Beginning here, are sermons that I have given.            Return to Home Page:  Dorothy's Home Page
 

  #10 Ma
  #9   Membership Sunday
  #8   Us and Them
  #7   Election 2002
  #6   Tolerance
  #5   Our UU Heritage
  #4   Cramming Earth With Heaven
  #3   Eastering
  #2   Spirituality
  #1   Good News

Sermon #10
Women’s History Month
“Ma”
March 25, 2001

My talk today will be a synthesis of Why History Matters by Gerda Lerner published in 1997.

At that time, she was Professor of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison.   She accepted a position at the University with the express mandate to create a Ph.D. program in Women's History. She directed the first Women’s History Master’s degree program in the country.

Gerda was born in l920 Germany and grew up in Vienna, Austria, after WW I, in a comfortable middle-class family.  They were “assimilated” Jews, did not keep a Kosher home.  She was raised in the best traditions of German culture. Her father fled Austria after being warned by a friendly Nazi that his name was on a list of people to be arrested.   A few weeks after his flight, 12 fully armed stormtroopers raided their apartment, put a gun at her twelve-year-old sister’s, chest, tore up the furniture with bayonets and terrorized them for hours. 

In the end, they took Gerda and her mother to jail.  For six weeks they were forgotten, but never tried.  They were held hostage for their father, and were released only after he finally signed away all his property and business.  They lived for another six months in Nazi Austria, and reported to police every week.  Finally, her mother and the two girls secured the necessary papers and were able to join her father in Liechtenstein; they had residence permits for Liechtenstein because their father had established a business there in l934.  This fact saved his and their lives.  Her mother died at age 50.  Gerda was an emigrant in Liechtenstein and received a passport to the United States.

During WWII the U.S. government forced her to register once a month as an enemy alien.  She eventually became an American citizen.  Gerda was over 40 when she entered graduate school, a foreign born woman, a Jew and in a field of history her professors considered “exotic” and weird.  Women’s History.   She said she carried her “otherness” with her.

The following words are a synthesis and excerpts of 200 pages from Why History Matters.
 It is not the function of history to drum ethical lessons into our brains.  History is the archives of human experiences and of the thoughts of past generations; history is our collective memory.   The only thing one can learn from history is that actions have consequences and that certain actions and certain choices once made are irretrievable.  As one can “forget” personal memories, and by choosing what to remember, one selects what one wants to remember and leaves out the rest so it can be one with collective memory.  The “great forgetting,” selective memory, has a special significance for women.

Women are half of humankind; they have always carried half of the world’s work and duties and they have been active agents in history.  Yet in recorded history they have appeared only as “marginal’ contributors to human development.   What we see is selective memory on the part of male historians, which is grounded in the patriarchal values they hold.  Such values make the activities of men appear as inherently more important and significant than the activities of women.  War and politics are regarded as being more important in the history of humankind than the rearing of children. 

 If one accepts such values as a given, then one commits the basic error of seeing the half as the whole and “forgetting” the other half.  The consequence of such thinking is not only unjust to women, but, more importantly, it makes it impossible for women or men to reconstruct a truthful picture of the past.  Women have always lived in history, acted in it and made history.  But the history of women was, up until about thirty years ago, distorted in a peculiar way; it came to us refracted through the lens of male observation and distorted through an interpretation based on patriarchal values. 

 The new women’s history has undertaken the task of reconstructing the missing half and of putting women as active agents into the center of events in order that recorded history might as last reflect the dual nature of humankind in its true balance, its female and it male aspects. 

The charge of women’s mental inferiority, upheld male “excellence” throughout the 19th century.  In regard to general education, it was abandoned in the 20th century but surfaced in allegations of women’s inability to do hard sciences or be the equal of the male professorate in universities.   The concept of male superiority holds that men and women are essentially different in nature and faculties, and that men because of their superiority are better equipped than women to hold positions of power and leadership. 

American democratic liberty was so defined that the exclusion of women from political representation and power was not even questioned for nearly 200 years.   To this day, after women’s seventy-two-year-long struggle for suffrage, women are woefully under represented in all public bodies and offices.  American individualism was defined so as to describe the psychological development of males; female autonomy and self-definition were considered subordinate to women’s nurturant role as family care-giver and did not even begin to surface as an articulated demand of women until the 20th century. 

Our grandchildren’s world has become a global village, a world of mainly  people of color living in poverty, with a small segment of mainly white people living in wealth.  The inclusion of women in the pool of talent is an absolute necessity and makes good sense in terms of human survival.  Finally, quoting Gerda Lerner, history functions to satisfy a variety of human needs:

l. History as memory and as a source of personal identity:  As memory, it keeps alive the experiences, deeds, and ideas of people of the past.  By allowing us to transform the dead into heroes and role models for emulation, history connects past and future and becomes a source of personal identity

2. History as collective immortality:  By rooting human beings on a continuum of the human enterprise, history provides each man and woman with a sense of immortality through the creation of a structure in the mind, which extends human life beyond its span

3. History as cultural tradition: A shared body of ideas, values and experiences, which has a coherent shape, becomes a cultural tradition.

4. History as explanation:  Through an ordering of the past into some larger connectedness and pattern, historical events become “illustrations” of philosophies, and of broader interpretive frameworks.

History-making then, is a creative enterprise, by means of which we fashion out of fragments of human memory and selected evidence of the past a mental construct of a coherent past world that makes sense to the present. 

History as memory and as a source of personal identity is accessible to most people and does not depend on the services of the professional historian.  It is the story of one’s life and generation; it is autobiography, diary and memory; it is the story of one’s family, one’s group of affiliation.  As Wilhelm Dilthey wrote: 

“The person who seeks the connecting threads in the history of his or her life has already created coherence in that life, which represents the root of all historical comprehension.  The power and breadth of our own lives and the energy with which we reflect on them are the foundation of historical vision.”

The necessity of history is deeply rooted in personal psychic need and in the human striving for community.  None can testify better to this necessity than members of groups who have been denied a usable past.  No group has longer existed in this condition than have women.   Groups that have for longer or shorter periods of time, been denied their history, groups so deprived have suffered a distortion of self-perception and a sense of inferiority. All other groups, have been minorities in a larger whole.    Women are not a minority, although they have been treated as if they were members of minority groups. 

 Women are frequently divided from other women by class, race and religion.  No other subordinate group with common experience has 
ever been so thoroughly divided within it.   Women have functioned in a separate culture within the culture they share with men.

No story of cultural history is adequate which neglects or minimizes women’s power in the world.   Women have not been left out of history because of the evil intent of male historians but because we have considered history only in male-centered terms.   We have missed women and their activities, because we have asked questions of history that are inappropriate to women. 

We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time, and how they solved their problems.  We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were.   The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. 

Denied any knowledge of their history, women were also denied heroines and role models.    People without a history are considered not quite human and they incorporate that judgment in their own thinking. 

Women’s History of the past thirty years has offered corrective to ‘selective forgetting,” seeking a holistic worldview in which differences among people are recognized and respected and which records the commonality of human striving in all its variety and complexity. 

Women’s History, the essential tool in creating feminist consciousness in women, is providing the body of experience against which new theory can be tested and the ground on which a feminist vision can be built.

We live our lives; we tell our stories.  The dead continues to live by way of the resurrection we give them in telling their stories.  The past becomes part of our present and thereby part of our future.  We experience, we give voice to that experience; others reflect on it and give it new form.  That new form, in its turn, influences and shapes the way next generations experience their lives.  That is why history matters.

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Congegation
                                                                               Top of Page
Sermon #9 
Membership Sunday
Feb. 18, 2001

Quotes from A Chosen Faith 

John Buehrens and Forrest Church list ten beliefs Unitarian Universalists hold in common.  They share some of their personal experiences before and after becoming UU‘s and quote many early members telling of their experiences.  It was difficult for me to decide which to share, whose experiences might be called typical.  I chose to share some short anecdotes about early UU s. and to drop a few familiar names.  I will leave my copy of A Chosen Faith here on the table for anyone who would like to read it. 

In the early nineteenth century we were accused by orthodox Christians of the heresies of universalism and unitarianism.  Perhaps we chose the names that others gave us because they indicate the expansiveness of our faith.  For if there is one God for all and if we all have equal access to this, regardless of the specifics of our respective faiths, the only thing that differentiates one person’s righteousness from that of another is reflected in his or her deeds.”

Universalism’s principal theological contribution lies in striking hell from the theological menu. Unitarianism removed original sin.  Together, they conspired brilliantly on behalf of goodness.   Someone said that if we are all going to be together in heaven, we had better learn to get along on earth.

In the early nineteenth century sin became a dirty word in both Unitarian and Universalist circles. Liberal theologians responded by claiming that we were born good.  Any evils that manifested themselves during the course of our lives were the fault of environment, education, lack of opportunity, poor nurture, bad example, or discrimination. These were the things that led us to fall, not sin.

Henry Whitney Bellows a Unitarian minister, emerged as one of the most active and effective humanitarians of his generation.  In the early l860’s, as founder and president of the American Sanitary Commission (the precursor of the American Red Cross) he and his cohorts raised six million dollars and built an organization that eased the suffering of the wounded and dying on both sides during the Civil War.

Some  nineteenth-century Unitarian and Universalist witnesses were Clara Barton, health care, Susan B. Anthony, women’s rights, and Theodore Parker, the most popular preacher in Boston.  He wrote his sermons with a pistol by his side, not to protect himself, but, should the need arise, to defend escaped slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad toward Canada.

Thomas Jefferson said,  “it is in our lives, not our words that our religion must be read.”

Forrest Church wrote, “the principal sin besetting many of us today is the sin of sophisticated resignation.  It allows us to feel strongly about injustices without prompting us to do anything about them.  We know so much about the world’s problems, and their enormity, that however much we want to do about them we feel impotent.  For many of us, self-improvement (both physical and spiritual) has displaced the transformation of society as our principal moral concern.  Our heritage reminds us that we are a faith of deeds not creeds. 

