Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Unitarian Universalism

  • It’s Never Too Late

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading comes from the closing chapter of The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett. The story takes place in the late 19th C., and the narrator of the book has spent the summer in the coastal Maine village; but now it’s time for the narrator to bid good-bye to her friend and landlady, Mrs. Todd, and return to Boston and her job as a writer….

    “At last it was the time of late summer, when the house was cool and damp in the morning, and all the light seemed to come through greeen leaves; but at the first step out of doors the sunshines always laid a warm hand on my shoulder, and the clear, high sky seemed to lift quickly as I looked at it….

    “I was to take the small unpunctual steamer that went down the bay in the afternoon, and I sat for a while by my window looking out on the green herb garden, with regret for company. Mrs. Todd had hardly spoken all day except in the briefest and most disapproving way; it was as if we were on the edge of a quarrel. It seemed impossible to take my departure with anything like composure. At last I heard a footstep, and looked up to find that Mrs. Todd was standing at the door.

    ” ‘I’ve seen to everything now,” she told me in an unusually loud and business-like voice. ‘Your trunks are on the w’arf by this time. Cap’n Bowden he come and took ’em down himself an’ is going to see that they’re safe aboard. Yes, I’ve seen to all your ‘rangements,’ she repeated in a gentler tone. ‘These things I’ve left on the kitchen table you’ll want to carry by hand; the basket needn’t be returned. I guess I shall walk over towards the Port now an’ inquire how old Mis’ Edward Caplin is.’

    “I glanced at my friend’s face, and saw a look that touched me to the heart. I had been sorry enough before to go away.

    ” ‘I guess you’ll excuse me if I ain’t down there to stand round on the w’arf and see you go,’ she said, still trying to be gruff. ‘Yes, I ought to go over and inquire for Mis’ Edward Caplin; it’s her third shock, and if mother gets in on Sunday she’ll want to know just how the old lady is.’ With this last word Mrs. Todd turned and left me as if with sudden thought of something she had forgotten, so that I felt sure she was coming back, but presently I heard her go out of the kitchen door and walk down the path toward the gate. I could not part so; I ran after her to say good-by, but she shook her head and waved her hand without looking back when she heard my hurrying steps, and so went away down the street.

    “When I went in again the little house had suddenly grown lonely, and my room looked empty as it had the day I came. I and all my belongings had died out of it, and I knew how it would seem when Mrs. Todd came back and found her lodger gone. So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.” [pp. 115-116]

    The second reading is from Treatise on Atonement by Rev. Hosea Ballou, the great Universalist minister whose preaching here in New Bedford in the 1820’s led to the formation of First Universalist of New Bedford, which merged with this church in 1930:

    “Let us pass to the prophecies of Isaiah; see chap. xxv. 6, 7, 8. “And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all the nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall be taken from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.” No one will doubt that the provisions here spoken of are those which are provided in the gospel of salvation.

    “In the first place, then, observe it is made for all people; this proves that it was the intention of him who made the feast that all people should share in its divine benefits.

    “Secondly. It is testified that the veil of darkness which was over all people shall finally be taken away.

    “Thirdly. That death is to be swallowed up in victory, and tears wiped away from off all faces….”

    SERMON — “Never Too Late”

    In the reading this morning, we heard how it is that New England Yankees say good-by. Sarah Orne Jewett writes: “I ran after Mrs. Todd to say good-by, but she shook her head and waved her hand without looking back when she heard my hurrying steps, and so went away down the street.” As a New England Yankee born and bred, that was certainly the primary way I learned to say good-by: You don’t go down to the wharf to wave good-by to a good friend as she heads off on the unpunctual steamer that goes down the bay; instead, you invent some good errand that will require you to be elsewhere so that you really don’t have to say good-by at all; and if your good friend runs after you to say good-by, wave your hand at her without looking back.

    Modern psychologists would probably tell us that this is not a healthy way to say good-by. I respectfully disagree. It is a culturally appropriate way to say good-by. Living in the place we do, with the climate we have, we New Englanders have faced an quite a bit of loss over the centuries. Half the people who came over on the Mayflower died in the first winter; don’t forget that 90% of the Native Americans in New England had died from disease a few years before the Mayflower arrived. There wasn’t much good soil for farming here, many New Englanders turned to the sea to earn a living, and of course many ships went down, leaving widows on shore. We turned to manufacturing textiles, which went pretty well for a while, but now that’s gone too, and, with the exception of Boston, most of New England still struggles to base its economy on something other than tourism. Nor can we forget the Red Sox, who finally won another World Series in 2004, but now seem to have gone back to their old losing ways, dropping three straight games to the hated Yankees.

    Perhaps the most poignant loss of all here in New England comes with the changing seasons. Just when we get used to the heat of summer, with its long lazy days that seem to stretch on forever — just when we get used to summer, we start noticing that the birds are forming flocks and getting ready to fly south, and the days are quickly getting shorter and shorter, and then comes a cool night when we have to dig out the blankets we put away last spring. What makes it worse is that in our short New England summers, you generally don’t get to do all the things you had hoped and planned to do; here we are in the last weeks of summer, and as usual half of my plans never materialized.

