Dan Harper | Sermons

  • What about Assisted Dying?

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Sermon

    This is a sermon that grew out of the concerns and interests of people in First Parish. It began with questions a couple of you have asked me about assisted dying. And then after I announced this topic, quite a few of you sent me articles and other material about assisted dying. Thank you to everyone who sent me those materials, and to everyone who talked with me about the topic.

    My goal this morning is not to give you an exhaustive overview of the topic of assisted dying. Instead, what I’d like to do is to consider what it means to make personal choices around assisted dying. As usual, I’m not going to try to give you any final answer; I’m merely going to try to lay out some of the main ethical issues. It will then be up to you to figure out how to address these ethical questions in your own life.

    When talking about ethical issues, it often helps to have a concrete case study to consider. For a case study about assisted dying, I’m going to give you the story of the death of Scott Nearing, as told by his wife Helen Nearing. Soctt Nearing was a well-known figure in the twentieth century, though he is mostly forgotten today. He first came to prominence during the First World War, when he was fired from his position as college professor because of his public support of pacifism during that war. (Pacifism was essentially illegal during the First World War; the First Amendment was ignored, and anyone who spoke publicly in favor of pacifism risked job loss, imprisonment, and officially sanctioned harassment.) After the First World War, Nearing became a Socialist, and then during the Great Depression a Communist. Then he and his wife Helen decided that they wanted to live by the efforts of their own hands, first moving to a farm in Vermont. When a ski resort opened next to their farm, they felt they had to move, but rather than sell their land to the ski resort, which would have made them millions of dollars in profit, they gave it to the town as conservation land. They then moved to Maine, where they wrote a book “Living the Good Life” describing how they lived off the land, and how they followed what we would now call a vegan diet. This book became a sort of Bible for the 1960s “Back to the Land” movement, and the Nearings had many visitors who came to their farm to learn how they, too, might live off the land.

    I tell you all these details of Scott Nearing’s life to help you understand that he was an independent thinker who was not bound by a conventional religious worldview; he was a freethinker. This will become important later. Now I’ll give you the story of his death, as it was told by Helen Nearing:

    “A month or two before Scott died, he was sitting at table with us at a meal. Watching us eat he said, ‘I think I won’t eat anymore.’ ‘All right,’ said I. ‘I understand. I think I would do that too. Animals know when to stop. They go off in a corner and leave off food.’

    “So I put Scott on juices: carrot juice, apple juice, banana juice, pineapple, grape — any kind. I kept him full of liquids as often as he was thirsty. He got weaker, of course, and he was as gaunt and thin as Gandhi.

    “Came a day he said, ‘I think I’ll go on water. Nothing more.’ From then on, for about ten days, he only had water. He was bed-ridden and had little strength but spoke with me daily. In the morning of August 24, 1983, two weeks after his 100th birthday, when it seemed he was slipping away, I sat beside him on his bed.

    “We were quiet together; no interruptions, no doctors or hospitals. I said ‘It’s all right, Scott. Go right along. You’ve lived a good life and are finished with things here. Go on and up — up into the light. We love you and let you go. It’s all right.’

    “In a soft voice, with no quiver or pain or disturbance he said ‘All … right,’ and breathed slower and slower and slower till there was no movement anymore and he was gone out of his body as easily as a leaf drops from the tree in autumn, slowly twisting and falling to the ground.

    “So he returned to his Maker after a long life, well-lived and devoted to the general welfare. He was principled and dedicated all through. He lived at peace with himself and the world because he was in tune: he practiced what he preached. He lived his beliefs. He could die with a good conscience.” (1)

    Thus ends Helen Nearing’s story of how Scott Nearing died. Now let’s consider this story as an ethical case study that might shed some light on assisted dying.

    First, let’s ask: Was Scott Nearing’s death suicide? I would say: yes, it was. He starved himself to death. Think about it this way: if Helen Nearing had called 9-1-1, when the EMTs came they would have given him intravenous feeding; that is, a third party would see that Scott Nearing was dying, and they would have done what they could to stop him from dying.

