Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: Neo-paganism

  • Easter Joy

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Sermon

    Traditionally, Easter tells the story of the literal resurrection of Jesus, in which he rises from the dead after being executed. The traditional Easter story is ultimately a story of how an impossible situation can be transformed into a hopeful and joyful situation. And I don’t know about you, but given the news these days, I could use some hope and joy.

    Now, we Unitarian Universalists happen to have a wide variety of theological viewpoints, and many of us interpret the Easter story in non-traditional ways. So this year, rather than offering just one interpretation of Easter, I’d like to give you four different takes on the basic message of Easter. We’re going to hear four poems by Unitarian Universalist poets, expressing beliefs ranging from liberal Christian, to very liberal post-Christian, to Neo-Pagan, to humanist. Most of these poems link Easter with the hope and joy and transformation of the spring season. Admittedly, if we were in the southern hemisphere where Easter comes in autumn, equating Easter with spring doesn’t work so well. But here we are in the northern hemisphere, so we can make a link between the Easter season, and the hope and joy and transformation of the spring season.

    With that introduction, let’s listen as our worship associate, Mary T., reads the first poem:

    “Dandelions” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

    Welcome children of the Spring,
    In your garbs of green and gold,
    Lifting up your sun-crowned heads
    On the verdant plain and wold.

    As a bright and joyous troop
    From the breast of earth ye came
    Fair and lovely are your cheeks,
    With sun-kisses all aflame.

    In the dusty streets and lanes,
    Where the lowly children play,
    There as gentle friends ye smile,
    Making brighter life’s highway

    Dewdrops and the morning sun,
    Weave your garments fair and bright,
    And we welcome you to-day
    As the children of the light.

    Children of the earth and sun.
    We are slow to understand
    All the richness of the gifts
    Flowing from our Father’s hand.

    Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who lived from 1825 to 1911, represents typical Unitarian Christianity of the late nineteenth century. Although this poem doesn’t specifically mention Easter, it still feels like a Unitarian interpretation of Easter to me. Late-nineteenth century Unitarians were mostly interested in what Jesus did during his lifetime, and they thought a lot about how to live out his teachings in the present day. As a result, they didn’t spend much too time worrying about whether the Easter story of resurrection was literally true or whether it was a metaphor. Instead, they concerned themselves with trying to follow Jesus’s example — helping the poor, loving their neighbors, and so on.

    I see this pragmatic Unitarian attitude in Frances Harper’s poem about dandelions. Instead of writing a poem about the showy flowers that well-to-do people from in their gardens, she turns her attention to the lowly dandelion. Dandelions grow everywhere, even in “the dusty streets and lanes, / Where lowly children play.” So it is that God brings the joy of springtime — the joy that we associate with Easter — to everyone on earth, whether rich or poor. As an African American, Frances Harper was fully aware that Black people in late nineteenth century America often didn’t have equal access to many things; yet God brings beauty and joy to all human beings equally, regardless of race. Even though this poem doesn’t specifically mention Easter, it tells us something important about Easter — that God wants everyone to have equal access to the joy of Easter. Frances Harper would tell us that if we find some people don’t have equal access to Easter joy, well then, that’s a problem caused by humans, not by God — which means it’s a problem that we humans can solve.

    Now let’s hear another poem, “i thank You God for most this amazing day” by E. E. Cummings (poem is not included here due to copyright restrictions, but a legal audio version of the poem may be heard on the Poetry Foundation website)….

    E. E. Cummings, who wrote this poem, was the son of a Unitarian minister. As an adult he had no formal religious affiliation, yet even so this poem sounds very Unitarian to me. It’s what you might call a post-Christian poem — the poem uses some standard Christian images, yet those images are interpreted in a very free manner. Cummings writes “i who have died am alive again today,” which sounds like the standard story of Easter (except that story is not usually told in the first person). Then Cummings takes this in a decidedly non-standard direction by saying: “this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth / day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay / great happening illimitably earth.” This is not orthodox Christian theology.

    The final stanza of the poem, while clearly unorthodox, does carry an echo of some of Jesus’s words. In the synoptic gospels (that is, the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the Christian scriptures), Jesus often tells his followers to pay attention. For example, Jesus says: “After all, there is nothing hidden except to be brought to light, nor anything secreted away that won’t be exposed. If anyone here has two good ears, use them!” (Mark 4:22-23, Jesus Seminar translation). We hear lots of talk about the importance of mindfulness these days, but this is not a modern phenomenon. For thousands of years, prophets and sages have been telling us to wake up and pay attention. E. E. Cummings is echoing not only Jesus, but other prophets and sages, when he tells us, “now the ears of my ears awake and / now the eyes of my eyes are opened”. And what is Cummings urging us to pay attention to? — he is telling us to pay attention to wonder, and beauty — in short, he is telling us to wake up to joy. Or as Jesus put it, “Anyone here with two ears had better listen!” (Matt. 13:9, Jesus Seminar translation)

    Now let’s hear another poem, this one by a Neo-Pagan Unitarian Universalist — “Seed for Spring Equinox / March 21” by Annie Finch. The poet says: “For the full effect, speak the poem aloud 3 times.”

