things you will find in Socinus is his way of conceiving God. He believed that God is not immutable, but rather God is affected by the choices we make. That our process of becoming affects what God is. That God changes. This was truly revolutionary for the sixteenth century (and probably the twenty-first). Think of the ways this kind of understanding of God affects our understanding of who we are. Free, yes. But even more than that. We are partners in creation. Some would call us co-creators. Co-creators with God. And what is real is the process of becoming. The movement in our lives.

In the early twentieth century, Alfred North Whitehead, among others, suggested that “being” is not the essence of reality—rather, “becoming” is. Process philosophy and Process Theology are important correctives to a metaphysics that manages to freeze our human experience. If not negate it altogether. In Process thought we create a new synthesis each moment by our choices and experiences of the rest of what is becoming. Change alone is unchanging. Yet, we know, we experience constancy in our lives. Our lives are a series of events: decisions, actions, thoughts, what have you, that are in a constant state of movement in the context of previous decisions, actions, thoughts. In each decision, each action, each thought, we become something different. The essence, then, of who we are is captured, not in a moment in time, not in a substance, but in a process. Movement.

This is true for us as individuals and it is true for the institutions in our lives. It is true for this congregation. The essence of this congregation is not this or that person or event from its history. It is not enough to say the essence is what our mission statement says today. Or what our vision statement says about what we hope for the future. All of those elements come together to form an institution, the essence of which is captured our process of becoming.

I make this distinction sometimes when talking about Unitarian Universalism. Unitarian Universalism is not so much about content, about what we believe about this or that, it is much more about process. About how we live our lives. For me it is active, engaged. That’s a distinction that’s very important to me.

This is a great metaphysics (metaphysics attempts to explain what is) for religious liberals. We believe in change, in the growth of things. And we believe in our own power to affect change. We don’t think it is our duty to surrender our power to create the world to some other authority. (We have to be careful, here, of course. This is where we liberals can get in trouble. Sometimes we believe humanity ALONE has this power.)

So how might all of this affect the way we look forward to another fifty years in this congregation’s life? If I were convinced by Plato’s argument about “being,” I might try to suggest substantively, in content, what the essence of who/what we are is, and then demonstrate how that was true for us in the beginning, describe how it is true for us now, and project into the future how it will be true for us then. This could very well be a useful exercise. It is how we often reflect on things. It feels constricting, though. In Taoism it is said, The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things.” So the essence, what is eternally real, is (at least partially) lost in naming. Like process thought, Taoism suggests that substance is not essentially real. For Taoism what is real is the Way.

So, if we would like to get closer to what is essentially real, we might try another exercise in looking forward. We cannot predict what the future holds. Surely a fifty-year-old has learned this much. I believe this fifty-year-old institution has also learned the value of being open to inevitable change and the importance of recognizing its own role in creating the world. As I’ve already said, these presumptions under gird our liberal way. And with these presumptions the question shifts from who are we, and who will we become, to something like: “how can we offer ourselves, our congregation, to Life in the most open and vital way?” Looking forward requires us to examine the ways we engage, or do not engage, with Life. To examine our capacity to connect with Life, the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.

In light of these reflections about essential reality, we can see that our connection with the web of life cannot be captured in a moment in time. Let’s go back to the language I set aside earlier. This “present moment” can feel captured. But many who use this designation understand the present moment much more broadly than that. They might say within this present moment are all past moments and all future moments. That is as important a kind of connection as our connection with the life that shares our planet with us right now.

We affect and are affected by the life we share this time with and life that has been and life that will be. All of this forms the web of existence of which we are a part.

It’s the connection with our past and our future and our present that makes us vital. When we connect with this essence, we are engaged in a way that is truly alive. The messages we receive, even from traditional religions, tell us to disconnect, to isolate, forget the past, live for now. They tell us this is our reality and our destiny. But that is not true. When we make the connections we can feel the spark of life in us. When we make the connections we can feel the power of our own participation (both humble and significant) in creating the world.

It’s a bit of a jumble in my head. Of course it is this present moment. Here and now we make choices that create the world we live in. The movement, though, is where the living is. Being an institution, or individuals, that have grown in maturity to a place where we can find a way of being that welcomes, accepts, invites, is conducive to the Way, the Tao, to Life, to Flow, to God, to Process—then we have realized our potential. It will take many forms, of course. Sometimes we will feel beaten down. Sometimes we will believe we have more power than is possible. It is the openness and vitality of our congregation that will determine our ability to use our power well. To answer Life with Life.

May these next fifty years find us engaged. May we look alive to all who see us. May we use our power without abusing it. May we be humble without relinquishing our responsibility. And fifty years from now, may those who follow us be assured that we knew them and they mattered to us.