Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Pottstown

10/15/17 Sermon

Serenity in a Time of Chaos
Rev. Paul D. Daniel

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference ”

Some of us may know this from AA but it was written by the theologianReinhold Niebuhr.  In this troubling time, it is worth taking such a prayer to heart. What is now important is to find constructive ways of coping with the challenges of living amidst political and social chaos that is shaking the nations equanimity. Coupled with catastrophic fires and storms the need for prayers for serenity are more needed than ever to calm our anxiety. But prayers are not enough. We must unite to engage in resistance if we are to change the disastrous course of our nation.

Political and financial systems can change if we set our minds to the task. What I do know is the only way to survive our personal and national malaise is not to panic. Instead, take in a deep breath of serenity and exhale your stress and tension. Breathe in, breathe out. We have been here before; endured economic meltdowns, brutal wars, political turmoil from McCarthyism to presidential impeachment’s and assignations.

We can do that again if the threat to our stability and safety grows and our democracy is in danger. No president or politician is above the law. We are a nation of laws enshrined in our constitution. We also have an inner strength and untapped resources to persevere and cope.

I believe this church; you and I have a mission to help each other face these challenges no matter how daunting. What we can’t do is ignore these challenges. If we do we give up the rights to create a better, more relevant faith and nation.

So, let’s talk about some ideas that might help us deal with this assault on our serenity and tranquility. We all know it is easy to experience a sense of inner peace and satisfaction when life flows smoothly, when we have financial security, good relationships, our health, and a good job.  But, when those things are under attack it is far harder to relax, especially if we feel our social safety net might be falling apart: the affordable care act, Medicaid and Medicare, environmental safety and a seemingly   endless list of other protections.  When our basics human rights such as the right of transgender citizens to opening serve in the military, and workers right are being scaled back serenity is will be in scarce supply and our national stress can reach all-time highs.

Real life however is never truly free of the worry that prevents us from feeling at peace. Nevertheless, tranquility is within our reach internally regardless of the chaos surrounding us. Outside events do not have to control our inner life. We can learn to intentionally seek tranquility and serenity through a focused practice, guided imagery, meditation even under the most trying circumstances.

Thoughts always arise as distractions that intrude on our inner peace, but we have a choice and the ability to silence those negative voices or, we can choose to pay attention to the noise and surrender our tranquility to  a growing knot in our stomachs. It is in our power to choose to think positively and imagine what we sincerely want and need to achieve serenity. Good can arises through both acceptance or action. When the mind is silent and still, we can achieve a degree of inner and outer happiness. In a state of quiet and clarity, body and soul are united in our intuitive center. It is there that we know that we are a miraculous expression of the holy,

A calm mind arises out of a kind of emotional cleansing where we feel the rush of all our emotions but do not let them overwhelm us. This is difficult to achieve but a blessing when we in the words of hymn 352,

“find the stillness,

hold the stillness

let the silence carry us”.

Try giving your brain a rest; let it shut down alienation and despair. Let it calm and restore you. Serenity is the freedom from the compulsion of nonstop thinking …. I admit, that is my challenge when I lay my head down to sleep.  Remember achieving tranquility is an ongoing process. You can achieve it with practice: meditation, guided imagery, deep breathing, intentional relaxation or many forms of therapy. I have taken up this inner medication to become more conscious of the rhythm of my breathing to calm my racing mind. , out with my racing “monkey mind I am sure some of you have ” tried similar methods that work for you. This journey to serenity that we seek requires time, patience and persistence.

Our thoughts and habits imprison us. This cacophony of thought prevents inner harmony. It can be a very destructive human habit but we can free ourselves of it. To rid ourselves of this incessant chatter of our inner voice we must be conscious of them, and intentionally behave in a new and different manner to shut them out. We must retrain our mind and thoughts until we can form new, and healthy coping skills.

Our thoughts determine how we see ourselves in the world. A healthy self-image is the Rosetta Stone of our being. We can see ourselves as beloved or worthless. It is in our power to decide which one. To become a true master of our own mind goes beyond our ability to concentrate on only a single thought to the exclusion of all others. It is the ability to slow down and quiet the mind completely. That is the path to serenity.

The Indian sage, Sri Ramana Maharshi, has said: “Mind is only a bundle of thoughts, stop thinking and show me the mind”. When the clouds hide the sun, writes another mystic Ramirez Sason, “it is still there, beyond the clouds. Our essence, our inner self, is always here. We only need to remove the barriers to experience peace and calmness.” These obstacles are our thoughts, ideas, habits and beliefs. While we can never stop using our mind, we must work to balance the tension between the instinctual id, the moralizing super- ego and the ego that mediates between the two.