    Annie Finch is a Neo-Pagan; the Neo-Pagan religions reach back in Western culture to the ancient earth-centered religions that existed before Christianity took over. Like many Neo-pagans, Annie Finch recognizes eight main holy days in the year: the two equinoxes, the two solstices, and the four days that lie halfway between the equinoxes and solstices. Like many Neo-pagans, Annie Finch traces the roots of the Christian holiday of Easter back to an older pagan holiday called Ostara, which was connected with the spring equinox. The poem we just heard is an Ostara poem, and it’s also a spring equinox poem.

    Finch also believes in the power of the spoken word. Poetry is not just something your high school English teacher made you read. Poetry contains a kind of magical power, the power of incantatory words spoken or chanted aloud. This may seem an alien concept to many of us today; but all human cultures have recognized the power of the spoken word. Our politicians still rely on the spoken word to sway the electorate. Religions rely on the spoken word through chanting scriptures, repeating mantras, saying prayers aloud, or even hearing sermons. People who are deaf might cast some doubt on whether the power of the spoken word is universal. In response, some religious traditions would reply: it’s the vibrational energy that’s important, or the communal aspect of speaking something aloud to a group of people, not the actual perceived sound.

    Whatever you might believe, or disbelieve, about the mystical powers of poetry, this poem by Annie Finch is — to my way of thinking — a poem about hope, and ultimately a poem about joy. The poem is spoken from the point of view of a seed that has been planted and is beginning to sprout — therein lies the hope, for as any gardener can tell you, the act of planting a seed is an expression of hope for the future. And then there’s the moment when the seed’s “head and shoulders past the open crust / dried by spring wind” and the new plant emerges into the spring sunshine — this is a moment of joy. By speaking the poem aloud, we enter into that mindset of transformation, and perhaps that may help us to transform ourselves — a hopeful thought.

    Now let’s hear one final poem, from the 1923 book “Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams:

    By the road to the contagious hospital
    under the surge of the blue
    mottled clouds driven from the
    northeast — a cold wind. Beyond, the
    waste of broad, muddy fields
    brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

    patches of standing water
    the scattering of tall trees

    All along the road the reddish
    purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
    stuff of bushes and small trees
    with dead, brown leaves under them
    leafless vines —

    Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
    dazed spring approaches —

    They enter the new world naked,
    cold, uncertain of all
    save that they enter. All about them
    the cold, familiar wind —

    Now the grass, tomorrow
    the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
    One by one objects are defined —
    It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

    But now the stark dignity of
    entrance — Still, the profound change
    has come upon them: rooted, they
    grip down and begin to awaken

    This poem by William Carlos Williams contains no mention of Easter or Ostara, no mention of Jesus or God. Nevertheless, it seems to me it poem tells much the same story as the other poems we have heard. There is a sense of hope for the future, the hope that comes every spring as the world emerges from winter cold and darkness. There is a sense of joy, the joy of new life, of new beginnings — we might even say, the joy that comes with the sense of resurrection of the natural world from the dead time of winter. Above all, there is a sense of the importance of paying attention. Pay attention to “the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf”, for in that tiny, easily-overlooked detail we can find a revelation of what is to come.

    Williams was a physician, and as is true of many physicians he had a scientific outlook. His poetry reflects that scientific outlook in the careful attention to small details, and the ability to connect those small details to a larger whole. Our culture likes to pretend that science and religion are opposed to one another, but a poem like this shows that science and religion can find unity in a sense of wonder — unity in the joy that can come from paying close and careful attention to the world around us.

    As a Unitarian Universalist, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about deep theological questions like the existence of God, the existence of the historical Jesus, the relative truth values of the world’s religions, and so on. These will always be attractive questions, questions which have been worthy of the attention of some of the greatest minds through human history. As I get older, I find myself less interested in questions that (quite apparently) won’t be answered in my lifetime. So I have no longer have much interest in trying to settle, once and for all, all the debates and questions about the story of Easter. Instead, I find myself increasingly adopting the attitude that I sense in the William Carlos Williams poem. I spent yesterday taking a class on the graminoids, a group of plants that include grasses, rushes, and sedges. Talk about paying close attention! — we spent much of the class looking at the seeds of plants through a dissecting microscope. And talk about hope for the future! — we examined the fine structures that have evolved to allow the seeds a maximum chance of creating new life. This seemed a worthy and appropriate way for a Unitarian Universalist like me to spend Easter weekend. So you can see, science and religion are not so far apart as some would have us believe.

