Like each season in its turn, Autumn speaks to the deep places in us. Autumn is a season of winding down from summer's energy and exuberance. It is the evening-time of our lives-the time after play and work; the time before sleep.

Let us take this evening-time to sit quietly, perhaps by the fire, to reflect on the things which matter most in our lives. Let us take this evening-time to remember our deepest longings, so that we may conduct our lives with intention and conviction. Let us take this evening-time to remember the gifts of the ancestors so that we may confront life's challenges with insight and wisdom. Let us take this evening-time to envision the future and those who will come after, so that we may engage the world with creativity and passion, guided by an enduring accountability and a profoundly hopeful faith. Let us take this evening-time to remember all those who are hurting in this world, in particular those who are rebuilding in the aftermath of devastating hurricanes in the American south, and to find in our hearts the ways we will respond to suffering.

Let us take this evening-time to sit quietly, perhaps by the fire, as the Autumn wind coldly blows, and the earth turns, once again, toward the nurturing darkness.

Amen. Blessed Be.

"You should perform all your deeds without whys and wherefores."¹ Provocative words from the late Medieval German Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart. "The person who seeks for God in a particular way, takes that way and misses God."² Hmm. "Life is lived for its own sake and emanates from its own sources; hence it lives entirely without whys and wherefores, because it is lived for itself."³ Hmm. I don't profess to fully understand Eckhart's meaning, and I sense the point is not to understand the meaning, but to live it; to live with immediacy, to be open to life as it comes, to be present without purpose, without calculation, without fear. Do we live without whys and wherefores, at any point in the course of our day, at any point in the course of our week, at any point in the course of our lives? Could we live without whys and wherefores? If you're familiar with Meister Eckhart, you may know Catholic officials condemned many of his writings during his lifetime. This notion of 'without whys and wherefores'-sunder warumbe in German-suggests each of us has access to spiritual experience, knowledge and power and we need neither the mediation of the church nor the guidance of church doctrine. This doesn't mean you can all go home now. But I am suggesting that if we want to know the core of our faith we will not get there with whys and wherefores. And although we must use the language of whys and wherefores to talk about our faith, I believe more and more that such language is not the path to knowing our faith. We will know the core of our faith when we learn to live, sunder warumbe, without whys and wherefores.

Last week I spoke about the recently published report of the Unitarian Universalist Association's Commission on Appraisal, Engaging Our Theological Diversity, which raises the question, what is the core of our Unitarian Universalist faith? I pointed out that while this report affirms the Unitarian Universalist principles as a common and uniting bond among us, it does not, ultimately, make a claim about the core of our faith. The commissioners write that "from the beginning, if we accomplished nothing more than initiating a thoughtful, engaged, and widespread discussion of this important subject, our effort would have been worthwhile."⁴ That may sound like a cop-out to some, but I don't think it is. I see it as a position of great wisdom and also great respect for the rest of us. The Commission couldn't possibly study Unitarian Universalism for four years and produce words that name the core of our faith. They would only produce more whys and wherefores. The point of the study was not to answer the question. The point of the study was to inspire Unitarian Universalists to engage much more openly in theological dialogue. As I said last week, the commissioners want Unitarian Universalists to expand our ethics-oriented religious identities with deep and heartfelt theological reflection. They want Unitarian Universalists to become theologians, so that we really can engage our theological diversity; so that we really can talk about what we each believe; so that we really can demonstrate to the world it is possible to believe in profoundly different ways and still love one another.

I think it is right to ask the question at this time-what is the core of our faith?- and I think it is appropriate and realistic not to offer an answer. I say this because in our history, and I suspect in the history of most organized religions, the core is almost always hidden beneath the institutional whys and wherefores, beneath the doctrinal and creedal statements, beneath the ethical proclamations, beneath the scriptural intricacies, beneath the General Assembly resolutions, beneath all the spoken and written words. And not only is it hidden, it is churning and dancing and moving; it is a fireball, it is a waterfall; it is a pot simmering on the stove; it is a raging storm; it is a child being born; it is poetry, it is music; it is the autumn wind blowing leaves across your street; it is joy, it is rage. It is sadness, it is peace. It can be felt and intuited and lived! But words alone are not sufficient to get us there. Whys and wherefores will not bring us to the core of our faith.