    Second, let’s ask: Was this assisted dying? Again, in my opinion the answer is fairly clear: yes, it was. Helen Nearing helped Scott Nearing to die. She assisted him in reducing his food intake, first to juices, then to only water. When Scott Nearing was bed-ridden, she had to care for him, but she did not force him to eat, nor did she take him to the hospital. She assisted him in dying.

    This is not the usual way we think about assisted dying, of course. We usually think about assisted dying as a patient asking for the assistance of a doctor or other health care professional in finding a way to end their life. And certainly when a health care professional is involved, that raises other ethical questions for the professional. But assisted dying can also take place at home, without medical supervision or assistance.

    Now that we’ve determined that this was assisted dying, let’s consider some of the ethical issues that arise in this case study. And the first issue that has to be considered when considering any form of assisted dying is whether the person dying has given their full consent. When it comes to assisted dying, this is perhaps the trickiest of all ethical considerations. Often, we try to dodge this question, as when we say that assisted dying is acceptable if a doctor determines that the person who wishes to die has only a few months left to live. In such a situation, more people are inclined to say that assisted dying is acceptable; even if someone is unable to give their full consent, perhaps we don’t worry so much about consent because after all the person is going to die soon anyway; and in such cases perhaps assisted dying allows the person to die in dignity, without unbearable suffering and pain.

    But Scott Nearing did not have a terminal diagnosis, so in this case study we cannot dodge the issue of consent. I would say in Scott Nearing’s case that yes, he was able to give full consent. Not only that, but he gave consent repeatedly over a period of time: he gave consent every time he chose not to eat. Furthermore, by putting him on a juice diet at first, Helen Nearing gave him the option to revise his decision; he got terribly thin on that juice diet, but he could still have changed his mind and begun eating once again. So in this case, by choosing this method of dying, Scott Nearing gave the fullest possible consent.

    Consent is very important for at least two reasons. First, obviously we should be concerned about the possibility of family members pushing someone to commit suicide for reasons of their own — they want the person’s money or property, or whatever less-than-savory motivation that might exist. Second, it turns out that many people change their minds during or after a suicide attempt. Back in 1981, Art Kleiner wrote an article titled “How Not To Commit Suicide.” In that article, he documented how when suicide attempts fail (and they often fail), those who attempted suicide decide afterwards that they really wanted to live. (2) Thus consent cannot arise from a momentary impulse; consent can only arise from a carefully considered decision.

    It’s both critically important and quite difficult to determine whether consent has been freely given. Was the person forced into the decision by others? Would the person change their mind if you gave them time to think about it? These are two key questions. In the Scott Nearing case study, we can be about as certain as it’s possible to be that consent was freely given.

    Next we have to consider how a decision to die affects all those around the person who is dying. I assume that we are isolated individuals, but rather that each one of us is a part of the interdependent web of existence, and what we do with our lives will have distinct and definite effects on other people. We especially have an effect on those who are closest to us, but when a person dies by suicide they also have an effect on the wider society, especially those who are required by law and custom to investigate such deaths.

    In the story of Scott Nearing’s death, he did take into account those around him. In particular, he had to take into account his spouse, Helen Nearing. What would Helen think if Scott decided to die? Helen Nearing tells us that several years before he died, Scott Nearing told an interviewer: “‘I look forward to the possibility of living until I’m 99.’ His blue eyes twinkled. ‘It is a precarious outlook, I assure you. … I have almost nothing left but time. But if I can be of service, I would like to go on living.’” Helen then said that Scott “did more than his share of mental and physical work up to his last years.” Helen implies that it was only when Scott felt unable to contribute as much as he felt he should to their partnership that he decided to die; and that, while she may not have fully agreed with him, she understood and supported his decision; supported it to the point that she was willing to care for him in his last couple of weeks when he was bed-ridden. When we consider how a person’s death affects those around them, this helps us understand the difference between assisted dying and other types of suicide. Assisted dying is a decision made in partnership with others, with full awareness of the emotional toll on others, full awareness of the help that will be needed from others, and full awareness of all the impacts on others.