    Of course when fall comes, with gloriously-colored leaves on the trees, it doesn’t last long. The leaves are incredibly beautiful for about two weeks, and then they fall off. Along comes winter which, in spite of the sublime beauty of the bare trees, and the gray ocean, and the storms that roar through, is unpleasant at best. And just when you get used to winter, everything turns to mud and muck. Spring mostly seems vastly overrated, until at last spring is in full flower, and you want it to last forever; but spring too ends all too quickly.

    Nor do the seasons end neatly and cleanly. If you say good-by to summer now, you’ll be saying good-by too soon, because we will have at least one more heat wave before we’re done with it. I imagine this is what the whaling captain’s wife fel, albeit on a grander scale: she said good-by when her husband got on the boat, but was she saying good-by for good, or just for a while? Was she saying good-by for one short year, or for five long years? No one could say. Her good-bys had no certainty in them.

    Our religious traditions cannot be entirely separated from our New England climate and culture. The earliest European settlers brought some religious beliefs that fir in with the New England climate. The Puritans brought both the belief that most people were going to eternal damnation after death, and a strong sense that they could create a good society against all adversity, a society that would stand as a beacon for all humanity.

    This second belief, that we can overcome adversity, and the climate, and the poor soil, and the fact that ships go down at sea, has become an integral part of New England culture. We are quite convinced that we can create a better world. We have often done so. When the whaling industry started to fade out, the good old New Englanders of New Bedford started manufacturing textiles; that served this city well for many decades. Now we are trying to figure out how this city can fit into the new post-industrial economy, and I have no doubt that we will solve that problem, eventually. The Red Sox constantly lose (except for that one year), but every spring we are certain that this will be the year when they win again. Deep within us is the certainty that the world can, and will, be better by and by.

    We are quite convinced that we can create a better world, and this legacy of the early Puritans has turned New England into a land of reformers. We are always trying to reform the world, to make it better. We New Englanders have been ardent Abolitionists, we have advocated for universal education, we have fought for religious liberty, we supported the Civil Rights movement, some of us supported women’s rights from very early on. Today we are at the forefront of supporting equal marriage rights, and it is no accident that Massachusetts is the first state to legalize marriage for same sex couples. The fight for justice is part of our belief system. We truly want a world where all people are treated equally well.

    Given all this — given the adversity of the climate, given the fact that New England has presented its human inhabitants with quite a bit of loss, given our deeply-held sense that the world can and will be made a better place, perhaps it is not surprising that Universalism flourished here in New England. Even though the old Puritan belief that most of humanity will be damned to eternal torment upon death remains strong in some circles, New England has also nurtured a strong belief in universal salvation, the belief that all persons will get to go to heaven upon death.

    Now you personally may or may not believe in heaven, or in any kind of life after death. But even if that is true for you, I’m sure you can see how there is that in the New England spirit that would support the idea of universal salvation. Think about it this way: If there is a heaven, it must be a place where true justice, and true equality reigns supreme. We could not imagine heaven as a place where injustice is possible. Given that, those of us who are true New England reformers know that all persons must be given equal access to heaven; just as we know that all persons deserve equal access to education; just as we know that women and men must be equal; just as we know that we cannot tolerate racism. If we cannot tolerate racism, how can we tolerate heaven as a place that refuses to admit some people? From our vantage point as imperfect human beings, all we can see is how flawed other people are; a hundred years ago, white people thought it was a fatal flaw to have dark skin; a hundred years ago, men thought it was a fatal flaw to be a woman; today, there are too many people who still believe it is a fatal flaw to love someone of the same gender as yourself. But if we were able to take the vantage point of God, we would see that all human beings are examples of perfection. Not to say that human beings don’t do evil things; we can do evil, we can even be evil. But there is something within us, some irreducible core, that retains something of perfection.

    Similarly, if the Bible is correct and there is a God, then logically speaking that God must be a God of love. Logically speaking, the God of the Bible, whom the Bible asserts is a God of love, would not ever damn someone to eternal torment; for, logically speaking, such damnation would not be what we could call in any sense loving. Human beings may be imperfect; human beings may indulge in sin; but an infinitely good an loving God would not therefore damn those human beings to eternal torment.

    I go on at some length about this topic because belief in hell is making a comeback. So while you might not use the word “heaven” yourself, and while you might not use the word “God” yourself, you know perfectly well that many of our neighbors and friends talk about God and heaven and hell. And if need be, we Unitarian Universalists can still use traditional religious language to pass on what the old New England Universalists said. They said that God is so great that God can love each and every human being. They said that because God is a manifestation of perfect love, everyone gets to go to heaven. There will be universal salvation, because you and I are worthy of being saved. We may do evil, but God’s love is powerful enough to redeem us all.