In human history, there are periodically, incredible, though always brief, moments when the core of any faith comes to the surface, pierces through the whys and wherefores, and can suddenly be named in plain language for all to understand. Consider the emergence of Unitarianism in the early part of the 19th century. For 200 years Unitarian theology had been churning and dancing and moving-germinating-within the womb of the Puritan congregational church in New England-from the time the Puritans came to the Algonquin lands in the 1620s. Suddenly, 1819 to be exact, a clear statement of Unitarian faith exploded from the heart of the Rev. William Ellery Channing, into New England's liberal congregational churches; every Unitarian who wanted to could name the core of their faith. One God only; Jesus distinct from God; God subject to the same moral laws as humanity; the human capacity for moral reasoning and virtue. It may sound somewhat traditional to our postmodern UU spiritual sensibilities, but in 1819 it marked a radical break with Trinitarian Calvinist hellfire.⁵

How long did that beautifully constructed core expression of Unitarian faith remain uncontested? Not long. The core of any faith is like lava flowing; it is like sun tracing its arc across the afternoon sky; it is like waves pounding the beach at high tide. We cannot stop it. The whys and wherefores of Unitarianism mounted, the core began to shift beneath the surface; it boiled and bubbled and brewed. Not even fifteen years after Channing's famous sermon, the emergence of the Transcendentalist movement within New England's Unitarian Churches called into question the core of Unitarian faith. No core is static. Take any scripturally-based religious tradition. Look at the scripture. Then look at the commentary on the scripture. No core is static. There is always tension, always controversy, always dynamism, always movement. I sometimes think the only reason religions establish doctrines is to contain the feelings of vertigo and unsettledness that come with sustained effort to comprehend the always shifting core of one's faith. Trying to hold onto something that is always moving and shifting is tiring. Why not then just name the core for all time and be done with it, wherefore our faith lives will become more steady and stable? Why not proclaim the doctrinal truth and demand adherence, wherefore our congregations and our society will become free of conflict and strife? All the whys and wherefores available to us will not stop the core from moving and merging, flowing and blending and bursting.

I also think religions establish creeds and doctrines to maintain institutional power once the core has shifted. By that I mean the people who articulate the core of any faith wield institutional power. They invest energy in maintaining the core as they have articulated it. As the core shifts, they produce doctrines and punishments for violating those doctrines, so they can maintain the core as they would have it. The more the actual core shifts, the more extreme the doctrines and punishments become. Meister Eckhart saw this very tendency in the medieval Catholic Church and confronted it through his mystical writings, teachings, and practice. He said: "as long as you perform your deeds for the sake of the kingdom of heaven or God or your eternal salvation, in other words, for an external reason, things are not truly well with you."⁶ He was offering a critique, among other things, of focusing on creeds and doctrines, and in doing so he was countering the powers that be, the authorities who were wedded to a specific articulation of the core of Catholic faith in that era. He was offering a way for Catholics to locate God that jettisoned doctrinal conventions. And his writings were condemned by the Church. One could argue the Church was trying to keep the core immobilized with whys and wherefores. Eckhart said "That's not how it works!" "All you are doing is taking God, placing a coat around God's head, and pushing God under a bench."⁷

There have been other moments in the history of Unitarianism and Universalism when a clear sense of the core of our faith emerged. Within the Unitarianism of the early twentieth century the core was Humanism, a largely atheistic faith in humanity, a conviction that human beings are on our own in this universe and we have the capacity to shape our lives and our world in such a way that peace, justice, and love prevail. I love Unitarian Humanism. It is a profoundly hopeful religious world-view, locating worth and dignity in each human being. So many critics of atheism over the years have claimed that without God there is no hope. Unitarian Humanists say "No! Hope resides in humanity." This was the core of our faith on the Unitarian side for many years.

