March 2002
Religion will not regain its old power
until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.
It Only Adds
by Lee Barker, senior minister, Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church
of Pasadena, California.
My father is 91 years old. I am amazed by the length of his life. When
I ask him what it's like to have lived for nearly a century, he says,
"Well, unlike before, it now feels as if I have breakfast every 10
minutes."
Sometimes I can coax him into making larger observations and he will marvel
over the scientific and technological changes he has witnessed, how in
the arc of his life he has seen the span from gas lamps and horse-buggies
to cyberspace and biotechnology. Such talk prompts me to speculate on
what the world will look like 90 years from today. And I wonder if artificial
intelligence will ever come to be or if space-docking stations will ever
evolve into settled space colonies. They are terribly moot questions.
Just as my father could never know what changes he would see in his lifetime,
I can never know those that will come during the remainder of my own-or
beyond.
I do, however, know this: I know that if religion is to serve us in those
future days, if it is to live up to its promise of establishing wholeness
in the self and in the world, then it needs to be specially prepared so
that it may meet whatever scientific and technological developments are
to be born. We'll have to work on it. It won't be easy. New human achievement
and expanded knowledge have always been a struggle for religion.
No matter the age, no matter the advancement, much of religion has been
threatened by scientific discovery and technological innovation to the
point where they have been viewed as a menace both to theology and morality.
Rarely has that view resulted in the good. That's the point Karen Armstrong
made in her latest book, The Battle for God. Karen Armstrong, a former
Roman Catholic nun, has turned to the academic life. Having rejected the
church, she now calls herself a "freelance monotheist," and
has become one of the foremost British commentators on religious affairs.
She argues that fundamentalism is a phenomenon in all the world's faith
traditions and she takes some time spinning out its various manifestations
in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. She writes that each expression of
fundamentalism shares a common trait with the others, that it is a fearful
defense against the modern world, which is seen to be spiritually bankrupt,
tainted by new science and technology. She writes that fundamentalists
haven't really gone back to the roots of the traditions and that they
have actually misconstrued the purpose of science and blurred the distinction
between myth and reality. The irony is that every time something new is
learned, we human beings are confronted with even more that we do not
know. And that is threatening. And, too often, that threat has caused
some to veer off into the desperation of violence.
She wrote this well before September 11, well before the days when, in
New York City, rescue workers sifted through ashes and dust, taking into
their fingers the remains of heroes, office workers, and terrorists, all
in the very same handful.
I have a deep affection for anyone who seeks the ineffable. But when that
effort leads to the denial of all that has been learned about life and
religion, when it leads to the acceptance of the gods of an earlier humanity,
gods who are judgmental, overly involved in the affairs of humanity, and
too interested in either saving or destroying the souls of those who do
not worship them, then that effort leads necessarily to human fragmentations
and brokenness. It pits human beings against one another and splinters
us apart, and it is a rent in our humanity that can only grow more severe
as the modern world draws us closer together.
It doesn't have to be that way. When we are confronted with the achievements
of the modern world, we don't always need to react with retreat, defensiveness,
denial and possibly even violence. I'm thinking of Richard Feynman, a
Nobel Prize winner in physics who got at it by writing about flowers.
He said: "I have a friend who's an artist. . . He'll hold up a flower
and say, 'Look how beautiful it is,' and I'll agree. And he says, 'You
see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist,
oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.' And I think that
he's kind of nutty. . . I can appreciate the aesthetic beauty of a flower.
At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can
imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside that also have
a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter,
there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure. . .
All kinds of interesting observations showing that science knowledge only
adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds;
I don't understand how it subtracts." It only adds, it doesn't subtract;
a scientific understanding adds to our experience of wonder, doubts add
to the bedrock of truth, the modern world is the place where the fulfillment
of all our heartfelt values will come to pass.
Let me tell you a true story, told by a newer member of our church in
Pasadena. Julia grew up in the 50's in a Christian Science home where
she learned that: The only true reality is God, the earth's existence
is meaningless, this flesh of ours is illusory. The only thing with true
substance is the spirit and intention of God. God is in control of our
bodies and our healing. All humans can do is to petition God to heal them
when they are ill. In her home, prompted by the teaching that only God
could offer instantaneous healing, no medicines were allowed and no medical
treatment was sought.
For Julia, a first bout with tonsillitis was both painful and prolonged.
So, when a second episode flared, at 17, she snuck out of her home and
took a shot of penicillin. She was healed 24 hours later. This confirmed
the faith of her parents. "See, Julia," they said, "God
is the true healer." But more important, it proved to Julia the validity
of that same faith. This, she agreed, was God's instantaneous healing,
which came through medicine. The modern world, she saw, was the fulfillment
of church teaching, not a challenge to it. So now she has found a home
in our church and with our insistence that truth is augmented by the modern,
more scientific world.
But this is what I would like you to hear today. Our liberal tradition
is no different from any other faith tradition. Our liberal tradition
is not immune to the retreat from innovation. Our tremendous openness
offers a spiritual haven for all seekers, including those who have latched
on to answers like numerology, astrology, phrenology, and "angelology."
I'm confident that this is not just a Southern California thing. I've
been to too many Unitarian Universalist coffee hours and talked to too
many members of UU churches to believe that. But even if it were a California
thing, it is only the most graphic example of what I'm talking about.
There are among us more subtle and prevalent forms of the retreat. And
as I look over this congregation and pick out the more than half-dozen
ministers with whom I attended seminary, I say to you particularly, "We
are kind of responsible for this," at least our generation of ministers
is.
Twenty-five years ago, a generation of liberal theological students vowed
that we would take something new to the pulpits we filled. We vowed that
we would bring spirit and passion to a ministry that we saw covered with
the dry dust of reason and intellect. We wanted to lend the poetry of
story and the heartbeat of personal experience to the ideas we brought
to our parishioners. And, in many ways we have been successful, perhaps
too successful. Now, in our movement, there are genuine strains that confuse
feelings for spirituality. Strains that are so thirsty for the intimacies
of personal relationships that those intimacies are thought to be the
ultimate; that so desperately want the new, just world to be created that
it is seen to be the only concern of religion. These strains are narrow
tracks, which, too often, have taken no account of the human mind's great
lessons and accomplishments.
William Ellery Channing, 160 years ago, was criticized by the younger
ministers of his time for being too heady and not passionate enough, for
not being integrated enough into the modern, real world of human experience.
He internalized those criticisms and took them as his failing. He wrote,
"The age in which we live demands not only an enlightened but an
earnest ministry. . .. To suit such an age a minister must communicate
religion-not only as a result of reasoning but as a matter of experience.
. "
Our modern age is different from Channing's modern age. In our time, feelings
rule the day. In our place, intimacy is thought of as supreme. In our
company, justice is thought to be all. And that means, perhaps, that we
do not need to guard against the detachment of science as much as we need
to guard against religious passions that have no anchor in science or
reason. Myself? I would flip Channing's sentiments on end. I would say,
"The age in which we live demands not only an earnest religion, but
an enlightened religion. To suit such an age we must communicate religion-not
only as a result of our passions and experience but as a result of our
reasoning as well."
"It only adds," wrote Richard Feynman. It does not subtract.
The world is in trouble. It won't get beyond this terrible time without
learning and accepting that truth.
It only adds. It does not subtract. Our precious movement is susceptible
to its own confusion and to a bit of myopia. We will not be served in
our quest for wholeness without keeping a broad connection between heart
and mind.
It only adds. It does not subtract. There is a future for all of humanity
in those words and only in those words.
Quest March 2002 Contents
 From
Your Minister
by Rev. Jane Ranney Rzepka, minister, CLF
Easter is about Jesus. There are no two ways about it. Certainly Unitarian
Universalists celebrate, and often emphasize, other holidays at this
time of the year; of course we understand the pagan origins of Easter
celebrations; and naturally, we feel free to understand the traditional
Easter message metaphorically. But in the world around us in this day
and age, Easter is known to be a Christian holiday and its fundamental
purpose is to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.