    So there you have it — four very different poems about hope and joy and transformation. Believe whatever you wish about God and Jesus and Easter; we Unitarian Universalists have no required beliefs. Believe what you want, but pay close attention to the world. And if you’re willing to pay close attention to the world, no matter who you are — no matter how much money you have, or what race or ethnicity you are, or whom you love, or what your gender might be — your attention will be rewarded with amazement and transformation and hope and joy; for the wonder and beauty of the world remains universally open to all.

  • Ecofeminism

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

    Readings

    The first reading is from the Christian scriptures, from the book called Matthew, chapter 6, verses 24-30.

    “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

    “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’… But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

    The second reading is from Starhawk’s book Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics. I take this second reading to be deeply related to the first reading.

    “The image of the Goddess strikes at the roots of estrangement. True value is not found in some heaven, some abstract otherworld, but in female bodies and their offspring, female and male; in nature, and in the world. Nature is seen as having its own inherent order, of which human beings are a part. Human nature, needs, drives, and desires are not dangerous impulses in need of repression and control, but are themselves expressions of the order inherent in being. The evidence of our sense and our experience is evidence of the divine — the moving energy that unites all being.”

    So end this morning’s readings.

    SERMON — “Ecofeminism”

    One of the things that I like best about Jesus of Nazareth — that is, the Jesus whose words we can find in the Bible as opposed to the Jesus that the established church has constructed — is that Jesus constantly challenges us to think more clearly and to feel more deeply. So Jesus preaches to his followers:

    “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Today, we might add that the birds of the air use no fossil fuels in order to feed themselves, and the only waste products they emit are biodegradable and nontoxic. Jesus goes on: “And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” And Jesus’s words take on additional meaning in the 21st century when you think about the energy it takes to manufacture clothes, and ship clothes from the distant countries in which they are now mostly manufactured. Jesus goes on: “If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith?”

    If you have been coming to church over the past three weeks, you know that I have been preaching a series of sermons on feminist theology, and today’s sermon is the last, and I might say the culminating, sermon in that series. If you were here two weeks ago, you heard how feminist theology became our most important theological stance in the 1980s, and you heard about how feminist theology underlies the so-called “seven principles,” which have become the most widely-used affirmation of faith among us, and therefore I said that feminist theology has become central to who we are now. But I also pointed out how the feminist theology of the 1980’s has problems and limitations, and I described how a younger generation of women, especially working class women and women of color, have pointed out some of those problems and limitations. And that old 1980’s feminism really doesn’t have much to say about the ecological crisis that we are in the midst of now. Today I’d like to speak with you about ecofeminism, and I’ve saved ecofeminism for last because I believe ecofeminism addresses these problems and limitations, and I believe ecofeminism should be a central theology for us Unitarian Universalists.

    Which brings us to the second reading this morning. Starhawk, a Neo-pagan and the author of that second reading, is one of the best-known ecofeminist theologians alive today. In that second reading she writes, “True value is not found in some heaven, some abstract otherworld, but in female bodies and their offspring, female and male; in nature, and in the world. Nature is seen as having its own inherent order, of which human beings are a part.” In other words, Starhawk is saying that we don’t have to wait until after we die to enter into some disembodied heavenly state. We’re there here and now. We can find true value in our own bodies. We can find true value in the world and in nature. Actually, there is no real separation between our bodies (our selves) and nature, because we are a part of the inherent order of the world.

    That’s a pretty radical thing for Starhawk to say. Western Christianity and Western culture have been telling us for centuries that our souls or minds are more important than bodies. Western culture tells us that there’s a separation between our minds and our bodies, and that our bodies are less important than our minds; and Western Christianity tells us not to worry about suffering here and now, because one day we’ll get to go to heaven. But Starhawk says that true value is found in our bodies, in nature, in the world; we’re already a part of it; true value is here and now.

