Dan Harper | Sermons

  • Spiritual Muscle

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make any corrections.

    Readings

    The first reading is from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay titled “Greatness”:

    I do not pretend to any commandment or large revelation, but if at any time I form some plan, propose a journey or a course of conduct, I perhaps find a silent obstacle in my mind that I cannot account for. Very well, — I let it lie, thinking it may pass away, but if it do not pass away I yield to it, obey it. You ask me to describe it. I cannot describe it. It is not an oracle, nor an angel, nor a dream, nor a law; it is too simple to be described, it is but a grain of mustard-seed, but such as it is, it is something which the contradiction of all mankind could not shake, and which the consent of all mankind could not confirm.

    The second reading is from Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker by John Wiess. Parker was a Unitarian minister of the 1840s whose sermons attracted over two thousand people a week.

    When a little boy … in my fourth year, one fine day in spring, my father led me by the hand to a distant part of the farm, but soon sent me home alone. On the way I had to pass a little pond-hole… [A] rhodora in full bloom… attracted my attention and drew me to the spot. I saw a little spotted tortoise sunning himself in the shallow water at the root of the flaming shrub. I lifted the stick I had in my hand to strike the harmless reptile; for, though I had never killed any creature, yet I had seen other boys out of sport destroy birds, squirrels, and the like, and I felt a disposition to follow their wicked example. But all at once something checked my little arm, and a voice within me said, clear and loud, “It is wrong!” I held my uplifted stick in wonder at the new emotion — the consciousness of an involuntary but inward check upon my actions, till the tortoise and the rhodora both vanished from my sight. I hastened home and told the tale to my mother, and asked what was it that told me it was wrong? She … taking me in her arms, said, “Some men call it conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer, and always guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear or disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and leave you all in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on heeding this little voice.”… I am sure no event in my life has made so deep and lasting an impression on me.

    Sermon: “Spiritual Muscle”

    Rev. Danielle DiBona preached here on December 1. After the service was over, I went up to her to thank her for coming to First Parish. I always enjoy talking with Danielle, in part because she grew up in Weymouth and has that no-nonsense New England manner of speaking. So when she said something about Unitarian Universalist congregations needing to develop their spiritual muscle, I paid more attention that I might otherwise have done. If another person used the phrase “spiritual muscle” it might have sounded like just another spirituality catch-phrase that sounds good yet doesn’t mean all that much. But when Danielle said “spiritual muscle” in her no-nonsense South Shore accent, it sounded real. And maybe important.

    I meant to ask Danielle what, exactly, she meant by “spiritual muscle,” but we got interrupted. I thought about emailing her and asking her exactly. But I was pretty sure I knew what she meant. I was also pretty sure that a good way to develop my own spiritual muscles would be to put my thoughts in order and speak to you about the topic, which is what I’m doing right now.

    If we use the phrase “spiritual muscle,” obviously we’re making a comparison with physical muscle. It’s equally obvious how we develop our physical muscles: we exercise. Last fall, I noticed my physical fitness level going down, and I knew I needed to exercise. Since I hate going to the gym, I bought a compact rowing machine that fits in our apartment. For the past few months I’ve been doing at least twenty minutes five times a week on that rowing machine (that’s in addition to daily walks, and daily exercises). Using that rowing machine is sometimes painful, sometimes boring, but I really notice the improvement in my fitness level.

    All this is obvious. If you want to build up your physical muscles, you have to use them; you have to do more than just use them, you have to push yourself. Similarly with spiritual muscles: obviously we have to use our spirituality regularly in order to retain our spiritual muscle tone. But what does that even mean?

    The readings this morning offered two very simple examples of what I think of as using one’s spiritual muscles. In the second reading, the great nineteenth century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker told a story about his moral development. When he was four years old, he saw a turtle. He picked up a stick to kill it. But suddenly he heard a voice telling him “No.”

    Even though Parker clothes the story in mid-nineteenth century sentimentality, it sounds like a true story. Four year olds do have these kinds of experiences: sometimes they do hear a voice that they can’t explain telling them to do the right thing. And Theodore Parker’s mother gives him just the kind of advice that a Unitarian mother would give to their four year old. She tells him that whether you call it Conscience, or the voice of God (or whatever other name a Unitarian Universalist might come up with), you should listen to that voice. This is one way we begin teaching young children how to exercise their spiritual muscles. We want to help them to become their best selves, and we do our best to help them grow into their best selves.

    While this may seem hopelessly elementary, while it may seem trite and sentimental, it’s really not. Back in 1986, a Unitarian Universalist minister named Robert Fulghum wrote a bestselling book titled “All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Fulghum’s book used the basic lessons taught in kindergarten as a way to remind adults what they needed to do to exercise their spiritual muscles.