Some of our more traditional Christian friends and family members take
the occasion of Easter to poke fun at the pickle we Unitarian Universalists
appear to find ourselves in-all dressed up in our Easter finery, but
not quite sure why. It's a matter of some bewilderment for the general
public, seeing that a number of us celebrate an event that few of us
believe in.
For me at least, celebrating a resurrection-free Easter doesn't feel
like a pickle at all. Unitarian Universalists have a long tradition
of looking at the Easter narratives as story. Indeed, it would be surprising
to find a Unitarian Universalist (a Christian UU or any of the other
varieties) who believes literally in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
For most of us, the Easter message is one of new life and renewal and
hope, it is a genuinely welcome and valid message, and the age-old story
about Jesus coming back to life reminds us of just how profound that
message is.
For Unitarian Universalists, it's just fine if the Jesus narrative is
simply a story that's managed to capture the human imagination for 2,000
years.
History suggests that Jesus died as a political subversive, but the
story, as most cultural Christians understand it today, comes in one
of two forms.
As I understand it, for some who hear the story, Jesus is a model of
suffering and martyrdom, the only son of a God who directs that he be
killed as a sacrifice. From this point of view, Jesus joins humanity
in its suffering, and it is honorable to accept that suffering. This
has never been a Unitarian Universalist understanding of Jesus-in fact,
for generations, people have often become Unitarian Universalists precisely
to distance themselves from this perspective. A new book by Rebecca
Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive
Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Beacon Press), treats the
seriousness of this version's implications.
Others understand Jesus' story as one of a courageous and generous man
who decided to die for the benefit of you and me. Now that's something
to ponder: a man who died for you and me. Who among us hasn't wondered,
"What would I die for? Who would I die for? Or sacrifice for? Is
there a principle or a person worth dying for? Would I test an experimental
drug to improve the chances that others might live? Would I risk my
life defending our country? Would I donate a kidney?"
When we talk about courage and sacrifice, we are discussing universal
human issues. They're on the unpopular side today, but that's part of
why we honor the old religious stories-to keep us facing questions that
need to be faced. What do we value? What would we sacrifice to keep?
What do we feel about the notion of sacrifice? What do we think about
it?
By now you may know the little story in Anne Lamott's book, Bird by
Bird, about an eight-year-old boy who had a younger sister dying of
leukemia. This version may not be medically accurate, but like the Easter
story, it's powerful.
"The boy was told that without a blood transfusion, his sister
would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably
compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked
him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was
a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of
blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would
have to think about it overnight.
"The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to
donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put
on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked
up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was
then put in the girl's IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while
the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see
how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, 'How soon
until I start to die?'"
Why are these accounts of sacrifice so powerful for us? That a human
child might muster all his or her courage and love and donate life to
a sister? That a courageous young man in ancient times might choose
to die on the cross because he thought it would do us some good? For
me, these stories of humanity-your stories and mine-kindle our love
and our faith in each other. They give us hope about what we can be
for one another-courageous, generous, brave.
These are the stories of Easter.
Jane Rzepka
Minister
Quest March 2002 Contents
REsources for Living
by By Betsy Hill Williams, Director of Religious Education, CLF
Everyone's reading about Islam these days, and I'm no exception. From
the Afghanistan travelogue of journalist Jason Elliot (An Unexpected
Light) to the Living section of my local newspaper, I can't seem to
get enough. As a religious educator, I may have begun this yearning
with more knowledge than many others about Islamic beliefs, practices
and history. And still I read it all, alternately fascinated, frightened,
and inspired by a belief system that garners such unselfish and total
devotion.
The inspiration came from an interview with a 15-year-old Islamic girl,
living in the suburbs of Boston, who decided last spring to wear a hijab
(head covering) and to follow the rules of Islam, which require her
to keep a safe distance from much of what defines teenage culture in
America today: fashion, relationships, parties. She made this decision
without pressure from family or religious leaders-her mother is from
India and does not wear a hijab. She said that wearing the hijab was
a true example of jihad, which as she had been taught in Sunday school
is a fight within yourself, the work of spiritual discipline. To be
able to tell the world who she is, she says, "To me, this is my
jihad. This is my struggle."
Immediately the universality of this experience struck me. To tell the
world who we are, to fight within ourselves to do the right thing, be
the best person we can be-these are human struggles we all share. Islam
responds with prescriptions that give followers a way to meet these
struggles head on. There is no mistaking the identity and commitment
of a 15-year-old girl wearing a hijab in a suburban American high school.
But what about a Christian, a Jew, or a Unitarian Universalist? How
do we tell the world who we are as religious people? What personal struggles
do our religious beliefs engage us in? And how do our religious practices
help us?
Reflecting on these questions my mind had a little fun imagining how
we Unitarian Universalists might proclaim our faith as visibly as wearing
a hijab. Our flaming chalice jewelry is much too demure-it rarely even
elicits questions. Imagine if we all wore garments with giant flaming
chalices emblazoned on them-shawls say, or collarless jackets. As silly
as this sounds, imagine how you would feel just walking down the street,
or helping out in your child's classroom, or making a presentation to
your most important client. Of course, we'd all have to develop a 3-minute
answer to the question "What do UUs believe?"-a test currently
reserved for our ministers-in-training. But more importantly, we'd all
have to live every moment knowing that others know who we are as religious
people. They would have important information about us-information that
we might not have about them-and they would interact with us accordingly.
How would this knowledge affect them? How would it affect us? The Islamic
youth said, "[Wearing the hijab] reminds me of who I am, it reminds
me of my limits. It has definitely kept me in line…I am a nicer
person." Would such a public display of our faith make us better
people?
Our religion may not test us with the requirement of a visible, public
display of faith but it does test us. Unitarian Universalism requires
that we do the hard work of self-reflection and education to find our
own way to express our faith and commit ourselves to its values.
On a large scale of public policy, most of us struggle to live our values:
it's hard to find compassion for terrorists, hard to affirm the worth
and dignity of individuals whose own hatred and fear cause them to violate
the basic human rights of others. We struggle, as citizens of a democratic
society, to make the right decisions for all people, to advocate and
lobby and vote for public policy that promotes justice and equity, even
when doing so may cost us personally. This is a jihad-an internal struggle
to put justice for all ahead of self-interest.
On a more personal level, just last week I found myself challenged to
live by the principle of "a free and responsible search for truth"
in a local debate about funding for school administration. My struggle
was (and always is) to find the words and the attitude to convey the
truth as I see it without acting aggressively, or putting others down.
As a Unitarian Universalist I am committed to everyone's search for
truth and meaning-not just my own-and I am committed to acting in a
caring and responsible manner in searching for and expressing my truth.
This is a jihad-an internal struggle to speak the truth with love.
Muslim women who wear a hijab struggle to be who they are and to fit
in to the culture around them. Our struggle may be far less obvious
to the outside world but I hope no less important: to be the best Unitarian
Universalists we can be and to live by the values of our faith everyday.
Quest March 2002 Contents
Experiencing Easter: A
Great Skeptic's
Transformation
by Mark Belletini, senior minister, First Unitarian Universalist
Church, Columbus, Ohio
My grandfather, Nazzareno ("the Nazarene") Belletini, would
have appreciated the poem, Presence, by Rosario Castellanes, that is,
had he ever learned to read poetry, which he never did. He was too busy
in his garden and wine-cellar to do any reading, too busy creating the
poetry of red tomatoes, dark green rosemary, bright green spinach, pinkish-blue
snowball bushes and deep, ruby wine to ever find any great satisfaction
in the kind of poetry made only of words.
"This body that has been my refuge, my prison, my hospital is also
my tomb," writes Castellanos.
Why would my grandfather have liked that poem? I remember one Easter
day, when I was ten years old, overhearing my grandfather talking to
my father about, of all things, death. "Oh, death doesn't worry
me," he said. "The way I see it, life is a lot like spending
the day gardening. You dig, and hoe and prune and weed. You smell the
blooming flowers and imagine how sweet the tomatoes will be on your
plate. Then, at the end of the day, you lie back in your bed, satisfied.
You pull the quilt up over your shoulders, and you feel sleep coming
warm and heavy upon you. We don't really know if we will wake up in
the morning, but nonetheless we are happy to leave our aches and pains
behind us, and drift off to rest and sleep."
"When my turn to die comes one day," continued my grandfather,
"it will be the same thing. Except on that day I will lie down
in the same earth that my tomatoes grow in, and allow the earth itself
to be my blanket. I will be happy to fall asleep, not thinking, as usual,
about whether I will wake up or not, but just satisfied that I lived
and created and loved."
I remember being amazed when he said that. Stunned to the core of my
ten-year-old being. After all, in my church school (Roman Catholic),
we were taught that death was something to be saved from. We were taught
that death had "a sting," like a scorpion, and that all human
beings would be glad to have a chance to live forever.
My grandfather, however, did not seem to want to live forever. And that
simply amazed me.
Now, I need to tell you that my grandfather never read a book. He never
attended school one day in his life. He grew up in poverty in the hill
country above Modena, Italia, in a tiny village called Fannano. When
he was still a child, he left Italy and worked with his brother Pipa
in a coal mine in Corsica. The two brothers crawled on their bellies
daily, through a shaft less than two feet high. They did this for years,
earning only pennies a day. My grandfather immigrated to this country
when he was a young man, 17, I think, only to end up working in dangerous
coal mines here too. His lungs were black as tar all of his life from
his work. He was often sick because of his work. He even lost one of
his eyes.
But he was more than a man of work; he was a man of sorrows. You see,
when he came to this country, he left his parents and never saw them
or talked to them again. Without any schooling he had to make his way
in a country with an odd language and strange ways. He and my grandmother
were always poor. I think you can see that his was not an easy life.
Yet despite this, he did not live his days waiting for another life,
a reprieve from death, a promised, saving resurrection. And I was amazed.
My grandfather wasn't finished talking with my father. He seemed to
have guessed, somehow, that Jesus must have been a poor peasant from
the hills much like himself. This is the reason, I suppose, that he
finished his conversation with my father offering this: "I'm sure
Jesus must have been a very good man. But when they killed him,"
he said, "his body was placed under the blanket of the earth too,
and that is where it stayed."
Obviously, the traditional Easter story made no sense to him.
It does not make sense to many modern people. We modern Unitarian Universalists
too, although often more educated and more fortunate than my grandfather,
have mostly shared my grandfather's opinion about Easter through the
years.
Oh there have been some exceptions, I know. There has always been a
variety of beliefs among us about such things. And yes, some folks find
it important to affirm that something good happens to people after death,
as our Universalist ancestors maintained so eloquently for hundreds
of years.
But I'm clear that the majority of us do not spend much time imagining
a life beyond this one, howsoever conceived. We seem to want to focus
on this side of the grave no matter what happens after death. And I,
for one, consider this a deeply spiritual, yes, even religious, position
to take.
When I personally think of Jesus, the man whose name is so clearly associated
with Easter Day, I do not think of his sad and cruel death or highly
fabled birth. Like my grandfather, I imagine Jesus' life, his daily
hours, not his disturbing death. I think of his ethical passion. I think
of his deliberately peaceful living. I think of his call to all who
heard him, his invitation to so transform society that the hardships
of poverty, illness, and cultural cruelty would no longer rule the roost
and distort the powerful and central reality of love… a love most
often reflected in kindness and compassion.
Yet despite my view of Easter Sunday, I am always intrigued by the story
of transformation that Easter represents.
Like my grandfather, I do not find that my death needs to be remedied
by resurrection, however defined. Like many Unitarian Universalists,
my life experiences have made me wary of accepting stories with heavy
theological overtones as a sort of sober history that is essential for
my well-being and spiritual welfare.
But I cannot deny that under all the amazing stories of Easter, with
their contradictions and lapses, there is an authentic report of an
amazing and life-changing transformation. Not that of a dead, crucified
body into something dazzling, nor that of a filled tomb to an empty
one. But the transformation of a group of unschooled peasants into a
group of pacifist preachers.
With most modern scholars, I have no doubt that Jesus was a teacher,
one well loved by his students. Some modern Christian scholars, John
Dominic Crossan, for example, suggest that this wonderful teacher was
killed quite suddenly, and unexpectedly. His death was not, Crossan
says, the result of dramatic trials or the betrayal by a student, but
rather, his death was anti-climactic, the result of the well-oiled machinery
of the occupation government, which brooked no opposition. There was
nothing dramatic about the death of this teacher. His was just one among
many unfair crucifixions, typical of that era.
For his students who loved him, of course, it was a drama. They were
devastated utterly.
I think I can imagine what that devastation might have felt like, because
I cannot believe it was too different from what I felt after my best
friend Stephen died following a terrible span of suffering. He was something
of a teacher to me too, and to Richard, his partner in life. I could
barely function after he died. The fact that I preached on Sundays during
the period could be considered a bona fide miracle.
One day, some months after Stephen's burial, as I walked along a park
path in Golden Gate Park that featured lots of beautiful, twisted, dark
green Monterey Pines, the sense of my friend suddenly overwhelmed me.
I began to feel as if his life lived in me; his noted fearlessness in
social situations, for example, coursed through my veins. I knew, from
all our years of conversation, the deep loneliness that hummed underneath
his extravagant love for others. I began to want to reach out to others
in new ways.
The sun began to set west of the park into the silver Pacific. The first
star blossomed in the sky. It seemed to me, as I saw this star framed
in the dark branches of a pine tree, that it would be just as easy for
me to pick that star and hold it in my hand, as it would be for me to
reach up and pick a pine cone off the tree. The universe became very
small for a moment, and I felt as if a ligament ran from my heart to
everyone and everything, else. I felt a suffusion of warmth and wonder
that was pure joy. I realized that Stephen's love for me and for all
his other friends was also the best and most authentic part of him,
and that nothing could take that from us.
In the gospel of Mark, the "young man at the tomb" tells the
mourning women who come there to grieve, that they should not seek for
"something alive among things that are dead." The risen Jesus
has gone to another region, "to the Galilee," says the young
man. "Go and tell his students to go there."
And what's back in the Galilee? Their families, their boats, their knotted
fishing nets, their everyday lives, their children, the heavy taxes
of the government, and the ordinary political folderol of the era. That's
what waits for them in Galilee. Not a resuscitated corpse, something
more nearly dead than alive, but something completely alive…themselves-living
their lives. Themselves transformed by their mystical and metaphorical
meditations on the life and suffering of their teacher.
My grandfather knew suffering too; he saw plenty of it. More than his
share, if even half the stories I was raised with were true. But I only
knew him as someone who was fully alive, alive in his garden, alive
in his wine cellar, alive with his grandchildren whom he would toss
in the air, alive in his love for me.
He believed that when he died, his capacity to say, "I am Nazzareno"
would be buried with him under the earth. Yet he had no doubt that I
would be alive after he died, and that my capacity to say, "I am
Mark," could, and probably would, outlive the deepest part of his
soul. His soul? Yes, his soul… his capacity for love and redemptive
relationship.
The deepest part of me is when I relate in love to you, to myself, to
the trees, to the earth, to the memory of a beloved friend, to the memory
of a great ethical teacher. And that love, that relationship, is what
survives me, is what rises in alleluia "forever and ever."
As Castellanos reminds us in her poem, "There is no solitude, no
death, even if I forget and although I am no more. Humankind…all
of us…shall survive." Survive in our relating, our communion
of relationships, not in our idiosyncratic "I am."
Easter for me is not some particular Sunday in April or March. Easter
Day, the Big Joy, is when I no longer think that my self is more important
than the network, the web, the communion of transforming relationships
I live among. It's when I choose, at last, to live every single moment
of life, to feel it all, love it all, and refuse to hurt or control
others as if I am somehow more important than they are. To insist on
living any other way, I fear, is not to live at all. And as the man
at the tomb asked: Why would anyone look for what is alive among the
dead?
Quest March 2002 Contents
The
Easter
Miracle
by The Rev. Jacob Trapp, 1899-1993
I am amazed to the point
of ecstasy
at the miracle of awareness.
Life brings me its freshness as an ineffable gift.
Every moment renews my vision.
Death is permission granted to other modes of life to exist,
so that everything may be ceaselessly renewed.
The ploughshare of sorrow,
breaking the heart,
opens up new sources of life.
The land bursts again into bloom.
The possible and the future are one.
The possible strives to come into being,
and can be, if we help.
Without sacrifice there is no
resurrection.
Nothing grows, flowers and bears fruit save by giving.
All that we try to save in ourselves wastes and perishes.
All things ripen for the giving's sake, and in the giving are
consummated.
From Celebrating Easter and Spring. Compiled and
edited by Carl Seaburg and Mark Harris;
published by Anne Miniver Press, Cambridge, Mass 2000 UUA Bookstore
Item # 7223. Price: $10.00 www.uua.org/bookstore. Also available from
the CLF library.
Quest March 2002 Contents
Tell This Story and Remember
by Katie Lee Crane, minister, First Parish of Sudbury, Massachusetts
I love it when Passover and Easter fall in the same week. I love
it because it makes the stories of both traditions come alive for me.
Of course Jesus was traveling to Jerusalem; it was Passover; he was
a Jew making his pilgrimage to the Temple. I can picture the festive
spirit of the whole city as he arrives. Everybody is in good spirits.
Everybody is ready for the festival.
I can sense the increasing seriousness as the week progresses. Why serious?
For one thing, Jesus is a suspicious character thought by some to be
dangerous. This has a direct impact on Jesus and his diverse group of
companions. For another, the tone of the annual ritual deepens as the
Jewish people remember their enslavement, their dramatic escape, and
their fears when they arrive in a strange wilderness. Passover is not
the most serious of Jewish holidays, but still, Jews are called to come
together and remember hard times even as they celebrate their freedom.
I imagine Jesus with his friends and family, eating the traditional
Seder meal in a hidden room. Why hidden? Perhaps because Jesus was a
suspicious radical leader. Perhaps, also, because his "family"
was not altogether traditional and included some thought to be unfit
to dine with the others. Perhaps because they were poor and it was all
that was available to them.
I love the image of what many have come to call "the last supper"
because, for me, this is a key point of transition, the time when it
is difficult to see where Judaism leaves off and Christianity begins.
It is the time when a radical Jew from Judea, a teacher with new ideas
that challenged the status quo, sat with his "family" and
shared the Pesach meal. Though I recognize that there are deep theological
differences between the meanings we bring to the seder and those we
bring to communion, and that there is some controversy about whether
the last supper was actually a Seder, I am still in awe that, at its
core, this is a story about a courageous (and motley) group of people
who broke bread together and told, once again, an old, old story.
Only on that particular night, after the sun had gone down, a new story
was born. On that particular night, a story that honored the meanings
and richness of one tradition became a new tradition. Out of a need
to keep their Jewish tradition relevant for themselves and their times,
a few courageous people gave an old story new meanings.
I love it, because at the core, both stories share the same message:
Gather together. Tell this story. And remember.
Quest March 2002 Contents
Gloria
by Barbara J. Pescan, parish minister, Unitarian Church of Evanston,
Illinois
Gloria
The tenacity of earth and its creatures.
Kyrie eleison
These children who will go on to save what we cannot.
Baruch ata Adonai
The ordinary tenacity of plants and of people.
Om
The center of the universe which is everywhere, not the least place
in the human heart.
Alleluia
Love that survives anger and winter and despair and sorrow, and even
death.
Shalom
Love that persists.
Nam myo-ho renge kyo
Calm that is the seed in the dark.
Amen
For endings that are beginnings, for beginnings that are endings.
Alleluia
For the circle, the spiral, the web, the egg, the orbit, the center,
the seed, the flower, the fruit, the opening, the death, the release,
the seed.
Amen
We are going on.
Amen
It is going on.
Blessed be.
This piece is published as #534 in Hymns for the Celebration of
Life, the Unitarian Universalist hymnal
Quest March 2002 Contents
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Last updated June 12, 2005
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