    You can also see how such a belief would be attractive to the New England character. The idea that most of humanity will be damned to eternal torment doesn’t sit well with the typical New Englander. We already have to put up with New England winters. We already have to put up with high unemployment, and a difficult transition to a post-industrial economy. We already have to put up with the Red Sox, who even as I speak are going through their usual late-summer breakdown, who as usual have no depth in the pitching staff and no real team leaders. Don’t tell me that I have to suffer through years of watching the Red Sox lose late-summer games, and then be denied admittance to heaven because I didn’t measure up to some impossibly high standard of behavior. A belief in eternal damnation is just a little too much for the average New Englander to have to bear.

    This brings us at last to the second reading, by the great New England preacher, Hosea Ballou. Hosea Ballou is from a different era than ours: his language may now sound dated; his extreme reliance on the King James version of the Bible, without any reference to all the Biblical scholarship we now have, may now seem quaint; his propensity for interspersing his writing with too many Bible quotes may now sound annoying. But underneath that, underneath his awkward prose, there is a deeper poetical meaning, a non-literal meaning, that sounds surprisingly contemporary. Back in 1805, Ballou wrote: “It was the intention of him who made the feast that all people should share in its divine benefits”; today we would say that all persons have an inherent worth and dignity and therefore all persons should have equal access to all that is good in life. Ballou wrote “that the veil of darkness which was over all people shall finally be taken away”; today we are still working to help remove that veil of darkness over people. On some days we fell as if we’re making some progress.

    I would like to go further. When Ballou says: “That death is to be swallowed up in victory, and tears wiped away from off all faces,” I would like to be able to agree with him. I would like to think that my life has been lived to some purpose, that I have not lived in vain. I would like to think that death doesn’t bring complete annihilation, any more than I wish to think that after death some vindictive God is going to send me to eternal torment for being a heretic or worse.

    Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I think not. None of us lives in vain. If you have wiped the tears away from one face, other than your own, you have not lived in vain. If you have brought joy to one other person at any time in your life, you have not lived in vain. If you really want death to be swallowed up in victory, go and do more of that: wipe away some more tears from other’s faces; recognize the inherent worth and dignity of all persons; set a feast before those who need it; bring joy to someone else.

    I would say: Heaven isn’t just about some life after this life; it’s about creating justice and love here and now. For some of you, this will not be enough; some of you will want to know what happens after death. If you are one of those people, take heed of Hosea Ballou’s proclamation of universal salvation: everyone gets to go to heaven. Take heed, and take comfort. And now take heed of what I have to tell you: it’s not enough to wait passively until you die, and then go to heaven. The underlying meaning of Ballou’s words tells us that. It’s not enough to wait passively for someone else to set a feast in front of you; you must be ready to wipe away the tears from someone else’s eyes when that is needed. If you truly want your eventual death to be swallowed up in victory, start working on it now: love other people, bring justice to the world in however small a way, proclaim that life is joy.

    In this time of late summer, when the days are getting shorter quickly, it’s easy to look back with regret on all the things you meant to do all summer long, but never quite got around to doing. In your life, it’s easy to look back with regret on all the lost opportunities, on all the things that you did wrong. It can be all too easy to look forward to death as a release and a comfort, and to live passively towards that end. But it’s never too late to change. It’s never too late to turn around when you hear those hurrying steps behind you, and to meet a good friend face to face, and to say that you love them. It’s never too late to express your love, to partake of the feast of life, to swallow up death in victory. You can transform your life into one of love and joy. It’s never too late to begin.

  • Question and response sermon

    Story for all ages — The Quail and the Bird Called P’eng

    Many years ago in ancient China, the Emperor T’ang was speaking with a wise man named Ch’i.

    Ch’i was telling the Emperor about the wonders of far off and distant places. Ch’i said:

    “If you go far, far to the north, beyond the middle kingdom of China, beyond the lands where our laughing black-haired people live, you will come to the lands where the snow lies on the ground for nine months a year, and where the people speak a barbaric language and eat strange foods.

    “And if you travel even farther to the north, you will come to a land where the snow and ice never melts, not even in the summer. In that land, night never comes in the summer time, but in the winter, the sun never appears and the night lasts for months at a time.

    “And if you go still farther to the north, beyond the barren land of ice and snow, you will come to a vast, dark sea. This sea is called the Lake of Heaven. Many marvelous things live in the Lake of Heaven. They say there is a fish called K’un. The fish K’un is thousands of miles wide, and who knows how many miles long.”

    “A fish that is thousands of miles long?” said the Emperor. “How amazing!”

    “It is even more amazing than it seems at first,” said Ch’i. “For this giant fish can change shape and become a bird called P’eng. This bird is enormous. When it spreads its wings, it is as if clouds cover the sky. Its back is like a huge mountain. When it flaps its wings, typhoons spread out across the vast face of the Lake of Heaven for thousands of miles. The wind from P’eng’s wings lasts for six months. P’eng rises up off the surface of the water, sweeping up into the blue sky. The giant bird wonders, ‘Is blue the real color of the sky, or is the sky blue because it goes on forever?’ And when P’eng looks down, all it sees is blue sky below, with the wind piled beneath him.”