Finally, quoting Betty Mills, a UU layperson:

“Who are these Unitarian Universalists, standing around the coffee table on Sunday morning discussing last night’s movie and next fall’s election; reviewing the morning sermon, designing tomorrow’s education, storming over next century’s oceans?  Joyful celebrants of the gift of life, mixing nonsense with the quest of the ages, turning secular need into concerned action, serving wine on the lawn and petitions in the foyer.”
 

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Congegation
                                                                               Top of Page
 

Sermon #8
Us and Them 
 January 21, 2001

I believe it is easy to separate ourselves from others saying “they” without being able to define “them.” 

For example, there are those we call the religious right, others conservatives and we refer to ourselves as liberals.  None is an easily definable group unless like some, who say they have Jesus as their personal savior, he is all they need and that they want to be thought of as out of the mainstream.  As Unitarian Universalists we accept all people and we do not wish to judge others, but it is frustrating to feel that there are people deliberately working against what we believe, as a religious group and as individuals.  Even beyond that, we may feel that we are the only ones who share our values.

I was very happy to learn that we are not alone.  I first learned of Cultural Creatives in December.  Today, I want to share highlights from the report of a research study completed by sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson.  From the study  they identified others like us and they are not all Unitarian Universalists.    They drew upon thirteen years of formal research, which included 100,000 people from every region in the US except New England.  They also included  statistics from the l995 Integral Culture Survey.  From this research Ray and Anderson identified three subcultures, the three Americas.  Moderns, Traditionalists, and Cultural Creatives.

 Moderns are the dominant subculture – 48% of the US citizenry.  They make the rules we all live by – they control the civil service, the military, the courts, and the media.  Some of them operate the multinational corporations.  Their ideology is laid out for us every day, in detail, in the New York Times  the Wall Street Journal, in the other major papers, and on TV.  The Moderns’ belief in a technological economy is reshaping the face of the globe.  The Moderns tend to dismiss other cultures and other ways of life as somehow inferior.  In summary, “The simplest way to understand today’s Moderns is to see that they are the people who accept the commercialized urban-industrial world as the obvious right way to live.  They’re not looking for alternatives,” say the researchers.  To Moderns, growth is not only good it is essential.  What’s most important to moderns is :

- making lots of money
- climbing the ladder of success with measurable steps towards one’s goal
- having lots of choices as a consumer, voter, or on the job
- being on top of the latest trends, styles and innovations
- supporting economic and technological progress at the national level
- rejecting the values and concerns of native people, rural people, Traditionals, New Agers, and religious mystics. 
- In 1995, they had a median family income of $42, 500

The Traditionals:

Traditionals represent 24.5% of the US citizenry, 48 million adults. “Many Traditionals are not white bread Republicans but elderly New Deal Democrats, Reagan Democrats. and old-time union people as well as social conservatives in politics….” Quoting from the researchers

Traditionals tend to believe, among other things that:

- patriarchs should again dominate family life: feminism is a swearword;
- men need to keep their traditional roles and women need to keep theirs
- family, church, and community are where you belong
- customary and familiar ways of life should be maintained
- it is important to regulate sex, - pornography, teen sex, extramarital sex, and abortion
- men should be proud to serve in the military
- all the guidance you need for your life can be found in the Bible
- preserving civil liberties is less important than restricting immoral behavior
- freedom to carry arms is essential
- foreigners are not welcome.

Many Traditionals are pro-environment and anti-big business.  They are outraged at the destruction of the world they remember, both natural areas and small-town life.  Traditionals tend to be older, poorer, and less educated than others in the US.  At the end of World War II, Traditionals were 50% of the population, but today they are 25%, and their numbers are shrinking as older Traditionals die and are not being replaced by younger ones.

Cultural Creatives

Cultural Creatives are not defined by particular demographic characteristics – they are accountants and social workers, waitresses and computer programmers, hair stylists and lawyers and chiropractors and truck drivers photographers and gardeners.  The large majority is mainstream in religious beliefs.   They are no more liberal or conservative than the U.S. mainstream, though they tend to reject “left-right” labels.  One distinguishing demographic characteristic is that 60% are women and most tend to hold values and beliefs that women have traditionally held about issues of caring, family life, children, education, relationships, and responsibility.  In their personal lives, cultural creatives seek authenticity, meaning they want their actions to be consistent with what they believe and say.  “ They are also intent on finding wholeness, integration and community.  Cultural Creatives are quite clear that they do not want to live in an alienated disconnected world,” say the researchers. 

 Their approach to health is preventive and holistic, though they do not reject modern medicine.  In their work, they may try to go beyond earning a living  to having “right livelihood” or a vocation.

Ray and Anderson summarize the forces that have given rise to Cultural Creatives this way:
 In the twenty-first century, a new era is taking hold, the biggest challenges are to preserve and sustain life on the planet and to tread a new way past the overwhelming spiritual and psychological emptiness of modern life.  Though these issues have been building for a century only now can the Western world bring itself to publicly consider them.  The Cultural Creatives are responding to these overwhelming challenges by creating a new culture. 

By different paths, fifty million Cultural Creatives emerged from or were influenced by social movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s. 

A major impediment to further innovation, to the environment movement, to standing for positive values, developing new kinds of businesses, technologies, and cooperative ventures, and to rebuilding the industrial infrastructure of the Western world, is that Cultural Creatives all think there are very few of them when, in fact, there are very many.  They have not yet formed a sense of ‘us’ as a collective identity; nor do they have a collective image of themselves.

Cultural Creatives are hampered by their own lack of self-awareness.  They fail to recognize their own potential for creating a new world.   Until they recognize each other’s existence, they cannot work together. 

In conclusion, at the risk of oversimplifying these are some examples of how Cultural Creatives are at work creating a new culture:

In 1999 the Episcopal Church, under the leadership of the Reverend Sally Bingham was working in San Francisco and Los Angeles to get all its churches and congregations to adopt Green Power. 
 The National Council of Churches set up a series of ecojustice working groups on global warning. 
 Conservative denominations have parted company with the corporate establishment over environmentalism
 Some religious groups are moving toward psychological counseling, meditation and concern for the inner life, downplaying an exclusive emphasis on personal salvation.

 The Natural Step was started in Sweden in l989 and  has spread as a new educational movement to practically every advanced industrial country in the world, including the United States.   Educational packets are sent to every school and every household in the country, explaining their view –the “nonnegotiable conditions” for human survival.

There are four conditions:  If we want life to continue on the planet: 
  We must recycle all minerals and fossil fuels from under the Earth’s crust or cut their use to zero
  We must do the same with all long-lasting “unnatural” man-made substances
  We must stop causing the deterioration of Nature, whether it is by depleting fish and forests or polluting, or making deserts, or creating extinction of other species.
  We must ensure that these conditions are met by being more efficient in our use of resources, and promoting justice for all the people of the planet. 

Finally, I quote from Fred Polak, the great futurist, writing in l955.  “If a culture lacks a positive vision of the future….its creative power begins to wither and the culture itself stagnates and eventually dies out.  Negative images are even more destructive, leading to hopelessness, helplessness and failure to provide for the future.  Collective pessimism results in “endgame” behaviors, with people snatching and grabbing to secure something for themselves before everything falls apart.  This behavior brings about the very collapse they fear.”. 

Today as we are besieged by planetary problems, the risk is that we deal with them in just the pessimistic and unproductive style Polak decried.  A positive vision of the future, according to writer and philosopher David Spangler,  “challenges the culture to dare, to be open to change, and to accept a spirit of creativity that could alter its very structure.” 

I will end with a quote from the authors, Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson,
“There is nothing inevitable about the kind of life we have now in Modern society, and nothing inevitable about the kind of future that lies ahead of us.  Cultural Creatives are quite clear that they do not want to live in an alienated, disconnected world.  Their guiding images refer again and again to a sense of wholeness.  They say that each of us is a living system within a greater living system, connected to each other in more ways than we can fathom.  If we focus on that wholeness, we can begin to imagine a culture that can heal the fragmentation and destructiveness of our time.  The appearance of the Cultural Creatives, we suggest, represents a promise that a creative vision of the future is growing.  It is a resurgence of hope, of imagination, of willingness to act for the sake of a better civilization.  The work toward a reintegration of, and design for, a new culture can have great power in our collective imagination.  What we want and what we choose can shape our future. 
 

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Congegation
                                                                               Top of Page

Sermon #7
Election 2002 
Dec 3, 2000

  Several weeks ago I used Volume 1 Issue 1 as the basis for my talk to this congregation when I spoke on my sadness over the loss of trust among people, even to include a personal experience in Ellensburg.  When I received Volume 1, Issue 2, I was at once drawn to it. 

What I want to do this morning is share the writings of four authors of articles – representing four different minority faiths from IFA Foundation bulletin, Issue #2.  First, a word about IFA.  The Interfaith Alliance.  It was founded in l994 by Walter Cronkite. It is his belief that we need less divisiveness and more Interfaith values in our country.  He was not able to express his own spirituality freely as a news analyst and reporter.  “IFA is a non-partisan clergy-led grassroots organization.  Drawing on shared religious principles. TIA advances a mainstream faith-based agenda dedicated to promoting the positive and healing role of religion in public life and challenges those who manipulate religion to promote an extreme political agenda.  With more than 120,000 members drawn from over 50 faith traditions, and a national network of activists in every state, TIA promotes civility, mutual respect and cooperation in our increasingly-diverse society.’

  The Foundation, publishers of the Bulletin, exists to promote the positive and healing role of religion in public life.  The President of the Foundation Board of Directors is Ms. Denise Davidoff, Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  And I must add that a member of the Board of Directors is Mr. Ben Cohen, Co-Founder of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. 

