What is Spirituality?

I developed the following remarks for the worship service at the Sugarloaf Congregation of Unitarian Universalists on Oct 7, 2012.  They are intended, in five to seven minutes, to answer the question “What is Spirituality?”  I’m grateful to Carol Plummer, the lay service leader, for the invitation to participate.  The SCUU web site can be found here: http://scuu.org/site/.

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Most of you know my wife Linda.  We met here at Sugarloaf.  When we were first getting to know one another we had a conversation in which Linda said:  “I don’t do spiritual.”  My response to her was something like “But you play music.  To me music is spiritual.”  And she said “I think of it that way too!”, and we talked about how at a contra dance the band will shift the music up a key and there’s this surge of energy and the whole thing becomes more alive and spirited.  Now I’m sure that when we call a dance or a person or a conversation “spirited” we mean something different than if we call a dance or a person or a conversation “spiritual”, but I’m also sure that the connection in language isn’t an accident.  I think that most of us who are interested in spirituality and spiritual practice seek in part to be more alive, more spirited.

Two sayings come immediately to my mind in this connection.  One is a phrase placed on the lips of Jesus by the evangelist John, chapter 10 verse 10: “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  The other is from Joseph Campbell, from the well known interviews with Bill Moyers. Campbell says: “People tell us that we’re seeking a meaning for life.  I don’t think that’s what we’re seeking.   I think that what we’re seeking is the experience of being alive.”

I’m going to segue this into the big ugly, that big looming thing that so disturbs and frightens most of us: our inevitable personal death.  For Christians the words of Jesus just quoted can cover that base as well.  Christianity, like most religions, offers the promise of life that goes beyond the death of the body in this world.  Joseph Campbell has a teaching on this score too.  For me it’s a very compelling teaching and a cornerstone on which much may be built.  Moyers asks him “What about the dark gate?” and Campbell says “Oh, that’s no problem at all.  That a question of whether you identify with the light bulb, or whether you identify with the light, of which the bulb is merely a carrier.”

And I think that here we’ve reached the nib of the question.  I think that spiritual seekers almost universally seek a connection with something greater than the embodied self, with the light rather than merely the bulb.  We seek a connection that can free us from the prison of separate, individuated, personal existence. People seek and find that connection all the time in all kinds of ways, many having nothing to do with religion as it is conventionally understood.  I witnessed such a connection . . .

. . . a few years ago I participated in a workshop on vocal improvisation.  Our coach offered us an exercise for clearing the mind’s ear of musical ideas and then going into an improvisation so that something new can emerge.  We worked with that for a bit and then formed a semi-circle of chairs and began each taking a turn.  There was a guy in the workshop, Charles.  He was a masterful pianist, I heard him play.  He was not an experienced singer.  He’d chosen this workshop as a way to stretch himself musically.  Charles went to take his turn and there he was doing the clearing and then suddenly his voice soared.   And I was going like this [hands shaking].  It was acutely painful for a moment to be in the presence of that energy unprepared.  I got my hands on the arms of my chair and grabbed hold.  I was sort of all right then.  And Charles sang out this music.  It knew exactly where it was going.  It had a conviction that snapped you to pieces.  And it knew exactly when it was finished.  And there we were in the semi-circle, astounded; our jaws half way to the floor as they say.  Charles went to take a step toward his chair and his legs crumpled underneath him.  He actually fell, but he was all right and he got to his chair and in the moment his weight was supported he exclaimed: “WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!  WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!”, in just about the way I said it just now.

There’s a simple and obvious answer to the question “where did that come from?”  It came from within Charles.  I don’t have a problem with that answer.  I’m not going for anything metaphysical or supernatural here.  I don’t care about those things.  But I don’t think the answer really answers Charles’s question.  What was that inside of Charles?  What font of creativity that he didn’t know about until then?  And it wasn’t just inside of Charles.  I know because I heard the music.   We in the semi-circle could not have been touched, and we were touched profoundly I promise you, unless we were touching whatever it was that Charles touched.

I’ll end my remarks with words that are part of my daily spiritual practice, and that I’m sure most of you will recognize as adapted from the 23^rd psalm of the Jewish bible:

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me.  Your rod and your staff they comfort me.  You prepare for me a table in the midst of my fears.  You anoint me with light, my cup runs over.  Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of this life, and I will dwell in the house of light, forever.