The mind should be our servant and not our master. Sason continues “You don’t have to feel uncomfortable with the language of meditation, self, Inner Self, Inner essence, universal Consciousness, etc. At first blush, they may seem to be meaningless words, but they are not. They symbolize something very real. Concentration and mindfulness give these words meaning.” This spiritual journey is substantive and not impractical.

Let us take a moment now to move into a centered silent Meditation:

I invite you to close your eyes and sit comfortably in your chairs.

(Tibetan Bell)

Try to calm your mind of all agitation.

Mentally, take a step back and watch your mind, as if looking at someone else’s mind.

Breathe in deeply of love and tranquility and breathe out all that constricts and distresses. Let our rhythmic breathing, the rise and fall of our chest, calm and relax us. Concentrate on relaxing our mind and calming our body. Feel all our tension draining away. Breathe in deeply of serenity and exhale all that causes stress and fear. Breathe in … and out. … as you become aware of your mind and body relaxing.

Breathe in …. Breathe out.

This all to short meditation should allow you to calm your mind, quiet the voices of chaos and lead you to a sense of tranquility.

Open yourself to it.

Feel a cocoon of tranquility wrap around you.

Breathe in relaxation and breath out tension.

Nothing can hurt you or disturb you.

You are at peace.

Take these next few moments to just relax and calm yourself.

Breathe in tranquility … breathe out tension     and stress         ,

Repeat. Repeat, Repeat

(Tibetan Bell)

Now, allow yourself to come back to this room, this place, —more at peace than you had been before.

Ramirez encourages us to become aware of our thoughts, as if they were not ours, but we will not allow ourselves to become submerged in them. Learn to practice being mindful of your thoughts. A growing awareness will become easier over time. You will have to repeatedly remind yourself to practice watching your thoughts, for your mind will quickly lose focus. Do not give up and you will succeed.

If you meditate, sit quietly as often as you can. Inner tranquility will come, Remember! Ramirez writes,

“You are not your mind!

You are not your thoughts!

You are not your ideas!

You are not your beliefs!”

They may be from you, but they are not you.

They are tools only and have no power to control, except what
you give them. When your thoughts quiet, the
essential you remain. There is no void. When the emptiness of no thoughts is reached, you begin to feel your true existence, your inner being, your Tao.

This emptiness is filled with a great, wonderful, powerful and sweet tranquility. This is existence without fetters. This is peace that is your birthright.

Let it calm you.

Blessed be!

9/17/17 Sermon Our Fourth of faith

Jewish and Christian teachings

Paul D. Daniel, Minister

The fourth source of our faith derives from Jewish and Christian teachings that call us to

respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves. Sadly, these Holy Scriptures are sometimes “texts of terror”, for women and minority groups who have been marginalize and oppressed for eons by biblical literalists. Woman, immigrants and strangers of every stripe have been treated as either property or enemies of the dominant culture. Today, a white patriarchal system dating back to biblical times still effects the body politic, denying whole segments of our population basic human rights.  Even some in our government support white supremacy to exclude all people of color.

As a result, many Unitarian Universalist have trouble reading scriptures, even when heeding the admonitions by feminist scholars and theologians to view these books with a critical eye, a “hermeneutics of suspicion.” If we read scriptures with a healthy skepticism we are better able to find the kernels of inspiration and wisdom embedded in these sacred texts, while rejecting that which wounds and oppresses.

Rev. Phillip Hewett writes “the bonds of unity in a church are not a shared belief but a shared worship. This idea opens the door for us to accept or rejects these texts based on our personal experience and scholarship. Worship (worth-ship) it is an act of reverence for what is regarded as of great, or supreme worth. In the ultimate analysis, this is but another way of capturing the real meaning of love central to scriptures and the fourth source of our faith. What is of real worth to us, in the fullest sense, is that love is central to our being. Love is reverence for life, to use Albert Schweitzer’s phrase, and reverence is a mode of worship.

Worship in a Unitarian Universalist setting becomes a shared act of celebration expressing our love in varying degrees for those values by which and for which we live. As UUs we sometimes confuse our human love with God’s love.  God offer unconditional love but most of us can only approximate that ideal and often with strings and conditions attached. As former Unitarian Universalist president John Buehren writes, “we expect from finite, conditional human beings unconditional love” on a level with the divine. Surely at the core of our being we know that is unrealistic, no matter how much we crave giving and receiving it. When we expect the near impossible we are setting ourselves up for to be disappointed in ourselves and Holy Scriptures. Simply put, our pre-conceived image of God as our personal protector for ourselves and the rest of humanity is folly.