    For example, Fulghum said we should learn to share everything. That’s how you word it when you’re teaching a four- or five year old, but all the great spiritual traditions of the world have some similar teaching aimed at adults. Muslims teach that zakat, or almsgiving, is one of the five pillars of Islam; Jesus taught his followers that whatever they did for “the least of these” they did for God; for Hindus, the Rig Veda teaches, “Bounteous is he who gives unto the beggar who comes to him in want of food” [Rig Veda 10.117]; and our latest wording of the Unitarian Universalist principles names generosity as a core value. When teaching a five year old, you may word it differently, but the principle remains the same: share everything.

    Many of Robert Fulghum’s kindergarten lessons pertain to morals and ethics. We learn how to play fair. We learn that we shouldn’t hit people. We learn to put things back where we found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt someone. These are all pretty straightforward moral and ethical lessons, relatively easy to translate from the kindergartener’s perspective to an adult perspective.

    But Fulghum also includes lessons that are are not about morality and ethics, and more about having a proper attitude towards life. Fulghum says that kindergarten (or, at least, a well-run kindergarten) teaches children how to live a balanced life. In good kindergartens, each day the children engage in a little learning, a little painting, a little singing, a little dancing, a little bit of playing, and a little bit of working. Translated into an adult perspective, we might talk about work-life balance and making time for our families. But it’s still the same spiritual lesson: how to lead a balanced life.

    Fulghum also mentions that kindergarteners learn how to take naps. Now this may not sound like a spiritual matter at all. But several years ago, a divinity school graduate named Tricia Hersey started leading workshops in the spiritual importance of napping. While in graduate school, Hersey found herself working two jobs, going to school full-time, raising a six year old, and working an internship. She was living the American Dream, moving up in the world. But as a Black woman learning about the history of Black theology, Hersey also realized that the same kind of engine that drove slavery was driving her to work herself to a state of exhaustion. After receiving her divinity degree, Hersey started what she called Nap Ministry, in which she teaches people how to take spiritual care of themselves. But this is not some kind of pop culture self-care. In an interview, Hersey said, “That’s one thing I dislike about our work blowing up on social media…. [That] doesn’t allow for people to go deep…. They think it’s some cute wellness thing. [But] it really is held together by deeply liberating ideas and theories that come out of Black thought and scholarship.” For Hersey, taking time out to rest can serve as a spiritual force allowing us to honor our inherent divinity. (1)

    I’d suggest this kind of spiritual rest may have deep roots in the ancient idea of Sabbath, where you deliberately take one day a week where you do no work. Of course, in our culture today, it’s difficult to take a true sabbath. I know very few people who actually take one whole day every week as a day of rest. Even when we take a day off, we feel we have to do something — we have to travel, or pursue hobbies. Thus not even retirement guarantees spiritual rest; many of my retired friends say they’re busier now than when they were working full time.

    Sometimes it seems that it’s far more difficult to exercise our spiritual muscles as we get older. The spiritual task of resting is a perfect example of what I mean. When you’re five years old, your parents tell you to take a nap, and you can whine and complain all you want, but you have to take your nap. Then you become a teenager, and you have no time to rest because every spare moment is filled with school, sports or extracurricular activities, and a part-time job, to say nothing of figuring out what to do after high school graduation. When do you ever have time to rest? Then you become an adult, and you have even more to do, and even less time to rest. Even if you’re one of the rare people who is able to do nothing in retirement, doing nothing isn’t the same thing spiritual rest.

    To get some genuine spiritual rest, most of us require outside structure. When I was in my twenties, I regularly worked fifty-five hours a week, plus I was taking classes at night to try to get ahead. I discovered that going to Sunday services at my local Unitarian Universalist church provided the structure I needed to actually take the time for spiritual rest. Actually, I was often bored by the worship services. I watched the older Unitarians who had been going to that church for decades. They sat through all the services, listening when the sermons were interesting, calmly staring out the windows when the sermons were boring. In a sense, taking time for sabbath rest is the adult equivalent of taking a nap.

    Sabbath rest provides one example of how hard it can be to develop your spiritual muscles. We live in a society that teaches us that our highest purpose is to be constantly busy, constantly entertained. We have to have our constant doses of dopamine from scrolling through social media, or we have to feed our adrenaline addiction by working or studying too many hours. And if we no longer many responsibilities, then we can feel undervalued or even useless. Yet busy-ness and uselessness prove to be a false dichotomy. All the great spiritual traditions teach us to spend time in contemplation. While this may be interpreted in terms of contemplating God or trying to reach Nirvana, you can also think about contemplation in terms of the motto inscribed above the temple to Apollo at Delphi in ancient Greece. That motto said quite simply: “Know thyself.”

    Knowing oneself — true and deep self-knowledge — requires exercise of one’s spiritual muscle. It’s easy to look in the mirror and see everything that’s good about ourselves. It’s even easier to look in the mirror and see what our own failings are. But it’s quite difficult to see ourselves as we truly are. And since human beings are constantly growing and changing, right up to the moment of death, to truly know yourself means you are constantly learning new things. I would even go so far as to say that all development of spiritual muscle begins with self-knowledge — or, more precisely, all development of spiritual muscle begins with the effort to attain self knowledge, for no one ever achieves final self-knowledge.