    One should also consider carefully how the means of death will affect others. One brief example: I was on a train once that someone used to die by suicide. When that happens, the train becomes a crime scene, and all of had to stay in the train for a couple of hours. I have a vivid memory of watching the train crew as they walked down the train to talk with the police, of seeing their expressions of pain and shock. You simply do not want to do that to anyone. Then too, there is the impact on the first responders, and all those who will have to investigate. By contrast, Scott Nearing chose a means of assisted dying that was not going to traumatize other people.

    In addition, there are other impacts beyond the emotional impacts. For example, there may be financial impacts. Consider the way assisted dying happens in Switzerland. The legal situation around assisted dying in Switzerland is complex — I don’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs — but from a practical standpoint, while assisted dying is allowed, every unnatural death has to be fully investigated. Those organizations that provide assisted dying in Switzerland charge their clients a fee that covers not only the assisted death, but also the investigation that has to happen afterwards. That way, Swiss taxpayers don’t have to pay every time an assisted death is investigated.

    And then there are the legal implications of assisted dying. But I don’t have time to go into the complicated question of the subtle differences in assisted dying laws in different jurisdictions. Here in the United States, assisted dying is legal in California, Colorado, Hawai’i, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and the District of Columbia; yet each jurisdiction has slightly different laws. In other ocuntries, assisted dying is available in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland; in all Australian states except the Northern Territory; and in the United Kingdom in England, Wales, and Scotland. (3) Each of these jurisdictions has significantly different laws for assisted dying, and each set of laws results in different ethical issues, and I don’t have the time or the expertise to talk about these differences. Beyond the legal questions of assisted dying, there are many other ethical issue that arise. We don’t have the time to cover them all, so I’m going to stick to my purpose: trying to consider the personal choices around assisted dying.

    Thinking about personal choices raises one last question, and that’s the question of religious ethics. In our case study, Scott Nearing did not have a conventional religious perspective, which may have allowed him to perceive options that would not have been apparent to a more conventional religious worldview. So what religious stand do Unitarian Universalists take on assisted dying? There is no simple answer. Ours is a religion that does not have a creed or dogma to which we all must assent. Instead, we leave ethical matters to a person’s individual conscience, while also acknowledging that a person’s individual conscience only exists as a part of a larger community.

    By contrast, many Christians are able to fall back on a simple and straightforward dogma or belief system regarding assisted dying — they would say assisted dying is a sin. Many Buddhists would also feel that assisted dying is unacceptable, since it could affect a person’s next birth. Many Hindus and Jains feel that assisted dying is wrong because it can be seen as a form of violence directed against the self, which goes against the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence. In other words, some religious traditions have firm teachings on assisted dying that are easy to understand and follow.

    In some ways, it would be easier if we Unitarian Universalists had a simple and straightforward perspective on assisted dying. But we don’t. From our religious perspective, we can imagine situations in which assisted dying is quite acceptable — when someone is suffering too much, when life has become a burden, and so on. We can also imagine situations in which assisted dying gets ugly — when it looks too much like eugenics, or when it looks too much like an excuse to get rid of people who are old or disabled, and so on.

    I would say that most of us Unitarian Universalists feel that some kind of assisted dying should be available to those who want it. And most of us probably agree that there should be some limitations to assisted dying and some protections — and I suspect many of us have known someone who died by suicide when that was probably the wrong thing to do. So we want the possibility of assisted suicide, with appropriate protections in place — protections like ensuring consent, and considering the impact on other people.

    Thus we Unitarian Universalists do not have a single straightforward teaching or doctrine that covers assisted dying. Our religious worldview doesn’t force us to find one simple, final answer to every question. Instead, we try to think carefully about difficult ethical questions, to understand our feelings about those difficult questions, and to understand the feelings of those around us. Then we do our best to live out our beliefs, living lives that are in tune with our highest principles, at one with the interdependent web of all existence.

