I have some good news for you all this morning. Perhaps unknown to you Unitarian Universalists are, as far as spiritual heritage is concerned, direct descendants of New England Puritans. That’s right, the people with the buckles on their shoes and buckles on their brains.

This news might surprise you for there does not seem to be any obvious similarity. Yet it is true in some very significant ways. And after all, the Puritans cannot have been quite as Puritanical as popular imagination has suggested. They too made babies, lots of babies, and I suspect that some of them enjoyed at least the initial step in that process. “Was it bad (giggle) for you Priscilla?” “Yes John. Was it bad (giggle) for you too?”

But how does the spiritual genealogy work? The Puritans were theologically a Calvinist sect. Calvinism is particularly known for its emphasis upon the absolute sovereignty of God. According to John Calvin God is in charge of and has eternally existing knowledge of all things. You can see how this rather logical foundation would come to be affirmed. Of what use was a slacker God that was only partially in charge and was ignorant of some things? There was supposed to be no “oops” when it came to God.

This emphasis upon the absolute sovereignty of God makes logical sense but this foundation did create some problems for the Calvinists. Most notably - could a human being change God’s mind? John Calvin said unequivocally, “No.” But if a human being couldn’t change God’s mind then what was the point of trying to lead a life of faith? What’s the point of trying to please a deity whose mind’s already made up? Were we just little puppets in God’s drama? Yup. According to Calvin salvation was completely unmerited. But then, damnation was completely unmerited as well.

The real slap across the theological face was the fact that no one could really tell which destination, heaven or hell, was to be one’s fate. As you might imagine this uncertainty made Calvinists very nervous. And of all the Calvinists in those centuries the Puritans were among the most nervous. They did believe that God must have predestined them to be Puritans. What else could have motivated them to adopt such an austere faith? And if God had so motivated them to adopt this faith then by God they were going to be the very best Puritans that anyone could hope to encounter.

This drive for perfection in faithfulness however posed another dilemma. How do you be a very good Puritan? One thing was certain - one could never brag about it. One always had to strive for perfection - yet perfection required a strict disinterest in perfection. This rather Zen-like paradox led to an unexpected consequence. Perfection for Puritans could not consist in displaying perfect piety but was focused on an intense interest in God’s world. Since perfection in spiritual practice was off limits lest one succumb to pride, piety took the form of a strong desire to be, for instance, a great farmer, seamstress or silversmith. By the way, you are familiar with the American cultural tradition of discomfort in talking about faith? You can thank the Puritans who believed that the truly faithful never talked about it. And American views about the necessity of a good education are derived from the very same source. Since God was absolute sovereign of everything that one surveyed any knowledge about God’s world was a way of appreciating the deity’s handiwork. And education had the side benefit of enhancing one’s capability as a farmer or seamstress or silversmith. A twofer! Calvinists have always tended to believe in a kind of salvation by education.

These successful Puritans morphed over the ensuing decades into what became known as the Congregational Church. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Congregational Church split in two. One half became the Unitarians, the other half remaining as the Trinitarian Christians. It is easy to focus on the differences between the two halves, particular differing views about Jesus, but such distinctions do not negate some deep similarities. Our love of education and our reluctance to talk about matters of faith were inherited, not invented, by Unitarian Universalists. It could be said that we loved learning so much that we educated ourselves right out of orthodoxy. Just like Puritans everywhere, we have had a tendency to go to the extreme.

There is another, even more interesting, extreme to which we Unitarian Universalists, we latter day Puritans, have succumbed. Lurking in the background of claims about God’s total sovereignty is an often un-glimpsed pantheism. That is, it is easy to imagine that since everything belongs to God’s realm, everything is therefore sacred.

This is a lovely sentiment that is increasingly expressed by Unitarian Universalists. And I can certainly understand the appeal. It strikes us a way by which we can affirm the many different faith traditions and spiritual practices that exist today among human beings. We feel we do not need any more people who are too close minded about traditions and practices that differ from their own. What we need instead is a willingness and enthusiasm for encountering the beauty and wisdom of each and every tradition and practice. What we need instead is a way to celebrate the rich diversity of belief and spiritual practice. But while this way we propose seems rich in potential, it is not without some very dangerous potholes.

