COMING HOME:

Sept. 10, 2006

Frank Carpenter, D.Min.

St. John’s UU Church, Cincinnati, OH

 

MEDITATION: Let us be mindful.

 

In the quietness of this place, surrounded by beauty, let us be mindful.

 

Let us be mindful of ourselves sitting in a chair, a chair next to the chairs of friends;

 

Let us be self-aware, aware of our feelings, our hopes and fears which gather us here today; let us recall the victories and failures of the struggle for existence; let us hold in our thoughts the victims of Katrina and the attacks of 9/11;

 

Let us be mindful of the gratitude we feel, thankful for the teachers and advisors of our Religious Exploration program who initiate our children into the pursuit of truth;

 

Let us be mindful of the love that surrounds each of us, young and old in this place;

 

Let us be mindful of resting once again in our spiritual home.

 

Let us be still.

 

Peace be with you.  Amen.

 

 

SERMON.

 

Welcome! It’s good to welcome you here today.  Today we gather together once again. Today we begin our worship at 11:00 o’clock.  Once again, today Cathy Roma and the choir led us in singing.  Here once again we begin our Religious Exploration Program, with Barbara, Mary and the RE Associates. We begin a new church year. 

 

Welcome!  Welcome home.  This is your spiritual home, a hint of paradise.  Welcome home!

 

Coming home is deeply spiritual.  Coming to our true home means we are restored to our true self.  We know again the journey of being true to ourselves. We are recalled once more to that which we have committed our lives. Here we ask again what gives our lives meaning.  We respond: our quest for peace and justice, a better world for our children

 

Howard Thurman was one of the great spiritual Americans of the last century.  He was the spiritual guide of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In these words he gives the finest description of our spiritual home:

 

In the quietness of this place, surrounded by the all-pervading presence of the Holy, my heart whispers:

 

Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in good times or in tempests,

 

I may not forget that to which my life is committed.

 

Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve.

 

Our spiritual home is the place we come to be restored to what is most true in our lives.  Our outer spiritual home is the place we gather to be restored to our inner spiritual home, our true selves.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in ‘Self-Reliance’ “Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.” So we gather here to consider the facts of our lives from that highest point of view, that perspective of our true selves.  What gives our live meaning, we ask.  And the response comes as we sit mindfully, true to ourselves

 

Are you not often distracted from yourself, from the vision you have of hope and peace?  I know I am.  Nothing like a lot of email to tempt me away from the clear path I would have.  I get an email asking if I will fast for peace and justice.  I’m not against it.  But will it be a distraction.  I will walk this after noon on the annual 9/11 peace walk.  That is my commitment.

 

So much in our 24/7 culture is getting to us. A recent study reports that "Blackberries and mobile phones mean we are always on call. It is hard to slow down and people struggle to find the time to relax.” More and more our lifestyles lead us away from our true selves.  We are busy, busy, busy.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5325182.stm

 

So I believe that we need a place to gather, to know that others seek as we do, to be restored to our rightful minds, to be recalled to our high resolve, to our true self.

 

But there are many things which drag us away.  It’s not just the rushing to work.  It’s also fear, fear and violence.  We wonder if there is not an increasing violence in our world.  Here as we gather the day before the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and on the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we are mindful of all that shakes our world, all that can go wrong.

 

Such events can throw us off our balance.  Fear fogs up our path to our spiritual home. Frustration at what we can do to help may blind us to our true selves.

 

Whatever our response, if our fear or frustration mislead us, leads away from our spiritual home, they have won.  We need once again to seek that place of which the choir sang:

 

in the quietness, there is grace,

in the quietness there is joy,

in the quietness there is peace,

in the quietness there is hope,

in the quietness there is faith

in the quietness there is love

 

Each of us will have our different response.  The main thing is to recall to ourselves who we are and what we understand ourselves to be about.  Consider just the phrase September 11th.  It seems to have but one meaning.  But let us recall that September 11th was written down in calendars and history books long before airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

 

Indeed, tomorrow, September 11, 2006 has great significance.  Tomorrow is the 100the anniversary of one of the most important popular movements in recent times.  On this date, September 11th, 1906.Mohandas Gandhi stood up. Speaking before 3,000 Indians gathered at a theater in Johannesburg, Gandhi organized a strategy of nonviolent resistance to oppose racist policies in South Africa. Satyagraha was born and since then, it has been adopted by many around the world to resist social injustice and oppression.

 

Gandhi used it in India to win independence from the British. The Reverend Martin Luther King used it in the United States to oppose segregation and Nelson Mandela used it in South Africa to end apartheid.