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Notes: 

      1) The vocal improvisation workshop was offered by “Music For People”, an organization dedicated to empowering musicians of all levels to improvise music freely.  Their web site is here http://musicforpeople.org/my/.

2) For more information about Joseph Campbell and the interviews broadcast as “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth” check out this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth.

Atonement Chant

I cantered the service at the Sugarloaf Congregation of Unitarian Universalists on Sunday and offered a prelude chant that I call At One.  A friend asked me for a copy of the words so I reproduce them here:

hail bright vision

great spirit

kind mother

we are your children who circle your world

may we be your wisdom

may we be your laughter

may we  be your spirit a foot in the world

at one, at one, at one, at one

at one, at one, at one

at one, at one, at one, at one

at one with your spirit a foot in the world

REFRAIN:

purify our hearts and

purify our minds

cast out all that blocks us from thee

may we be your window

through us may you shine

grant us your vision to be

at one with the stars from which dust we are made

at one with the light that we seek

at one with the salt sea from which we have come

at one with the voices that cry out to be free

REFRAIN

at one with the circle

the circle of life

at one with our family

our brothers our sisters

lovers and friends

all our relations at the jubilee

REFRAIN

Being the Sunday closest to Yom Kippur Reverend Megan chose to speak on atonement.  The text of her sermon can be found here: http://scuu.org/site/content/remove-our-shortcomings.

A mentor once told me that atonement means "at one-ment", restoring our oneness with our source.  When I thought about a prelude what came to my mind was the 3/4 heartbeat rhythm and how a drumming teacher used to chant to it the words "We are one, we are one, we are one".  You'll form the rhythm if you chant "bomp bomp <pause> bomp bomp <pause> bomp bomp <pause>" with equal time given to the bomps and pauses (silence at the pauses).   The sound is like a beating heart which is perhaps why it suggests the oneness of all to many of us.  In my mind I heard "at one, at one, at one" in place of "we are one, we are one, we are one" but conveying much the same idea.  The 3/4 heartbeat forms the underlying rhythm of the chant.

This is the first time I've written creatively in months.  It seems I need a reason to write.

May we all be blessed

Dreaming a Dream of Limits

In April Reverend Megan Foley gave a sermon at the Sugarloaf Church of Unitarian Universalists called “Dreaming a Dream of Limits”; a sermon that responds to a story I wrote a little over a decade ago and that was the text of the first performance piece I did at Sugarloaf back when I first came there.  The sermon can be found here: http://scuu.org/site/content/dreaming-dream-limits, the text of the story, “Before There Was Time”, is embedded.  I’ll repeat the story text at the end of this post in case the link to the sermon archive breaks.

“Before There Was Time” is definitely my strongest piece of writing, and an aspiration of my current writing endeavors is to find that voice again.  Rev. Megan’s sermon response is very rich and worth contemplating.  Below I’ll share some of my own musings about it as well as some on an essay on process theology that a friend insightfully noticed has a striking connection with the story and Rev. Megan’s sermon.

Rev. Megan observes: “. . . it is limit, in and of itself, that causes things to be, that causes particular creations to happen.”  I offer a reformulation of this notion as creativity occurs in response to limitation.  I know that this is true in my own creative life.  When I sit down to write and I can write about anything in any way, when the page is a blank slate, I cannot write at all.  Nothing comes to my mind.  But throw in a limit, like the constraint to write in a specific meter, or to express a specific image or set of images, a memory, my affective response to a piece of music etc., and typically words come to me.  I often have the sense that I can feel my unconscious humming away creating a response.  A poem (or story), not any poem, but a poem with specific requirements, has been called, and it comes (usually).  Of course, the unconscious has its way of interpreting the requirements, of co-opting the project to suit an agenda of its own.  That’s part of the creative process.  But whenever I’ve appealed to my unconscious with something like “oh, just make something up so I can post the damn daily poem”, I get nothing.  The genie grants wishes, but you have to wish for something, something specific (i.e. limited).

