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Unitarian Universalist Men I Have Known and Loved The Reverend Mark Edmiston-Lange, June 19, 2005 When George Washington was sixteen years old he copied out 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. The Rules are based on a set of instructions composed by French Jesuits in 1595 and collected in English by Francis Hawkins in 1640. Washington took his copying to heart for he was well known for his scrupulous attention to such social graces. Some examples: 2. When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body, not usually Discovered. 4. In the Presence of Others Sing not to yourself with a humming Noise, nor Drum with your Fingers or Feet. 13. Kill no Vermin as Fleas, lice ticks in the Sight of Others, if you See any filth or thick Spittle put your foot Dexterously upon it. If it be upon the Cloths of your Companions, Put it off privately, and if it be upon your own Cloths return Thanks to him who puts it off. 54. Play not the Peacock, looking every where about you, to See if you be well-decked, if your Shoes fit well if your Stockings sit neatly, and Clothes handsomely. When I was a boy we had a copy of Washington’s version of Hawkins little book of etiquette in our bookshelves. Perhaps it was part of my mother’s efforts to teach her three quite boisterous sons some manners. Some of it took, and I am thankful for her patient and sometimes impatient efforts to teach me how to behave. In my childhood years many things seemed, and I emphasize “seemed,” routine—more so than now, particularly when it came to such matters as child raising and role identification. Daddies went to work, mommies stayed home. Daddies were the ultimate disciplinarians, like a household sheriff; while mommies were the deputies, taking care of most of the small messes into which we fell. Social expectations of men and women were generally assumed and daughters were supposed to grow up to be just like mommy and sons were supposed to grow up to be just like daddy. That relatively stable set of social expectations became unglued some time ago now and the reasons for that change is beyond the scope of my sermon this morning. All we need do at this point is note that stability is gone and been replaced with...what? In some cases, nothing. In some cases children seemingly learn who they are to be from everyone but their parents. After adolescence strikes its mortal blow to childhood equilibrium, peers and the ever present media swarm seems to take over. Parents in the year 2005 know vastly more about child raising than did parents in 1955, but many parents have a hard time not feeling like they are often just whistling in the wind. Mary Catherine Bateson’s excellent book, Composing a Life, offers an alternative view of our growing up which I believe may help us all become more aware that there is an order lying beneath all the hustle and bustle, smoke, and grinding of gears in growing up, growing, or composing a life. She states that when most of us think of maturing we actually imagine there is some pre-determined script that we would do well to follow. Good grades, do your chores, good schools, take up a sport, play a musical instrument, avoid drugs, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, friends with stupid ideas, etc. One success leads to another, and another, and another. And we often feel that the reverse is also true, that one failure leads to another, to another, to another. Thus, sometimes parents draw a straight line that begins with subjecting the fetus in utero to classical music and ends with the son or daughter becoming a partner at a prestigious law firm or medical practice. For some, life will be like that for at least some stretches of time. For most of us, she says, life is rather different. Instead of a script, it is useful to think of the course of life as a continuing improvisation. Instead of a script, we find ourselves living with the unexpected, the surprising, occasionally discordant possibilities that often have no clear outcome. People’s lives intersect with our own, coming and going in no necessary pattern. Life is, in this case, not the relatively stable pursuit of objectives but is instead a continuing series of attempts, starts and stops, straight and curved lines and occasional leaps into the purely unknown. No matter how you conceive the course of your life, good companions have always been and always will be an essential ingredient for success and happiness. But in the improvisation model, good companions are far more than a pleasing component—they are essential. At least, they have been to me. And on this Father’s Day I want to pay a short tribute to some of the Unitarian Universalist men who have made a tremendous difference in the improvising of my own life. Some of them I knew in person, others through study. Each has given me very important clues, helping me find how my life could be played out. The first three are purely historical. I never met them because they all lived in the nineteenth century. They are William Ellery Channing, who more than anyone else helped launch Unitarianism in American in the early 1800s. The second is Ralph Waldo Emerson, representing the next generation of Unitarians. The third is Hosea Ballou, who was the correspondingly large figure for Universalism at about the same time as Channing was for Unitarianism. These three men have been very important to me because their writings continue to inspire me greatly. You and I might sometimes feel that it is difficult to be a liberal religionist so deep in the heart of the Bible belt. It is instructive to imagine what it was like to be a religious liberal when the Bible was not only the belt but the pants, shirt, shoes—the entire suit. What impresses me most is their persistent pursuit of honesty, their unwillingness to simply go along with whatever the authorities or the powerful claimed was true. And—they did their homework. They studied hard, read widely, thought deeply, asked penetrating questions. And whenever I feel as if the pursuit of honesty is just too much a burden I often read their words to simply remind me of who I am and what I am called to do. Recall the words of Channing we read earlier. I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically copy the past, nor live on its old virtues, but which listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions.....I call that mind free which has cast off all fear but that of wrongdoing, and which no menace or peril can enthrall: which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself, though all else be lost. I strive for that freedom. I do not find it an easy assignment. That which enthralls your or I today might differ in detail from that to which Channing referred—but there is enthrallment aplenty, and it requires persistence to resist it. Emerson’s essays are a constant touchstone for me. Of course, a fair amount of Emerson is somewhat opaque but that only makes the hunt that much more fun. Studying Emerson requires concentrated study because his are among the most original and complex set of insights about religion in our culture. Overall his writing reminds me of a phrase from the Jewish theologian Martin Buber who once wrote that the fundamental error in religion comes when people in honest astonishment see a meteor—but then claim to hold the stone. Emerson knew that the