    ***

    A little gray dove and a little insect, a cicada, sat on the tree and listened to Ch’i tell the Emperor about the bird P’eng. They looked at each other and laughed quietly. The cicada said quietly to the dove, “If we’re lucky, sometimes we can fly up to the top of that tall tree over there. But lots of times, we don’t even make it that high up.”

    “Yes,” said the little dove. “If we can’t even make it to the top of the tree, how on earth can that bird P’eng fly that high up in the sky? No one can fly that high.”

    ***

    Ch’i continued to describe the giant bird P’eng to the Emperor. “Flapping its wings, the bird wheels in flight,” said Ch’i, “and it turns south, flying across the thousands of miles of the vastness of the Lake of Heaven, across the oceans of the Middle Kingdom, heading many thousands of miles towards the great Darkness of the South.”

    ***

    A quail sat quietly in a bush beside the Emperor and Ch’i. “The bird P’eng can fly all those thousands of miles from the Lake of Heaven in the north across the Middle Kingdom, and into the vast ocean in the south?” said the quail to himself. “Well, I burst up out of the bushes into flight, fly a dozen yards, I set back down into the bushes again. That’s the best kind of flying. Who cares if some big bird flies ninety thousand miles?”

    ***

    The Emperor listened to Ch’i, and said, “Do up and down ever have an end? Do the four directions ever come to an end?”

    “Up and down never come to an end,” said Ch’i. “The four directions never come to an end.

    “That is the difference between a small understanding and a great understanding,” Ch’i continued. “If you have a small understanding, you might think the top of that tree is as high up as you can go. If you have a small understanding, you might think that flying to that bush over there is as far as you can go in that direction. But even beyond the point where up and down and the four directions are without end, there is no end.”

    ***

    But the quail did not hear, for she had flown a dozen yards away in the bushes. The cicada did not hear because it was trying to fly to the top of a tree. And the little dove did not hear because he had tucked his head under his wing and fallen asleep.

    Readings

    I have one reading, on the importance of asking questions, but first I’ll start with a few words about what a “Question and Response Sermon” might be.

    In our religious tradition, what holds us together is not a creed, but a covenant, a set of promises that we make to one another. In other words, our religious tradition emphasizes relationship, not belief.

    This state of affairs is confusing to some people — How, they ask, can you have a religion if you don’t believe in anything? Well, we think it’s better to concentrate on the promises that hold us together, rather than some abstract beliefs. More to the point, of course we do believe in things — life and love and the power of truth. But I’d also say we believe in the power of questions. And when the glue that holds us together is relationships, we are freed to ask difficult and interesting questions; and the responses to those questions often lead us to engage in further questioning together.

    My sermons are usually written in response to something someone in this congregation has said to me. But in a question-and-response sermon, the relationship is a little more direct. You ask the questions, and I respond to them right here and now; I won’t say I answer your questions, I respond to them. And then I file all these questions away, and they’ll influence my sermons for the next year — even if I don’t get to respond to all your questions this morning, you can bet I’ll refer to them over the next twelve months as I plan out and write sermons.

    Now for the reading on the importance of questions. This is from one of Mark Twain’s speeches, given at a 1909 banquet honoring one of his friends, Mr. H. H. Rogers. I should tell you that at the time of this speech, a half crown would have been worth about sixty cents. Mark Twain said:

    “[Others have said] Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is. It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know lots of private things in his life which people don’t know, and I know how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to ask questions. He did not like to appear ignorant…. On board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. He did not like to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn’t know; but rather than be ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in bed he could not sleep. He wondered if he could afford that outlay in case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: ‘A king’s crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000.’ He could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.”

    Thus ends Mark Twain’s thoughts on the importance of asking questions.

    *****

    From the First Unitarian newsletter — The “Question and Response Sermon”

    On June 4, I gave a “question and response sermon.” Everyone who was in church that Sunday had a chance to write a question on a piece of paper, and during the sermon time, I responded to as many of the questions as we had time for. But I only had time to respond to less than half the questions. The questions were so thoughtful and interesting that I thought I’d give written responses to the rest of them in the newsletter…. –Dan Harper

    *****

    Question: Is the Unitarian Universalist denomination changing so that more Unitarian Universalists believe in God and are seeking spiritual fulfillment?

    My response: According to a recent survey by the Commission on Appraisal of the Unitarian Universalist Association, “there has been a shift in Unitarian Universalism away from a humanist center to a more eclectic mix of philosophies or theologies.” Does that mean that more Unitarian Universalists believe in God? Well, it all depends on what you mean when you say “God.” If you mean a traditional conception of God, then I don’t believe that any more Unitarian Universalists believe in God now as compared to twenty years ago; if you mean “God” in the broadest possible sense as something transcending humanity, then yes I think more Unitarian Universalists believe in God now.

    However, I would not connect a belief in God and the search for spiritual fulfillment. I know plenty of atheists and humanists who seek spiritual fulfillment without any need for belief in God.

    Question: Do Unitarian Universalists have any belief in an afterlife? i.e., heaven? reincarnation? Is it left up to us to decide what we believe?

