[9/1/02] Holy Cows!

by Rebecca Rod
September 1, 2002

Some of my most religious experiences as a young person took place in a basement in Iowa. Every summer, for a week or two, I got to go to Decorah to stay with my Grandma. Fortunately, for me and Grandma, there were two sisters who lived down at the end of her block on Maple Avenue, Mona and Jeanie, who were the same age as me and my sister Jenny. Theirs was the brick house on the corner, nice and big, with white trim, neat as a pin and cool inside, and the coolest place to be on a hot summer afternoon, was their basement. Unlike my Grandma's rather spooky cellar where I helped her wash clothes, Mona and Jeanie's basement was finished and clean, and the playroom had some benches and chairs and tables and books in it.

Sometimes we would play school down there, but it seems even more often we would play "Church." We would put the benches and chairs in rows, one of us would become the Pastor (we were all Lutheran), and the rest of us would be the congregation, sitting attentively with our play-hymnbooks neatly on our laps. The "pastor" would drape a long, white, winter scarf around her neck and stand in front of us holding an open Bible, and pretend to sermonize about who-knows-what. Sometimes we would have a bowl of water and the "pastor" would "baptize" us by dabbing water on our foreheads and making the sign of the cross, or we would play Communion, and pass around wafers we'd made from slices of squished and flattened white bread. Kool-aid served as wine. After the ritual, we "congregants" would open our hymnals, raising them high, and sing some of our favorite hymns, but mainly [sing it] "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty...bless-ed Trinity."

Interestingly enough, when we played school, we usually goofed off more, slapping each others hands with rulers and being silly, but when we played "Church," it seemed that we would be pretty "religious" about it, playing it fairly straight and solemnly.

I attended a Lutheran elementary school, so religion was a pretty serious thing to me, not to be messed with. After all, God was watching all the time, and being sacrilegious could put you on the fast track to hell, especially if you had enough points against you already, from all the other stuff you just did normally.

Ironically, it felt more religious to me to play church, than to go to church. Maybe it was because in playing, there was choice and direct participation involved. Going to church was another matter. No choice involved. And, in a family of six kids, just getting ready for church could be pretty hellish. I'm afraid we were not very cooperative for our mother when Sunday morning rolled around, and the older you got, the more resistant you were to get up, much less get ready. Finally, after a lot of yelling and waiting turns for the bathroom, we would all squeeze into the car, fight over the window seats, finally get to church, and then all eight of us, if our Dad had decided to go too, would file down the aisle 10 to 15 minutes late, to the front rows, the seats most Lutherans avoid taking till last. It would take most of the service just to live down the embarrassment of it all. Not the most religious experience.

And yet, I grew up with a lot of "religious" aspirations. I yearned for God, for acceptance, for salvation, for assurance, and especially for an end to all my questions about religion and the meaning of life and other things that didn't make sense. So, as an adult, I tried a few churches out, and this is where I landed, -- smack dab in the middle of this rolling Palouse -- in the Unitarian Universalist Church, a religion that is jokingly associated with having a question mark as its symbol, and one that some people don't even regard as "religious."

It seems we're a somewhat misunderstood lot, maybe in part because we don't proselytize, -- which makes me think of the joke about the UU's going door-to-door, asking, "So, what do you believe?" Most often you find we have the name recognition problem where people confuse us with the Unity churches, or Rev. Moon's Unification Church, which can also lead to people thinking we're just another new Cult on the block.

Let me assure any of you who are new here, Unitarian Universalism was not built in a day! Our religion has been around as long as the Lutherans and many of the other Protestant off-shoots whose beginnings are also rooted in the Radical Reformation days of the 1500s. However, our particular heretic, Michael Servetus, who proposed the idea of God as One and not a Trinity and was burned for it, seems not as well-known as a couple of his contemporary heretics, Martin Luther and John Calvin. Now, this is not a sermon on UU history, so today I will just jump you ahead a few hundred years, from the 1500's to 1961, when the Unitarians, whose basic heretical belief was in the Unity of God, joined up with another group of Christian troublemakers, the Universalists, who, in the 1700s had come up with their own heretical belief of Universal Salvation, -- and, presto! -- you got your Unitarian Universalists, a denomination that does not have a stated doctrine, but, ironically, has a name derived from the two heretical doctrines that separated each of them from the rest of the Protestants.

We have so much interesting evolutionary history that it can not be easily condensed here, but the upshot of all of it is that we have come fairly far afield from our early Christian roots. We have become a liberal, living, breathing, changing faith, with no memorizable doctrine or creed to repeat when someone asks a question like, "What's religious about your religion?" So, it's normal to feel a little daunted at first. But I happen to think we have our own Very Good News, so my own exuberant inclination when asked that question is just to jump right in with both feet and say "Why, Everything!" Now, our dear minister, Joan, has reined me on that over-statement, but let me tell you what I mean by that -- now that she's gone on sabbatical.