important thing to do is not simply cherish the one meteor you saw—but keep your head up because they fly again—every night! Religion suffers, we suffer, he said, when we lock up faith in a mausoleum of thought. Faith is a living thing and is best witnessed in its native habitat, the entire world which, for those who have their senses and mind alert, possesses not one square inch of anything the least bit ordinary. The last of these three is one who was fondly known as “Father Ballou.” Ballou published his Treatise on Atonement in 1805, claiming not only Universalism, but Unitarianism as well—a full 14 years before Channing came out of the Trinitarian closet in 1819. Basically he claimed that what didn’t make sense was injurious to faith and that Trinitarianism and the doctrine of eternal torment ordained by God were both illogical nightmares. From Ballou’s point of view, when speaking of God the words “loving” and “torture in hell” just never go together. The orthodox hated him—mostly because he could not be defeated in argument. He really did make sense and he was one of the most gifted creators of analogies that has ever existed. Just one example. When asked to defend why God would save even the nastiest people, Ballou responded, “If your child fell into the mire—would you long to clean him up because you loved him, or would you only love him after he was clean?” Another later episode in Ballou’s life has also been instructive to me. In the 1830s and 40s, transcendentalism was not only having an impact on Unitarianism, but Universalism as well. It was a controversy in both denominations but over time the Unitarians largely embraced the transcendentalist insights. The Universalists, on the other hand, did not. That fateful mis-step, largely at the insistence of Ballou, set the stage for their eventual decline. Over the ensuing decades after Ballou’s death the Universalists would become increasingly conservative, not rousing from their theological slumber, until giants such as Clarence Skinner and Clinton Lee Scott (grandfather, by the way of our own Judy Williams) rose up in the mid-twentieth century. Sadly, Skinner’s and Scott’s insights came too late to revive the faltering denomination. Ballou’s resistance to the transcendentalist movement serves as a strong cautionary note to me. Namely, it does no good to rest on one’s revolutionary laurels. Unitarianism, Universalism, and now the merged denomination (since 1961) Unitarian Universalism, earned its spurs by an unflinching dedication to what made sense. Unfortunately, sense does not remain where we want it to stay. And sometimes it does not take very long for revolutionary insight to become cautious convention. The ground shifts, people and the times move on and one must engage emerging insight. It’s regrettable but understandable that the freedom we least willingly embrace is the freedom from our own entrenched opinions. A man I actually knew in person (I was his minister for eight years before he died) exemplified in some ways an unyielding independence of spirit. We will call him “Red” because that was in fact the name by which everyone knew him in the medium-sized town near the church I served. He did not have red hair. His footwear of choice was red hightop Keds sneakers. I don’t think I ever saw him wear anything else. Red had a career as a bread truck driver, but his real job was maintaining the fields and organizing the Little League teams in his town. It was a massive job for which he received no pay—if you don’t count the affection of an entire town. He was undereducated but very bright, ingenious, and quite capable of helping you see the world from an unexpected and unusual point of view. His was the essence of “free spirit.” After Red’s wife of 52 years died he moved in with his son Keith. One important thing to know about Red is that in his later years he also enjoyed listening to a police scanner, feeling it gave him an edge when he read the crime reports in the paper the next day. Well, late one evening Keith was coming home from work and just as he turned the corner onto his street he noticed several police cars with their lights flashing at the other end of the block. Keith pulled into the driveway and got out thinking that his Dad with his scanner would probably know something about what was going on up the street. He started walking towards the front door when he heard his Dad calling to him through one of the front windows. Keith couldn’t really hear him so he moved closer, and then closer again, until he was standing in the bushes, leaning into the window. Finally he could hear Red say, “Keith, the cops are looking for a peeping Tom!” I realize that my days as a practical joker are long behind me, and the UUMA Code of Professional Practice undoubtedly prohibits my indulging in such behavior. None the less, I am very thankful for the people who keep me on my toes and who consistently refuse to give into the feeling that life is only supposed to be one damn thing after another. The last great Unitarian Universalist I will mention this morning is my own father. I mention him last because of them all he is by far the most important to me. As a teenager I sometimes feared that I would become like him. Now as an adult I feel privileged to be one of his sons. There are many things of mine that were first his. Take for instance, a love of reading, widely. As a young boy I noticed there were always books on his nightstand. And not only did he read them—he wanted to talk about them. Perhaps I was destined to become a minister because of his thirst for an ever better understanding about this most curious world in which we live, and his ever willing desire to talk with you about it. Or take, for instance, his love of Unitarian Universalist churches. My father is what as known as an institutionalist. As a lay member of a church in every town he has lived, he has served as president, treasurer, sometimes the clerk. He has run the canvass, answered the phone, run off the newsletter, helped build churches, start new ones—wherever, whenever. He always lent what wisdom and assistance he could to something that he believed was of great value. His reward lay in the deep and unquestioned personal satisfaction gained by doing the right thing, of adding his share to the community woodpile. There are many more men, oh the people I have met, the books I have read, that have all lent a part to the ongoing improvisation of my life. We all start out thinking that we are going to discover new insights and live a life that has never been lived before. And while the individuality of each life is beyond doubt, it is also true that our unique identity is a composition of parts borrowed, gleaned from a cast of thousands, some known and many unknown. We take what we can borrow from others, pass it through the prism of our own experience, constantly driven to create a medley that expresses as much personal reality as we can muster amidst the churning of a large world. And so as we each take up the making of the song of our lives, it is important to remember the people who, as Emerson wrote in his Divinity School Address, “gave us leave to be what we inly were.” It is equally important to note that you here now are part of my singing, and the singing of many others, each of us longing to live his gift of life we have been given. |
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