    I’d like to take a brief look at three other things that Robert Fulghum says he learned in kindergarten: When you go outside, watch for traffic and hold hands and stick together. Everything dies. Be aware of wonder.

    The first one — hold hands and stick together — can be surprisingly difficult. Often, we have the impulse to act like kindergartners, and go whichever way we personally want to go. We adults often say what kindergartners say: But I don’t wanna hold hands with them, I wanna go over there! That is in fact precisely what is going on in the United States right now. Instead of sticking together, we all want to do what we want to do; we don’t want to hold hands with the other children in the class. When it comes to holding hands and working together, we Americans have let our spiritual muscles become flabby. Nor is this a new problem, for this is what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was telling us in his famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he said:

    “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification’ — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

    We Americans did exercise our spiritual spiritual muscle to the point where little Black children and little White children can sometimes now join hands with each other. But when it comes to racial harmony, or world peace, or environmental balance, or any other big problem that requires us to hold hands and stick together, we are still struggling. We have no kindergarten teacher to tell us what to do or how to do it; we have to develop our own spiritual muscles to enable us to work together.

    Compared to that, the next kindergarten-level task sounds so simple: Be aware of wonder. But sometimes I believe we struggle more with this than with holding hands and sticking together. At least with holding hands and sticking together, there’s something we have to do. But to be aware of wonder, we just have to be. Being aware of wonder is closely related to sabbath rest, and it takes as much spiritual muscle. Being aware of wonder is also closely related to knowing oneself; you have to know who you are in order to know who it is that is aware of wonder. This gets us into deep spiritual waters, and we’d need another whole sermon to talk about it.

    Similarly with the last of the kindergarten tasks I’d like to mention, which sounds so simple: Everything dies. Everything dies, including us. It sounds simple, but it takes a great deal of spiritual muscle to wrap your head around this simple thing. This, too, gets us into the advanced development of our spiritual muscles. This could be the subject of a whole series of sermons. Although I’m not sure I’m qualified to speak on the topic; I’m not sure I’ve developed enough spiritual muscle yet.

    If you asked me to sum up the topic of spiritual muscle, I’d say this: It’s not easy being human. It’s not easy being part of the human community. It takes strength; it takes endurance; it takes flexibility. Just as we have to work on our physical muscles to build strength, endurance, and flexibility, so to we have to work on our spiritual muscles.

    Note:

    (1) Kathryn Post, “The ‘Nap Bishop’ offers rest as a tool of resistance,” Religion News Service, 25 March 2022 https://religionnews.com/2022/03/25/nap-bishop-offers-rest-as-a-tool-of-resistance/ accessed 24 Jan 2025

  • Martin Luther King, Jr., for Times Like These

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make any corrections.

    Readings

    The first reading is from the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    “How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an ‘I it’ relationship for an ‘I thou’ relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong….”

    The second reading is another excerpt from the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    “Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.”

    Sermon: MLK for Times Like These

    The readings this morning were excerpts from Martin Luther King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.” King wrote that letter in response to a public letter from eight White clergy — seven Christians and one Jew — who together wrote what they titled “A Call for Unity,” which they published in the main Birmingham, Alabama, newspaper. In their letter, these eight White clergy said: “We are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.” And their letter concluded by saying, “We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.”

    King wrote his reply to these well-meaning but narrow-minded clergy while he was in the Birmingham jail, having been arrested for taking part in the demonstrations which so bothered those White clergy. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he showed these eight clergy how they were wrong: that the principles of law and order should guarantee all American citizens equal rights; that American citizens should not have to wait for human rights; that he himself was not an “outsider” but rather someone caught up in the same fight for human rights as the Black people of Birmingham. And then King asked: “Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?”

    This question has bothered Unitarian Universalists, and the rest of American organized religion, ever since. We know those eight White clergy were misguided in their critique of King; we know they were misguided in their critique of the whole non-violent Civil Rights movement. At the same time, we secretly worry that King’s critique of organized religion might be correct: that organized religion would prefer to maintain the status quo, rather than to make the world a better place.

    Conservative Christians respond to this secret worry by insisting that the primary purpose of organized religion is saving individual souls, preparing persons to get into heaven after they die. Go ahead and worry about making the world a better place if you want to, they say, but your top priority should always be saving saving souls for heaven. We actually see a similar response in other religious traditions; as one example, some Buddhists will tell you that your top priority should be spending time on your personal practice in order to achieve Enlightenment. These conservative religious groups answer Dr. King’s question by saying that they are not especially interested in saving the nation or the world.

    We see a different response from those of us on the progressive wing of religion — Unitarian Universalists, progressive Christians and Jews, engaged Buddhists, and so on. Religious progressives really do believe that the primary purpose of organized religion is to try and make the world a better place. This is certainly true for Unitarian Universalists. Our old “seven principles” talked about the inherent worthiness of every human personality; the important of the democratic process; caring for the interdependent web of existence; and so on. The new Unitarian Universalist principles, adopted last June, talk about justice, equity, pluralism, generosity, and so on. We do our best to stay focused on saving the world.