 The God I imagine the real God as Buehrens writes “is unconditional and indiscriminate in overturning our more personal, temporary and narrow expectations.  Our Judeo-Christian heritage is derivative. Our expectations and understanding of the nature of our Gods arise out of ancient pagan traditions and rituals honoring the cycle of seasons, the mystery of birth and death and the celestial void. They are further influenced by early Sumerian traditions, indigenous faiths of the Middle East and later Roman and Greek customs.

These stories tell of a human history of faith maintained in the face of disappointment or unexpected turns of event. Ancient Gods were often capricious and vengeful.  Putting your faith in them was risky but not doing so was fraught with even greater danger.  As people moved from polytheism into monotheism, religious understandings began to change. Religions began to focus more on a God of love and mercy, yet our faith stories in the Old and New Testaments still contained many surprises, some of them quite unpleasant. Think about Job to know that truth.

The Jesus of the Easter story does not become the King of Kings as expected, instead he is martyred on the cross like a common criminal; A sad turn of events Yet, there are also miracles celebrate, Jesus rises from the tomb, the Hanukkah candles that were only to last a day lasts for eight nights; the Passover story has Moses’ calling for the Red Sea to part, only to go unanswered until one brave soul, in an act of faith, enters the water. The Christmas story of a child’s birth out of humble origins becomes an event that changed the course of human history is miraculous.

All these stories and more arise out of the realm of the unexpected. We Unitarian Universalist are called to bring our own intellect and faith to bear as we interpret these stories and texts. Our challenge is to find the healing truth within these stories. As Buehrens remarks, we are called to find “the mark of God less in the regularities of nature than in the unexpected turn that life can take, in the humbling of the arrogant and the uplifting of the lowly”. The lesson embedded in the unexpected is to find love in the face of our disappointment in God or in each other.

We can still be humbled by small events, insignificant ones that teach us to move out our narrow understanding of what love can mean and what love calls us to. We can do that by conducting an owning and acknowledge both our shortcomings and successes in offering love. None of us are perfect in that regard yet, none of us are condemned for our shortcomings. We are however, called to keep trying to become better people, to allow our better angels sprout wings allowing us to become the most authentic person we are meant to be.

To act with love is hard work when we are limited by our frail and fallible humanity. In human relations whether with friends or families or in settings such as at our jobs or in a church Buehrens reminds us, “the real work of growing together religiously consists above all else of learning to behave well, to respond creatively even when our expectations in life are disappointed”.

As a minister and a recovering fixer and rescuer, I want to meet all your expectations, to be perfect in how you experience my ministry but that will never happen. What any minister can do is only their best in a moment. I am also mindful of the aphorism that my role as a minister is to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted”. In truth, I am not here just to meet your expectations, but to provoke you, to stimulate your thinking, to help you grow spiritually, to comfort you in times of crisis, to provide leadership and direction, to help you find your own truth. Whoever you think we UUs are and whomever you think I am as your minister is probably an incomplete picture.

All of us are a whole lot more and something less than we might have hoped for or expected. Buehrens speaks of this as a “theology of juxtaposition”, running the rasp against the grain.” That expectation applies to all of us. We are admonished to take care in what we put our trust. When religious people take pride in trusting God, then the prophetic thing is to test how that effects and changes our day-to- day treatment of each other. When we pride ourselves too much on being ethical and moral beings, then perhaps we need reminding that our long-term capacity to embrace the second great commandment of Jesus–to love thy neighbor as thyself—depends on the depth of our ability to live out the first—to love God with all your heart, and soul and mind.

The theologians Paul Tillich had a very different understanding of that precept. For Tillich theism is bad theology. He believed, God is the ground upon which all beings exist, the Holy the sacred other.  God is the holy sacred other, the foundation, the bed rock of all that exists upon it. It is that which we must love with all our heart, mind and strength.

