Staring At a Blank Page

 

This blog has helped me sort out my thoughts for several sermons.  So, I shall try again.  Only this time it’s not a sermon that needs help.

 

Before I went to seminary, before I became an Interfaith Minister, I had come to the conclusion that the traditional approach to our religions wasn’t working.  I had felt “called” since I was a child.  But I had always felt called to something beyond my own personal faith.  My path has been Judaism.  It has broadened over the past ten years to Jewish Unitarian Universalism.  But that it my path.  It’s good for me.  It helps me.  But for whatever reason, I have never believed that it was the only path, or even necessarily the best path for someone else.  So, I at last wrote a book about the need for a new approach, one that embraces multiple paths.

 

I never published the book.  I didn’t even try.  It occurred to me that everything I was speaking about was theoretical.  I realized I needed to “walk the talk.”  So I sold my home and entered the School of Theology and Ministry.  I graduated a year ago this month.  By then I had already found the Interfaith Community Church in Seattle and interned there for a year.  Once I graduated, I happily and with great enthusiasm entered the ministry as an Associate Minister at the church.  It has now been a year into that ministry.  Braced with my studies and work at the Interfaith Church, I now have that practical experience both with theological study and on the ground ministry that my earlier book clearly lacked.  So, I am ready to try this again.

 

Ah, to be in the middle of the project!!  But I’m not.  I’m beginning it, and staring at the blank first page.

 

Some things I now realize that I didn’t before.  One is the impressive number of marvelous books that have encouraged an interfaith approach (often called inter-religious).  So many books.  Do we really need another?  And if so, why?

 

Since interfaith has remained hit or miss, an on and off phenomenon, I think the answer is yes, we need another book.  But why hasn’t interfaith blossomed?  What has been missing?  And what can I do about it in “still another” interfaith book? 

 

It occurs to me why I have been driven (guided?) to seek Interfaith, rather than interfaith.  I wonder if interfaith as a philosophical “ideal,” however attractive, may be out of reach without Interfaith as a “spiritual practice.”  Interfaith, I think, must be more than thought.  It must be lived.  Ah yes, the name of the website.  Living Interfaith.

 

So what will it take to LIVE Interfaith?  How do we get it from our minds to our hearts?  How do we “embody” it?  How do we get from “think” to “do?”  If I can write a book about that, that might be useful.  That might make a difference.  It might at least help point the way.

 

So what are the roadblocks?  What has made what so many think is such an attractive idea so hard to put into practice? 

 

Here my Unitarian Universalist experience can help.  Most UU’s embrace the idea of interfaith.  That is one of the things that attracted me most to Unitarian Universalism and indeed encouraged me to become a Jewish Unitarian Universalist.  But one of my papers in seminary was on orthodoxy within our Unitarian history.  The practice of interfaith has been much more difficult than the idea of it. 

 

My experience at the wonderful Interfaith Community Church where I serve part time (I also work part time as the Director of Music at my UU Fellowship) can also help.  With its exciting interfaith message, it  remains a small church.  Why?

 

That has to be the essence of the book.  How do we practice Interfaith?  And, of course, why?

 

Hmm.  The blank page still sits there.  But I think I’m a little clearer as to direction.

Of Wolves and Humanity

 

On Sunday, I’ll be giving a sermon titled “Feeding the Right Wolf.”  It has allowed me to ponder this week a traditional story from the Cherokee nation.

 

A Cherokee elder was teaching a grandchild about life.

 

“A fight is going on inside me,” the elder said to the child.   “It is a terrible fight, deep inside.  It is between two wolves. 

 

“One brings darkness - he is anger, hate, envy, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, lies, resentment, inferiority, and  false pride.

 

“The other brings light - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

 

“This same fight is going on inside you,” the elder told the child.   “And inside every person.”

 

The child thought about it for a minute and then asked the elder, “Which wolf will win?”

 

The elder replied simply, “The one you feed.” 

 

The one you feed.  The idea seems simple, but profound.  And difficult for all its simplicity.  The temptation to feed the wrong wolf can be pretty strong.

 

Dr. King wrote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.   Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”  I think he was trying to get us to feed the right wolf.  The wolf of light and of love.

 

But how?  That’s where the sermon has to go.  I wonder if perhaps rather than trying to “starve” the wolf of darkness, it might be better to take it as a one day at a time proposition. 

 

I will not try to banish that wolf from within me.  That's too large.  Too difficult.  I will only undertake not to feed it … today.   That is my task as I rise each morning.  Not to feed it … today.

Father’s Day

 

I have a sermon to give on Father’s Day.  And I’m grappling with whether or not to make a confession from the pulpit.  The fact is, I have never liked Father’s Day.  Or Mother’s Day.  I do like Parents’ Day, but oddly enough we don’t celebrate it.  Not that there isn’t a Parents’ Day.  It was established in 1994, by a Congressional Resolution and signed by then President Bill Clinton.  But you won’t find it on most calendars.  It never caught on.  Instead, we divide the holidays up. 

 

On Mother’s Day we celebrate how much Mom loves us and we give her flowers or some other token of affection.  On Father’s Day we tend to celebrate how hard Dad works, and we “let” him go fishing, or volunteer to cut the grass for him.  In other words, we reinforce the old stereotypes and cultural norms that we keep proclaiming we’ve put  behind us.   Many of us pride ourselves on breaking free from the paradigm of patriarchy or, to put it in the words of a famous 50’s TV show, that “Father Knows Best.”  But have we?

 

Over the years I’ve had several female friends tell me how much I am in touch with my “feminine” side.  I know they meant it as a compliment, but I have never taken it as such.  I do not feel that I am in touch with my feminine side.  I am not willing to cede compassion and listening, among other traits, as the sole province the female of the species.

 

And if you’re thinking, “Why can’t the guy just take a compliment?” — consider.  If a friend does really well with investments, would you tell him or her, “You’re really in touch with your Jewish side?”  I hope not!  I hope we recognize that this would be an idiotic thing to say, despite the cultural stereotypes about Jews that still pervade our society.

 

In the same way, I think we get into trouble when we talk of our “female side” as being nurturing, while our “male side” is more aggressive.  I would submit these are far less male and female attributes, and far more cultural norms that we have accepted.  And as a society we continue to encourage these norms, even when we say we that we don’t.

 

What, for example, does it say to a male child to tell him he’s in touch with his “feminine side?”  Are we not telling the child that he is “naturally” aggressive?  Would it not be more helpful to reinforce for the small boy that being nurturing and sensitive is a perfectly normal male attribute?  And shouldn’t we be telling our young girls that it’s perfectly natural to be aggressive, when being aggressive is appropriate? 

 

I would submit that nurturing is a human trait, and we do no one any favors by identifying it with a particular gender.  I would also submit that being aggressive is a human trait.  And we do no one, and particularly our young boys, any favors by inferring that it’s their “natural” state.

 

So why do we still do this?  Why, when so many of us have declared this is not how it should be, is it still seemingly such a part of our lives? 

 

It becomes time to embrace the spiritual.  Our minds are one thing; our bodies, something else.  Any thought or philosophy, or religious belief for that matter, stays intellectual until and unless we truly embody it.  Slang puts it as “Walk our talk.”  And we frequently  recognize the dichotomy with the familiar expression, “Do as I say, not as I do.”  Yet the key to any real change within us, let alone in the human condition, is to make that change  a spiritual practice.  The key is to bring what we say into our hearts and bodies.  Soul work, if you will.  We need to bring “say” and “do” into harmony.  But the truth is this is hard and, as another expression puts it, “Easier said, than done.”  So true.

 

With so many things, we stop at said.  And said, by itself, just doesn’t make it any more. 

 

So, for the sake of our sons and our daughters: Happy Father’s Day!

Our Argument Culture

 

I’ve just finished Deborah Tannen’s book “The Argument Culture.”  She writes of the paradigm (though she doesn’t use that word) of using debate as the crucible for solving problems, coming to conclusions, arriving at “truth.” 

 

Debate: attacking whatever the “other side” says and promoting without caveat what one’s own position is.  And, of course, debate is death to dialogue.  There’s no time (nor incentive) to listen to the “other side.”  The “game” is to seek out weakness and destroy the other side. 

 

We have, of course, based our entire system of justice on it.  The jury must listen to and consider solely what the opposing sides offer them, and then make a decision.  And, as Tannen points out, this argument mentality pervades our politics (boy does it ever!!), our news, business and even our personal lives. 

 

But argument has also been instrumental in preventing true dialogue among religions.  I very much want to write a book on Interfaith, but have put it on hold to do more reading.  I’ve been fascinated how even those who are proposing what they call “dialogue” among the religions are still caught up in the quicksand of argument. 

 

It is, perhaps, my personal idée fixe, but I can’t help but wonder if our “argument culture” has as it’s floor the religious foundation of “right belief.”  As I read books that truly urge inter-religious dialogue, I find that still there is that undercurrent of, “We have the ‘right’ belief.”  What is added is, “but we need to acknowledge that others have beliefs that are valid . . . in their own way.”

 

“God in a Box.”  I feel certain that this will be a chapter in the book that I have promised myself to write this summer.  At some point, I think, there comes the need to acknowledge that we find God much too big and too far away.  Most if not all religions talk about the mystery of God, and the vastness of God … and then quickly turn around and precisely define the meaning of God and what God wants.   It’s as if we can’t handle a God “out there.”  So we put God in a box: a quantifiable, definable, controllable box.

 

I think that’s the key.  It think the box is our way of controlling God and by extension controlling at least in some measure our own lives.  In the words of the argument culture, God is either this, or God is that.  Signed, sealed and delivered.

 

Atheists have bought into it as well.  Definitively stating that there is “no God” builds upon the same paradigm of “God is this or God is that.”  It’s all “right belief.”  There is “one” answer, and we will argue until we get it right (as in, you finally agree that you’re wrong and I’m right).

 

I have a feeling that that is where Tannen’s “Argument Culture” misses out.  There is, I believe,  a deeply religious foundation to our culture of argument rather than dialogue.  Our courts are based on religious courts that gave us inquisitions.  Our schools (as Tannen points out) are based on religious seminaries. 

 

I agree whole-heartedly with Deborah Tannen that we need to break free of our “argument culture.”  But the more I contemplate it, the more I think we need to start with its foundation: religion.