    The interesting thing about Dr. King was that his approach included both the impulse to save your own soul, as well as the impulse to save the world. The sociologist Jonathan Rieder put it this way: “King’s message was that God wanted you to deliver yourself. His gospel of freedom mixed responsibility [and] spiritual recovery…. This emphasis on the need for a change in Black consciousness aligned him with the most diverse cultural streams: the traditional American idea of being born again; its secular incarnation in … identity as a project of self-fashioning…. [and] It also jibed with the Exodus story: The Israelites needed forty years in the wilderness to get their minds right, so they would cease their whining….” So writes sociologist Jonathan Rieder.

    Dr. King taught that it’s not enough to just go out and solve the world’s problems. We also have to solve our own personal problems. Maybe even we even have to figure out whether we’re a part of the problem. Dr. King tells us that personal and global problems may be linked. You can’t take on responsibility for solving the world’s problems unless you deal with your own internal personal problems. And you can’t solve your own internal personal problems until you also take on responsibility for helping to solve the world’s problems.

    But how, you may wonder, does this pertain to the Exodus story? We usually read the Exodus story as a quaint fable, a primitive attempt at history. We chuckle a little at the naïveté of the story. We know that it’s only about 350 miles from Egypt to the Promised Land. If you take forty years to walk 350 miles, that works out to about 125 feet per day. How naive to think that Moses would take forty years to lead his people that short a distance.

    But instead of reading Exodus story as a primitive attempt at history, we can read it as a sophisticated metaphorical account of internal psychological growth and change. You begin in a mental state that you want to escape from. What do you have to do to free yourself from that mental state? With that in mind let’s consider one episode from Exodus, the story of the golden calf. It goes something like this:

    During their psychological journey from the fleshpots of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land, Moses has his people camp out at the base of Mount Sinai. While the people are making camp and taking care of the day-to-day necessities of survival in the desert, Moses climbs up Mount Sinai to talk with God. God tells Moses that he and his people are now under God’s special care. All they have to do is promise not to worship other gods. Then God provides insightful rules for living, given to Moses in the form of laws inscribed on stone tablets.

    There comes a time when Moses stays on top of the mountain for a really long time. The people camped out at the bottom of the mountain begin to grow uneasy. They worry that Moses isn’t going to come back. Is he lost in meditation and contemplation? Has their new God has abandoned them? So they decide to make a different god. Aaron, the brother of Moses, gets the people to make a calf out of gold. Aaron and the people invent new ways to worship this god of their own invention. They worship this god, share a big meal, then begin to celebrate together.

    At that moment, Moses comes back down the mountain. “What’s going on here?” he said. “Don’t you remember your commitment to stay focused on one spiritual task? Yet here you all are, distracted from your goal by some deity that you invented. And seriously people, a baby cow covered in gold? — this is not something that is worth worshipping.”

    Moses takes the golden calf, burns it, grinds it up into a powder, dissolves it in water, and makes the people drink it. The people look a little shamefaced at first, but then some of them point out that Moses had been gone for a long time. For all they knew, Moses and his god had given up on them and gone somewhere else. Next Aaron tries to calm Moses down, telling him, “You know the people, they are bent on evil.” But Moses perceives these are merely attempts to placate him. He sees that the people are still running wild, and that they have no intention of actually improving their behavior.

    “Who’s on my side?” said Moses angrily. “If you’re still committed to your original promises, if you can see that the golden calf is merely a distraction from your serious purpose, come with me!” Some of the people joined him. Moses made sure they all had swords, and then told them to go and kill anyone who still worshipped that golden calf.

    So they did.

    Now, if you read Exodus as if it’s naive history, this story of the golden calf sounds brutal, and it seems difficult to understand. But if we read Exodus as a psychological journey, the story of the golden calf makes more sense.

    Think of it this way: Here we all are, on our journey to the Promised Land, the land where we will live in peace and plenty. But the journey to the Promised Land takes longer and proves more difficult than we had expected. The length and the difficulty of the journey causes us to get distracted by meaningless and trivial things. The only way to get ourselves back on track is by completely cutting out the trivial distractions. Yet those trivial distractions are pleasant, and cutting them out proves painful. If this is the general outline of the psychological journey described in the story of the golden calf, it doesn’t take much to imagine specific applications of this story to real life.

    To take one example, the story of the golden calf might serve as a metaphor for how my friends in recovery programs describe their psychological journey out of addiction. The road to recovery takes longer than expected, and it’s more difficult than is expected. You may know the principles needed to recover from addiction, whether you’re following a twelve-step program or some other program. But it’s easy to abandon those abstract principles for the empty pleasure of trivial distractions. Sometimes successful recovery requires the harsh act of cutting ties with old friends, people who might drag one back into addiction.