I became the IFA contact person in Ellensburg several years ago when a few of us from Coalition of Human Rights hoped to start a chapter of IFA in Ellensburg.  We were unable to get the minimum number to become official, but we did meet with the State Director and I now receive regular – at least weekly – reports of activities around the State and nation.  Also, I was contacted some time ago regarding an IFA campus group.  They have materials and what seems to be very viable organizational plan for such a group. 

 Singh for President?  Well, maybe in 2020.  Stay Tuned!   The final sentence in an article from the Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force (SMART) founded in 1996 dedicated to the fair and accurate portrayal of Sikh Americans and the Sikh religion in the American media and society.  What is Sikhism?  It is a faith that issued from an original divine revelation to Guru Nanak in the 16th century.  Its homeland is the Punjab in northwest India.  Its doctrine is  relatively even  between Hindu and Muslim.   Sikhs believe the only True Guru is God. 

All Sikh men have the name Singh, or lion, meaning stalwart and lionhearted. and all Sikh women have the name Kaur, or princess.

 Why do the Sikhs say that one of theirs could become president?  Because there are quite a number of Sikhs in elected office in Canada, including the Premier of British Columbia.  The numbers of Sikhs in the  U.S. approximate those of Canada with no Sikh elected officials.  One Sikh, Dalip Singh Saund, did serve in the US Congress between l958 and 1962.  He came to the U.S. in the 1920s to study mathematics at Berkeley.  Racism prevented him from finding work as a math professor in the American academy.  He eventually became a prosperous farmer in Central California, and was actively involved in community politics.  Existing anti-immigration laws precluded Asians from citizenship until 1949.  Saund actively worked for Native American rights.  Forty years later, Saund’s election to Congress seems like an anomaly rather than a precedent. 

 SMART believes the major reason for the current lack of involvement of Sikhs is the very strong sense that America’s ethnic make-up is at heart bipolar – black and white.  Other ethnic groups tend to get written out of the national story.  Latinos and Asians have begun to make strides, but generally with assimilation into the cultural mainstream as a precondition of acceptance.   Another reason for lack of participation is that Sikhs in the U.S. are widely scattered geographically.  Cities such as Vancouver and Toronto have huge Sikh and Punjabi neighborhoods; and therefore constitute a kind of voting block, a highly visible minority presence – for which there is no parallel in the U.S.

 An article, written by Rabbi David Saperstein, says that religion certainly has a role in public life, that The First Amendment suggests, “Your status as a citizen, and your rights to opportunities in America, should never depend upon your religious beliefs or practices.” Any one who, through their rhetoric or the policies that they support, conveys otherwise is threatening what is, in essence, a survival issue for minorities in general, and for the Jewish community in particular.   The author goes on to say that there’s a difference if you speak within the context of the civic, religious, inspirational language of America – the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln, King – rather than talking about Jewish Law the Talmud as something America ought to do. 

 Rabbi Saperstein says that we can be appreciative of Joe Lieberman’s rhetoric.  An agenda that opposes constitutional amendments to tear down the wall separating church and state, government-imposed school prayer, and scientific creationism, while similar religious language is used by others to justify an agenda to tear down the wall separating church and state, have school prayer in all of the public schools, teach scientific creationism, and not allow access to books that people have religious objections to.  In other words Joe Lieberman’s rhetoric is more like Martin Luther King’s and we need far less of Reverend Falwell or Reverend Robertson. ( We may have to wait only one week to see if we get a member of a minority religion into a high office, rather than wait 20 more years to 2020.)

 What is the Role of Hinduism in the U.S.?  First, what is Hinduism?  It is more than a religion; it has been a way of life in India for centuries.  Hinduism is based upon belief in karma – the law of cause and effect by which each individual creates his/ her own destiny by his or her thoughts, words and deeds.  This teaching about accountability plays very heavily into the current debate over the role of religion in politics.   There has been a clear message to use integrity when dealing with matters of the state but not to ignore those same matters as being separate from one’s faith. 

 Hindus were very involved in Indian politics in the ancient and middle ages.  In modern times, India has attempted to balance both the religious and the secular.  Hindus in the U.S. have heretofore participated predominantly in professional fields and have remained a relatively passive group within American society.

  Only recently have they started to get involved in any political activity in an organized manner.  These activities first started as cultural and religious groups, mainly to allow themselves to practice religious activities amongst friends.  This led to the next stage of building temples in neighborhoods.

  Temples have begun to emerge all over the U.S. in the last fifteen years, and they have begun to be recognized as a community in America and have become more engaged in the larger society.  In l990, Dr. Ray Heimbeck, professor of Religious Studies at CWU,  was selected as distinguished professor.  His acceptance speech was “Religion in the 21st Century.”  He predicted, that based on the growth of minority religions nationwide, that by 2050 there will be both Hindu and Buddhist temples in Ellensburg. 

 Madhu Vedak, author of the article on the role of Hinduism in the U.S. says that the new generation of Hindus is getting more involved.  She is optimistic that in the next few years they will become a lot more visible.  Hindus, hand in hand with other religious leaders, she says, will lead to a more spiritually enlightened America. 

 Azizah Y. al-Hibri is the author of the article “Islam and the Concept of Democracy.”   She examines the Islamic system of government in light of five principles.  Beginning with: The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of the government and continuing, through the people’s choice of a head of state, and the people’s choice of a constitution.   She says that in Islam, laws derive their legitimacy from the divine will of the Prophet through God’s will.  And that seems to be more akin to a totalitarian system than a democratic one.

 She argues that the contrast between democratic government and Islamic government is superficial and that a closer look results in a different conclusion.   She says that the Qur’an is the core of the Muslim’s constitution.  It defines the very essence of the Muslim society for generations to come.  Just like in the United States where the shared values and beliefs are memorialized in the Constitution or the Magna Carta  which can be interpreted and supplemented, just as can be the Qur’an, to produce laws suitable to a certain epoch and society. 

 In summary, she says the Qu’ran was consented to by the Muslim people when the Islamic state was established.  As a result, it reflects not only Divine Law but also the will of these people to abide by such law.  This is in the same sense that the United States laws rest their legality on the consent of the American people.  The Islamic system of government is sufficiently flexible as to admit the most democratic structures. 

 Finally, Modern Buddhism Addresses Politics and Social Action.   An American Buddhist, troubled by the plight of the world, asked a Zen teacher, “There are so many urgent problems.  What should I do?”  The teacher replied.  “Take one thing and do it very deeply and carefully, and you will be doing everything at the same time.”  The Buddhist tradition has taken a new turn at the end of the twentieth century as Buddhists around the world seek to apply the fruits of contemplative life to social, political, and environmental issues.  This movement, known as “engaged Buddhism,” includes Asians, Westerners, monks, lay people, and even sympathetic non-Buddhists.

  Professor Kenneth Kraft is one of the foremost scholars on Buddhism in the United States.  The  publication  The Wheel of Engaged Buddhism; A New Map of the Path, is a series of essays and artwork that show how ancient Buddhist insights can be actualized in modern life. 

 In conclusion this issue of “Interfaith Insights” says that we need more enlightened beings in politics, ones representing the minority religions in the United States.  What does it mean to us, to our congregation?  It is suggested that at our local level we can seek out people of minority faith and encourage them to participate in local government.   We can support them as mentors, as teachers, as believers in the need for diversity among our elected officials.   Electing a president from a minority religion by 2020 may be only a dream, but unless such individuals begin now, at the local and State level, it cannot happen. 

This is our challenge as a liberal religious body, housed in what I choose to call the Interfaith Center of Ellensburg, to become active, to consider the benefits that come to our nation with the inclusion of several of the minority religions.  Of course, the nomination of  Joe Lieberman as Vice President has given hope that there will indeed be greater participation by people of differing religious beliefs.  This last campaign saw both candidates for the Presidency devoting an exceptionally large amount of time and rhetoric to the role of religion in public life and in their personal lives. 

The IFA has not always been thrilled with the substance of this dialogue, but Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, Executive Director of the IFA thinks the nation is at “a teachable moment” regarding the role of religion in the life of our nation.   For this reason we must protect and promote the precious principle of religious liberty.  All people must be free to practice the religion of their choice (or no religion at all).   He believes that the 2000 election will demonstrate the absence of a voting bloc and the presence of vast political diversity among religious people.  Real religious freedom, he says, guarantees religious and political pluralism among people of faith and goodwill. 

Please join with me in a short prayer, meditation, in closing.
Creator, Great Mystery, Spirit that is larger than own individually, but which makes up what we call the Collective Consciousness or Universe, containing the spirits of every living thing since the beginning of time, help us recognize what we individually and as a congregation of like-minded folks can do to help guarantee religious and political pluralism among people of faith and goodwill.

 Thank you for the words of Nelson Mandela from his l994 inaugural speech, 
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

So be it and Amen
 

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Congegation
                                                                               Top of Page

Sermon #6
Tolerance
November 12, 2000

My selection of Tolerance as the subject of my talk today came from three incidents that occurred within a few days or weeks of each other here in our valley.  The first two incidents were reported to the Coalition – First, a young man in a pickup drove by the Democratic headquarters repeatedly yelling out  “ Jew lover.”   Second, three different people reported  their outrage at a Black jockey  lawn ornament in a yard here in Ellensburg.  They said it was offensive and that this is 2000, we are expected to respect  diversity in our neighborhoods.

The third was not an incident reported to the Coalition.  It was a personal story shared at the Democratic women’s meeting by Nancy, a friend and colleague.  Her sister called her and asked her to accompany her to Oregon where her daughter was in Intensive Care, severely beaten by her husband.  Nancy said that the outrage she felt has made her an activist against Domestic Violence.  She invited a woman from the Domestic Violence office in Ellensburg to speak to our group.  She presented facts related to violence against women in our community.