Of course, in the story, things go terribly wrong.  The wonder and beauty of the limited universe becomes war, rape, murder, on a massive scale.  Rev. Megan observes : “And then the Dream Dot dreamed of the limits of Joy, and that, it seemed was where the trouble began. The particularities created by limits came to believe, like we humans believe, that their own limited viewpoint was True Reality. They came to see that they were one way and others were another, and they began to fight. War, murder, oppression, armies, kings and congresses were the result. The unintended consequences of limitation. The creation of the matter, of the particularities, comes with it an inescapable conflict, an original sin, if you will.”

I think this is insightful.  The very fact of individuated beings implies the possibility of conflict between them.  But there is another factor at work it seems to me, the insidious poison of one tiny little mad idea, perfection.  The dream dot dreams that is “perfectly limited, extending not at all”; but the intrinsic tendency of its nature, Joy, is to extend, so the dream of limit keeps extending, creating more limited realms of beauty.  Damn Joy!  This isn’t the perfect limit the dream dot wanted.  Somehow it manages to hit on the idea of fear (called dread in the story), with fear’s tendency to contract, a counteraction to Joy.  But now what becomes limitless is dread itself.  From “cutting remarks and hurt feelings” dread reaches the holocaust in only sixty six words.  What was the holocaust about anyway?  To embrace an ideal, like pride in being German, is one thing.  Individuated beings will embrace ideals that are less than the All from which they come and which they really are, and only by doing this can they explore the possibilities of individuated being.  But throw in the tiny little mad idea, decide that the chosen ideal has to be perfected, and then anything at variance with the chosen ideal has become the enemy and has to be destroyed.

Rev. Megan reaches this horrible of horribles in her sermon in the form of the torture chamber.  Her response to Reverend Bill Schultz’ claim that “torture obliterates the very face of God.”, her rejection of the equation God = Love, are well worth the reader’s time to explore and reflect on.  I’m gratified that a story channeled into the world through me helps her to unpack her thoughts on these things for us.  I have one contribution to make here, and I’m not clear whether it relates to Rev. Megan’s sermon or not.  It’s a disturbing thought and I don’t really like having it, but here goes:

Roy (me) screaming in a torture chamber is OK with God.

For God, it seems to me, the torture chamber is as legitimate an outcome of the big bang as any other.  It’s dukkha (sometimes rendered “suffering”) we Buddhists might say.  If you’re fully enlightened you don’t even mind it (nice work if you can get it).  This thought (that God is OK with torture) is repugnant of course to those of us used to thinking of God as a protector (“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . .”).  I’d love for someone to prove me wrong, I really mean that.  And at some level I accept that God feels my pain even more than limited I does, and unwaveringly intends my wholeness, my abiding happiness, never doubting that I am Joy in eternity, however I suffer in time.  But that’s the thing; my agony is just a temporality to God, but my delusion that it’s all there is when I’m in it is hellishly hard to let go.

A friend who heard Rev. Megan speak was struck by a sentence in an essay he’d been reading that runs “God offers novelty and also limits, thus making growing complexity possible”.  The essay, a kind of primer on process theology, can be found here: http://www.ctr4process.org/about/process/GodUniverse.shtml.  I’ve never known much about process theology, but reading this essay reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend in recovery years ago.  In talking about God (and God is a big deal in twelve step recovery programs) we found that we both thought of God as a pervasive pressure or influence always tending to move life toward health and wholeness.  I learned in recovery, not to believe in or have faith in God, but to keep faith with God by seeking to participate in my own healing as a co-creator of my life, as well as to help others with their healing.

And here perhaps is some kind of escape from my disturbing thought.  God may be OK with my suffering, but God is always about influencing life away from horror and toward wholeness/happiness, even in the torture chamber where God’s influence is so muted by the dream of dread that we can’t perceive it.  God is always about awakening to Joy.

May we all be blessed

Before There Was Time

© 2001 Roy Mueller

Before there was time, there was Joy.  Joy knew only Joy and Joy did not know limit.  Now there was no one to see Joy, but if there had been, Joy might have looked like shiny patent leather, very black and very bright, extending limitless in countless directions forever.  Joy silently rang and sightlessly radiated Joy; so sweet that song, as if it vibrated on an endless harp string of vibrant green, crisscrossing Joy as countless strings, ringing with the ancient song silent and sweet forever.

