First Reading
“Infinity Close at Hand” in A Small Heaven
by Rev. Jane Rzepka
I was in an elevator—one of those glass elevators that zips along the outside of forty-eight floors. Looking down, one sees terraced floor after floor, blending into little horizontal stripes, finally descending into an all-too-clear view of infinity.
Nobody enjoys this, I’m convinced. Maintaining a confident, humanoid demeanor, what with all this infinity so close at hand, is trying. But it’s possible…until the elevator stops mid-floor and begins an ear-piercing bleat. Minds go blank, overcharged with the electricity born of trying not to scream.
It all turned out fine, of course; we did slide down to some appropriate notch; the bleating stopped. I’ve ridden up and down the forty-eight floors a dozen times since, and the elevator ride is simply an elevator ride. But sometimes, for a split second, as in the rest of life, I look down past my shoes and see the infinity below. And I love my children and the green grass and everything else with all the intensity there is. Then the door opens in an ordinary way, and I get out.
Second Reading
Excerpt from “The Humanist Spiritual Imperative for a New Age”
the Rev. Khoren Arisian
In 1938, when I was six years old, my parents and I were living on one of the upper floors of an apartment building in Boston’s Back Bay. It was night and the eastern seacoast was being battered by a powerful hurricane. I jumped out of bed and eagerly looked out the window. Nature’s chaos was in full evidence. I was impressed! What I saw I accepted at face value. As Ludwig Wittgenstein might have described it, what was going on was all that was the case; I needed no further speculative interpretation.
As the years of my early youth melded into the years of early adulthood, I found the concept of God, however interpreted, to be neither helpful nor compelling. The very idea lacked clarity, emotional persuasiveness, or explanatory power. I didn’t find the word in the least evocative or exciting, least of all in the New England Unitarian church in which I grew up. By my early twenties, having discarded whatever remained of the hypothesis symbolized by the “G” word, I decided that if I was going to acknowledge my religious promptings at all, I’d have to do so without benefit of a deity. I’ve never had the slightest cause, either as a result of thought or experience, to change my mind or to yearn for a change of heart. Probing for and trying to establish the liberal religious and ethical foundations of a this-worldly humanism has consequently been a lifelong spiritual undertaking and a professionally exciting if unpopular one. It’s a quest that never ends, that regularly leads, for me, to fresh discoveries about the world, human nature, and myself.
Humanity at the Center
The Rev. Joshua Mason Pawelek
Unitarian Universalist Society: East
Manchester, CT
October 8th, 2006
“Thanks be for these, for birth and death; life in between with meaning full…. ennobling art, music caressing ear and heart.
I chose this hymn, the opening and closing hymns, the readings and, at Bob Richardson’s suggestion, the Bartók violin music, because each expresses the insights and vision of religious humanism.
This is the second in a series of sermons on the sources of our Unitarian Universalist living tradition. As I’ve been saying in recent months, Vicki Merriam and I refer to these sources as the building blocks of Unitarian Universalism, the roots that ground us, the wings that set us free. These sources are the starting place for Unitarian Universalist spiritual searching; they are keys to our religious identity. This morning I am reflecting on religious humanism, or as the official denominational language reads: “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”
Reason and science. Since the time of the European Enlightenment, and even before then, reason and science have been brought to bear on matters of faith in a variety of ways. For many people of faith, particularly those of a more traditional bent, this bringing to bear has been threatening. Reason and science challenge the assumptions underlying traditional religion—the existence of God, miracles, a divinely ordained creation, a divinely ordained end of creation. But for liberal religious people reason and science have been a source of great religious fervor, exploration and growth. For the early Unitarians and Universalists in the United States, approaching the religious life with a reasoning mind—a questioning mind, a doubting mind—was of utmost importance. Gathering and evaluating the evidence for religious truth claims, applying logic, applying common sense, establishing measures and criteria: these are ways of bringing reason to bear on religion. When the Rev. William Ellery Channing delivered his sermon, “Unitarian Christianity,” in 1819—the sermon that defined Unitarianism for his generation—he spoke about how to read and interpret the Bible. He said, “All books, and all conversation, require in the reader or hearer the constant exercise of reason.” A failure to apply the principles of reason, suggested Channing, displays “a criminal want of candor, and an intention of obscuring or distorting” the meaning of a text
He described the absence of reason as criminal! Strong words.
Science. Liberal religion has always been open to the results of science. I think of Joseph Priestley, a British-born Unitarian theologian and scientist, famous for his critiques of Christian doctrine and his contributions to the study of electricity and the discovery of oxygen. (What would we be breathing if it weren’t for Priestley!) I also love the example of the Unitarian minister turned Transcendentalist philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in addition to his vast studies in theology and philosophy, read voraciously in the natural sciences, planted fruit trees, tracked the wheather, and let it serve as the foundation for his world-view.