 In each case, tolerance seemed to prevail.  The staff person at Democratic headquarters called 911 and spoke to an Ellensburg police officer.  He said that without the license number of the pickup they would not investigate.   A carefully written letter was sent to the occupant of the house with the lawn ornament.  There was little more that could be done in those two cases, but it was a wake-up call that racism and anti-Semitism is alive and well in our County. 

Our over-all outrage against domestic violence, racism, anti-Semitism is not adequately followed with action. Our reaction might more aptly be called tolerance.   I asked myself, “IS there a limit to tolerance? 

Dr. Peter Raible, minister of University Unitarian Church in Seattle for thirty-five years said that each of us, when we become ministers must decide for ourselves when tolerance is not appropriate action.  He said that his experience tells him that UU s overdo tolerance, that there are times when we should resist, should say “enough! become activists.

I went to World Scriptures for passages related to tolerance. (read marked portions of Introduction on p. 705) The next section is on the Pacifist ethic.  Every religion has writings extolling passivity.  They assume the principle of Cosmic Justice that will set things right and vindicate the victim’s passivity and they are all far more favorable toward an ideal society in which everyone has the responsibility to contribute to society in one way or another. 

Racism and anti-Semitism are wrong and we must speak out against the people who are perpetuating both in our community. I want to speak now domestic violence
It is obvious that Racism is hatred toward people of another race than one’s own and anti-Semitism as hatred toward Jews, and hatred toward homosexuals by heterosexuals, are all easier to explain than why husbands beat their wives and why men beat women. I say, the root cause is global Patriarchy. 

    World Scriptures has a section on “the good wife” and “the good husband.”  Every religion distinguishes between the roles of the husband and wife and in each of them there is the admonition to women to be subservient to their husbands. 

 Marcus Borg says…the image of God and the structure of society go together.  Historically, male images of God go with a male-dominated society.  The result is patriarchy, defined as a hierarchical social structure dominated by men.  Patriarchal politics, patriarchal religion, and the patriarchal family are all connected to the monarchical model of God.  God as a male monarch legitimates the domination of men over women.  As Mary Daly put it over two decades ago, when God is male, the male is God.

Marcus Borg wrote in The God We Never Knew  ”… the emergence of feminist theology seems to me to be the single most important development in theology in my lifetime.”

A few years ago Dr. Jennifer James, then a professor of Anthropology at UW spoke on campus.  She said that men do not understand Feminism.  They think that if women have power, they must lose theirs.  The perceived loss of power causes men to react similarly to other forms of grief over a loss.  First, there was widespread denial that men had power and women none.  When they realized that it was true, they went to the next stage of grief, anger. 

She said that every stage of grieving – denial, anger, acceptance, and rebuilding  will occur simultaneously.  Some men have always been at the final stage, genuinely shared power.  She said that until anger peaks we will see an increase in violence against women.  Consciously or subconsciously an angry man blames his own feelings on women in general or on one woman in particular and strikes out with the most prevalent and acceptable manner used by men in general, physical force. 

 Dr. James spoke here again a few years ago.  I had an opportunity to speak with her and asked her if domestic violence, men beating and killing women, was nearing the peak, when can we expect to see less violence.  She said, “no, it has not peaked and it continues to increase all over the nation.” 
I don’t know where we are at present, but as long as there are dozens of cases of violence toward women reported in our very small community, we must not stand by in silence.  The only behavior I acknowledge as a sin is one human being using power over another human being.

During the last 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in men and women working together, living together, as equals.  Both men and women are experiencing the benefits that have come from the work of Feminists in the sixties and seventies and for one hundred years before that.  I am very proud of my son and of the sons of my friends.  They were reared to respect women as equals and have no need or no desire to abuse women.  I know that even young men, the ages of my children 45 to 55 have told me they feel guilty every time patriarchy comes up. I regret that all men are affected because of the actions of a few and I believe that it is a relatively very small percentage of men who continue to take out their anger on women.

I say that there is a limit to tolerance - perpetrators must be brought to justice.  When I bring all of this to our community and consider the close relationships we have with each other, I recognize the difficulties associated with being activists.  In her book Killers of the Dream, Lillian Smith says that when she reached out for help and support, to overcome evil with good, that she accepted the lack of support from some individuals or groups, but that when liberal groups which she expected to stand up, only stood by and did nothing, she felt betrayed.  Lillian Smith was an activist during the Civil Rights movement and before, an Afro-American, born in the 1800’s and died in l966. 

 Can we, the most liberal religious group in this valley, stand back in the name of tolerance and do nothing? Would I as an individual, write a letter to be published in the Daily Record to express my outrage at the violence, the racism, the anti-Semitism.  No, I believe I would not.  I would not ask you to put your name or your person out in protest.   There is a way we can declare our outrage and speak against the causes of violence in our community. 

 The Southern Poverty Law Center speaks up for the people and groups around the nation, in kindness, compassion and love.  But, they did not hesitate to sue the Aryan Nation.  They said, “Enough!”  You must be punished in the only way that will have meaning to you, to make you penniless and hopefully, take away your power.  You are unwelcome here and we will not let you rest until you are brought to justice.  So, too, can we, in our community, through the Coalition for Human Rights speak up.  The Mission statement includes these words:

…we resolve to oppose and combat injustice, brutality, and affronts to human dignity, regardless of the status of the victim.  We will continue to work until all people are recognized as fully human, entitled to the basic rights promised in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States…We will strive to create within our local community, our nation, and our world, a community of peace, harmony, and social justice.  We will use all legitimate means to accomplish these ends, including advocacy, education, political action, and cooperative action with others.
  It goes on to say “Our Coalition aims at bringing together individuals and members o groups already heavily committed to justice and equality for all person. We do not intend to duplicate their efforts, but rather to strengthen the resolve, expand the vision, and extend the effectiveness of each of the single issue groups by bringing them together with other committed persons to create and to promote a wholistic vision of an inclusive, loving, and peaceful community in Ellensburg and Kittitas County.

 In conclusion, I urge this congregation to speak up, to speak out, to say “enough!”  As an affiliate member of the Kittitas County Coalition for Human Rights, with a representative on the Executive Board, we can join with other groups and organizations and through the Coalition express our outrage and our willingness to work cooperatively to promote an inclusive, loving, and peaceful community in Ellensburg and Kittitas County.
 
 

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Congegation
                                                                               Top of Page

Sermon #5
Our Unitarian Universalist Heritage
October 22, 2000

Earl Norse Wilbur, author of A History of Unitarianism.  wrote, in l925, “Our religious faith is a heritage.  We did not form it independently for ourselves.  Many of us did not even choose it, but instead received it as a precious legacy, bequeathed to us by those who have cherished it before us.  If it is to amount to anything vital, it should include at least these three elements: 

  -  A profound conviction on some of the greatest subjects of thought, 
  -  A sacred personal experience hallowing the deepest part of our lives
  -  A way of living as children of God”

He goes on to say that none of these things wholly originated with ourselves; for to no small extent our convictions were implanted in us, our experiences were cultivated within us, and our way of life was trained into us, by others. 

In contrast, he says that the religion of some people, seems to be an inheritance and little else, a tradition handed down to them by others, rather than a matter of personal conviction, experience, or principle. Inasmuch as our religion has come down to us from the past, we must, if we would appreciate anything like its full meaning, know its past history

 Both the Unitarian and the Universalist churches had their origins as free and progressive movements in the Christian church.  These movements had their beginnings only a few years later than those of Protestantism itself. 
Both were well established for more than two centuries before it taking form in England, from which came the early leaders to America in the 17th century.

I will concentrate on three ancestors and movements associated with them– Arius, Servetus, and Socinus, not because they formed churches after which Unitarian Universalist Churches were modeled, but because they help to give us a sense of why we chose this congregation in Ellensburg with which to affiliate, as a member or  in what ever way suits us.

         It is estimated that at least 85% of Unitarian Universalists have come out of another faith background, our faith of origin.  For most of us it was a Christian church.  Each of us has our own very personal story of first leaving our church and then “finding” the UU church.  Learning its history comes some time later. 

 Because we come to UU ism for such personal reasons, it is next to impossible to explain the attraction and/or to explain to another what UU s believe, the origin of the church and on and on.  Outsiders know so little about the faith tradition that they are quick to judge.  Unless we know something of its history we likely tell others only what we as a congregation don’t believe.

 Both Unitarian and Universalists churches had their origins as free and progressive movements in the Christian church.  Unitarians trace their beginning to Arius , a Greek Theologian, born about 250 A.D.,  Universalists to Origen , a Greek Christian Philosopher. 

Priest Arius represented the Arian movement at the Council of Nicea, convened by Emperor Constantine in 325 a.d. for the sole purpose of uniting all Christians into one theology and to establish a  State church.  Arius dissented over the main theological issue.   He did not believe that Jesus became God.  History tells us that the Priests argued for so long without agreement on that one issue, that Constantine himself voted and broke the tie, in favor of three Gods, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. 

 Origen dissented, not at the same Council, regarding salvation.  He contended that there is Universal Salvation, that a loving God would never condemn his own creations to eternal damnation.  Both Arius and Origen believed in the literal interpretation of the Scriptures, which say that there is only one God and that we are saved by Grace, a gift from God.

 Arianism, which was a minor movement at the time of the Council,  became  dominant and was for a time the official religion of the whole Empire.  Emperor Theodosius who ruled between 392 and 395 decreed that all nations in the Empire should adhere to the orthodox belief in the Trinity.   He decreed that all subjects believe the one divinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, of majesty co-equal, in the Holy Trinity.  We will that those that embrace this creed be called Catholic Christians.  We brand all the senseless followers of other religions by the infamous name of heretics.