And one green string of Joy dreamed a dream of limit.  It dreamed it was a dot, perfectly limited and extending not at all.  Now that dream dot was made of Joy, for there was nothing else of which it could be made.  And being Joy, its’ dream of perfect limit extended to limit an inside from an outside.  The inside dreamed within itself hosts of limited structures; membranes covered with sphericals and membrane bound organelles, all dreaming insides of their own dreaming of inner worlds, dreaming of inner worlds.  The outside dreamed without itself a sky strewn with stars.  And the stars dreamed without themselves a galaxy of shining stars dreaming of whirling groups of galaxies racing ever faster into an outer beyond that perhaps dreamed a dream of that without itself.

And the dream dot perceived that the dream of perfect limit was limitless.  And hoping to recover perfect limit still it dreamed that it has a before and an after; so that even if perfect limit had not been achieved in the before it might yet be in the after.  And the before dreamed that it had a before of its’ own as well as an after, dreaming of its’ own before.  And the after dreamed that it had an after of its’ own as well as a before dreaming of its’ own after.  And the dream dot perceived that the dream of before and after too was limitless.

Now the dream dot reasoned that the dream of perfect limit always extended into limitlessness because it was made of Joy, and Joy did not know limit.  So the dream dot began to dream of alternatives to Joy.  It dreamed of indifference, but indifference was vast.  It dreamed of dread,  ahhh, now here was a dream to counteract extending Joy, for dread ever contracted, seeking to make itself small and hide from what it dreamed it feared.

And the dream dot dreamed a dreadful dream.

It dreamed of cutting remarks and hurt feelings, of faces slapped, dogs kicked and children shamed.  It dreamed of judgment and of guilt, of trials and punishments, of hierarchies and kings and courts and congresses.  It dreamed of armies swarming over landscapes like locusts burning towns, raping women, murdering children, and slaughtering one another; of whole peoples shipped off like cattle and sent up chimneys as thick billowing smoke.  It dreamed of the righteous punishment of the evil by the good, and of evil’s insidious revenge.

And yet, in every war in the dream of dread some soldier looked into the face of his enemy and saw himself. In every burning town someone risked their own life to care for a neighbor.  In every strife torn relationship moments of forgiveness spread like a fan to soften two hearts; and in every political struggle someone, at some point said “there has got to be a better way than this and I am going to find it”.  And because of these awakening ones the dream of dread was also a dream of hope; the hope of awakening to Joy, before there was time.

What Unitarian Universalists Believe

I have never become convinced that Unitarian Universalism is in and of itself a religion.  This is perhaps merely a matter of semantics.  For me religion (re-ligio, linking back) is anything that links me back to the totality of which I am a part; and a religion is a concept for accomplishing re-ligio which informs religious practice.  To my mind Unitarian Universalism is a mode of interpreting religion, any religion, rather than being a religion.  A UU congregation is a context within which religion, understood in a UU way, is practiced.  This UU mode of interpretation I think arises from Unitarian Universalism’s least common denominator, humanism.  All UUs aren’t Humanists as a matter of religion, but most must surely hold humanist values.  The first six of the seven principles that UU congregations covenant to affirm and promote are, it seems to me, a humanist manifesto.  So UU understanding of religion will be conditioned by the notion that individual human beings matter, that they are precious.  Hardly any UU would interpret any religion they embrace as justifying the destruction, oppression, or even disrespect of a human being based on some religious end.  Valid religion will be understood as promoting human thriving and freedom, of all human beings, not just the religious practitioner.

A while back I ran across an article on the web written by a Humanist that was an address to the UU congregation he was leaving and an explanation of why, for him, UUism is inadequate as a vehicle of religion.  By being about everything he said UUism is about nothing.  And by embracing every sort of religious orientation (in particular both God oriented and not God oriented)  UUs fail to join with likeminded people so that together they can channel their common intention and take collective action according to their shared convictions.  That made sense to me, but it wasn’t a problem as far as my being part of the Sugarloaf Congregation of Unitarian Universalists.  I hadn’t come to Sugarloaf UU for the religion, I’d come for the community.  I’m an introvert who tends to drift into isolation and I wanted to break out of that.  It worked, and it has continued to work for some years now.  I’m comfortable around UUs perhaps because I am both a universalist (all religions have value, at least for some people) and a humanist (people matter, people are precious) so I’m pretty on board with the values that Unitarian Universalists share.  Religion is important to me but I mostly do religion solo.  If I wanted to practice communal religion there are places I could go to do that with people whose religious understanding and practice are similar to mine.