I was greatly inspired in seminary by a book entitled Scientific Theism, published in the late 1800s by Unitarian theologian, Francis Ellingwood Abbot. He asks: If we were to conduct all our endeavors using the scientific method, what religion would result? “The scientific method,” he writes, “is the grandest discovery yet made by [humanity], towering immeasurably above all…; it is the mother of all achievements, all investigations, all discoveries,—nay, exists imminently in them all as their innermost process and law, and gives them all their meaning.” For Abbot the scientific method is not simply a source for the religious life; rather it is the most authentic religious life. Beliefs are like scientific hypotheses. What evidence have you collected to confirm or discredit your hypothesis? Based on the evidence, what is your conclusion? Does your belief make sense? Can you verify it? Is it reasonable?
Reason and science: these are the seeds of modern religious humanism, which took shape primarily within Unitarianism, and to a lesser degree Universalism, in the early twentieth century. By this time, belief in God had become, for many, unreasonable. No scientific evidence supported the existence of God. Certainly there was the evidence of scripture, tradition, and personal experience—and in certain contexts these were (and continue to be) valid sources of evidence—but generally speaking none of it met (or meets) the demands of the scientific method. None of it qualifies as proof of the existence of God. What we have to work with is not God, but humanity—minds, hearts, bodies—able to engage the world, to make meaning, to improve life for and with the oppressed, to shape society with its ideas, to shape the environment with its hands. With humanism, God recedes into the religious background, or out of the picture entirely. With humanism, humanity enters the religious foreground and becomes the primary religious category, the primary subject of theological reflection, the primary agent of historical change.
Placing the religious focus on humanity instead of God had tremendous impact on how Unitarians and Universalists understood the practice of their religion. The Rev. Clifford Reese, one of the architects of humanism said in 1931that “the trend in modern religious developments is away from the transcendent, the authoritative, the dogmatic, and toward the human, the experimental, the tentative; away from the abnormal, the formal, the ritualistic; and toward the normal, the informal, the usual; away from the extraordinary mystic expression, the exalted mood, the otherworldly; and toward the ethical, the social and the worldly.” Or as the Rev. Khoren Arisian said in describing his vision for humanist ministry in the 1950s, “I was going to be my own kind of religious leader: no incense, robes, or the usual paraphernalia. I chose the path of moral universalism: we are all moral equals. In…humanism: our highest purpose is to help improve the lives of human beings, according to their own best wishes.”
We heard the music of Béla Bartók earlier. Bartók was a Hungarian composer who became an atheist as a young adult and converted from Catholicism to Unitarianism. This conversion took place in Hungary, inspired by a visit among Unitarians in Transylvania. I don’t know the relationship between American Unitarian humanism and Transylvanian and Hungarian Unitarian humanism, but clearly one could take the same theological journey in eastern Europe as in the United States. (I’m quoting from a biography that appears on the Unitarian Universalist Association’s website.) “In a letter written in 1905 Bartók…expressed his skepticism about religious teachings: ‘It is odd that the Bible says, ‘God created man,’ whereas it is the other way round: man has created God. It is odd that the Bible says, ‘The body is mortal, the soul is immortal,’ whereas…the contrary is true: the body (its matter) is eternal; the soul (the form of the body) is transitory.”
In other letters “he called the conception of God as ‘a bodiless, everlasting and omnipresent Spirit who has decreed all that has happened in the past, and similarly ordains the future,’ a ‘muddled notion.’ The existence of the universe did not require the hypothesis of a creator, Bartók thought. ‘Why don't we simply say: I can't explain the origin of its existence and leave it at that?’”
“Bartók thought life's meaning was not directed towards immortality or the afterlife, but to ‘give a few people some minor pleasures’ and to ‘have a zest for life, i.e. a keen interest in the living universe.’ ‘If I ever crossed myself, [he said] it would signify ‘In the name of Nature, Art, and Science.’”
Incidentally, Bartók served as the chair of the music committee at the Mission House Congregation of the Unitarian Church in Budapest. Evidently they hated him in this role. Despite all his modern, humanistic tendencies, he was strict and conservative about church music and forbade the use of any instruments other than an organ.
He protested Hungary’s fascist regime and drew negative political attention during the 1920s and 1930s. He would not permit his music to be performed or broadcast in Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. He refused to accept a national arts award from the fascist ruler of Hungary, and eventually went into exile in the United States where he died in 1945. His funeral was held at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City.
It is often said, or at least assumed, that humanity’s great artistic creations are divinely inspired, that creative gifts are gifts of God. Yet here is one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century for whom God was meaningless; for whom humanity and the natural world were central. His music is not a triumph for God. To make that claim is to deny his religious journey. His music is rather a triumph for humanity.