In the fifth century their doctrine and that creed were incorporated into the Roman law and the door was closed to freedom of belief or teaching on these subjects.  Appeal must no longer be to reason, but only to tradition.  Tolerance was a sin.  Heresy was a crime to be punished at the stake.

In the 16th century the Renaissance roused peoples’ minds so fresh inquiry in every field of thought and many questions in religion were re-opened.
Martin Luther posted his theses at Wittenberg in 1517, beginning the Protestant Reformation.

 In 1531, Michael Servetus, a Spanish born theologian and physician and prolific writer called for a return to the early Christian Church roots in all areas of theology and lifestyle. 

He was a strong biblical literalist.   He understood that the Bible explained Jesus as an actual human.  He was also The Son of God.  He accepted the supernatural conception. He said that Jesus was God—but in a different sense than God The Father.  The Holy Spirit was not a divine being—but rather an “activity or power of God working in people, 

I have chosen to include the life  Michael Servetus as one of three UU ancestors.  There are hundreds of men and women from which I could have chosen, but the principles that UU s hold might have come most directly from Servetus.  He was first and foremost, a dissenter and resistor in a time when religious power and political power worked in concert to control the lives of the masses.  Whether or not we believe today that Servetus was right in his theology or even in his tactics, we must believe that he had a right to hold his own beliefs and argue them publicly. 

 Wilbur writes that Servetus was a narcissistic, arrogant zealot who almost deserved what he got.  I have to wonder if Servetus’ passion was appropriate precisely because the system he was resisting was so powerful.  How could anyone but a zealot stand up against tyrants that held the power to dictate belief?  The power to dictate what is “right belief” is nearly absolute power.  Only the most brash, most obstinate, and most dedicated person could resist such power.  Servetus himself may not have been polite or even proper, but even so, he stands as a symbol of resistance to the kind of political oligarchy that controls not only behavior, but also belief.  We may not like the things he said or the way he said them, but if we are to live up to our UU principle of a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” we must claim Servetus as our own.

  His imprisonment, trial without representation, and death made him a martyr for the sake of freedom of thought and belief.  A dissenter should not have to be popular and polite to earn the right to speak his/her mind.  Servetus, rude and overbearing as he may have been, deserves to be remembered for his sacrifice, if not for his theology.

In the history there are countless people and several movements that make up the  story of Unitarian and Universalism.  The Anabaptists are a movement to which Quakers, Mennonites, possibly Amish and others trace their roots.  Another movement was Antitrinitarianism.   Faustus Socinus, was an Antitrinitarian.  He had a gift for organization.  He organized their beliefs into a consistent system.  For this he was highly esteemed by both Catholics and Protestants.  Much of he reasoning for systematic thought was contained in his book On The Authority of Holy Scriptures. 

 A later book, On Christ the Savior, caused such hatred to flame up, that it is recorded  a mob of students broke into the house where he lay ill in bed, sacked it, dragged him half-naked through the streets, burned his books and manuscripts, and then  threatened to burn him too unless he would recant .  To which he calmly declared, “What I have been, that I am, and by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ shall be till my last breath.”  He was rescued at the last minute by Catholic professors.  I choose to believe they were Jesuits.

 Who was this man who was such a threat and what did he contribute to UU today?  First, he used reason to interpret the scriptures.  He said that Jesus didn’t die for our sins, instead Jesus showed us how to live so that we could have salvation. 

He was gifted and talented and drew gifted and talented scholars to him, so many that the schools and churches were always full.  I is written that his followers held a disproportionate number of public offices, even to one who sat upon the throne of Russia.  Socinians were intellectually the most advanced, cultivated, and talented of Polish dissidents.

 Socinius said he didn’t want to form a sect or a church.  He taught reason and the use of one’s intellect in studying the scriptures. He urged his followers to go to churches that were already formed.  Unfortunately none of the other churches wanted them. 

The Socinians sent their brightest, who had connections in far away places, to start new congregations.  What strikes me as most significant about Faustus Socinus was that he knew what he believed, he was able to state it clearly verbally and in his writings.  He was highly creative and imaginative in his approach.  He hung out with like-minded folks.  He was gentle in his reasoning.   He dared to stand tall as a dissident and as a leader.

How are Servetus’s and Socinus’s legacies relevant to UU today?  Whether it is their historical influence, or whether we simply relate to them as people like ourselves.  There are many of us and those around us willing to stick their necks out, to state their views.    Many UU s voice their opinions in public and write letters. 

 I have barely skimmed the surface of the long history of the dissenters who came before us and eventually formed the Unitarian and Universalist Church.  I will conclude with a letter written about a year ago to the BSA, by John Beurhens, President of the UUA. He speaks for all UU s.

  This letter tells me that the legacy of the three ancestors I spoke of today continues through our  commitment to worth, dignity, freedom and reason, which motivates us and drives us to push for fairness, justice. 

Our ancestors did not give us a church, a formula, a creed, a doctrine.  Their lives, committed to reason, to questioning , and to maintaining our own personal beliefs is the legacy, the gift  they gave to us.  So Be It. Amen.
 

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Congegation
                                                                               Top of Page

Sermon #4
CRAMMING EARTH WITH HEAVEN 
April 17, 2000 

 The title of my talk is from  EARTH CRAMMED WITH HEAVEN, by Elizabeth Dryer, a textbook for one of my classes at Seattle University, School of Theology.  It was written for Catholic laity, who after Vatican II in l966 were recognized for the first time as having a significant place in the ministry.  Before that ministry was given to individuals through “grace”, sacraments administered by a Priest.  We  know that only a few have been recognized as Saints. 
 Three general themes run throughout the book, Creating heaven on earth through sharing our gifts, recognizing our own spirituality, and forming community.  The same quarter I had this textbook in one class,  I was taking Christian Scriptures, in which we were asked to take familiar stories from the teachings of Jesus and rewrite them - using our imagination and creativity to pull out what was the a more likely interpretation than the one we had been taught as children.  I re-wrote  Lydia, a slave girl mentioned in the story of  Paul and Silas in Prison.  Today I will read the story of “Feeding the Five Thousand,” as recorded in the sixth chapter of Mark and then share a more likely interpretation, written by Marcus Borg in Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time. 
 We do not have to change our daily activities in order to cram earth with heaven.  We don’t have to become Saints.  The potential for sainthood is located in the depth and intentionality of ordinary living.   It is from sharing our gifts. 
 Take a moment right now and turn to the person next to  you and share what gift you give to the community in which you live, work, or worship.  It may be a talent, a value or values you hold, a way of interacting, however you see yourself. We will come back to your gift later in my talk. 
 First, I will speak of our own spirituality and of  community.  In the words of Thiellard de Chardin,  “We are spiritual beings walking around in human bodies.”  The result of our spiritual work, is creation of heaven on earth.  The more we do, in community, the more crammed earth will become with heaven. 
  There is no greater obstacle to the spiritual life than thinking that the Divine Spirit, God, Creator is far away. We are divine beings.  Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “We are God stuff - part and parcel of God.”   I rememer one of my first teachings from my Auntie.  She was an accepting, non-judgmental woman and I learned as I matured what she meant when she said, “Some people are so heavenly bent, they are no earthly good.”  It seemed out of character for her, and she must have felt strongly that some people missed the point of being a Christian, the faith of my family. 

 Thinking that the Divine is “out there”  can give a person a false sense of unworthiness, or that the height of holiness is for someone else.   As a result individuals may become the last persons in the world  whom they would consider worthy of sainthood.   Many would not even recognize that they have gifts to share. 

  I will now read, from the Christian scriptures,  the sixth chapter of Mark verses 30 through 44, which  I expect most if not all of you have heard.  It is often referred to as the story of the “loaves and fishes, “ or of “feeding the five thousand.”    I will read from the new revised standard version published in l989, one of the latest versions with recent interpretations included as postscripts - none of which changes the story very much from the most popular version, The King James Version published in 1611. 

  The way this story is told, it can be interpreted as Jesus miraculously turning five loaves of bread and two fish into enough food to feed 5,000 people.  What could we possibly learn from that to help us in our daily lives?   It sounds more like a tale of a magician.  That interpretation, one, that focuses on a supernatural Jesus, does not make the story useful to ordinary people wanting  to use their gifts to “cram earth with heaven” to make “heaven on earth.”  In fact, that interpretation can easily lead us to shirk our human responsibility for sharing our gifts. 

 It doesn’t take a huge imagination to find the more likely teaching. 

 This is a story about sharing gifts in community, about cramming earth with heaven.  The disciples return to Jesus to tell him there is a throng of people around them. They have had a long day and would just as soon the crowd would leave, go to town, get dinner and not return!  In this story, Jesus’ teaching begins with teaching his disciples about sharing and also about  compassion.  Compassion is a quality, a spiritual gift.  Jesus taught  from his own life, shared one of his own gifts, compassion.  He does not teach to prove himself, nor does he teach what the crowd wants to hear.  Marcus Borg, a Quaker, in his book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, said that Jesus was probably thought of as a Spirit man. In his time, that is the term used to identify men, and I am sure women, who lived from their Spirit, who were so spiritual that they changed the lives of people with whom they worked and lived.  They used their gifts for the good of the community. 

 In this story of Jesus, the disciples follow his instructions to see how many loaves and fish they have.  The inventory is not reassuring!  Jesus does not hesitate.  He gathers the crowd into small groups and seats them on the grass.  He takes the loaves and fish and blesses them, he breaks them into pieces and give them to the disciples for his and their dinner and then offers to share what they have with the crowd. 

 If we are expected to believe that Jesus  made the bread multiply, then what about Jesus refusing to make it multiply in the story about his confrontation with the devil?  It seems unlikely that Jesus would sacrifice his integrity, another spiritual gift, by doing tricks here on the lakeshore when he fought so hard to preserve his integrity against the devil’s taunts in the desert. 