    My response: Yes, many Unitarian Universalists do believe in an afterlife, and a smaller number believe in reincarnation. Many Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in an afterlife. And there are a fair number of Unitarian Universalists like me who just don’t worry about the whole issue one way or another. Generally speaking, the question of an afterlife is less important to us than the question of how we can bring about justice and peace in the present world.

    Yes, it is left up to each individual to decide what he or she believes on this point. Yet there are limits to what you can believe about an afterlife, and still feel comfortable within Unitarian Universalism. I don’t know any Unitarian Universalists who believe in the idea of eternal punishment, probably because our Universalist tradition was founded around the notion that since God is love, God would not condemn anyone to an eternity of suffering.

    Question: Connection between the local, national, and international Unitarian Universalist church organizations.

    My response: Our local church is our ultimate religious authority. We have the power to make all significant decisions regarding our religious life together. However, we are in a covenanted relationship with a thousand other Unitarian Universalist congregations across the United States, meaning that our congregations promise to provide mutual support and guidance to each other. Each year, representatives from local congregations gather in late June at General Assembly to set policy for the national organization (I’ll be the voting representative for our church at General Assembly this year, although we could have had two other delegates as well).

    Internationally, Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalist churches in various countries around the world are loosely organized through the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists (www.icuu.net/). The various national organizations are all organized quite differently: Unitarians in Hungary and Romania have bishops; Universalists in the Philippines are organized as one big congregation with outposts scattered here and there; Unitarian Universalists in South America are just beginning to get organized.

    Question: Spark of life — divine or chemical reaction?

    My response: Both, in my opinion. But we could have a long discussion about what we mean by “divine” in this context. I mean it in the sense that it is something that is not quite comprehensible to us (and I’d argue on the basis of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem that there’s a good chance that the “spark of life” must always remain an unexplained axiom from within the context of our consciousness).

    Question: If Unitarian Universalism accepts all, regardless of beliefs, then why call it a religion at all? Similarly, Unitarian Universalism stresses acceptance of all people and beliefs, but to what extent? Critical thinking has its role in living a productive life, i.e. making good choices. If we don’t accept all beliefs/lifestyles, does this make us less “evolved”?

    My response: First of all, I don’t believe we accept all, regardless of belief. For example, I would find it difficult to accept someone who believes it is good to exploit other human beings; I would find it difficult to believe in the necessity of live animal sacrifices; and I would find it difficult to accept someone who believes in a vengeful God who gives us permission to hurt other human beings. I’m sure you could come up with your own examples.

    So we don’t accept all beliefs, but I don’t believe this makes us any more or less “evolved.” I’m not sure I would apply the concept of evolution to religious beliefs. When someone starts claiming that their religion is more evolved than another religion, that can lead to things like religious persecution and religious wars.

    Probably the most important thing to remember in this context is that we Unitarian Universalists are not organized around beliefs. We are organized around our covenant with one another. A covenant is a set of promises that we make to each other. These promises set forth our ideal of what it means to live in human community. One of our fundamental assumptions is that no one person can figure out how to live a good and moral and productive life alone. That only happens within the context of a community.

    Question: What is CUUPS?

    My response: CUUPS is an affiliate organization of our church, and it stands for Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. Learn more from their Web site at www.cuups.org. If you want to know about our affiliated CUUPS chapter, talk with Niko Tarini, who is a member of First Unitarian and a member of the CUUPS chapter.

    There are also nation-wide groups for Unitarian Universalists who identify with the following spiritual paths: humanism, Christianity, Universalism, Judaism, and Buddhism. If you have an interest in any of these other groups, let me know, and I’ll get you contact information.

    Question: Do fish know they’re in water?

    My response: In the book One Hand Clapping: Zen Stories for All Ages, Rafe Martin recounts the following Zen Story:

    “Once upon a time a baby fish asked an older, larger fish about the sea.

    ” ‘What is the sea,’ he asked. ‘I keep hearing about it, but I don’t know what it is.’

    ” ‘Why the sea is all around you, little one,’ said the grown-up fish.

    ” ‘If that’s so, why can’t I se it?’ asked the young fish.

    ” ‘Because it is everywhere. It surrounds you. It’s inside and outside you. You were born in the sea and you will die in the sea. What’s more, you yourself are the life of the sea…. It’s just because it’s so close to you that it’s very hard to see.’”

    Question: Could you do a pagan ritual at one of your services?

    My response: I do not feel I personally am qualified to lead a pagan ritual — I know how to lead Unitarian Universalist worship, but I just don’t enough to be able to worship in any other religious tradition. However, I will pass this suggestion on to the Religious Services Committee, and see if they would like to find someone to take this on.

    You should also know that our CUUPS chapter has regular pagan rituals — see the church calendar for dates.

    Question: Could you speak on grief and using our spirituality to help us through our loss?

    My response: This is a big topic, and I will plan to do at least one sermon next year on this topic. I also try to address the topic of grief each year on the Sunday just before Memorial Day.

    But here’s a brief response: Yes, I feel that religion and spirituality can help us in times of grief and loss. For me, the difference between religion and spirituality is that religion always takes place in community, whereas spirituality tends to be more personal and private. Religious communities can help us deal with grief by offering a supportive community of caring people. Personal spirituality can help in a different way. Whatever personal spiritual practice you follow — meditation, prayer, etc. — can calm and heal you from the inside.

    Of course, you can always make an appointment with me to come into the office and talk about issues around grief and loss.

    Question: Do you believe in life after death? Please don’t say we live on in people’s minds. True, but not true enough for me.

    My response: I have to say this is not something I think about much one way or another. I find that I am so focused on bringing about a heaven on earth here and now, that I don’t have any much energy left over to worry about what happens after death. I suspect that this won’t be a satisfactory answer for many of you, but I’m being as honest as I can.

    Going beyond my personal beliefs, the question of life after death is a very big question indeed. I’ll try to work this question into a number of sermons in the coming year.

    Question: What is your belief in karmic retribution?

    My response: In my own life, I have not found karmic retribution to hold true. Sometimes bad things happen for no apparent reason. Perhaps if I could see a bigger picture somehow, I would see that that karmic retribution does hold true. And I certainly have the greatest respect for those world religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, that set forth doctrines of karma. It’s just that I haven’t found it to be true in my own life.

    Question:What is the relationship between Unitarian Universalism and the Baha’i faith?

    My response: It is a relationship of mutual respect, and I think there’s a mutual recognition that each is a liberal religion. However, there are substantial differences. The Baha’i faith does claim to have ultimate answers in a way that Unitarian Universalism does not, and the Baha’i faith came out of Islam whereas we have come out of Christianity.

    Question: How can we use religion as a means to inclusion and unity among people, instead of using faith to divide us?

    My response: Good question. I wish I had an answer to this problem. Instead of an answer, I have a possible response.

    Carole Fontaine, a professor at Andover Newton Theological School and a Unitarian Universalist, has proposed that we Unitarian Universalists are well-placed to further human rights work in the world. As it stand right now, there are two main camps of human rights workers: there are those who support human rights on the basis of religious belief, and there are those who support human rights on the basis of natural law that has nothing to do with religion. At present, these two groups don’t work much together because of their differing attitudes towards religion. Yet if they combined their efforts, it seems obvious that there would be much more progress made towards human rights. Carole Fontaine proposes that Unitarian Universalists already know how to facilitate dialogue between atheists and theists (after all, we do it all the time in our local churches). So we could make a major contribution to human rights work by helping these two different groups talk to one another, and learn how to work with one another.

    This might serve as a model for how Unitarian Universalists could promote inclusion and unity among people, by facilitating inter-religious dialogue, and dialogue between religious and non-religious groups.

    Question: Is there any guilt involved with Unitarian Universalist beliefs (other than not coming to church)?

    My response: Since beliefs are not particularly important to us, I don’t see how there can be any guilt involved with our beliefs. Unitarian Universalist guilt comes about when we violate the terms of our covenants with one another. Covenants are the promises we make to one another about how we promise to be in relationship, and how we promise to maintain our religious community. That’s why there’s Unitarian Universalist guilt when you don’t come to church — the guilt arise, not because you’ve violated some belief, but because in a very small way you have broken the covenant you have made with this religious community.

    I should add that when you miss church because of health problems or family obligations, there’s no violation of the covenant and therefore no guilt. In fact, if you miss church because of health problems or family obligations, and no one from church calls you to find out where you’ve been, then it’s the church community who has broken (in a small way) the covenant with you. The obvious conclusion is that if you don’t see someone at church for a few weeks, you should call them and make sure they’re OK.

    Question: Prayer — why? I can’t visualize that there is any one hearing or any reason to think that the words go anywhere.

    My response: I probably represent a minority viewpoint within Unitarian Universalism — I have no personal prayer life, and prayer has never worked for me personally. I’ve tried it, but it doesn’t do anything for me. However, I have seen that public prayer is an effective way to give voice to concerns of a community, so I am happy to do public prayer.

    Many Unitarian Universalists do pray. People for whom I have the highest respect tell me that they believe there is a God who listens to their prayers. Other Unitarian Universalists think of prayer in a wider, more metaphorical sense — for example, I know Unitarian Universalists who think of social justice work as a kind of prayer. I think a big part of this depends on how you define the word “prayer.”

    For more on this topic, check out the pamphlet “Unitarian Universalist Views on Prayer,” which you’ll find in a rack by the bulletin board in the Parish House.

  • Flower celebration, 2006

    This flower celebration was led by Rev. Dan Harper and Emma Mitchell, Director of Religious Education. As usual, the material below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Homily and story copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    Story for all ages — The Story of the Flower Service

    83 years ago, Norbert and Maja Capek were ministers of a Unitarian congregation far away from here in Europe, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Most members of their congregation had left other religions to become Unitarians, and many of these people did not want to be reminded of the religions they had left behind. So Norbert and Maja Capek decided to create a new ritual for their congregation — a Flower Ceremony.

    One Sunday in June, they asked everyone in the congregation to bring a flower to the worship service. When people arrived on Sunday morning, all the flowers were gathered together in vases, and Norbert Capek said a short blessing over the flowers. It seems to me that the flowers became symbols of what it means to be a human being: every flower was different, every flower was beautiful in its own way. And at the end of the worship service, everyone went up and took a flower, a different flower from the one that they had brought, took that flower home with them as a symbol of their connection to everyone else in the congregation.

    We are going to have our own Flower Celebration, or Flower Communion, right here in our own congregation. In just a moment, we will all have a chance to come forward and place a flower in the vases on the table here. If you forgot to bring a flower with you this morning, or if you didn’t know that you were supposed to bring a flower, you will find extra flowers on the table over there, and you can come up, pick a flower you like, and place it in the central vase.

    Because we value our children highly — for our children represent new beginnings and new possibilities — I am going to let the children be the first ones to place their flowers in the vase here. I invite the children to come forward now, and you may bring an adult along if you wish….

    [Children come forward]

    And now I invite everyone to come forward and place a flower in the vase here.

    [All come forward]

    This short blessing was written by Norbert Capek:

    Infinite Spirit of Life, we ask your blessing on these, your messengers of fellowship and love. May they remind us, amid diversities of knowledge and of gifts, to be one in desire and affection, and in devotion to your will. May they also remind us of the value of comradeship, of doing and sharing alike. May we cherish friendship as one of your most precious gifts. May we not let awareness of another’s talents discourage us, or sully our relationship, but may we realize that, whatever we can do, great or small, the efforts of all of us are needed to do your work in this world.

    [All come forward during this.]

    Now that we have gathered all the flowers together, I will read a short prayer written by Norbert Capek:

    In the name of Providence, which implants in the seed the future of the tree and in the hearts of men [and women] the longing for people living in [human] love; in the name of the highest, in whom we move and who makes the mother [and father], the brother and sister what they are; in the name of sages and great religious leaders, who sacrificed their lives to hasten the coming of [peace and justice];– let us renew our resolution sincerely to be real brothers and sisters regardless of any kind of bar which estranges [one from another]. In this holy resolution may we be strengthened, knowing that we are [one] family, that one spirit, the spirit of love, unites us, [that we] endeavor for a more perfect and more joyful life. Amen.

    Readings

    The first reading is from a short biography of Norbert Capek, written by Richard Henry for the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society.

    “On the 28th of March, 1941, [Norbert] Capek and his daughter, Zora, aged 29, were arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Pankrac Prison. Zora was accused of listening to foreign broadcasts and distributing the content of some BBC transmissions; Capek himself of listening to foreign broadcasts and of “high treason.” Several of his sermons were cited as “evidence” of the latter charge. Listening to foreign broadcasts was a capital offense under the Protectorate. Two separate trials were held, the first at Pankrac Prison soon after their arrest; the second, an appeal of the original decision, at Dresden in April 1942. The appeals court found Capek innocent of the treason charge, recommending that, given his age, the year between his arrest and the appeals trial be counted toward his jail time. The Gestapo, ignoring the court’s recommendation, nonetheless sent Capek to Dachau, Zora to forced labor in Germany. Capek’s name appears among prisoners sent on an invalid transport on October 12, 1942 to Hartheim Castle, near Linz, Austria, where he died of poison gas.”

    Not long before he was put to death by the Nazis, Dr. Capek wrote this prayer:

    It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals.
    Oh blow ye evil winds into my body’s fire; my soul you’ll never unravel.
    Even though disappointed a thousand times or fallen in the fight and everything would worthless seem,
    I have lived amidst eternity.
    Be grateful, my soul,
    My life was worth living.
    He who was pressed from all sides but remained victorious in spirit is welcomed into the choir of heroes.
    He who overcame the fetters giving wing to the mind is entering into the golden age of the victorious.

    HOMILY — “Maja Capek, Flowers, and Totalitarianism”

    You all probably know that our congregation dates back to 1708. It started out as one of the established Puritan congregations of the Massachusetts theocracy, but eventually the congregation gradually moved towards a more liberal Unitarian theology. So it is we often think of our congregational history as a single long chain of existence from those early beginnings nearly three hundred years ago; and so it is that we post bronze plaques at the front and the rear of this room listing all the ministers who have served this congregation.

    Of course, life is rarely that simple; and the history of our congregation is more complex than the list of ministers would have it seem. For in fact, our congregation today is the carrier of the institutional existences of two other New Bedford area congregations: First Universalist Church, which had its start in the 1820’s, became a part of our church in 1930; and North Unitarian Church, founded by First Unitarian as a settlement house in the North End in 1894, affiliated with the American Unitarian Association as separate congregation in 1941, but when their building burned down in 1974, they essentially merged back into First Unitarian. Therefore, our single list of ministers should really be three lists of ministers: the ministers of First Unitarian, the ministers of First Universalist, and the ministers of North Unitarian.

    I wish we had those other two lists of ministers posted on bronze plaques here in this room, because if we did I could point to the name of the minister whom I consider to be the most remarkable minister who ever served one of the three root congregations of our present congregation. That minister’s name is Maja Capek, who was minister of North Unitarian Church for the first three years of its existence as a congregation.

    Maja Oktavek was born in Bohemia on April 8, 1888. She came to the United States in 1907 when she was 19 years old, obtained a degree in library science from Columbia University, and went to work for the New York Public Library. There in the library she met Norbert Capek, a liberal minister affiliated with the Union of Baptist Churches of Moravia and Slovakia. (In 1910, he had tried to get the American Unitarian Association to support his efforts to promote liberal religion, but to no avail.) Capek had escaped the Austro-Hungarian Empire because of his writings which promoted Czech nationalism, and were critical of the state-supported Roman Catholic church. Norbert and Maja were married on June 23, 1917.

    Norbert tried to continue working as a Baptist minister in this country, but he and Maja were becoming increasingly liberal in their religious views. Then in 1920, they decided to send their children to the Sunday school of the First Unitarian Church of Essex County, New Jersey. The children loved it so much, Maja and Norbert attended the church; and Norbert and Maja liked it so much they became members of the congregation in 1921.

    By this time, the Capeks had decided to return to their homeland. After the end of the first world war, Czechoslovakia had achieved independence, and once the Roman Catholic church was no longer supported by the state, many people left Catholicism, searching for a new and more liberal alternative. Maja and Norbert Capek founded the Prague Congregation of Liberal Religious Fellowship; I say that Maja and Norbert founded the congregation together, even though the standard histories give all the credit to Norbert; because we all know perfectly well that in those days, the wives of male ministers did as much work as their husbands while receiving none of the credit. And the Prague congregation, and Norbert, recognized Maja’s contributions, for Maja was ordained in 1926.

    The Prague congregation searched for alternatives to the Roman Catholic worship that had dominated them before national independence. It was in response to that search that Norbert — probably with help from Maja — developed the Flower Celebration. The very first Flower Celebration was celebrated on June 23, 1923. The celebration was seen in part as a replacement of the Roman Catholic communion service:– stripped of all the weighty Catholic theological baggage, stripped of the Biblical references to bread and wine, the Flower Celebration became instead a way to celebrate the essential connection of all persons to one another.

    During the next decade and a half, the Prague Unitarian congregation became the largest Unitarian congregation in the world, with over 3,200 members. That is more than twice as large as today’s largest Unitarian Universalist congregation. I believe liberal religion in Czechoslovakia in those years between the two world wars represented a new sense of freedom for Czechs; it represented the end of domination by the outside forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by the Roman Catholic church. But soon a new spectre of domination would rise over Europe.

    In 1939, Maja Capek came to the United States to raise money to assist refugees trying to escape Nazi Germany. Not long after she left, the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, ending that small nation’s brief history as an independent country. It was not safe for her to return to occupied Czechoslovakia, and in 1940 she wound up settling in the North End of New Bedford, where she found a vibrant community of people from central and eastern Europe. Of course she immediately became involved in the Unity Chapel affiliated with First Unitarian’s settlement house, and soon she had arranged for North Unitarian Church to have separate institutional existence; and she became the first minister of North Unitarian Church.

    But Norbert and their youngest daughter Zora remained trapped in Nazi Germany. Norbert and Zora were arrested on March 28, 1941; and Norbert was executed by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp on October 12, 1942.

    I cannot help but think that the Capeks’ Unitarianism represented a threat to the tyranny and totalitarianism of Nazi Germany. Any religion that preaches the essential connection of all human beings must be a threat to tyrants; for tyrants maintain their power by driving people apart. Any minister who preaches that one spirit of love unites us all must also be a threat to tyrants; for tyrants push hatred on us, and love is always a threat to manipulative hatred.

    I cannot help but believe that even today the Flower Celebration developed by the Capeks remains a threat to totalitarianism. When we celebrate flowers, we celebrate a spirit of beauty that feeds our souls, a spirit of beauty that encourages us to be better human beings, a spirit of beauty that encourages us towards new life. But the would-be tyrants try to seduce us with a lesser beauty:– an empty beauty that cuts us off from other people, a selfish beauty that tries to get us to consume selfishly, a hateful beauty that divides us along the lines of race and gender and class.

    In this spirit we celebrate our own Flower Celebration this morning. We celebrate the true beauty of the world, as symbolized by flowers. We celebrate a beauty that seems fragile; but it is a beauty which is vibrantly alive, and like the grass that grows through concrete, it is a beauty that can quietly resist tyranny. We celebrate beauty, and we celebrate the freedom inherent in liberal religion: not just a freedom of mind, but the freedom of our hearts, the freedom of our spirits, the freedom of our bodies; we celebrate freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from violence.

    The symbolism of this Flower Celebration is simple: we commit ourselves to spreading beauty in the world; a wild, free, raging beauty that will brook no tyranny, that will not allow domination of body or spirit or mind. May it be so.