    Notes

    (1) Helen Nearing, “At the End of a Good Life,” In Context, summer, 1990, p. 20. https://www.context.org/iclib/ic26/nearing/
    (2) Art Kleiner, “How Not To Commit Suicide,” CoEvolution Quarterly, summer 1981, pp. 88-109. https://archive.org/details/coevolutionquart00unse_26/page/88/mode/2up
    (3) See, e.g., Fergus Walsh, “How assisted dying has spread across the world and how laws differ,” BBC News website, 29 November 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1dpwg1lq9yo — N.B.: since this article was written, assisted dying has been legalized in England, Scotland, and Wales.

  • Gardens, not Walls

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Reading

    The reading was the poem “Set the Garden on Fire” by Chen Chen. (The poem is not reproduced here out of respect for copyright.)

    Homily for the annual Water Ritual

    Every year, when we have this water ritual, we talk about how we are all connected. Or more precisely, how all human beings are connected to each other, and how all human beings are connected with all other living beings and indeed with the non-human world as well. We are literally, physically connected by the water cycle (as Kate and I pointed out during the moment for all ages), and we are also connected by ethical concerns, concerns that may not be physical but are just as literal as the water cycle.

    In the first reading, we heard a poem by Chen Chen, a now-middle-aged poet who was born in China and grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. This is a poem about a suburban community. It could be a poem about Newton, or it could equally well be a poem about Concord, Massachusetts, where I lived and worked for the first forty years of my life, or it could just as well be a poem about Cohasset or Scituate or any South Shore suburban community. Here in the suburbs, we are both good at nurturing human community, and we are bad at nurturing human community.

    We are good at nurturing human community when we keep our communities safe so that we don’t have to fear interactions with strangers. We are good at nurturing human community when we support local organizations like parent-teacher groups, and elder affairs councils, and congregations, and scouting groups, and community aid groups like food pantries and the Cohasset Community Assistance Fund, and so on. Indeed, many of us move to the suburbs precisely because we think it will be easier to be part of human community here.

    On the other hand, suburbs can also be places that are actually destructive of human community. I’ll tell you a couple of stories to show what I mean, both taken from my home town of Concord. First story: A friend of mine had a new family move in next door, and when she saw her new neighbor getting his mail at the mailbox, she ventured to go up and say hello. He retrieved his mail from the mailbox, and then said into the air — not looking at her — “One of the things that I like about the suburbs is that you don’t have to talk to people.” Second story: When I was in my thirties, I was talking with an older friend about an affordable housing project that the town proposed building near her house. She was vehemently opposed, because, she said, “Black people might move in.” (She was so vehement I decided not to tell her that it was much more likely that I’d move in, because as a current town resident in the right income bracket, I’d get preference.) From these two stories, you can see that sometimes people in suburban towns do not nurture human connections.

    Of course this is true of people everywhere, not just in the suburbs. In the current political environment, we have two political parties whose primary vision for the future seems to be the eradication of the other political party. I have friends who are Democrats who seem to mostly want to talk about how much they hate Trump, and I have friends who are Republicans who seem to mostly want to talk about how much they hate liberals. Neither party are exemplars of nurturing human connection. Similarly, in the current ethical environment, too many of our thought leaders are people like the former CEO of Steward Health Care, who received hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, while at the same time the hospital chain didn’t have enough money to pay for critical supplies, or to pay staff salaries. Again, this man is not an exemplar of nurturing human connection.

    I’m reminded of a story in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sabbath 31a. A man approached the famous Rabbi Hillel. “I would like to convert to Judaism and become a Jew,” he said. “I know I have to learn the Torah, but I’m a busy man. You must teach me the Torah while I stand on one foot.”

    “Certainly,” said Rabbi Hillel. “Stand on one foot.”

    The man balanced on one foot.