 Let’s go back to the more likely interpretation, first, Jesus divides the crowd into “companies” of hundreds and fifties and commands them all to sit down upon the green grass.  His miracle begins with the simple act of gathering the faceless crowd into small face-to-face communities.  We can imagine what happened among the people.  Friends and neighbors spot each other.  People greet and embrace, full of joy of recognition and the excitement of the event.  Words are exchanged about this phenomenon called Jesus and about the strange events surrounding his life.  The crowd is replaced by small communities.  True abundance resides in the simple experience of people being present to one another sharing their gifts. 

 Jesus seems to be trying to get the disciples to understand that they have a gift to give the crowd that does not depend upon stockpiles of food or commercial transactions.  It does not say that the loaves and fish magically multiplied by the time they left Jesus hands.  What may have happened instead is that Jesus and the disciples simply modeled the act of sharing by giving thanks for what little they  had and offering it to any who wanted it. 

 As this happened, perhaps the people gathered in the small groups realized that they, too, had food they could share with one another.  Taking a small or large bag of food when we go away from home is common today and was even more common in ancient times.  Perhaps they found themselves moved to emulate the generosity of Jesus and the disciples rather than hoard their resources.  In fact, it might have been hard to do otherwise, sitting there on the grass in a circle of family and friends, and neighbors. watching this beleaguered little band of Jesus’ followers giving away their own meager rations. 

 The story does not claim that everyone walked away from the dinner with a full belly.  It simply says, “And they all ate and were satisfied.”  Here it seems is a true miracle; that everyone in a group of two or more, let alone five thousand, should end up satisfied. 

 The crowd had heard his teaching, had experienced the excitement of being in a crowd of seekers and the fulfillment of being clustered into small communities that allowed for mutual caring and sharing of gifts.  They had shared a meal with one another. 

 Jesus had addressed them as whole persons, honored them at every level of authentic human need.  Whenever that happens, scarcity is turned into abundance and even a few scraps of fish and bread can seem like a banquet spread before us. 

 When Jesus takes the five loaves and two fish and looks to heaven and blesses them, he reveals at least two convictions that empower his action.   First, he is thankful for the food, acknowledging that he and the others depend on gifts beyond their own making, acknowledging that other gifts have in fact been given and shared. 

 Jesus, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other leaders, both women and men have empowered communities to act, to share their gifts.  As we follow in the footsteps of those who shared their gifts within the community and who created communities by sharing, following the example of Jesus, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and people in our own communities and families,  we are surely cramming earth with heaven. 

 Now for a minute or two, put yourself into the story - into the role of Jesus, of one of the disciples, of a person in the crowd.  Use your creative imagination.  The crowd was not Christians.  They were a cross-section, Jews, gentiles, pagan, Gnostics, probably mostly women and children, and probably from servant and poor class.  Imagine the setting, on a grassy  place by the lake, toward evening.  They had all had a full day’s work, maybe carrying their lunch buckets on their way home.  They heard that Jesus was in town and took this opportunity to hear and see him. 

 Now share with another person, or with the  group near you, who you are in the story and what gifts  you share. 

 Let us spend  a moment in meditation.  Thank the Great Mystery, the Giver of gifts, for our own gifts and for all the gifts we receive from others.   I pray that each of you will be richly blessed as you continue on your spiritual journey sharing your gifts - cramming earth with heaven.  So Be It and Amen. 
 
 

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Congegation
                                                                               Top of Page

Sermon #3
EASTERING 
April 20, 2000 
Maundy Thursday 

 I am indebted to Rev. Scott Alexander, a prominent Unitarian Universalist minister, pastor at Riverside Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, for giving to me, a new way to think about Easter and for sharing two stories from the lives of people in his congregation. 

 Easter is the beginning of the Christian church.  All over America Christian churches are full to overflowing on Easter.   Although many people no longer find the same meaning in Easter as Christians do, they may also fail to find any spiritually satisfying meaning in Easter.  Instead, some simply see, a neo-pagan lunar celebration for the return of daffodils, bluebirds, and forsythia following the long winter! 

 In this often tough and tragic world, I seek a meaning for Easter that will make a sustaining difference in my  complex life, that will last longer in my heart than a daffodil.  So what Easter meaning can make a real and transforming difference?  Rev. Alexander  wrote. “Easter is a decision of the human heart, to live fully, recklessly, courageously, even in the face of death and despair itself.” 

 It doesn’t require brightly-dyed eggs or chocolate bunnies, or theological adherence to the idea of personal immortality.  Easter requires something deep inside me and inside you, a saving impulse of human hopefulness and defiance.  Easter requires a stubborn, reckless, and affirming heart. 

 Easter is not some static doctrinal noun describing ancient spiritual events  that are the sole purview of orthodox Christians.  Easter is a verb, an active everyday verb, “to Easter,” that describes hearts that refuse to submit to all the very real crucifixions of this creation in which we find ourselves. 

 We must acknowledge the reality of crucifixion (the suffering and dying of innocent people) if Easter is to be spiritually meaningful.  Good Friday is real - terrible, painfully real.  “Dear God, why hast thou forsaken me?” is not only the cry of Jesus suffering on the cross.  The same cry is heard amidst the pain and meaninglessness of life, struggling to find life and meaning.  Easter is the verb that describes a human being choosing to live - “plotting the resurrection” even as death and negation are near. 

 Rev. Alexander refers to the final stanza of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” in which Hopkins uses Easter as a verb.  The poem, tells of the tragic drowning death of five nuns.  Hopkins depicts the reviving, saving, and healing power of God as a verb: 

 Let God easter in us, 
 be a dayspring to the dimness of us, 
 be a crimson-crested East. 

 Easter is the process of a human being moving against death, moving against meaninglessness, isolation, and despair. 

 If Easter is a verb then it is accessible to each and every one of us.        It describes a life-saving decision that can happen within us in moments of life crisis.  I easter.  You easter.  We easter together, by means of the resurrections of the spirit.  We easter, every time we choose to live with color, courage, and purpose, in this world’s very very real losses and deaths.  Easter is the judgment we make for life over death.

 Scott tells the story of an ordinary person, Donna, an active member of a UU church where he was a minister.  Donna was a bit erratic, he says, a hypochondriac, absolutely terrified of AIDS/HIV and of those affected by it. 

 One afternoon she was attending an elegant backyard brunch, where two of the men present were known to be infected with AIDS/HIV.   As soon as she heard this, Donna said, in a panic, that she had to leave immediately because “the retroviruses in the air are making me deathly ill.”  Her irrational fear of AIDS, which is not an airborne virus, and is impossible to catch from casual contact, kept her isolated and alienated from those struggling to live with the disease.  She said that the AIDS epidemic was one human crisis she would simply have to sit out. 

 But then her good friend Tony suddenly became gravely ill with AIDS.  She turned her heart around.  Within a few short weeks, Donna somehow was able to make the decision to set aside her fears and avoidance, and over the many months of his painful decline, she progressively became Tony’s nurse, chauffeur, companion, and surrogate mother all rolled up into one. 

 Toward the end, when Tony’s disease-ravaged body hurt so badly he could hardly speak or turn over in bed, Donna (once afraid of AIDS) expressed her compassion and love for her friend the only way she knew.  To bring him physical warmth and emotional comfort she would calmly climb onto his bed, and tenderly curve her body up against what was left of his, Donna would hold, simply hold him for hours. 

 Donna, you see was eastering - making her decision in the prolonged Good Friday of Tony’s dying, for life, love and relationship.  When his death finally came much was lost, much had to be grieved.  But amidst all the death there was a miraculous, bright new crocus in the garden of Donna’s heart. 

 Scott tells another story to illustrate eastering.  Carol and Walter, were husband and wife who teach us about the holiness of eastering.  Walter was a once a brilliant and engaging scientist, husband, and father.  His mind and body were being ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease.  One day, in the convalescent center Walter lay dying, he could not be roused.  This once-lively man, was in a deepening coma. 

 None of the intellectual, emotional or spiritual, interchange which Carol had for so many years enjoyed with her husband was possible... And so she affirmed his life and her love for him the only way she could. She silently reached over to the bedstand drawer, took out his battered old silver-handled hairbrush, and began stroking his gray and matted hair.  With total engagement and incredible care, she stroked his hair.  Again and again, she stroked it in full absorbed silence. 

 It was a Good Friday moment sad, tragic, depressing.  It was a perfect and intimate moment of love.  Carol, was eastering.  Facing one of the worst nightmares, she refused to resign herself to the death and senselessness that was enveloping her beloved husband.  With each stroke of the hairbrush she was rolling the rock away from in front of the tomb. 

 Carol was bravely plotting the resurrection.  Did her eastering make a difference?  Did her wordless communion with the old silver hairbrush change things?  Yes.  It did.  Scott said, “Life filled that deathbed room.  Life won its gentle victory.” 

 The crucifixions, deaths, and losses faced by our far flung and varied churches at Easter are many and real and so are our easterings.  Let’s think of a few. 

 There is the alcoholic who rediscovers freedom and hope in sobriety,

 Men and women  uncover new purpose and joy as they control depression, 

 and the paraplegic, who from a wheel chair, builds self-worth and identity by serving others in need, 

 An ex-prisoner who starts over on the “outside” with a new job and a fresh determination to be a responsible, law-abiding and productive citizen - on and on our stories of courage go. 

 I know Easter is true because of all the eastering that is going on in our everyday, vulnerable lives.  I know Easter is true because you and I are doing and daring the heart work necessary to roll all sorts of rocks away from the traps and tombs in which we find ourselves.

 And so Easter is not a fixed, final Christian noun from which many  feel excluded.  It is a verb, a courageous way of human being. Neither, is  Easter  a single day of bunnies, bonnets, and bluebirds, it is rather a daily decision, a decision that human hearts can make in the face of this world’s many crucifixions, a decision for life and love, possibility, and purpose. 