“The difficulties we experience embodying our Jewish and Christian faith traditions and sacred texts is that they call us mere mortals to Godly standard of devotion. The best we can do is to be more open in our love, more accepting of differing perspectives and theology, more inclusive of other cultures, more willing to let go of our expectations of what we need from these texts and to meet these texts on their own ground with their built in human flaws and frailties. These moral parables and psalms are written by men for human consumption and as such are fallible and flawed by the bias embedded in a patriarchal culture in a limited cultural and social location. Why would we expect more from the authors of the Bibles then we would of ourselves with our inability or unwillingness to find the true message of love within the bottle. Why would we expect the measure of our love to equal that of our God? That is the pathway to disillusionment and unmet expectations.

No wonder we reject the Scriptures because they are way too human for us, flawed and imperfect, and yet these text like we UUs are always open to new understanding and interpretation as we grow in wisdom and knowledge. The true ground of our hope writes Buehrens “is not in our expectations however, no matter how grand or how humble. It lies in the hubbub, which upsets our expectations and reorders our perceptions”. In so doing this opens us to forge new paths to love eternal.

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9/10/17 9/16/07 Sermon
Ingathering-Water Communion

Returning Home Where Hearts Meet Hearts
Rev. Paul D. Daniel, Minister

Today we come together to celebrate life
symbolized by water. We come to celebrate
community; to celebrate the opportunity to be
with those we love in worship … , Every time we
meet in worship is a time of celebration. Let us
say Hallelujah together. Hallelujah!

We come together once again after being
scattered across the four corners of this globe.
Whether we left to avoid the heat, seek
adventure, find comfort in family and friends, find
a new way of dealing with the challenges of just
living, we welcome you back, old friends and
new. Our religious home is a place where we
offer our hand in friendship, where we open our
hearts to each other in love and compassion,
where we embrace the uniqueness of each of
us. If that is not a reason to celebrate I don’t
know what is. Let us say Hallelujah ….
Hallelujah!

We celebrate our coming together at the
beginning of each new church year. The clan

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gathers, the wandering tribe begins to return;
soon our “snow birds” will begin to wing their
way home. The bringing of water from wherever
you traveled, or from your backyard pool and
kitchen faucet, symbolically represents the joy
we feel at this renewal of our sacred community.

Water is the symbol of ever renewing life.
Kathleen Korb writes, “I suspect that there really
are some theological aspects to the water
communion, although — it may well be true that
ritual precedes theology, and it was started, I
suspect, primarily for community-building and class
participation in show and tell. Water is basic to JifE?
on earth – all life, even the desert plants and
animals outside our windows — and I think it is
symbolic of the connection that we feel with one
another and all living things and the celebration of
life itself.” Perhaps this is an oversimplification of
the concept of the unity of all things, but we can
stretch a bit in our understanding of nature. We do
after all believe in the interconnected web of all
existence.

Part of the point of this ceremony, it seems to me,
is recognition that the same molecules of water
from my tap in Palm Desert once washed the
shores of Tasmania …. We know that we are all

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connected, there is a unity in our diversity, in the
same way that streams become rivers that merge
into the sea.

Minister: It is written “the same stream of life
that runs through my veins, night and day runs
through the world and dances in rhythmic
measures.

Reader: It is the same life that shoots in joy
through the dust of the earth in numberless
blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous
waves of leaves and flowers.

Minister: It is the same life that is rocked in the
ocean-cradle of birth and death, in ebb and flow.

Reader: I feel my limbs are made glorious by the
touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the
life throb of ages dancing in my blood this
moment.“– (Rabindranath lagore).

Perhaps we don’t need water for this service of
renewal. We could just as easily use stones, or
special mementos from our summer to celebrate
our ingathering. What is really important is the
gathering of our beloved community after the
scattering of summer. It is a time to once again

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share our life’s experiences. This ceremony calls
us to listen to one another’s story. The merged
waters become a symbol of our merged life
experience. “The water”, writes Sydney Wilde,
“is endowed with the spirit of our stories and
shared experiences of our lives. It becomes a
visible, tangible symbol of our community.

IT IS OUR COMMUNITY WHICH IS HOLY. It is
our community, which bestows blessings; and, we
as individuals create that community when we
share who we are, share our wisdom, share our
labor, share our stories, share our pain, our
losses- and share our vacations. We bring
ourselves back to this congregation where the
whole transcends the sum of its parts.

The Water Ceremony is a wonderful example of
the spirituality of humanism. There is no deity
here. The power of the holy resides in people,
people sharing their lives. This grows out of our
renewed awareness of the need for community
versus our traditional individualism.”

Whatever our motivation to gather, this is a service
of celebration. let us rejoice and say Hallelujah
together. Hallelujah!

Blessed be!

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