    “Repeat after me,” said Rabbi Hillel. “What is hateful to you, don’t do that to someone else.”

    The man repeated after Rabbi Hillel, “What is hateful to me, I won’t do that to someone else.”

    “That is the whole law,” said Rabbi Hillel. “All the rest of the Torah, all the rest of the oral teaching, is there to help explain this simple law. Now, go and learn it so it is a part of you.”

    Of course we all know that we shouldn’t do to someone else what is hateful to ourselves; as another rabbi put it, we all know that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But notice that Rabbi Hillel adds the instruction: “That is the entire Torah, the rest is its interpretation. Go study.” (1) When Rabbi Hillel tells the man to go and study, he’s not talking about some academic kind of study; he’s talking about study as a sacred act; he’s talking about knowing something so well that it becomes a central part of who you are. An implicit part of this kind of study is that it must happen in community. This isn’t the kind of studying where you sit down alone somewhere and memorize a bunch of stuff. This is the kind of study where you engage with the biggest possible moral and ethical questions by talking and arguing with other people. Indeed, I’d argue that serious moral and ethical study can only be done in community, can only be done with other people.

    Actually, this is more or less what we do here each week on Sunday morning. Unlike some Christian traditions where the minister’s job is to preach from on high, telling the congregation what is right and what is wrong, our tradition is supposed to engender argument. (At least, that’s what I’d say, though it’s open to argument.) I would say that in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, oftentimes the role of the preacher is merely to articulate a problem or concern currently facing the congregational community, and to propose a preliminary resolution of that problem or concern. Then it is up to the members of the congregation to further think about and discuss the problem or concern, and to decide for themselves how this might affect their own lives.

    And when the preacher is wrong or inaccurate, it’s up to the elders of a Unitarian Universalist congregation to let the preacher know. When I was the minister at the New Bedford Unitarian church, Everett Hoagland, a poet and college professor, used to sit in the back pew in the center, and listen carefully to what I said in the sermon. He would tell me when something I said seemed particularly accurate or true; and when I got something wrong, he’d gently tell me where I went wrong. In that same congregation, Ken Peirce, a retired schoolteacher, sat in the center about a third of the way back. He would take notes during the sermon, and after the service hand me the notes as he greeted me on his way to social hour. His notes would often prompt a follow-up sermon.

    Now, not everyone is a college professor or retired schoolteacher. Most people are not going to take notes during a sermon and correct errors the way Ken and Everett did. I remember the old Universalist in one congregation who worked as the butcher at a local supermarket. What she wanted from a Sunday service, she said, was something to think about while she was at work during the week, something to turn over in her mind, something that might help her to live her life better. Or I think about Gladys, who was dying of cancer when I knew her; she had little interest in intellectual exercises, but she was facing the biggest possible human questions about life and death and mortality, and she came each Sunday to be part of a community where it normal and acceptable to talk about such big issues. Or I think about Nancy, who was in her seventies and homeless when I knew her; she came to Sunday services to have a time when she could think about something more than basic survival.

    To my mind, these people exemplify, each in their own way, what Rabbi Hillel meant when he said, “That is the entire Torah, the rest is its interpretation. Go study.” None of these people was Jewish, none of them read the actual Torah; but each of them, in their own way studied what it mean to be part of a community and a tradition that dealt with the highest moral and ethical and religious questions. For some of these people, study took the form of notes and verbal discussions. For others, study too the form of mulling over thoughts and ideas that might help one to lead a better life. Still others were confronting pressing questions of survival and life and death, and they needed a community where they could confront those questions openly and without shame.

    Because of this, I sometimes think the most important part of our Sunday services is social hour. That’s when you get a chance to have conversations with other people about life’s big issues. In our tradition, those conversations might not take the form of formal religious and theological discussion and argument; instead, those conversations are more likely to take the form of conversations about life and job and volunteer commitments and political actions and of course family (which includes both biological family and chosen family). Rabbi Hillel said that studying Torah was important, not for the sake of abstract religious and theological arguments, but rather for the sake of determining how to live by the dictum: “That which is hateful to you do not do to another.” For Rabbi Hillel, study was not merely an academic matter, but a matter of the highest ethical values and concerns; study was not something you do in your head, study is something that affects your entire life.