 Though we often wish it were otherwise, Good Friday is true, terrible true.  But the good news of this season is that Easter is also true - powerfully and preciously true. 

 So, I pray with you that  we go ahead, each and everyone of us, -choose to do some eastering.  No matter what befalls, afflicts, limits, pains, or confounds us.  Roll that stubborn rock away from whatever entombs our hearts.  Just roll it away!  Nobody else can or will do it, others have done it, Donna, with her warm body and Carol with the battered old hairbrush and all of us when we make the decision to live more fully and fearlessly. 

 No matter what entombs or constricts your heart, know that Easter is true, for you are free to do some eastering.  For me, Easter has come and my heart whispers Hallelujah and Amen! 
 

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                United Methodist Church
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Sermon #2
SPIRITUALITY 
December 19, l999

A few weeks ago I spoke  on the beliefs of UUs. I began with: 

 - we are spiritual seekers, attentive to life and open to its possibilities, - we engage in self-discovery to discover our own true selves, 
 - we have a heritage that is rich and to which we return for affirmation, 
 - we have a loving God who would not countenance eternal damnation, hence we believe in universal Salvation, 
 - we believe every human being can directly receive divine inspiration, and 
 - we are serious spiritual pilgrims. 

The last one is what I will concentrate on today. 

  What does it mean to be a spiritual pilgrim?  Last week, Cynthia said the difference between a tourist and a pilgrim is that a tourist takes pictures and a  pilgrim moves chairs and measures a labyrinth  inlay in a cathedral.  Why? to be able to go build a labyrinth of ones own.  Doing doesn’t stop with the measuring. 

 Pilgrims are active seekers. We seek to find or to affirm our own  spirituality, to define, to put it to use. We are on individual personal spiritual journeys.  We do not look to any person or religion to tell us what to believe. 

 Recently, while I was waiting to be seen by my doctor, I read an article in a women’s magazine, “Mommy, do you believe in God?”  The first paragraph reads: “Reality hit one fine spring day after church, when my then five-year-old daughter, Anna, proudly showed me the little mirror she had made in Sunday school.  “See it says ‘Jesus loves me’ on the other side.”  Unexpectedly, I flashed back to my own early conviction, instilled by my atheistic parents, that “Jesus loves me” was for misinformed people who stood on street corners shouting about Judgment Day.” 

   The author, putting together the stories she had collected with her own experience, said that she was Mormon on one side and vaguely Protestant on the other, she’d had no religious training.  Her husband had been a Lutheran altar boy but gave it up in his teens, but that they had decided to try church again, but what would they say when their daughter asked them about God - when they weren’t sure themselves. 

 The article went on to tell the stories of parents returning to church, to begin their spiritual journeys with their own children.  Some were returning to  Judaism, Protestants to  Presbyterian,  United Methodist, and Lutheran churches.  Two messages in the article were: 

 (1) that we should not  practice religion ‘for the children’ if it involves something the parents don’t believe, 
 (2) that parents can’t expect children to have much of a religious life if they simply ship the kids off for formal instruction and don’t take part in the religion themselves. 

 Probably most of us  recall that our own spiritual teachings were connected to a particular church.  If we believe in self-discovery - to discover our own true selves, what is a spiritual pilgrim seeking?  Are we separating our spirituality and our Self?  Do we tack on religion or add spirituality? 

 An article in the Dec. 5,  Yakima Herald “Thirsting for Answers and Spirituality” grabbed me.  I knew that Self help and spirituality books are everywhere and that people are searching for answers about life. The people interviewed for the Yakima Herald  said that their shifting spiritual beliefs have affected their outlooks on all of life.  One said that spiritual thirsting is a backlash to the sterile, scientific thinking of the past few decades.  Death was a significant case in point.  Instead of being left to the morticians and funeral parlors, it can be a sacred moment.  Family members no longer want to be shielded from its reality.  As in the past, certainly within my own memory and experience, people are dying in their own rooms, with loved ones and familiar objects nearby.  Is this a new dimension of spirituality, or a return to spirituality?  Or is it simply an expression of who we really are? 

 Churches are changing their approach as more and more people become spiritual seekers.  Dress codes are more casual, emphasis is lighter on judgment and heavier on help.  A minister quoted in the Yakima Herald  article  said “We aren’t good at answering spiritual questions.  We’re good at laying down the law.   Another said that the path to true enlightenment - which I equate with spirituality -  hinges on diversity,  that one set of spiritual beliefs may not be universal and that churches are reaching beyond their own denomination’s beliefs to other religions to explain spirituality. 

  I’ve known Effie Cedarberry Skinner for several years.  She was also quoted in the article as saying, “Spirituality is the uniqueness of the individual.”  Yes! and Amen! I replied when I read it. 

 Spirituality, as a topic, drew be back to my active teaching years.  Since my students were always teachers in training or in-service teachers, I used Maslow’s hierarchy of need as a teaching  tool.  The  highest point on the pyramid is Self-Actualization.  The lowest level is the need for the basics, food, clothing, and shelter.  Above them the need for love and to love, for safety and security.  I continued to use it as a tool even after I quit stressing it because I had witnessed people of all walks of life knowing who they really were, self-actualized and authentic with barely their basic needs having been met.  I knew that one could have enlightenment at any level of need. 

 Spirituality is so closely associated with Self-Actualization and Creativity that I searched for and found one of my old “friends,” Eric Fromm.  I want to read passage written by him in l959, but first I want to take you back in my life - to my generation - in the late fifties. 

 When I read Eric Fromm’s words again, I felt that I had come full circle.  My generation by the end of the 50’s had come through the depression, WWII, and had realized a dream that we could not have even imagined when we graduated from high school between l935 and 1940.  We had the G.I. Bill and were able to finish up to four years of college at Government expense.  We got everything; pencils, notebooks, tuition, fees, plus money enough for rent and food.  We were able to enter our professional lives and had financial security and were buying everything in sight, a house in the suburbs, new furniture, plastic things galore, a new car. 

 Ninety percent of my generation belonged to a church.  During the depression it was our security.   My  social life was almost entirely within my church.  Almost all of my friends were from the Baptist Youth Fellowship or from the comparable groups in other Protestant churches. 

 Our relationships were at least temporarily halted by WWII.  We married during or shortly after the war and it was not long before our lives were changing.   By the time our children had reached high school, we had begun to leave the church.  In my own family, I insisted our children attend Sunday School, at least, through high school.  I went with them, as a Sunday School teacher or superintendent.  By the time our two youngest children were in junior high school, I was bribing them to go.  They put their skis in the car and between Sunday School and Church, I would run them to the bus that carried them to the ski slopes. 

 Our children’s generation had the lowest percentage of church membership in our history - only about twenty-five percent!   Now, our grandchildren, raised by that generation have children who are asking, “Mommy, do you believe in God?” 

 My observation is that we have gone a complete cycle in  three generations and for a very different reason.  Where we were part of a global depression  who went to relative wealth following a world war. We were without technology as we know it today and our grandchildren and great grandchildren because of technology have gone straight from high school into five figure salaries and some with less than college degrees are earning six figure salaries.  Because of what is happening through technology we have an economy that is booming and people are searching for their own Spirituality. 

 I can’t identify with the new wealth.  No one in my family is making a six figure annual salary.  I can come to the current search for spirituality through my own experiences thirty-years ago, when I first joined the university faculty. 

  Maslow with self-actualization, Eric Fromm with creativity were responding to what they saw happening to children in our schools and to our teacher education programs.  My generation had gone from John Dewey and experience learning and teaching to Skinner and Behavioral Modification and other very structured methods. 

  I wrote the courses and then taught “Creative Teaching” and “Creativity” to hundreds of  in-service teachers. I saw the lives of students changed as they came to their own Knowing.  I soon  realized that what I was teaching was creative living.  Neither I nor my students separated  Way of Life from  way of teaching. 

 Now the words from philosopher and psychologist Eric Fromm: 
(I took the liberty of making his language inclusive) 

  People are always torn between the wish to regress to the  womb and the  wish to be fully born.  Every act of birth requires the courage to let go of  something, to let go of the womb, to let go of the breast, to let go of the lap, to  let go of the hand, to let go eventually of all certainties, and to rely only upon one  thing:  one’s own powers to be aware and to respond; that is, one’s own creativity.   To be  creative (or spiritual) means to consider the whole process of life as a  process of birth, and not to take any state of life as a final stage.  Most people die  before they are fully born.  Creativeness  means to be born  before one dies. 

  The willingness to let go of all “certainties” and illusions -  requires  courage and faith.  Courage to let go of certainties, courage to be different and to  stand isolation; courage as the Bible puts it in the story of Abraham, to leave one’s  own land and family and to go to a land yet unknown.  Courage to be concerned  with nothing but the truth, the truth not only in thought but in one’s feelings as  well.  This courage is possible only on the basis of faith.  Faith not in the sense in  which the word is often used today, as a belief in some idea which  cannot be  proved scientifically or rationally, but faith in the meaning  which it has in the  Old Testament, where the word for faith (Emuna) means certainty; to be certain of  the reality of one’s own experience in thought and in feeling, to be able to trust it,  to rely on it, this is faith. Without courage and faith, creativity is impossible, and hence the understanding and cultivation of courage and faith are  indispensable conditions for the development of ones creativity. 

 Yes, to me Creativity and Spirituality are synonymous.  When I was teaching Creative Teaching  I was asking teachers to be born again to their inner selves to their Spirituality.   Reaching ones spirituality, becoming self-actualized, developing the creative attitude, and  becoming aware of ones inner life and feelings, ones encounter with Spirit, with Self  is a profoundly personal process.  There is no easy technique or method that can be copied from others. 