Pothole #1. If everything is sacred, then nothing is not sacred. This could potentially elevate that original Puritan anxiety to a new level. If everywhere you look is filled with sacredness how do you actually do anything in such a world? When you take a walk through your neighborhood do you evince a certain sense of everything being very special? Are you attentive to every last little blessed thing you encounter? Is the stone in your shoe sacred? The people you encounter, are they all sacred, including that jerk, excuse me, that guy on the cell phone who pulled right in front of you? Do you have to think that all that everyone does is sacred? Is your anger at the impolite motorist sacred? You can see that the sentiment is an invitation to paralysis and exhaustion. Might as well join a Buddhist monastery.

Pothole #2. The sentiment that everything is sacred is disturbingly close to the sentiment that nothing is sacred. If everything is sacred then nothing stands out from anything else and it does not matter if we go left or right, up or down. We need not embrace anything, adopt any opinion, make any decision because any possible pathway that any of us might choose is just as good as any other. We will keep all our spiritual options open. If something seems too hard, oh well, we can try something else because after all, that task we face is not qualitatively any more special than any other path. Or consider this, if any other path was just as good, what’s so good about the one you are on? Are there no standards? Perhaps it’s an extreme example but what about the pathway of a live-in boyfriend who sexually abuses and finally murders a four year old? That can’t be a spiritual path. That seems like a clear example, but when you draw the line somewhere, what’s to stop any of us from drawing the line anywhere? But if everything is sacred what justifies any line drawing? Isn’t line drawing, if everything is sacred, itself a mistake?

I do believe that everything is sacred. But there are some problems to be worked out. I believe everything is sacred because it seems to reflect my experience of the world. When reading the history of what humankind has deemed a bona fide spiritual practice it seems that there is no behavior which has been left out - from solitary meditation to ritual murder. My favorite mystic from the Middle Ages was a fellow by the name of Brother Lawrence whose spiritual practice consisted of preparing the meals for his fellow monks. Perhaps he was medieval version of Julia Childs. Some of you more athletic types might be interested to know that there is a Buddhist sect in Southeast Asia whose principle spiritual practice is running. When the spiritual spectrum ranges from calligraphy in Japan to a kudzu Jesus in Raleigh North Carolina it is easy to see how human beings are willing to grant that anything, and hence everything, including kudzu, could be sacred. Spiritually speaking, as a species, we are quite promiscuous.

And of course, we also have the exact opposite problem, of people being far too willing to claim that some behavior or belief is not spiritual nor partakes of the sacred. Some things seem obvious; such as murder, but it still amazes me how frequently people use the “not sacred” label to justify all kinds of ugliness, brutality, abuse, even murder. Such willingness to wall off the sacred just seems wrong.

But there remain those potholes. One way of filling them in would be to elect some spirituality police who could decide for us what was truly spiritual and what was totally bogus. And in fact this is what most religions do. They make distinctions based on information they believe is fundamentally sound. Thus, if you are a Catholic anything which does not fall within Catholic doctrine is out. If you are a Jew anything which does not agree with the Torah is out. Protestants - the New Testament is central. For Hindus it’s the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita, for Moslems it’s the Koran. In each case the potholes supposedly disappear because some things are decreed off limits and other things are found to be acceptable.

Well, we don’t have a text to which we are absolutely beholden so maybe, to assist us, we could create a new committee at Emerson which we could call the “spiritual practices committee.” After all, we solve most of our problems by forming a committee. So if you had a question regarding the sacred quality of something you could submit it and they would, after some research and several meetings, give you an aswer. I imagine that kudzu Jesus would have a tough time making the cut but Japanese calligraphy - we’re good with that. Sacrifice of small mammals to foretell the future? Bzzzt- out. Meditation - okay. How about praying the rosary? What about kaddish? Sure. What if a woman showed up at Emerson wearing a burkha - h’mmm. I could imagine the heated conversations in the “spirituality practices committee.” But they wouldn’t have to worry about the outcomes of their decisions because no matter what ruling they might produce most Unitarian Universalists would be perfectly okay with paying absolutely no attention to any ruling with which they disagreed.

Okay, so the spiritual practice committee approach is out. What might be another approach? Let us start with a different kind of elemental reality rather than some text. Let’s theorize that it is absolutely true that there is no other human being on the planet who is exactly like you. You, for good and for woe, are a unique one of kind, never to be repeated human being. I think it would be very difficult to refute that claim.