 

Recently, Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, said of the philosophy of non-violence.

 

Satyagraha is the pursuit of truth. My grandfather believed that truth should be the cornerstone of everybody's life and that we must dedicate our lives to pursuing truth, to finding out the truth in our lives. And so his entire philosophy was the philosophy of life. It was not just a philosophy for conflict resolution, but something that we have to imbibe in our life and live it all the time so that we can improve and become better human beings.

 

On this Sept 11th, let us hold in mind that it is the one hundredth anniversary of this pursuit of the truth.  I ask you to spend some time tomorrow recalling Gandhi and the 100th anniversary of this pursuit of truth.

 

This pursuit of truth has been integral to our Unitarian Universalist living tradition.  This morning we honored Barbara and Mary’s ten years of service.  It was service to our children and youth.  It is also ten years of service to truth, as they seek with our teachers, to initiate them into the pursuit of truth. 

 

This truth, as Gandhi knew so well, is finally spiritual truth.  It is truth rooted in our deepest being, truth which we are aware of when we are mindful of our presence in the world, where we are and how we are with the world and others. It is this direct experience of our own truth which is the possibility of all truth

 

I urge you not to dismiss this pursuit of truth lightly.  We should never discount the disagreement in our society, the so-called culture wars, in which the pursuit of truth is rejected as the actions of the weak and confused.

 

But two examples.  In her book, KINGDOM COMING, THE RISE OF CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM, Michelle Goldberg recounts how many reject the pursuit of truth.  She tells us, for example, that Pam Stenzel has served on a twelve person panel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to help implement abstinence education for schools.  In 2003 at the Reclaiming America for Christ conference, Stenzel said she could be honest with those gathered.  She related how on a plane flight the man she was seated next to asked her what she did.  Responding she promoted abstinence education, he asked if abstinence worked.

 

She regarded the question laughable.  “What he’s asking is does it work.  You know what? Doesn’t matter. Cause guess what.  My job is not to keep teenagers from having sex.”  She turned angry and told the gathering that her job was to keep children from shaking their fists in the face of God. (Goldberg, 135f)

 

What can truth mean in such a discussion?

 

Closer to home, Citybeat for the end of August has a story entitled “Fake Followers.”  It’s about the most recent attempt to overturn the City of Cincinnati’s anti-discrimination law for gays and lesbians.  The group petitioning to end the anti-discrimination law dropped its campaign when challenged by Citizens to Restore Fairness.  Gary Wright was reviewing the petitions and saw the name of a woman living in Prospect Hill he knows and could not believe she’d sign the petition.  Upon calling her, she told Wright she hadn’t the foggiest idea what he was talking about and never signed the petition.  The names on the petition included one Fidel Castro.  Gary Wright fears they have lost their moral bearings.  For what does truth seem to mean?

 

The very core of Gandhi’s non-violence campaign, Satyagraha, is about holding to the truth.  This is what we are called to today.  We come to this, to our spiritual home, to be recalled to the importance of holding to the truth.

 

This is not unique to us, nor a new teaching.  Within the Buddhist tradition we find “Be ye lamps unto yourselves; be your own confidence.  Hold to the truth within yourselves as to the only lamp.”  (679)  Yes, hold to this truth within you.  To your own self be true.

 

One of the great spokespersons of our tradition, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote an essay entitled ‘Self-Reliance.’  A lot of people are confused.  Emerson was not talking about relying on your lonely you. For Emerson meant the deep self, the self that merges with the divine.  Emerson was not talking about ego-reliance, but self-reliance. 

 

In that essay Emerson gave voice to the great daring of our liberal religious movement.  He recounted,

 

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, "What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?" my friend suggested,--"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.

 

There are times when we have to be true to ourselves; times to overcome the fear so pervasive in our culture.  Speak out for truth, peace and justice.  Perhaps you join with the Women in Black each Monday evening at Vine and Central to protest an illegal war.  Perhaps you sacrifice your time and go to meet your children’s teachers.  Each in our way, each in our own time, we work to make a better world for all.  With Thurman, with Gandhi, with Emerson, we seek to be true to ourselves.

 

Herein is our daily paradise of which Thich Nhat Hanh spoke.  If we are mindful, if we will live with ourselves from day to day, we live in our spiritual home.  We come here to be recalled to our high resolve, to be recalled to what in us is true.

 

Welcome. You have come home.  Here you may be true to yourself. Each act which restores you to yourself is holy; each moment of mindfulness is sacred.