    To take another example, the story of the golden calf can resemble the journey of taking up a serious spiritual practice. Your spiritual practice, whether it’s meditation or some other practice, seems like such a good idea when you start out. But there often comes a time when your progress slows and stops. You grow weary of the effort required. You think to yourself: Maybe things weren’t so bad in the old days when you weren’t committed to this spiritual practice. Wouldn’t it be so easy to give it up? And so maybe you drop your spiritual practice for a time, and revert to your old way of being. When you realize that your spiritual practice really was doing you good, you find it can be wrenching to return to that spiritual practice, it can require the harsh acting of cutting out whatever trivial pursuits took the place of your spiritual practice.

    To take one more example, the story of the golden calf can also resemble the journey towards some social justice goal. When you first start working for racial justice, for example, you’re invigorated and enthusiastic. Then there are the inevitable setbacks; the political climate becomes hostile; the party in power uses barely concealed racist vocabulary; the people who resist racial justice are spreading disinformation. You grow weary of the work. You begin to feel that you only have enough energy for your ordinary day-to-day tasks, and you pull back from racial justice. Yet something happens — another racially motivated killing, another law supporting racial inequality, whatever — and you find that you cannot simply ignore the problem. You find yourself forced to return to the hard work of establishing racial justice here in the United States.

    If we read the story of Exodus as a psychological metaphor, it can apply to all these situations: to personal recovery; to personal spiritual growth; to making the world a better place. If we understand the story of Exodus as a psychological journey, it also helps us perceive the interrelations between all these things — between our personal recovery, and our personal spiritual, and our communal quest for making the world a better place. All these thing are interrelated.

    Martin Luther King understood the psychological truth that all these things are interrelated. Our own personal spiritual growth cannot be separated from our communal quest to make this a better world. Our own personal recovery from pain and trauma cannot be separated from the communal attempt to recover from the wrongs arising out of our shared history. This psychological truth runs through all of King’s speeches and sermons and writings: correcting injustice in the world cannot be separated from caring for our own individual spiritual health.

    I would suggest to you that this part of Dr. King’s message may be especially relevant to us in these times. Our country is faced with major problems that we must solve — racial injustice, economic injustice, ecological problems, the list goes on. Yet the psychological truth is that taking care of the world requires us to take care of our individual selves. If we neglect our own spiritual and emotional and physical health, we won’t be able to work on the world’s problems. If we ignore the world’s problems, our own personal health will suffer.

    Thus you see: we cannot achieve our goal of the earth made fair and all her people free, unless we simultaneously cultivate our own spiritual health. That is one reason why we gather here each week: to take care of ourselves, while also considering how to care for the world. And so it is we continue to live out Dr. King’s teachings.

  • Looking Forward, Looking Back

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make any corrections.

    Readings

    The first reading is an excerpt from the long poem “Fasti” by the ancient Roman poet Ovid:

    While I was musing, writing-tablets in hand,
    The house seemed brighter than it was before.
    Then suddenly, sacred and marvelous, Janus,
    In two-headed form, showed his twin faces to my eyes.
    Terrified, I felt my hair grow stiff with fear
    And my heart was frozen with sudden cold.
    Holding his stick in his right hand, his key in the left,
    He spoke these words to me from his forward looking face:

    “Do not fear, but learn what you seek, O poet who labors
    Over the days, and remember what I say.

    “The ancients called me Chaos (since I am of the first world):
    Note the long ages past of which I shall tell.
    The clear air, and the three other elements,
    Fire, water, earth, were heaped together as one.
    When, through the discord of its components,
    The mass dissolved, and scattered to new regions,
    Flame found the heights: air took a lower place,
    While earth and sea sank to the furthest depth.
    Then I, who was a shapeless mass, a ball,
    Took on the appearance, and noble limbs of a god.
    Even now, a small sign of my once confused state,
    My front and back appear just the same….

    “Now learn the reason for my shape:
    Though already you partially understand it.
    Every doorway has two sides, this way and that,
    One facing the crowds, and the other the household gods:
    And like your doorkeeper seated at the threshold,
    Who watches who goes and out and who goes in,
    So I am the doorkeeper of the heavenly court,
    Looking towards both east and west at once:…
    And I, lest I lose time twisting my neck around,
    Am free to look both ways without moving.”

    The second reading is from “Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye:

    Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
    Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
    transparent scarlet paper,
    sizzle like moth wings,
    marry the air.

    So much of any year is flammable,
    lists of vegetables, partial poems.
    Orange swirling flame of days,
    so little is a stone.

    Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
    an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
    I begin again with the smallest numbers….

    Sermon: “Looking Forward, Looking Back”

    The ancient Roman gods and goddesses are part of our shared Western culture. We name planets and dwarf planets after them — Jupiter, Neptune, Ceres, Pluto. And most of us have at least some passing familiarity with these ancient deities: Jupiter, the ruler of the other gods and goddesses; Neptune, the god of the sea; and so on.