    And like many ecofeminists, Starhawk tells a story of how we got to the point where we are now. This ecofeminist story is based on archaeological and anthropological research, and it goes something like this:

    Before humans invented agriculture, the archaeological record shows that we got along pretty well. Back then, human beings were reasonably healthy, and the hunting-gathering life didn’t take up much of our time so we had plenty of leisure. Maybe we did some gardening, too, but we weren’t engaged in intensive agriculture. Then some bright human invented agriculture. Once agriculture became the way we got our food, the archaeological record shows that overall health declined. Archaeologists find a greater incidence of illness and disease, and they find that agriculturalists were on average four inches shorter than hunter-gatherers. In addition, the invention of agriculture seems correlated with several other inventions: slavery, economic exploitation of the majority of humanity, devastating wars, and (dare I say it?) the emergence of monotheism, that is, the belief in one single male god.

    That’s the scientific story. Some Christians and some Neo-pagans tell this story a little differently. They tell a story about an ancient time when humankind lived in balance with the rest of the world. Some of these Christians tell the story of the Garden of Eden, a time a place where the first humans didn’t have to work by the sweat of their brows, and didn’t have to wear clothes, and generally had a lovely time. In this Christian story, those first humans violated God’s law by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that is by knowing too much. Because they knew too much, those first humans got kicked out of the paradise that was the Garden of Eden; and this is known as the Fall.

    Some Neo-pagans tell a different, but related, story about an ancient time in human history when women were in charge of human society. At that time, we human beings lived in harmony with the earth and in harmony with our own bodies. In this Neo-pagan story, someone invented domination, whereby one human being (usually a man) dominates another human being. This led to slavery, exploitation of the earth, and a lower standard of living for everyone except a few wealthy men; and this kind of domination is known as patriarchy.

    The Christians tell us that we can’t go back to the Garden of Eden; Neo-pagans like Starhawk tell us that we really can’t go back to living the way they did in the old matriarchal societies; the archaeologists tell us that we can’t go back to living as hunter-gatherers. So what went wrong? And how do we find a way out of this mess?

    Not that I believe that there can even be a final answer to these questions, or to any serious question about the fate of earth and humanity. Year after year, century after century, individuals have claimed to have the one true final answer to life, the universe, and everything; and year after year, century after century, human beings have fixed one problem only to have a new problem emerge somewhere else. That is the way of growth and evolution and change. To use an ecological metaphor, there is no single climax state of the forest in which the forest ecosystem settles down into some perfect unchanging heavenly state. Random fluctuations of weather, chance mutations in certain species, interactions with nearby ecosystems, all lead to change. Change is the only constant, accompanied by growth and evolution.

    Yet if change is the only constant, then we should be able to change things for the better, rather than letting them get worse. And ecofeminism offers some profound religious insight into our current mess, and offers hope that we might be able to grow, and to change things for the better. In that spirit of hope, let us ask what ecofeminism can offer us.

    Ecofeminism tells us that domination has helped get us into the current mess. So if we look at the Western Christian tradition, we find this idea that God allegedly told humankind that human beings have dominion over all other living things; and then God said that men have dominion over women; and next thing you know you have variations on the theme of domination like slavery and oppression of ethnic minorities. Even if one form of domination doesn’t follow another form of domination chronologically, all these kinds of domination are linked together: human domination of other living things is linked to patriarchy or the male domination of women, which is linked to slavery or the domination of some human beings by other human beings, often along racial or ethnic lines.

    Needless to say, domination and exploitation go together. If a woman’s place is in the kitchen where they don’t get paid or compensated for their work, whoever is dominating them is also exploiting them. And when human beings dominate the total ecosystem to meet our short-term needs without paying attention to the survival of other species, that sounds like exploitation to me.

    As Unitarian Universalists, we claim that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. I take that to mean that we will not affirm the domination of some human beings by other human beings. So, for example, if we affirm that women have inherent worth and dignity, then we will not put up with men dominating women. If we affirm that people of color have inherent worth and dignity, then we will not put up with white people dominating people of color. To say that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all persons means that we won’t put up with domination. We won’t put up with one person dominating another, yet we are willing to go further than that and say that we won’t put up with human beings dominating other living beings.

    So, too, do we affirm respect for the interdependent web of life of which we are a part. We are not comfortable with domination, no matter what form it might take. Any religion rooted in dignity and respect for other beings is a religion that cannot tolerate domination and exploitation. So it is that I say we Unitarian Universalists are ecofeminists — or, at least, we are in the process of becoming ecofeminists, for I’m not sure we’re quite there yet.

    Because once you start thinking like an ecofeminist, it really changes the way you think about religion. Your whole religious landscape shifts. You become suspicious of the way the old religious texts have been interpreted, so that when you hear about how God told humankind to have dominion over other living beings, you get suspicious and you wonder if there might not be another interpretation of that old Bible verse. You become suspicious of your whole Western religious tradition, so that when you hear about a God who is always referred to as “he” and “him,” you begin to wonder why we don’t also refer to God as a Goddess whom we refer to as “she” and “her.” You become suspicious of people who tell you that it is “natural” for men to have power over women, just as you become suspicious of people who tell you that it is “natural” for people with white skin to have more power than people with darker skin — and when they tell you that the Bible says that men should have dominion over women, you become suspicious of the way those people are interpreting the Bible.