As a one of a kind unique reality you have certain dispositions and tendencies which form the unique palette of your preferences. In the easiest cases there might be one thing which stands out in your own reality among all the other things. Perhaps you have excellent hand eye coordination. Perhaps you can zero in on what other people intend to say but don’t. Perhaps you are profoundly interested in manipulating numbers. There is in fact an endless number of possibilities of things which you might prefer, are good at; and an almost equally endless number of things which you dislike and are really not so good at. But even given this range there is still a unique constellation of preference, experience, and capability that is yours alone.

It strikes me that the utter rarity of your life suggests that there is something inherently spiritual about it. You could in fact conceive of your life as a spiritual project. It necessarily involves growing your soul, learning how to be that better you in the world you encounter and with the people you meet. Indeed, spirituality need not be something that you apply like clothing but something that wells up from the within of who you are. And because you are unique, your spirituality would be unique as well. And since everyone’s spiritual pathway is unique, we should be reluctant to suggest that our way is the only way, for there is, in fact, no “our” way. There is just “my” way, and another “my way,” etc.

There is a similarity in this approach to the Hindu concept of dharma, which asserts that everyone has an individually tailored life purpose which they are supposed to fulfill. Of course, Hinduism also emphasizes re-incarnation by which your present life is governed by the conduct in your past lives. And dharma within Hinduism is heavily influenced by caste traditions which are supposed to define your purpose within the context of a rather unpleasant hierarchy. But one need not adopt re-incarnation, and certainly not the caste system, in order to see the sense of dharma, the claim that your one life has some unique central spiritual purpose.

The fact that we each have our own unique dharma to fulfill might strike you as rather lonely. Each of us are busy pursuing whatever path we are on. You aren’t on my path, and I’m not on your path. And so yes, it is lonely. But while I hate the break this news if you do not yet realize it - you are not the only one who is lonely. It turns out that everyone is on some level lonely. Loneliness is not unique - it is common. There is something that each of us can do to abet that loneliness. It is called, “kindness.”

Dharma helps us with the “everything is sacred” potholes in two ways. First, the only spirituality for which you are personally responsible is your own, and for a time for that of your children. So, yes, everything is sacred, but your sacred path is unique. It is impossible to be responsible for the pathway of another - you’re not on that pathway. Besides which, you do not have the time to waste trying to live on someone else’s pathway. So you need not become anxious about being careful to appreciate everything being sacred all the time. What you do need is the intention to focus upon the things which are sacred to you.

The second pothole is a bit more interesting. Again, if everything is sacred than nothing can be distinguished as somehow being more sacred in comparison to anything else. But from the perspective of your individual life, not everything can be sacred. Matt Schaub thinks football is sacred. Gwen Essinger thinks the Texans are sacred but not everyone does. Even though everything is sacred, you do not experience everything, and you are not everything. The beauty of individuality is that you don’t have to be everything or love everything. You are just you, one little old lonely some of the time you. And from this perspective the hard part is not theaffirmation that everything is sacred, but what do you personally find to be sacred? Too often we really do want to keep our options open, but that is a failure of refusing to be the one unique never to be repeated version of who you are. Being you requires, on some level, your embracing that very specific pathway which is yours alone to walk. And you had better, because if you don’t - no one else can so it will go as a life un-lived.

I’m not saying this spiritual pathway is easy. Let us call it “intuitive spirituality” because it is rarely something that is blindingly obvious. It will never be easy to rest comfortably in the sense that your pathway is justified, and in fact, as those Puritans knew, feeling justified can very likely be a warning that you have no real justification. Discovering your pathway requires some introspection, it requires conversation with others, the ability to ask good questions, it involves perhaps study of religious traditions, perhaps poetry, fiction, science magazines. Trips to the museum, any museum, might help. A pilgrimage to the Beer Can House might help. Learning how to embrace the particularities of your failures helps. Concerts might help; a walk along the bayou might help. Confronting your own personal mix of demons might help. What you need do is keep your mind, senses and heart open. Remember, everything is sacred so nothing is left out of the mix while you are searching for and affirming what is sacred to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have been given, have been given, one amazing life in this big amazing world. As John Calvin knew, you didn’t earn it. It’s pure gift. So what is your response to receiving a gift which is so absolutely unique? Let us help one another as we each find the way to use our time wisely and well. And let us close with this song from Paul McCartney.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise