Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Pottstown

2/19/17 sermon- Third Principal  

Rev. Paul D. Daniel, Minister

Our Third Principle, the Acceptance of One Another and the Encouragement to Spiritual Grown in Our Congregations is a goal sometimes easier to espouse then to embody when people are very different then ourselves.

You see, life is messy and challenging and religions are often dogmatic. Churches are often filled with conflicting egos and spiritual perspectives. For example, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth the life.

No one comes to the Father, except through me. That leaves little room for other beliefs and faiths.

All faiths in Abraham Maslow’s words, tells us that human life is beyond itself, connecting to the cosmos”, open to all understanding, limited to no one religion.

This spiritual journey to connect is the foundation for all human needs and love is the path. The more we can achieve this union, the happier we will be.  Maslow goes so far to say that “a

spiritual life is the basic component of our biological life”.

I believe, our spiritual lives are innate and instinctual arising from a deep inner voice that is wonderful, beautiful and awe inspiring. That voice, our conscience, opens us to experiencing the complexity of life’s journey, not as an enemy to be feared but as a friend.

Spirituality embodies our inner soul that cries out to the rest of humanity to offer and receive sustenance, both spiritual and material.

The fact that we are the richest country

in the world, yet many of our fellow countrymen go hungry and live in substandard housing and have inadequate medical care. Our social justice voice to bring justice and equity to all is our souls longing coming too reality to offering care and connection.

How we do that will vary greatly and truth be told sometimes their dharma runs over our karma and then the going really gets tough. Accepting one another path would be easier if we were all cut out of the same bolt of cloth, had the same patterns of behavior, the same warp and weave, the same texture. But the fabric of life is far more varied. We come from many separate bolts of cloth, with differing patterns, styles and conditions. We are one soul, yet different from one another, at least from the outside. The lives, the souls and the gifts we each bring to this church are priceless, for we each bring our authentic selves to enrich this community. It is here that we grow our souls.

Bernard Loomer, the UU theologian tells us, “the size of our souls as the defining concept of spirituality. S-I-Z-E means the capacity of a soul, the range and depth of our love, our capacity for relationships. It means the volume of life one can take into our being and still maintain our integrity and individuality,

the intensity and variety of outlook
we can entertain in the unity of our being, without feeling defensive or insecure. It is the strength of our spirit to encourage others to become freer in the development of their unique selves. This is the power to sustain more
complex and enriching tensions. This is “the magnanimity of concern to provide conditions that enable others to increase in stature” and never to diminish another.

Accepting others and ourselves regardless of the size of our soul is the root of our spiritual questing. Spiritual growth is about growing in all
directions at once. It is the path to understanding our place in the universe. It is the way of taking in the world in all its complexity and diversity, while maintaining our integrity.

Our spiritual journeys need to take us home, not through OZ as Dorothy’s did, but to a kind of similar truth that she found. There is no place like home, not Kansas, but home to our heart truest self, to our soul growth to achieve infinite capacity for growth and expansion. This nexus of heart and soul is what gives life meaning. In their coming together we are bestowed with the ability to create justice and peace, to love deeply, to share one’s soul with another in compassion and to offer hope to those in need.

Religious communities such as this are the matrix and medium for this to happen. UU Rob Hardes writes, “true spiritual growth: is hearts and
souls becoming larger and supple enough to embrace and to love-more and more of our complex world”.

If we are to grow and survive it is essential that we must find new ways to adjust to change that will open the door to personal growth. We need to accept and even come to love our differences and diversity.

Churches, including this congregation embody that very struggle to grow a soul and overcome our differences so we can find meaning for lives that suffer and experience pain.

We are suspended between two great mysteries, birth and death. This congregation can be the spiritual bridge for finding the hope we all need to come to peace with the knowledge that we will all eventually die. Our Third Principle creates the promise to do that. Here diverse community gather and people touches one another. It is possible that if we touch just one new soul, just one, we can unlock the door that leads to reconciliation and the uniting of all souls in one universal entity. UU minister Edward Frost reflects, that “our natural faith requires us to make a vow of commitment to support and encourage one another. We realize we cannot make it alone in life. We need to invest in one another’s humanity especially now when immigrants are in so much peril and cower in fear.

The church also calls us to make deep connections with our rich history, culture and with fellow sojourners, and the larger community”. In this community of redemption, we can take risks to help another’s soul grow. And in the process, we begin to become who we are meant to be.

 In the end our spiritual journey is about encouraging one another to grow a soul.  My friend and mentor Ken Collier said it well. “living our deepest reality, our deepest truth, our deepest value, into the world is soul work”. Our spiritual growth depends on stretching from self-acceptance to accepting the person next to us and then onto the rest of humanity.

Our faith offers that message of hope and promise for action to those in need. Here, we encourage one another to be fully and authentically human. Here we give and receive the vital encouragement to become more than we could become on our own. There is no better place to heal our souls than in this religious community. It is here that we commit ourselves to our Third Principle of accepting one another on our unique spiritual journey that makes our souls take wing to connects us to our fully human selves and the infinite spirit in us all.

May it be so!

Love’s call

Rev. Paul D. Daniel, Minister

Elvis crooned, “I can’t help falling in love with you”. Perhaps, for some of us that may be the story of our lives.

Unfortunately, we sometimes learn that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune can follow on the heels of cupid if he crashes and burns.  

Love you see has man pitfalls and numerous peak experiences.

One of the dangers of love is we can fall in love with being in love, or loving the wrong person… or giving our hearts to someone who does not deserve our affection. We also know that unrequited love can wound us deeply; yet we still may feel compelled to answer love’s every call

Many Broadway shows and entertainers like Elvis, Tony Bennett or Lady Gaga himself sang of romantic love.

 When love happens, it is grand and glorious. I want to break out in song about love , which is always a bad idea.

Let’s have someone with a better voice sing these refrains from “My Fair Lady”,    I  have often walked down this street before

But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before

All at once am I several stories high

Knowing I’m on the street where you live

Are there lilac trees in the heart of town?
Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?
Does enchantment pour out of every door?
No it’s just on the street where you live

And oh, the towering feeling
Just to know somehow you are near
The overpowering feeling
That any second you may suddenly appear

People stop and stare, they don’t bother me
For there’s nowhere else on earth that I would rather be
Let the time go by, I won’t care
If I can be here on the street where you live

People stop and stare, they don’t bother me
For there’s nowhere else on earth that I would rather be
Let the time go by, I won’t care
If I can be here on the street where you live…

Song, poetry and prose show us the any ways of expressing the emotions of our heart. We humans are relational people and need connection to something beyond ourselves. The very cornerstone of our own UU faith is love.

For some of us we express that love through Agape or God grace, a universal unconditional love that transcends regardless of our life circumstances, or brotherly love for the rest of humankind. UUs also find loves truest expression when we stand on the side of love and dedicate ourselves to justice and mercy. For others loves has an intimate meaning thru dare I say, sex!

But, perhaps the most enduring bond of love is a parent’s love for their child. Yet, love also demands that child be given permission to disentangle themselves emotionally from a parent’s love. This process of self-differentiate allows a child to grow and learn to love themselves as a necessary precursor to loving another. And the opposite is also true, too much togetherness creates a fusion, a child with its parent which can prevent a child developing one’s sense of self. And the circle goes around and round, for too much individuality results in a distant and estranged family.

It’s no wonder love makes us all a bit crazy confused and uncertain.  To love is to take a leap of faith.

None of that is easy,

None of it free of risk

None of it has the same guaranteed of return like a T-Bills.

As a UU I have more questions than answers about the call of love. I have had several committed relationships in my life, and I am still learning what’s love is all about at the age of 71.  We can all learn a lot about love and life if we remain open to the heart’s lessons.Some of these lessons only come after the relationship ends.  Hopefully if a relationship ends we still hold that believe that love is the highest expression of our best selves. It is our most generous and compassionate way of offering deep devotion to a person, ideal or value… perhaps something we would die for.  

But there are limits to everything, contingencies if you will. To truly love another, we must first love ourselves enough to open to another in trust.

But lovers need to be aware and accept that the ones we truly, deeply love, can wound us most deeply to the very core of our being. That is the risk love calls us to.

As in most things, love is not really without boundaries. We must respect ourselves enough to not negate our own personhood and our humanity for another. How many of you really know who you are, outside the roles you play in your primary relationship?

Who are you when you are not being

the mother or father, the primary bread winner, the lover or spouse?

Love calls us to answer those questions too if we are to maintain our individuality, to not become an invisible person subsumed by the roles we play. We need to love ourselves enough to have a relationship with ourselves.

In relationship with another we are called to make room for our partners to grow and change. We must not close the doors to personal freedom nor make our love a stifling prison.

Love calls us to freedom but not to be unfaithful but to become more of who we are meant to be.

If there is no balance of roles or responsibility within a relationship

the ship of love soon becomes a ship of fools. We all must take equal responsibility for the success or failures of our relationships.

When the ecstasy of love comes to a couple, through sharing our bodies and souls, the most sublime of human experiences, joy is present.

If the expression of our intimate sharing lead to the birth of a child we are twice blessed. I was present at the birth of both of my sons and to see ones’ own children being born is beyond delight; beyond the miraculous. I can only imagine what the mothers here today felt at birth. To have a new life spring forth from your bodies is uniquely famine.

Giving birth thankfully is an experience we men will never know.

We couldn’t stand the pain?

The best we can do is share in the burden and emotional joy child birth brings. To love that child is an act of faith in ourselves and in the future. We promise to love a child we don’t yet know and to do it for the rest of our lives. A child will tax our patience,

bankrupt our pocketbook, and tax all our abilities to cope. We will be sleep deprived, and stressed most of the time. We will endure endless nights of midnight feedings, diaper changing, the crying of a colicky kid, morning, noon and night.

We may sometimes be disappointed in them, but truth be told, there is no more wonderful experience regardless of the challenges and disappointments that can follow. Our children will grow to be their own person in the same way we did. They may not be what we want or expect; but that’s life.

To watch them grow from helpless infant to self-sufficient adult is an experience of unbounded hope and joy mixed with sadness for it goes by too quickly. Ok, well maybe not soon enough after the endless sleepless nights.

Each stage our children pass through is cause for celebration: their first smile that not a gas pains, the first time they feed themselves with more on them… then in them, their first tentative steps and beyond to their first date with your car.  

To be there for all that is what love is all about. Love embodies both the agony and ecstasy of living. It is the paradox of joy and pain mixed together. Whether love is mutual or not, the reality of love is that it exists for its own sake. It needs to be unselfish; to be expansive; to stretch us and move us to be more human than we ever thought we could be.

We cannot demand or make someone love us; we can only offer it and remain open to its return. If we don’t leave love’s door ajar though it will have no way to enter. What we are called to do is to remain hopeful, open to offering our truest and best selves to another and receiving it in return.

Hopefully that is the right bait for the hook of love. When we go fishing. we just might not be able to keep from falling in love.

Happy valentine’s day.

 1/22/17 The First Source of our UU Faith

Mystery and Wonder

Rev. Paul D. Daniel, Minister

That sense of Awe, whether we call it mystery or wonder may not be rationally explainable but

we can experience that emotion directly and personally and it can be deeply transformative.

This sense of reverence is universal across all religions and has the power to open us to forces that create and uphold life

How blessed we are to have such experiences.

Science can partially explain some of this wonder,

the galaxies that surround us,

the snow that falls,

the DNA that makes us who we are.  

Others experiences defy rational explanation and those we can

choose to take on faith, or not.

“a gamble in the face of the unknown” says Forrest Church, until reason changes our mind.

Once at a beloved cousin Amy’s funeral, decades ago now,

I had what I can only described as an “out of body” experience.

I viewed myself from above and outside of my body as my brother and father tried to calm me in my grief.

This experience arose out of mystery, was beyond logic. It was a moment of awe and wonder.

Such experiences can move us into the realm of the spiritual, enlighten us to a greater truth that comforts and calms.

Part of my understanding of religion and faith derives from that ineffable experience.

Religion is what Forrest Church calls “our human response to the duel reality of being alive and having to die.”

He says that “the fact that death is inevitable gives meaning to our love,

for the more we love the more we risk losing.”

To love then is to have the courage to suffer loss.

Our children grow up and leave the nest or we become estranged from them. Divorce or death end relationships, friends move away or we do.

Life demands that we take risks to love and be loved even when we really want is the safety of the familiar without the risk of any loss.

We have a choice, we either can huddle our hearts in fear or open to the forces that sustain and give meaning to our lives.” Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings told Frodo.

“All you have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given you.

Our UU faith would say It is through our deeds and actions that give meaning and value to our lives. The great Unitarian suffragette Margaret Fuller put it this way, “cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abides by them in action.”

How our souls touch another is what really matters.

Our actions both serve to redeem our lives and to make the inevitability of our death both bearable and meaningful.

Shortly after the gay youth Matthews Sheppard was murdered in1999, I made a pilgrimage to Laramie, Wyoming where Matthew was crucified on a prairie fence and left to die. My sons, fearing for my life, tried to dissuade me but I had to go where I was called, as do we all.

If life is to have meaning, if we are to leave legacy of principle and courage that our faith calls us to

we all must stand for justice. As we saw in the woman’s march.

I had to confront my fears and the hatred that took Mathew’s life. I had to prove to myself that my life had some purpose worth dying for.

We all must go where our heart and values lead us and our faith demands of us.

Channing would call this an act of practical religion. —“The renewal of the spirit, intellectual integrity, and the application of one’s moral insight and aspirations to daily living and social existence”.

I surmise many of you have faced your own transformational experiences of a redemptive nature. What impact did your decisions have on your own life?

Did any of your personal experiences lead you to better define who you are in the world.

Like Jesus, did your experience push you to decide what was worth dying for.

Our personal faith is shaped and transformed in the alchemy of pain and loss. At times, in the fury, of anger, it can blot out the laughter and pleasure of living, and yet we somehow endure and find new meaning to sustain us.

D. H. Lawrence said “religion is about awakening, opening our eyes, and looking out with new wonder upon the creation, becoming not someone other than

ourselves, but more fully ourselves.

Through direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder, we are moved to a “renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces that create and uphold life”, reads our first principle. Surely this embodies a sense of awe that defies rational explanation.

Perhaps any experience of mystery broadens our understanding of ourselves and the universe.

If religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die, then Church is right when he writes that “Unitarian Universalism might best be described as a life-affirming rather death defying faith. Yet if we are to affirm life then we must also face death, and struggle to make sense of both.”

Experiencing mystery and wonder are gifts and not a birthright. They come to us if we are both open and receptive to what is often right before our eyes:

a bright purple Iris,

a gray and menacing thunder storm,

a four-leaf verdant green clover,

or an antelope, slick with sweat, in mid leap. All of this and so much more embody mystery and wonder.  Life itself is a gift and not to be taken for granted. It is an accident of genetics that made you who you are and not someone else entirely. You are a unique being, and every moment you take a breath is a testament to the miracle of your unique life.

The very breath of life is a mark of the sacred; awe-inspiring and mysterious. From Emerson’s perspective, there is only one miracle–life itself. He wrote “the invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

What is a day?

What is a year?

What is summer?

What is woman?

What is a child?

What is sleep?

To our blindness, these things seem unaffecting. We make fables to hide the baldness of the fact and conform it, as we say, to the higher law of the mind. [But to the wise] a fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables.”

The miracle of life embodies all living creatures, but for we humans the quality of our lives is in our own hands, Joy or sadness, compassion or callousness, generosity or selfishness is a choice. We can choose to live a life devoid of meaning without relationships or act for the benefit of others; living intensely connected life of action that embodies the richness of life.

Such a life can be about deepening the meaning of existence.  Such a life is about taking responsibility for our ethical and moral decisions.

Life is the ultimate and resounding YES!  It is stronger than all the negations that confront us. Such a life is about transforming the ordinary into something very special…, something holy.

That is what all the great religious leaders throughout history have done. Jesus, by acting on principle with clarity of purpose made his ordinary life of humble origins into something quite extraordinary. Our lives can be extraordinary to. While Jesus’s determination and resolve may elude us, it is accessible if we remain open to all that is unknowable through intellect.

The bible tells us our lives are only four score and ten, or with a little luck and some good living, a smidge more. If we are willing to take responsibility for our lives, we can enhance the meaning of our existence. If we are to leave any legacy, we must first be awake to the possibility of mystery and wonder in our lives.  Awaking is not a moment says Church “but an ongoing process. By remaining open to experiencing the mystery of life anew, we are born again and again.” If we are open to life’s unfolding and persistent questions we will not be overwhelmed by what defies explanation.

“Mystery and wonder unites us more deeply with others. Each time we encounter life’s transcending mystery we are moved to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces that create and uphold life. Upon awakening we can commit (or recommit) ourselves to join with others in the prophets Mica’s words, “to serve justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly together before the Mystery that gives us all life, and to do so even in the face of death.” That is true grace.

As Emerson wrote, “the renewal, the affirmation, the wonder of being alive, can only come in the present, while we have time to be amazed and grateful.

Perhaps that enough for one lifetime?

1/20/13 and 1/8/17    Sermon

Injustice vs. Love

Rev. Paul D. Daniel, Minister

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther king Jr., non-violence saint for our generation said,

“Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence

but also, internal violence of the spirit.”

As a student of Gandhi, he

came to accept the power of nonviolent resistance and love as the most effective way

to fight the injustice of violence, physical and emotional that darken our souls and the body politic.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, would be appalled at the election of the divisive, soon to be president Trump.

Dr. King’s would have fought this mean-spirited bigot and we must too when Trumps policies contradict our UU values.   

The need for socially fair, equal justice for all is imperative,

We must look at repeated acts against immigrants and shootings of people of color way beyond their numbers, to know injustice has gotten out of hand.

Mass incarceration is decimating communities of color.

It seems, Bigotry has been given license with the Trump victory.

As a faith, we whole heatedly support equal justice for all.

We cannot rest in this struggle for fairness and equity.

We are called to support all oppressed nations and peoples;

 such as the indigenous people fighting the desecration of their sacred Ian’s with an invasive pipeline.

Our faith calls us, no demands that we “Stand on the Side of Love” against tyranny, injustice and bias.

The UUA including this congregation collectively dedicate ourselves to bring love to bear against all violence.

There is too much that troubles our peaceful hearts today

dealing with unendurable gun violence, and cruelty in our country

stoked by gutless amoral politicians and a president elects who mocks the disabled and others who disagree with him and offend his fragile ego; who stand with the NRA against any sort of sensible, reasonable gun safety regulations, that most Americans favor.

In-spite of that, we are not helpless in the face of tragedy.

We can demonstrate, petition for sensible regulations. NO one wants to end our second amendment right to bear arms, but we should not allow citizens to own automatic assault weapons designed to mass murder people as just happened in Ft. Lauderdale.

Our concern is real, desperate, pressing and  deeply felt.

To honor MLK life’s work we are called to march and work for peace, justice and freedom.

We must build coalitions across faith and political barriers if we are toto save each other and the rest of humanity from a host of social ills:

hunger,

homelessness,

 murder of innocents,

unjust and disproportionate incarceration of people of color

mistreatment of immigrants because of color and/or religion.  

racial profiling

The criminal justice system including sentencing guidelines must be reformed and fairly applied. That is what DR King would have wanted us to do. That is what he died for at the hands of a gunman.

Amidst our culture of violence, no one is safe. Americans are 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun as is someone from another developed country. Over 16, 400 murders were committed in America in 2016r and Drug overdoses, another form of violence, has topped 50,000 and rising.

These scourges are what Dr. King died to prevent. If you are not alarmed, you should be. I’ll wager there is not one person sitting here right now who has not been touched in some way by these acts of violence.  My sister’s only child Alex, 27, died of a heroin overdose less than three years ago.

Recent mass shootings have sadly not been able to move the needle one step closer to creating a peaceable kingdom that Dr. worked to create. His dream remains a distant hope.

That hope now rests on our shoulders. We, who now carry the torch must continue the struggle and demand action on comprehensive gun safety regulations.

The gun manufacturers, the NRA and feckless politicians never stop working against the will of most Americans and others to make our streets safer, provide services for those mentally and emotionally disturbed with too easy access to weapon. The right-wing uses the shield of the second amendment to prevent any change in the laws that the overwhelming majority of Americans want.

We must marshal our voices, our treasure and vote out of office politicians who won’t protect us with sensible regulation of ammunition, safety locks, background checks, etc.

If we are to honor Dr. King, we must demand our government find a common sense middle ground, between protecting our Second Amendment rights and the safety of our citizens.  

I strongly believe no one has a legitimate need or a right to possess an assault weapons with large ammunition clips. Even the late Judge Scalia, one of the most conservative justices in Supreme Court history said, “The Second Amendment is “not unlimited” and is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner, whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Further still, “Article II of the U.S. Constitution clearly grants any President the authority and the discretion to issue executive orders with the force of law over the sale of guns and ammunition. Our founding fathers never envisioned assault rifles. No one need military weapons for hunting or home safety.

Yes, I have heard all the arguments … “guns don’t kill, people do”, but I submit, that is a bogus argument, a ruse to protect the gun manufacturers led by the NRA.

I acknowledge, there are many causes and sides to this complex debate.  We see violent movies coming from Hollywood and video games that glorify violence. I saw the movie “The Hateful Eight” and before that “Django” by Quentin Tarantino. While the anti-slavery theme in “Django” was laudably; the depiction of the evil and violence of slavery was gratuitous.  It was disturbing and repulsive to see literally dozens of gun murders the “Hateful Eight”. We must ask ourselves, when is this violence too much and harmful to not only impressionable children but our culture and to a peaceful, safe society?

Yes, this is a complicated issue, but that should not prevent good people from coming together as Dr. King urged us to find a reasonable solution to stop the carnage. We, you and I, must act; we must speak out against all violence but emotional and physical. We must tighten gun registration and close all the loopholes that allows criminals and the mentally ill to buy and possess guns.

We must reassess our mental health laws and put money into systems of treatment rather than spend money to clean the blood off our streets or engage in mass incarceration. We must go back to treating the mentally ill as our own brothers and sisters, members of our human family.

Our society needs thoughtful, committed citizens if we are to stop these behaviors that harm individuals and the nation itself.   I am urging you to take concerted action to end this violence before you become a victim. The  danger is real and growing.

I don’t want my grandchildren, Graham and Lisette, ages 12 and 9, or your child or some other loved one to become a statistic, a number with a forgotten name.

This struggle is our struggle.

It will be long,

the results uncertain but

we who stand on the “Side of Love are called to act. We must march, we must stand up, be counted and heard. Our faith calls us to that. Rev. King” gave his life for this cause and he deserves no less, than our dedication to fighting violence and injustice wherever we find it. If we do nothing, we fail to honor his memory, If we do nothing, we fail as citizens and as human beings. If we do nothing, we fail as religious people. Doing nothing condemn our children and loved ones to continue being victims again and again.

I don’t want that on my conscience.

Do you?