Today the Humanist core has shifted. It hasn't disappeared-there will always be a prominent place for atheism within our movement-but it has shifted. Who here participated in the adult religious education course called Cakes for the Queen of Heaven? Created by the Rev. Shirley Ann Ranck, Cakes was published in 1986 by the Unitarian Universalist Association. The title refers to a passage in the 44th chapter of the book of Jeremiah, where the Hebrew prophet is calling on the people to believe in the one God, the God of Israel. The people resist, saying, "When we poured out libations to the queen of heaven, we had enough to eat, we had no war, and when we stopped doing that we went hungry and died by the sword or through famine."⁸ They are, to say the least, skeptical about adopting belief in one, male God. Following on that theme, Cakes for the Queen of Heaven explores female images of divinity in a variety of religions, including Judaism and Christianity, but perhaps most notably in the pre-Christian traditions of Europe, traditions often referred to as Pagan, where Goddess worship was common. For so long, Unitarian Universalists had been skeptical of the received tradition in Western Christianity of a single, male God, a patriarchal God, a militaristic God. Although many Unitarians and Universalists rejected this image of God and replaced it with Humanism, there were others who still felt a sense of the divine in their lives, still hungered for a way to articulate it and worship it. This is one of the reasons I said last week Unitarian Universalists fit right in with the trend described recently in Newsweek magazine about Americans looking for a direct experience of the divine. Cakes for the Queen of Heaven took Unitarian Universalism by storm in the late 1980s. It blew open the theological gates. Not only did it create new spaces within our movement for Neo-Paganism; not only did it help inspire the denomination to add to its list of sources in its statement of principles, the "spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature;" but it gave an entire generation of Unitarian Universalist clergy a new set of images of divinity, a new language with which to talk about the religious life, a new way to conduct liturgical ministry through the cycle of the year, a new way to ground UU justice work-particularly environmental justice work. Most profoundly, it signaled to Unitarian Universalist women, at a time when the denomination was attempting to achieve gender parity among its clergy, that ministry is a viable and authentic path for women, that women ministers do not simply have to be like male ministers or believe like male ministers in order to succeed, that women's religious leadership is deeply valued in our movement.

We hear it said that the Unitarian Universalism of the 1960s and 1970s had a difficult time with God language. We hear about congregations where it was "against the rules" even to speak of God. I think much of this is exaggeration, though there is certainly some truth to it. Cakes for the Queen of Heaven brought multiple languages and experiences of divinity to Unitarian Universalism. I'm telling you this because we have only begun to taste where Unitarian Universalism is heading. The core is shifting. There is immense and wonderful movement beneath the surface. There is twisting and turning, melting and burning. The gate is ajar and swinging on its hinges. Now is not the time to put definitive words to it. Now is not the time for whys and wherefores. This is the time for searching, the time for examining our beliefs and holding ourselves open to the beliefs of others. This is a time for engaging our theological diversity far more deeply than we've ever done before. This is the time for each of us to search within our own hearts, and for all of us, together, to search collectively for our common core. And when the time is right; when the necessity is upon us, the gate will close for a few brief moments and we will have the words to proclaim the core of our faith before it shifts again. For now, let us understand that when we say, 'We are UUs,' it does not mean we profess a faith with no core. It means we are people who see religion as dynamic and flowing, and we are comfortable with that-and not just comfortable, but excited, inspired, passionate! We are people who love language, yet who grasp that no religious truth, no spiritual experience can be adequately communicated with the whys and wherefores of language. Though we cannot necessarily speak the core, we strive nevertheless to live it. And if we aren't already, we can become people who know how to seek our spiritual truths, as Meister Eckhart suggested, sunder warumbe, without whys and wherefores.

Amen and Blessed Be.