    For the most part, the Romans gods and goddesses were said to have appearances that were much like humans. Some of the them, however, had a more bizarre appearance. Janus was one of those odd-looking gods: he had two faces, one which looked forward, and one which looked backwards. In the first reading this morning, we heard Janus’s own explanation for his appearance. “I am the doorkeeper of the heavenly court,” he told the poet Ovid, “Looking towards both east and west at once… [for] lest I lose time twisting my neck around, [I] am free to look both ways without moving.”

    Janus also told the poet that he began as a part of Chaos, the stuff out of which the universe emerged. And Janus says, “as a small sign of my once confused state, my front and back appear just the same.” Because of that, he became the god of doorways, looking both outwards towards the crowds of people outside the door of the house, and inwards towards the household gods that preside over the safety of each household.

    No wonder, then, that the Romans named the first month of their calendar year for Janus. He is the perfect god for the beginning of a new year, because of the way he looks both forward and backwards. So it is that we, at the beginning of a new year, feel an impulse to look both forwards and backwards. So I’m going imitate Janus, and at the beginning of this new year I’m going to take a look backwards at last year, then a look forward into the new year.

    The most difficult task will be looking backwards. This is because looking back at 2024 seems to lead inevitably to conversations about the presidential election, and those conversations can be fraught. Either that, or people start arguing about the war in Gaza and Israel. Either that, or someone will bring up global climate change. When looking back at the past year, it’s all too easy to talk about topics which cause people distress.

    But I decided that for this first sermon of the year, I didn’t want to cause distress to either you or me. In the second reading, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye tells us: “So much of any year is flammable,/ lists of vegetables, partial poems./ Orange swirling flame of days,/ so little is a stone.” That is to say, at the end of any given year there are a great many things that we can let go of. In her poem, she imagines the things you can let go of as being things that are flammable. Then she adds another image: “So little is a stone”; or to put it another way, when you look back over the year there are only a few things that are solid like a stone, things that won’t perish in the flames, things that are worth holding on to. For example, it is worth holding on to the memories of the love of family and friends. It is worth holding on the the memories of people who have died in the past year. It is always worth holding on to that which is true and good.

    With that in mind, I’d like to suggest that we might also think about some of the good things that happened in the past year. Perhaps we can’t avoid thinking about what went wrong in 2024; but let’s take a moment to think about what went right.

    First: a sign of hope in the seemingly intractable problem of housing insecurity and homelessness. As we all know, the rate of homelessness is rising both nationwide and here in Massachusetts; our state is now in the top five states with the greatest numbers of people who are homeless. Yet in spite of these increases, last year the city of Los Angeles bucked the trend with a 2.2% decline the total number of people who were homeless in their city, while unsheltered homelessness declined by 10.4%. They accomplished this through a combination of policies and programs to get people into housing. (1) Thus we can see that homelessness is not an insoluble problem. There are viable solutions out there, and we can learn from places like Los Angeles.

    A second piece of positive news: three more countries legalized same sex marriage. Two of those were countries we might not have expected: both Thailand and Greece legalized same sex marriage last year. Thailand is the first Southeast Asian country, and the third country in all of Asia, to legalize same-sex marriage. Greece is the first majority-Orthodox Christian country to legalize same-sex marriage. (2) Estonia was the third country that legalized same-sex marriage last year, so there are now 38 countries around the world where same-sex marriage is legal. Same-sex marriage is now legal somewhere on all six permanently inhabited continents. This is not something I ever expected to see in my lifetime.

    Third: there was actually quite a bit of good news in the environment. In just one example, as of last year the United Kingdom no longer produces any of its energy from coal; the last coal power generation station closed in October. Since England was the site of the first coal power generation plant, this is both a symbolic milestone and a practical milestone. (3) In other positive environmental news from last year, the sail cargo ship Anemos completed its maiden voyage from the Netherlands to New York carrying one thousand tons of cargo. The ship Anemos has, and I quote, a “projected carbon intensity per unit transport [that is] less than a tenth of that of a sub-Panamax container ship.” Anemos will soon have seven sister ships, and regular cargo routes are already planned. (4) Electric vehicle sales continued to increase around the world in 2024. We’re still waiting for accurate data, but it looks like the price of renewable energy continued to drop significantly in the past year. All this is good news.

    Fourth: there was good news, perhaps unexpectedly, in the area of peace and nonviolence. Homicide rates in the United States dropped sixteen percent last year. That’s the third straight year homicides have declined in our country. (5) This is true locally, too — my recollection is that the Boston Globe ran a front page story a couple of days ago reporting that homicide rates in Boston for 2024 were the lowest since 1957.

    And one last bit of good news from the past year: This past summer, the United Nations reported that as of 2024, “population size had peaked in 63 countries…including China, Germany, Japan, and the Russian Federation.” The United Nations report went on to say that “in more than half of all countries…the average number of live births per woman is below 2.1 — the level required for a population to maintain a constant size.” Admittedly, because of so-called “population momentum,” the overall human population is still growing and will peak around the year 2080. Nevertheless, the projection for total human population is now projected to stabilize at three quarters of a billion people lower than was expected a decade ago. (6) Since human overpopulation contributes to just about every major world problem, from the environmental crisis to the worldwide refugee crisis, this final piece of news is very good news indeed.

    Now if you only read social media, these news items are unlikely to rise to the top of what your social media outlet is feeding to you. The people who design the algorithms that drive social media know you spend more time on their sites when you’re doomscrolling. As for traditional news outlets, they too are more likely to emphasize the bad news over the good news. On the Freakonomics podcast a couple of years ago, young adult author John Green pointed out: “a lot of times good news happens slowly and bad news happens all at once, and so we tend to focus on the bad news that’s crashing over us in waves and not on the slow long-term work that people are doing together to try to make a better world for us to share.” (6.5)

    Yes, there are many bad things going on in the world right now. But if you focus only on the bad things in the world, you’re presenting yourself with a distorted view of the world. Not only that, but when you’re thinking about good news you have to consider long-term stories that might not be newsworthy. And with that in mind, let’s look forward into the new year.

    I anticipate that some of the more interesting good news in the coming year will occur in the realm of public health. As one example of what I mean, consider the efforts to develop a vaccine for malaria. Beginning in 2021, a WHO-approved malaria vaccine has been made available to children in many high malaria transmission areas. In 2024, Cameroon was the first country to require childhood vaccination for malaria. We are in the middle of a long slow process to eradicate one of the more debilitating diseases on Earth. Some scientists are now predicting that malaria could be wiped out in another two decades. Because this is a long, slow process, it’s unlikely you’ll ever see it covered in social media or in traditional news outlets. But this represents a huge advance in public health, and a huge reduction in suffering world-wide.

    In the coming year, I’m going to be watching another interesting development in public health, one that directly affects us here on the South Shore. Public health experts are beginning to work with an emerging concept known as “social health.” A group at Stanford University called “Stanford Lifestyle Medicine” defines social health this way: “Social health refers to the quality of our relationships and how often we interact with others. Since social connection is in our nature as humans, when we are isolated and feel a lack of connection, research shows that our mental health can be affected…. Research also shows that our social health profoundly impacts our physical health.” (7)

    You may say this is just another case of university researchers catching up with good old common sense: we already know we’re going to have better physical and mental health when we have a good social network. But thinking about social health as an aspect of public health does represent an advance, because this allows us to think about how we might improve social health through communal effort. Two years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a report about the health impacts of the loneliness epidemic in this country. (8) Treating loneliness as a public health issue means not blaming individuals for being lonely, but instead working on solutions that may include public policy, local community efforts, and so on.

    So, for example, if we address social health from a public health perspective, we might develop public policies and public education campaigns that can deal effectively with the loneliness epidemic and the wider mental health crisis. This would be analogous to the way we used a public health perspective to develop public policies and public education campaigns that targeted the addictiveness of tobacco. Those public policies and those education campaigns led to a dramatic reduction in tobacco use, with a concomitant drop in the cancers associated with tobacco use. So I’m going to be watching what the public health community does to develop public policies and public education campaigns to improve social health, thereby addressing the loneliness epidemic and the mental health crisis.

    And I feel we don’t have to wait for the public health community to do all the work. I believe we here at First Parish can contribute to this effort, because we’re already contributing to this effort through what we do here every Sunday morning. It is clear that one way to improve social health is by building local communities. That is something we actually do quite well here at First Parish: we’re actually quite good at creating a welcoming community. We’re not perfect, and of course there’s always room for improvement in every human endeavor. But I’ve noticed that during social hour following the weekly service, we are actually quite good at talking with one another, and reaching out to people we may not know well. Having spent the last thirty years working in nine different congregations, I’d say that our First Parish community is well above average in providing community and positive social interaction.

    Now let’s put that into the context of the loneliness epidemic in the United States. When we think in terms of social health, what we offer as a community may be one of the most important things we do at First Parish. Simply by doing what we ordinarily do, we actually implement several of the U.S. Surgeon General’s recommendations for mitigating the loneliness epidemic: we “create opportunities and spaces for inclusive social connection”; we “embed social connection in … practices [and] programs”; and we “foster a culture of connection in the broader community by… leading by example.” (9) Just by doing what we would be doing anyway, we’re helping address a major public health crisis.

    When I think about our First Parish community as a part of a larger public health effort to address the loneliness epidemic, two things occur to me. First, I believe we should recognize that we are in fact participating in this public health effort; I could reframe this slightly and say that this is yet another one of our unrecognized social justice projects. Second, we could also be a little more public about talking about how we are contributing to social health.