    Socrates said something similar when he was facing the death penalty. According to Plato, Socrates told his accusers, “I say again that daily to discourse about virtue, and of those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest good of [humanity], and that the unexamined life is not worth living.” (2) This, too, is what it means to study. To talk about virtue and other big questions is to lead a life that is well worth living.

    And now let me return to the suburbs, and to the poem by Chen Chen. In the poem, a Chinese family buys a house in the suburbs. At this point, the people living in the house next door have a couple of options. On the one hand, they could get to know this new family (and if they felt some resistance to getting to know the new family, they’d engage in a little self-examination to figure out why). On the other hand, they could plant a hedge of rose bushes, and begin to whisper rumors of drub money and illegals and so on. In the poem, the neighbors choose the second option. And in response, the poet says:

    “Friend, let’s really move in, let’s
    plunge our hands into the soil.
    Plant cilantro & strong tomatoes,
    watermelon & honey-hearted cantaloupe,
    good things, sweeter than any rose.
    Let’s build the community garden
    that never was. Let’s call the neighbors
    out, call for an orchard, not a wall.
    Trees with arms free, flaming
    into apple, peach, pear — every imaginable,
    edible fire.” (3)

    While the poet doesn’t talk about Torah study, I think he’s saying much the same thing as Rabbi Hillel. Both of them are teaching us the importance of nurturing human community. Whether you choose to use the metaphor of study, as Rabbi Hillel did; or the metaphor of discourse and conversation, as Socrates did; or the metaphor of planting a community garden, as Chen Chen does — the end result is the same. All these are ways of learning how to embody the dictum “That which is hateful to you do not do to another.” At the same time, all these are ways of learning how to embody the dictum “that the unexamined life is not worth living.” And finally, all these are ways to call for an orchard, rather than a wall; to nurture human community, and further to nurture human community that is also a part of a community of all living beings.

    So those are the kinds of things that arise for me when I consider the imagery of the annual water ritual; that’s what arises for me when I ask myself how it is that all of us human beings are interconnected, and how it is that all human beings are connected with the rest of the universe. This is not to say that what comes up for me is any better than what comes up for you; you and I are both fallible beings, and it is only by talking together that we have a hope of coming closer to the ultimate truth.

    Notes

    (1) The William Davidson Talmud (Koren-Steinsaltz), www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.31a
    (2) Plato, The Apology, 38a; trans. Benjamin Jowett.
    (3) Chen Chen, “Set the Garden on Fire,” Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, ed. Melissa Tuckey (Univ of Georgia Press, 2018).

  • Your Job as a Calling (No, Really)

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Reading

    The reading was from “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation,” by the Quaker author Parker Palmer.

    “Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about — quite apart from what I would like it to be about — or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.

    “That insight is hidden in the word vocation itself, which is rooted in the Latin word for ‘voice.’ Vocation does not mean a goal I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live — but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.”

    Sermon

    Let me tell you a brief story about how someone I know lost their vocation, their purpose in life, and finally found a new purpose.

    My father had a job he absolutely loved, working as an electrical engineer. It was more than a job for him, it was a kind of vocation or calling, and he worked long hours at it, sometimes six days a week. But in his mid-sixties, his energy began to flag a bit, so he asked his employer if he could work part-time. Since that was against company policy, at age sixty-seven, he retired. I still remember the sign he put up over his desk in the basement, which read “Retire — and Die.”

    He moped around for several months, and I think that was the most downbeat I ever saw him. Then two disasters struck which gave him no time for feeling downbeat. The first disaster was a house fire, which meant he had to oversee rebuilding the house. The second disaster was my mother’s terminal diagnosis, giving her a life expectancy of about six years, which meant he had to spend more and more time being a caregiver. Both these disasters provided him with a vocation or calling; maybe not the vocations he would have chosen, but vocations nonetheless.