Over the course of the twentieth century, humanism became the dominant religious identity within Unitarianism and, after 1961, Unitarian Universalism. In recent decades its star has faded. Critics of humanism have found it to be too intellectual, too dry, lacking in reverence, lacking in feeling, lacking in spiritual sensibility. To some degree these are legitimate criticisms, but over the years UU humanists have responded to these criticisms. The Fellowship of Religious Humanists was founded in the 1960s to give humanism a deeper sense of reverence and spiritual appeal.
So there’s been a debate over whether humanism can serve the full religious life. I say it can. I say this because I’ve seen humanism and atheism help people find comfort and solace in times of searching or crisis; and I’ve seen them serve as the ground of faith. I hesitate to refer to faith in this way. I know atheists who don’t want faith mentioned in the same sentence with them. However, I’m not talking about faith in the traditional sense. I’m talking about the capacity to find comfort and solace in challenging times. I’m talking about the ability to trust that one is on the right path. I’m talking about having a personal sense of what is reliable in the universe. Remember Bartók’s comments on the origin of the universe? He asked, “Why don't we simply say: I can't explain the origin of its existence and leave it at that?’” I hear a sense of peace and comfort behind this question, a freedom from anxiety, an acceptance of the natural order of things enabling him to focus on what really matters, on creativity, on family. I hear in his reflection a simple yet profound faith that not having the answer is OK.
Rev. Arisian wrote, “It was night and the eastern seacoast was being battered by a powerful hurricane. I jumped out of bed and eagerly looked out the window. Nature’s chaos was in full evidence. I was impressed! What I saw I accepted at face value….I needed no further speculative interpretation.” This, too, is faith! Self-assurance! How freeing to not be plagued by a need to understand the divine intent behind natural phenomena, or by a fear that this hurricane is God’s judgment. “What I saw I accepted at face value.” What is, is; and what is, is enough. Confidence, comfort, trust, faith.
Rev. Rzepka describes a moment of being stuck in a glass elevator, 40 stories up on the outside of a building. She peers down to the ground below her, infinity close at hand, “and I love my children and the green grass and everything else with all the intensity there is.” Not God. She doesn’t pray to God for safety. She loves her children and the green grass. These things are of ultimate concern—not some otherworldly spirit, but these things. As the hymn says, thanks be for these things. She has faith that it is enough to love these things.
As he approached his death in 1997, the Rev. Josiah Bartlett wrote a beautiful letter to friends and colleagues. He said, “’God’ in this context means the reality of love…. The God of Theologians, a noble and necessary, but failed attempt, is not for me. Life is strife; our human enterprise may be incidental, or even irrelevant to, a universe with quite other purposes, or none. But my corner of it furnishes grounds and materials for what could be a lovely world. Not by merit but by grace, I have known and possessed that loveliness.” What incredible peace at the end of life. What a profound sense of acceptance. What ability to find meaning and purpose in spite of knowing that quite possibly no larger purpose exists.
Finally, I’ve told the story about how my family found Unitarian Universalism, how my mother answered an ad in a local paper for the music director position at the Unitarian Society of New Haven. I’ve never quite told the other half of that story. You see, my father was a scientist; he needed a congregation that would allow him to abide by the rules of science in his religious life. The Unitarian Society of New Haven was such a place, a deeply humanist congregation. I don’t know what my father thinks—perhaps I should ask him—but in my view, finding that congregation saved his life on many levels, and enabled him to find himself at a time when he could’ve lost himself in alcohol, divorce, and grief. The lesson I draw is that humanism, though it professes no doctrine of salvation, saves lives. And I don’t, for a minute, underestimate the value of that humanist congregation in my own life. Humanism is one of the most formative aspects of who I am. It has given me many of my gifts. Humanism not only saves lives. It builds and fashions them.
In this Unitarian Universalist congregation, grounded in humanist teachings, may we not only be saved, but also inspired to build and fashion our lives in the service of peace, in the service of justice, in the service of love, in the service of humanity.
Amen and Blessed Be.
Gilbert, Richard S. and Joyce T., “Thanks Be for These,” in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993) #322.
Channing, William Ellery, “Unitarian Christianity,” in Wright, Conrad, ed., Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism (Boston: UUA, 1986) pp. 49-50.
See the following link: See the following link: http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/curtiswillifordreese.html.
Abbot, Francis Ellingwood, Scientific Theism (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1888) pp. 119-120.
See the following link: http://www.nysec.org/sitemap/about-ethical-culture/leader-emeritus/.
All references to Bartok in this sermon are drawn from his biography at http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/belabartok.html.
Arisian, Khoren, “The Humanist Spiritual Imperative for a New Age,” Religious Humanism vol. 25, p. 157 (1991).
Rzepka, Jane, “Infinity Close at Hand,” in A Small Heaven (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1989) p. 5.