    And that can lead us to challenge the old religious interpretations. So Starhawk challenges us to give up those old notions of heaven as some abstract, otherworldly place. She challenges us to find true value in women’s bodies here and now, and to find true value in male and female bodies that come from women’s bodies. She tells us that we don’t need to be estranged from our bodies, or from each other, for we human beings are inherently part of the inherent order of nature. She tells us to trust the evidence of our senses, and find evidence of the divine in the moving energy that unites all living beings, unites all things. We challenge the old religious interpretations, and we find freedom: the freedom that comes when we don’t allow our thoughts to be dominated by some abstract authority, the freedom that comes when we shake off the bonds of slavery or servitude imposed on us by someone else. We challenge the old religious interpretations, and we find deep interconnectedness: we are interconnected with each other, male and female, all races and ethnicities, and dominating someone else only harms us; we are interconnected with all nature, and we can’t dominate nature without dominating and enslaving ourselves as well.

    This brings us back to those enigmatic words of Jesus, which end with Jesus saying, “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Traditional religious authorities have interpreted this to mean that we should strive to get into heaven, some time after we die, and then, like the lilies of the field we too will be clothed like King Solomon in all his glory. When Jesus talks about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, generations of church-goers interpreted these words as referring to heaven, to some perfect state of being that will come to us (if we behave ourselves) after we die. Wait for death, enter into that disembodied state known as heaven, and you too can become like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. When you’re in a disembodied heaven, it’s easy for the heavenly father to feed you and clothe you if you’re disembodied. In other words, suck it up now, be meek and mild and don’t be bothered when others dominate you, and after you die you’ll get your reward.

    But what if generations of church-goers and the old traditional religious authorities are completely wrong? What if Jesus is actually telling us to resist domination and to live with dignity, in harmony with each other, respecting the earth and all living beings? What if he is telling us that we can have heaven here on earth, if we choose to do so?

    That’s what you get to do if you’re an ecofeminist. You get to discard those old traditional religious interpretations, and try to get at what Jesus was actually saying. Strip away to creeds and dogmas of the centuries, and perhaps what Jesus really said was to strive for the kingdom of heaven, so you can live in harmony with the world — in the same way that the birds of the air, and the lilies of the field, live in interdependent harmony with the world. That possibility exists here and now. Nor is this some pie-in-the-sky utopian vision, for the lilies manage to do it here and now.

    Not that I’m going to claim that Jesus of Nazareth was an ecofeminist theologian, because he wasn’t. Nor am I going to say that any contemporary ecofeminist, including Starhawk, has the final answer to our problems, because they don’t and she doesn’t. We don’t need a final answer, we just need a direction in which we can travel. I think ecofeminism offers us a direction that all of us — women and men, people of color and white people, Christians and Pagans and humanists — a direction in which we can travel together to get out of this mess.

    It’s not like I’m just making this up. Many of you have told me that you know domination is everywhere: men dominating women, white people dominating dark-skinned people, super-rich dominating everyone else, humankind dominating other living beings. You have told me that domination no longer works, that it’s just creating mass extinction of species, ongoing violence against women, racism, and miserable lives — and many of you have told me pieces of how to put an end to it.

    So I’m just piecing this together for you. We know what to do. We know this is a religious matter, and we know that our church, good old First Unitarian in New Bedford, is one of the religious institutions that can address this matter. So what if we’re a small church. So what if there’s only forty of us here this morning. So what if we’re a little disorganized, and some of us are tired, and all of us are busy. What we need is an ecofeminist movement happening. When there’s a hundred of us in here on a Sunday morning, we can start building coalitions with like-minded groups. We’ll get lots of kids in here so we can get them to understand this at a young age. Then when there’s four hundred of us, the local politicians will have to start paying attention. And when there’s a thousand of us, we can….

    Now, I just know what someone is going to say to me at coffee hour — “Well, Dan, I just don’t know, I don’t think we’ll ever have a thousand Unitarian Universalists, not in New Bedford.” Well, my friends, the evangelicals are building a megachurch in the northern end of our city and they plan to build a membership of two thousand or more people, in order to save a few disembodied souls….

    …Surely we Unitarian Universalists can come up with a thousand people who will work towards a world of dignity and respect for all living beings, and earth made fair, and all her peoples one.

    No excuses, now.