    This would not require us to add any programs; we don’t have to do anything more, because we’re already promoting social health and fighting the loneliness epidemic. But the U.S. Surgeon General suggests that community-based organizations have a key role to play in advancing “public education and awareness.” And advancing public education and awareness could turn out to be quite simple. So, for example, if someone finds out that I’m part of First Parish, and if they express the least bit of interest, I make sure that the first thing I tell them is that First Parish is a good community. I make it clear being a community is one of most important things we do. Yes, I mention that we talk about moral and ethical issues; yes, I mention that we have good music programs; yes, I mention our beautiful historic Meetinghouse. But I always make sure to mention our sense of community first. I make sure to mention that it’s a good place to connect with other people.

    While this may seem like a very minor point, it’s not. Most people here on the South Shore still think that religion is primarily about religious belief. Many people still think the only reason to do religion is to shore up your belief system. However, in the context of the loneliness epidemic, I’d argue that the most important thing we do here at First Parish is provide social connection. By pointing this out, we can contribute to public education and awareness; we can help others in our community to understand that any organization they join is going to reduce their social disconnection and improve their social health. We can help them understand that this is true for all the community groups we participate in — whether it’s Rotary, or the sailing club, or the town elder affairs group — any membership-based organization, civic group, or arts and education group.

    We can all be a part of this low-key campaign of public education and awareness, and it doesn’t take much effort. All we have to do is just be a little more willing to talk with others about the community-based organizations we belong to, and to mention that belonging to such community based groups helps support social health.

    As I look forward into the coming year — as I look for positive trends that I think may continue in the coming year –I’ve spent most of my time talking about social health. The way we can contribute to social health is just one among many long-term projects that people are doing together to make this a better world. I know many of you are participating in other long-term projects that are making this a better world; long-term projects that don’t make it into the news. The only reason that I’ve focused on social health is that it’s something that we do together here in our First Parish community; improving social health is a project that we all share.

    Just by showing up here at First Parish, we help create a place where people who are lonely can come and find safe, healthy, supportive social interaction. Just by showing up here, we are helping improve our community’s social health, and thereby making the world a better place.

    As we look back over the past year, as we look forward into the new year, it’s easy to be negative. It’s easy to think about everything that’s wrong with the world. But I think it’s more productive to think about how we are contributing to making the world a better place; and in the year to come, may we all think more about our positive efforts in this world.

    Notes

    (1) “Unsheltered Homelessness Drops and Sheltered Homelessness Rises in City and County of Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority website, 28 June, 2024, https://www.lahsa.org/news?article=977-unsheltered-homelessness-drops-and-sheltered-homelessness-rises-in-la accessed 4 Jan. 2025.
    (2) “Thailand’s king signs landmark same-sex marriage bill into law,” Associated Press, 24 Sept. 2024 https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/24/asia/thailand-same-sex-marriage-intl-hnk/index.html accessed 4 Jan. 2025. — James Gregory, “Greece legalises same-sex marriage,” BBC News, 15 Feb. 2024 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68310126 accessed 4 Jan. 2025
    (3) Mark Poynting and Esme Stallard, “UK to finish with coal power after 142 years,” BBC News, 30 September 2024 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o accessed 4 Jan. 2025.
    (4) The Maritime Executive, “High-Tech Sailing Ship Starts Maiden Voyage With 1,000 Tonnes of Cargo,” 18 Aug. 2024 https://maritime-executive.com/article/high-tech-sailing-ship-starts-maiden-voyage-with-1-000-tonnes-of-cargo accessed 4 Jan. 2025.
    (5) Bill Hutchinson, “US poised to see dramatic drop in homicides for 3rd straight year: More than 5,000 fewer homicides have been recorded this year compared to 2023,” ABC News, 31 Dec. 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/US/united-states-drop-homicides-2024/story?id=116902123 accessed 4 Jan. 2025.
    (6) “Growing or shrinking? What the latest trends tell us about the world’s population,” United Nations News, Global perspective Human stories, 11 July 2024 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/07/1151971 accessed 4 Jan. 2025.
    (6.5) Freakonomics podcast, Episode 92, “John Green’s Reluctant Rocket Ship Ride,” 11 Nov. 2022, transcript at: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/john-greens-reluctant-rocket-ship-ride/ accessed 4 Jan. 2025.
    (7) Sharon Brock, What is Social Health and How Does it Impact Longevity? Stanford Lifestyle Medicine website, 14 Nov. 2024 https://longevity.stanford.edu/lifestyle/2024/11/14/what-is-social-health-and-how-does-it-impact-longevity/ accessed 4 Jan. 2025. Robert D. Russell of Southern Illinois University is usually credited with originating the concept of social health back in the 1970s: “With an interest in the holistic and ecological aspects of health and spirituality as components of personal health, he often gets credit from colleagues for creating the ecological model of health education.” Southern Illinois University News, https://news.siu.edu/2012/03/032812cjm12090.php accessed 4 Jan. 2025.
    (8) See: Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community (Washington, DC: Office of the Surgeon General, 2023), https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
    (9) Ibid., p. 62.