    After my mother died, my father once again felt himself adrift. The house had been rebuilt long ago, and he was no longer a full-time caregiver. He had to figure out what he was going to do with his life all over again.

    At about this time, he found a book in the local library called “Let Your Life Speak,” written by the Quaker author Parker Palmer (that’s the book this morning’s reading came from). I happened to discover this book at just about this time, and my father and I wound up talking about this book. I was in the middle of my own slow career change right then, a multi-year transition from the residential construction business to working in congregations. As I recall our conversations, there were two things about that book that both of us particularly liked.

    First, Parker Palmer, good Quaker that he is, consistently assumes that a person’s individual vocation has to help wider society in some way. Here a problem arises for many of us: the jobs we have don’t necessarily help wider society. Much of my father’s work as an electrical engineer went towards military applications, and he was entirely not comfortable with that. This is a common problem where many jobs in our society have at least some ethically challenging aspects.

    Yet as we talked it over, my father pointed out that a big part of letting your life speak was how you treat other people in your life. You let your life speak when you treat everyone the way you yourself would like to be treated, especially to people who were lower in social status than you were. As an example, my father talked about the social and class divide that existed in his workplace between the technicians who worked on the shop floor, and the managers and engineers. My father drew a contrast between a manager, known as “Nasty Frank,” on the one hand, and on the other hand an engineer he greatly respected. Nasty Frank was notorious for his obscenity-laden tirades, which he unleashed at anyone subordinate to himself. Nasty Frank was letting his life speak in a way that gave him no credit. By contrast, the engineer who treated the technicians on the shop floor with respect was letting his life speak in ways that reflected a higher moral ideal.

    There was a second aspect of Parker Palmer’s book that we both liked. Parker Palmer did not try to pretend that letting your life speak was going to be easy or straightforward. At one point in the book, Parker Palmer describes a vocational crisis that he was going through, where he felt he needed to change jobs but he had no idea what job he should try to get. There’s a traditional Quaker saying that, in difficult times like that, you should have faith and “way will open.” But Parker Palmer had no sense at all that some kind of way was opening before him. So he turned to an older Quaker friend, and asked her about this notion of “way opening.” She replied, “In sixty-plus years of living, was has never opened in front of me”; then she added with a grin, “but a lot of way has closed behind me, and that’s had the same guiding effect.”

    This was true for both my father and for me. Neither one of us had had the experience of “way opening” before us. Neither one of us had ever had some delightful opportunity dropping into our lives just when we needed it. But both of us had had the experience of “way closing” behind us. When my father was forced to retire, way closed behind him. He could no longer do the thing that had given his life meaning and purpose for several decades. Way closed behind him, as Parker Palmer would say, and my father was forced to find a new vocation, a new way to let his life speak. Then again, after my mother died and my father was no longer a caregiver, way closed behind him, and he felt adrift for a time — until he volunteered through the League of Women Voters to monitor the meeting of the town’s municipal plant, which in turn led him being appointed to that board, eventually serving as its chair, and allowing him the opportunity to help move the municipal light plant to buy as much renewal energy as possible. My father’s experiences also make clear that sometimes your life speaks, not through paid employment, but through your family responsibilities or through your volunteer work.

    The Quakers talk about letting your life speak, but this notion that everyone has a vocation in life is widespread throughout Protestantism, and throughout Western societies that have been shaped by Protestant values. It is not just clergy and monks and nuns who have a religious vocation — so said the Western Protestants — everyone has a religious vocation, because every human being is a part of God’s vision for the universe. This Protestant Christian understanding has permeated even secular Western institutions, so that it is commonplace for all of us, theists and atheists, to talk about having a purpose in life; and that purpose is to make the world a better place — not just a better place for me and my family, but a better place for all human beings. And some Christians and some atheists have extended this vision of a better world beyond just human beings. There are Christians who hope to make the world a better place for all living beings, since every being is a creature made by God; and there are atheists who hope to make the world a better place for all living beings, since all living beings are connected through their existence in earth’s ecosystems. This strand of Western culture sets a very high ethical standard for each and every one of us.