Being something of an instigator I emailed the link to the web article to the minister at Sugarloaf and asked her what she thought.  Being a UU minister she asked me what I thought and I told her pretty much what I’ve written in the paragraph above.  Reverend Megan developed a sermon out of her response to the article and I came away from hearing her speak with the following basic understanding of her message:

·         Christian religion is about belief.  Christians believe that correct theological belief in and of itself accomplishes a religious goal (often called “salvation”).  For Christians religious practice is secondary to religious belief.

·         Religions other than Christianity, like Unitarian Universalism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism are about practice, not belief.  Adherents of these religions may hold beliefs proper to those religions, but they don’t believe that such beliefs in and of themselves accomplish any religious goal.  Religious goals are accomplished through religious practice.  So Christianity is actually the odd man out.  UUism is on the practice side of the belief/practice divide along with the other religions that aren’t Christian.

·         There is a fault with the question “What do ___ believe?”  This question is conditioned by Christian religion, long dominant within western civilization, which has emphasized belief instead of practice.  It really doesn’t apply to Unitarian Universalism and other practice oriented religions .  For them the appropriate question is “How/What do ___ practice?”

Two of Reverend Megan’s points didn’t resonate with me completely.  First, that Christianity is about belief and not practice.  Now I get it that official Christianity has long squabbled over fine points of theology, and I was taught in Lutheran religious education that “salvation is by faith, not by works”.  I remember how bemused I was when I heard a tour guide in Greece explain that the difference between western and eastern Christianity is that according to the western creed the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, whereas according to the eastern creed the Holy Spirit and the Son proceed from the Father.  I remember thinking “wow, someone really cares about a nit like that!?” and then remembering that “oh, yeah, some actually do”.  But the suggestion that Christianity is about belief and not practice it seems to me is only half true.  Every serious Christian I’ve ever known has been devoted to practice.  The men and women I knew as a member of Saint Ann’s Episcopal were all about practice.  We had workshops on developing personal prayer practice, ministry to the needy practice, scripture study practice and, yes, social justice practice.  We recited the creed every Sunday, but in effect the creed served as an underlying concept for religion that informed religious practice.  “We are called to do the work of Christ in the world” was our rallying cry.

The other point I didn’t cotton to, that for practice oriented religions like UUism, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism the question “What do ___ believe?” is really the wrong question, struck me as even more strange.  I’m a practicing Buddhist.  If someone asks me “What do Buddhists believe?” I can tell them.  I can tell them in a small number of words.  And I can tell them with a high degree of confidence that what I’m telling them is not my personal take on Buddhism (which would require a lot more words) but rather is what we Buddhists universally believe.  We call what I would tell the questioner the Four Noble Truths, and we do believe that the Truths are true, not just locally and for the time being but universally and ultimately.  Now it is true that according to Buddhist teaching belief in the Four Noble Truths (at least in the ordinary sense of cognitive belief) does NOT in and of itself accomplish any religious goal.  It is also true however that we Buddhists do believe the Truths and that they inform all Buddhist practice in all of its variety across the world of Buddhism.  So the question “What do Buddhists believe?” is a sensible question to which a sensible and simple answer can be given.

My understanding of Islam is at the Reader’s Digest level, but I know that the word means “submission” and I’ve heard the adage “There is one God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” It’s ultimately for Muslims to say, but I think it’s fair to say that Muslims believe that there is one God, that submission to God’s will is our ultimate calling, and that the prophetic words of Mohammed, the Glorious Qur’an, contain the ultimate truth and all of the religious truth any of us need to know.  That belief is not merely common among Muslims but essentially universal, and that belief informs all Islamic practice.  It is a simple concept for religion and a fair and simple answer to the question “What do Muslims believe?”