My perception of the meaning of "religious" has expanded by leaps and bounds in the more than 10 years that I've been a Unitarian Universalist. Before, admittedly without consulting a dictionary, the term "religious" would conjure up associations in my mind with certain of the traditional trappings of religions, such as symbols, vestments, holy books, rituals, liturgy, men with beards, -- especially God. This sounds silly and simplistic of course, but I think some of the folks who put this question to us are thinking in similar terms, and I think many of them are quite curious about what we do in our church - without God and the Bible being central to our religion.

Again, ours is a liberal religion. It is not limited by one idea of God, or one text, or one doctrine. We derive our truths from many sources, which happen to be listed this morning on the back of your Order of Service (also in the first pages of our hymnal). For instance, today we began our service with the Call to Worship, the text of which was written by the 13^th century Sufi mystic, Rumi. Our Opening Words were by the American poet Mary Oliver, our Meditation Words were written by Reverend Carter Heyward, an Episcopal priest, who is also a lesbian, and our sermon is by an artist/layperson who has a degree in Library Science. Only one bona fide religious scholar in the bunch (Heyward), but I believe you will find that all our words contain religious truths.

While Unitarian Universalists don't ascribe to a doctrine or creed, we do have our seven Principles which can be found inside the first pages of our hymnal. No one is required to memorize these, but they are statements of our common faith which were drawn up over a period of three years by lay and ordained people in our denomination, and enacted by the General Assembly in 1986. Most of these principles, like our sources, are embedded in our service elements today.

Our Call to Worship by Rumi, "Come, come, whoever you are" is a direct affirmation of our Number One UU Principle that recognizes "the inherent worth and dignity of every person," inviting all to join us, from wanderers, to worshippers. And it also embodies the spirit of our Third Principle, which is the "acceptance of one another and encouragement of spiritual growth in our congregations."

Our Opening Words, Mary Oliver's poem, "Wild Geese," could practically be a UU mini-doctrine, if we had any, because, in addition to its message of inherent individual worth, and compassion and acceptance instead of judgement (principles 1, 2, and 3), it offers the hope of a kind of personal grace to be found by aligning oneself with nature and the creatures in it. This kind of connected relationship with nature is mirrored by our Seventh principle, "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are all a part."

The Story for all Ages, "Calico Cows" which we adapted a bit by running it through the Unitarianizer, demonstrates in microcosm the democratic process utilized in our congregations, where we all are equal in our access to leadership positions and at liberty to have our say (Principle 5).

The Meditation words by Carter Heyward, about our relational power and common strength creating love in the world, reflect principles 2 & 6, where striving for "justice, equity and compassion in human relations" can help to realize the goal of "world community, with peace, liberty & justice for all."

And the Meditation music Heather sang, our hymn #112, "Do You Hear" is a call to commitment and action in taking up the causes of others as our own, which is also Principle 2.

My Sermon today is rooted in principle 3 "the encouragement to spiritual growth" - my own growth, by the challenge of taking it on, and it took me a lot of #4 " a free and responsible search for truth and meaning" to pull it all together! So you see more clearly how it all works when you do some analyzing with our sources and statements of belief at hand. These Sunday services aren't just designed to entertain.

However, as good as all these Principles and lofty ideals sound, ours is not always an easy or smooth religious road. A membership with such diverse beliefs and points of view, experiences, desires, and aspirations, can frequently be at odds with itself. Even in our worship desires and styles, we run the gamut. We can be too spiritual for some tastes, and not spiritual enough for others; for some, too rational, while others want more ritual; using the word God can offend some of us, while others would like to hear it, or words like it, more, and so on. It is an interesting mix to try to balance all these, and sometimes we're more successful than others. But, our mandate as a liberal religion is to be a place where freedom, reason, and tolerance reign, made possible through love and respect, and consensus. Because each of us has been drawn to this faith that allows us so much choice, we must keep our hearts and minds open to others, and we must participate. This, to me, is one of the cornerstones of our religion, -- what is "religious" about it - our gathering together, to seek and to share.

One of the Latin roots of the word "religion" is the verb, religare, "to link, or unite." Religion is at its best done together, in relationship. Together, we test it and try it and see what it's made of. This is where our strength and sustenance comes from, -- connecting with each other, whether it happens in a service or a meeting, a potluck or a party, a class, a lecture, a discussion group, a work group, a play group, a computer group, a support group, a quilting circle, or a vespers circle, -- all of these comings-together, and all that they contain and generate is the "religious" part of our religion, the Divine and the Mundane, the "everything" I speak of when I answer the question, about our liberal, expansive, inclusive, living, writhing, religion. -- Child's play, for adults.