    Based on my own experience, I’d say that it’s incredibly difficult to live up to this very high standard. If you have any humility at all — that is, if you’re not a pathological narcissist — then knowing that you’re supposed to live your life in such a way that you make the world a better place is knowledge that can easily overwhelm you. Yet at the same time, a sense of humility requires us to acknowledge that each of us, as an individual, has very little impact on the world. Because of that, many people give up on trying to attain such a high ethical standard in their lives. But it becomes easier if we understand that that same sense of humility also teaches us that we’re not supposed to save the world all by ourselves. That sense of humility allows us to understand that each individual only has to do their small part of the greater whole. Together, all these little efforts will eventually make the world a better place, but it’s not up to just one person.

    Thus as we think about how to let our lives speak, it’s probably a good idea to recall that we only have to let our lives speak; we don’t have to make our lives shout. You don’t have to amplify your life’s voice so that it’s louder than everyone else’s. In fact, you really only have to live your life so that it speaks to those immediately around you. You may have a job with no morally redeeming features — I’ve had jobs like that — but you can let your life speak in other ways. Any one of us can let our life speak by treating the people immediately around us with respect and dignity. Nor is that an easy task. Many of us men have been caught out by women who drily point out those moments when we men were talking down to women. And when I worked in service-class jobs, I was all too aware of the managerial-professional class people who thought they were treating me with respect, but weren’t. At the same time, we don’t have to like everyone we come into contact with. My father didn’t like Nasty Frank, that obscenity-prone supervisor, but my father did his best to treat him as a human being. Jesus of Nazareth, echoing generations of rabbis, summed it up neatly when he said: Love your neighbor as yourself. If my life speaks in no other way, it is enough that my life speaks through loving my neighbor as I love myself.

    Loving one’s neighbor is something you can do no matter what job you have, where “job” can mean paid employment, or volunteer commitments, or caregiving, or maintaining a household, or simply engaging in essential day-to-day tasks. And it is also possible to have a job where you’re literally helping to save the world, but if you treat the people around you with contempt, you’ve still failed ethically. If you want to let your life speak in the best possible way, it’s probably a good idea to reflect on how you conduct yourself in your job. Personally, I ask myself questions like this: In my job, am I mindful of how what I do affects others? When it comes to my work life, am I mindful of seeking clarity in matters of conscience? Am I mindful of how others around me might be struggling with matters of conscience, and can I perhaps help them seek clarity? Am I mindful of how my actions affect not just the immediate circle of people around me, but wider circles beyond that? These are just some of the questions a person can ask when thinking about whether one actually loves one’s neighbor as oneself.

    These are the kinds of questions anyone can ask of themselves, whatever their work situation. These are the kinds of questions my father confronted during his long work life. He confronted these questions while working as an engineer, knowing his actions had an effect on both his managers and the technicians on the shop floor. After his forced retirement, he confronted these questions as he struggled to figure out how best to care for my mother’s deteriorating health. Then, after her death, he struggled to figure out how to find some volunteer work where he could mindfully affect the people around him, and maybe even the wider circle of his local community.

    You’ll notice I haven’t tried to answer the question of how a person can find work that’s meaningful. That’s because I don’t have an answer to that question. There have been so many years in my own work life when I had to hold onto a meaningless job; including, if I’m honest, some of the church jobs I’ve had. Yet you don’t have to have a job that will put you in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize, you don’t have to have a job where you save the world. If you have a job like that, that’s fabulous, and congratulations! But the thing to remember is that the most important vocation is to let your life speak in the way you live your life. Each of us can strive to do whatever little bit we can to make this a gentler, kinder world where we really do love our neighbors as we ourselves hope to be loved. This is how everyone can let their life speak. This is the true vocation that everyone has.