          An article in Mature Outlook - a magazine for “over 50’s” tells of people searching for what is in within themselves and finding it when they attuned with nature.  The author asked  five individuals to reflect on their personal spiritual journeys and how their faith has changed over the years. One individual shared that she was raised in Holland, went to Catholic schools and now is a Unitarian Universalist. She has had four recurrences of cancer.  She said that she could see herself as a victim, but that she sees the design, the wonder of creation, in every breath she takes. She responds through prayer and meditation, through thinking for herself and having an ongoing dialogue with God. She said she is not being judged by God, rather, she is becoming more and more authentic. 

           In the same article, one woman described herself as  a “convinced Quaker.” She said that spirituality is about listening for what makes life meaningful and then acting upon what she hears - she listens to the voice within.  She believes that the only hands God has are our hands. 

 Others shared that through their spiritual journeys they have come to  have a strong sense of the divine within nature, and through their own human awareness, that God is not only within this world but throughout the universe.  A Jewish respondent said that the “life of the universe,”  is a Hebrew synonym for God,  and  that if one is attuned, nature will communicate its divinity. 

 Yes, we are part of nature, of the natural order.  As Rev. Bill Houff says , we have infinity in our hands. 
 Spirituality is unique to each person, is found in doing, is the Human Experience.  It is beyond the senses, is that which we share in love and  understanding.  It is our individual expressions of love, truth, right action, nonviolence.  It is our unselfish love for humanity. 
 I  have examined my own life through my study and through my years of teaching.  For me Buddha and Enlightenment, Creativity, Self-Actualization, and  Spirituality are all related, even synonymous and my prayer, my hope for each of you is that you have found who you really are. 

 Truly, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” 

 Where is your spiritual pilgrimage taking you?    Is there a time when we will no longer be spiritual pilgrims?  Or, are we, as is the universe, still being created?   I believe that is the way the Great Spirit intended it at creation and the way it will always be.   So Be It - Amen 
 

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Congegation
                                                                               Top of Page

Sermon #1 
GOOD NEWS 
November 21, l999

 The Good News is that  Unitarian Universalists have beliefs.  How often are we asked who we are and what do we believe?  For several years it was easier for me to begin with what I don’t believe, but relating specifically what I believe was not easy. 

So, in a few words,  what can we say when someone asks us what we believe? 
 -We believe in Universal Salvation 
       -We believe in Miracles 
-We believe the Trinity is one interpretation of    Christianity, but not the only one 
-We believe every human being can directly receive divine inspiration 

If, the person who asked the question is still with us, we can tell them much more.  It’s the details that I want to share briefly today. 

 All of the great religions have  procedures by which one may grow spiritually.  We have four paths we use in our spiritual practice 
(1)  The path of spiritual discipline; 
(2)  The  path of knowledge, 
(3)  The Path of celebration or devotion; and 
(4)  The Path of witness and action. 

   Almost all mystics and spiritual teachers agree that the path of spiritual discipline should be followed.  The most common  of the disciplines is meditation. The function of meditation is to quiet the mind so that one can hear what is already there.  The Quakers call it “the quiet still voice within, or the good news that flows out of silence.”  It is so widespread that it is preferred by the majority of spiritual pilgrims.  There are many other disciplines, such as prayer, contemplation,  yoga, chanting, the Zen arts, T’ai-chi,  Sufi dancing, fasting,  and journal-keeping.  Most of the disciplines are centuries old . 

 Journal-keeping is the most modern of  the spiritual disciplines.  It is using a reflection and feedback process in order to draw upon one’s inner self for its material.  It is much more than recording personal experience.  One records one’s own spiritual insights and truths. 
  (2) The path of knowledge is encountering ideas  through reading and through communicating with  people with openness and honesty.  Our reading must  go beyond “facts” to Symbols, myths, metaphors, stories to stimulate ones own  creativity, including spiritual growth. 

(3) The path of Devotion includes what is meant by worship - affirmation of that which is true, good, and beautiful.  Reading from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is a part of our worship. The primary purpose of UU devotional literature is not to tell us original and final truths, but to evoke the truth that waits within us. 
  We should listen to our own inner echoes as much as we should look at the words before us.  All religions teach the path of devotion.  And all religions  direct us to be loving, kind, gentle, truthful. 

 Finally, the path of witness and action- UUs are deeply concerned with  social action.  We attempt to keep our sight on the unity of things.  We must include ourselves in what we do.  Our first project is ourselves.  If we want to change the world, we begin by changing ourselves . 

What about Creeds, statements of belief, catechism  as a part of UU religion? 

 When people meet UUism for the first time, they notice first the lack of any formal statement of beliefs.  Most people expect to be asked to assent to specific articles of faith.  They expect a creed or a catechism.  When they learn that Unitarian Universalists have no creed, only seven principles, and hold a wide variety of differing beliefs, they are confused.   Anyone can be a UU they ask, even an Atheist? 

 It is true that  UUs have no creed, but this does not mean that we have no religious beliefs.  A creed is a statement of beliefs that are considered to be beyond rational criticism and therefore binding upon all religious people.  The assumption is that the creed has been divinely revealed. 
  Unitarianism and Universalism rejects all creeds; not for the religious beliefs they embody but for their implied intention to bind future generations to the ideas, insights and literal words of the past. 

   It may well be that the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed were good and accurate formulations of the beliefs of most Christians in the third and fourth centuries, but we see no reason why they should remain definitive for religious persons in all time.  James Russell Lowell wrote:  ‘New occasions teach new duties;  Time makes ancient good  uncouth.  We must onward still, and upward -Who would keep abreast of truth.” 

 A statement of  beliefs was written first in l954, before the two churches, the Unitarians and the Universalists combined. These beliefs are still alive and well today. 

Briefly, they are: (1)We believe religion must include emotion, (2) We believe that religion must be ethical (3) We see Jesus of Nazareth as one of the great exemplars of universal religion, (4) We see Christianity itself,  as a large and varied family of faiths and churches. 
I brief explanation of those statements includes: 

(1) We have  “a rational faith.”  We believe that the deepest springs of human action are not only rational but also emotion.  A genuinely rational religion must include a real awareness of  emotional forces.  We believe that Miracles happen, not from an outside force, but from our own faith. 

(2)We believe that religion  must be ethical.  The ethical standards of pure religion, as UUs understand them, are not obscure, nor is there much disagreement about them.  They are freedom of mind and spirit; the sense of human equality and humanity; the triumph of understanding over fear, unity over division and love over hate. 

 The power and truth of our separate faiths are to be judged, not by the churches we belong to or the beliefs we profess, but by who we are as individuals and what we do.  “By their fruits,” said Jesus, “ye shall know them.” 

Religion is for UUs a universal human experience.  We believe that in all times and places, in varying languages and cultural settings, these same inclusive ethical standards have been taught and practiced by the wise, the holy, the humble, and the brave. 

 (3) We see Jesus of Nazareth as one of the great exemplars of this universal religion.  We need not believe that he was God or the Second Person of the Trinity in order to know that his words and his life were true and beautiful. It is possible to trace in early Christian thought the transformation of the simple prophet of Nazareth into Jesus, the Son of God or God himself, the Second Person of the Trinity.  This is one interpretation of Christianity - but not the only one.  There have always been devout Christians who held to a more human view of Jesus, and the weight of modern scholarship seems to be on their side.  This is the view which Unitarians and Universalists and other liberals have always espoused. 

 (4) We see Christianity itself, not as a singly monolithic faith and church, but as a large and varied family of faiths and churches, which have in common the Jewish heritage of the Old Testament and a reverence for Jesus of Nazareth and what he said and did. 
Unitarian Christianity places its major emphasis on Jesus the man.  We define Christianity as the effort to bring to life in this world the spirit that was in Jesus, to realize his ideals through words and deeds of justice, of mercy, of humanity and of peace.  This belief is the one Jesus himself made, and it is most clearly stated in the oldest portions of the Christian Scriptures. 

(5) UUs recognize that Christianity is our religious tradition and that the culture of which we in the West are part of  is a culture based upon Judeo-Christian moral and spiritual values.  However, most UUs regard Christianity not as the was but as a way.  Because it is our tradition, it is our best means of interpreting and celebrating the great universal truths of religion.  But this is not necessarily so for others whose history and culture have been different from ours.  Christianity does not lose in dignity or truth because it shares with other great religions the interpretation of universal religious truth. 

(6)UUs believe that the church is a fellowship of human beings who have gathered together in order to deepen and strengthen each other in major concerns of religious life.  Variety of belief, temperament and background within the church is not a disaster but an opportunity. 

-To one UU, religion will be expressed in a deep passion for social justice; 
- to another, it will be expressed in simple personal kindness and helpfulness to others; 
-to a third, it will involve an intense and serious search for knowledge; 
-to a fourth, it will mean a kind of mysticism, a sense of wholeness and unity with God and with other human beings through God; 
-to a fifth, it will be bound up with the continuing life and human relationships of a church. 

Religion can mean all these things and more to the various persons in a UU church.  All these elements are necessary.  None has been formalized into an exclusive creed, but if any were lacking, religion would lose something of its beauty and completeness. 

 UUs believe that we can trust the free human spirit to discover life’s best meanings and to realize them in the process by which history is made.  We believe that the ultimate destiny of humans will be determined neither by great forces of nature nor by arbitrary whims of deity - but by human hopes, purposes and choices.  Albert Schweitzer said  “as  making history rather than suffering it.” 

 We have confidence that our lives can be made better by the efforts of people who think clearly and reverently, who act patiently and boldly.  UUs do not claim to have found a faith that can solve all human problems and put an end to all doubts and questions.  But we are sure that the world needs such a faith as ours; that human life and society will be uplifted and made better by it; and that this, after all, is what a religion is supposed to do.   And that is the Good News we offer to all people.  So Be It   Amen 
 
 

                                                                                Sermon presented by Rev. Dorothy Mae Sheldon 
                                                                                Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Congegation
                                                                              Top of Page