I also have no native understanding of Judaism, and like many of our culture have learned about it through a Christian lens.  I received religious education in a Lutheran church which involved gaining some familiarity with a body of Jewish religious literature and an interpretation of that literature imputed to Jesus of Nazareth.  Only religious Jews can authoritatively say what Jewish religion is, but I’ll again hazard my semi-informed guess:  God the almighty creator has made a covenant with our people from the time of Abraham.  We are called to love God and turn to God as the source of all we need and to keep our covenant with God as revealed in the scriptures.  It’s a simple concept for religion that can inform a variety of religious practice.  With editing by someone having a native understanding of that religion it is perhaps a fair answer to the reasonable question “What do Jews believe?”

So I think that when people ask “What do ___ believe?” they don’t usually mean “What is it that ___ believe, and believe that believing it accomplishes religion.”  I think they typically mean “What’s the underlying concept, the basic religious understanding that informs a life of practice?”  I think it’s a reasonable question and an honest one, and not a result of distortive thinking induced by a certain Christian obsession with niceties of theology.  So why might UUs think to respond with some version of “That’s the wrong question . . .”?  Well, it’s not like people NEVER mean “What is it that ___ believe, and believe that believing it accomplishes religion”.  That meaning of “believe” has been and is embraced in some Christian circles; believing the creed means you’re saved and not believing means you’re damned.  UUism of course eschews this approach to religion and loudly proclaims that it has no creed.  UUs are so sensitized to this meaning of the English word “believe” that as a group they are what I would call “creed phobic”.  They seem to see creeds lurking behind every rock and tree as if in wait to jump them.  I’ve actually heard UUs at the Sugarloaf Church suggest that the Sugarloaf Community Covenant, which is clearly an aspirational document and makes no mention of belief, amounts to a creed; which is irrational on a level with asserting that black is the same as white or that 1 = 2.  Sadly this creed phobia can prevent UUs from hearing what someone is really asking when they ask the simple honest question “What do you believe?”

I think I know what Unitarian Universalists believe.

I think I know what the simple underlying UU concept for religion is.  Perhaps not identifying as a UU frees me to say this.  After all, who really gives a hoot if I get it wrong?  Here goes:

·         Everyone is intrinsically capable of seeking and finding the highest truth and meaning in life, and of knowing it when they find it

·         To seek and find the highest truth and meaning, that which ultimately satisfies us, is the highest calling of each of us

·         To honor and cherish one other as the ultimate seeker, the channel and embodiment of the ultimate truth and meaning, is also the highest calling of each of us

We believe in one another.

A few years ago, as a fairly new member of the Sugarloaf Congregation of Unitarian Universalists I developed the notion that if anyone ever asked me “What do UUs believe?”  I would answer with the nifty phrase “We believe in one another.”  (No one ever did ask which is probably just as well.)  As I learned more about UUism I came to think that such a word trick is hardly kind or helpful and that a more genuine answer would be on the lines of:

“UUs are united by shared values expressed in seven principles that UU congregations covenant to affirm and promote.  One of those, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”, places the authority to embrace or reject religious beliefs and practices in the individual rather than in the community or any outside authority.  UUism recognizes a range of sources of religious and spiritual inspiration and guidance including . . . (fill in the six sources written into the UUA bylaws).  At the end of the day though, every UU sorts out for herself what sources are valuable, what is true, and what it all means.”

I’ve recently come full circle through the discovery of an anecdote shared by Sophia Lyon Fahs as a preliminary remark to a talk she gave about the natural religious impulses of humans.  She related that she had given a talk to a group of Quakers, and that after the talk one of the Quaker gentlemen had said to her “I don’t believe a word thee said this evening, but I believe in thee.”  Reverend Fahs said that through this affirmation she “discovered in an unforgettable way what it means to be a true Quaker.”  When I read the anecdote I immediately thought “You can’t beat that, you just can’t.”  For me, if there is a religion that is Unitarian Universalism this is it.  “I believe in thee.” “We believe in one another.”  And if a day ever comes when every human being on the planet, in their heart of hearts, looks into the face of every other and says “I believe in thee”, then the Messiah really HAS come, and that sweet sound you hear in the rustling of the branches nearby really is the angels singing “Hallelujah”.


May we all be blessed